He laughed and twinkled. ‘I always like to employ the expert,’ he remarked obscurely, but he refused to explain the remark.
‘You got all the local gossip anyway,’ I remarked. ‘True, and untrue.’
‘And a great deal of valuable information,’ he added quietly.
‘Such as-’ He shook his head.
‘Why not have told me the truth?’ he countered.
‘In a place like this, all Ralph Paton’s doings were bound to be known.
If your sister had not happened to pass through the wood that day somebody else would have done so.’
‘I suppose they would,’ I said grumpily.
‘What about this interest of yours in my patients?’
Again he twinkled.
‘Only one of them, doctor. Only one of them.’
‘The last?’ I hazarded.
I ^ He held out to me the little quill.
I looked at it curiously. Then a memory of something I had read stirred in me.
Poirot, who had been watching my face, nodded.
‘Yes, heroin, “snow.”
Drug-takers carry it like this, and sniff it up the nose.’
‘Diamorphine hydrochloride,’ I murmured mechanically.
‘This method of taking the drug is very common on the other side.
Another proof, if we wanted one, that the man came from Canada or the States.’
‘What first attracted your attention to that summerhouse?’ I asked curiously.
‘My friend the inspector took it for granted that anyone using that path did so as a short cut to the house, but as soon as I saw the summer-house, I realized that the same path would be taken by anyone using the summer-house as a rendezvous.
Now it seems fairly certain that the stranger came neither to the front nor to the back door.
Then did someone from the house go out and meet him?
If so, what could be a more convenient place than that little summerhouse?
I searched it with the hope that I might find some clue inside. I found two, the scrap of cambric and the quill.’
‘And the scrap of cambric?’ I asked curiously. ‘What about that?’
Poirot raised his eyebrows. ‘You do not use your little grey cells,’ he remarked drily.
‘The scrap of starched cambric should be obvious.’
‘Not very obvious to me.’ I changed the subject.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘this man went to the summer-house to meet somebody.
Who was that somebody?’
‘Exactly the question,’ said Poirot.
‘You will remember that Mrs Ackroyd and her daughter came over from Canada to live here?’
‘Is that what you meant today when you accused them of hiding the truth?’
‘Perhaps.
Now another point.
What did you think of the parlourmaid’s story?’ ‘What story?’ ‘The story of her dismissal.
Does it take half an hour to dismiss a servant?
Was the story of those important papers a likely one?
And remember, though she says she was in her bedroom from nine-thirty until ten o’clock, there is no one to confirm her statement.’
‘You bewilder me,’ I said.
‘To me it grows clearer.
But tell me now your own ideas and theories.’
I drew a piece of paper from my pocket. ‘I just scribbled down a few suggestions,’ I said apologetically.
‘But excellent - you have method.
Let us hear them.’
I read out in a somewhat embarrassed voice.
‘To begin with, one must look at the thing logically ‘
‘Just what my poor Hastings used to say,’ interrupted Poirot, ‘but alas! he never did so.’