‘That is where we disagree, you and I.
Three motives - it is almost too much.
I am inclined to believe that, after all, Ralph Paton is innocent.’
Chapter 14
Mrs Ackroyd
After the evening talk I have just chronicled, the affair seemed to me to enter on a different phase.
The whole thing can be divided into two parts, each clear and distinct from the other.
Part I ranges from Ackroyd’s death on the Friday evening to the following Monday night.
It is the straightforward narrative of what occurred, as presented to Hercule Poirot.
I was at Poirot’s elbow the whole time.
I saw what he saw.
I tried my best to read his mind.
As I know now, I failed in this latter task.
Though Poirot showed me all his discoveries - as, for instance, the gold wedding-ring - he held back the vital and yet logical impressions that he formed.
As I came to know later, this secrecy was characteristic of him.
He would throw out hints and suggestions, but beyond that he would not go.
As I say, up till the Monday evening, my narrative might have been that of Poirot himself.
I played Watson to his Sherlock.
But after Monday our ways diverged.
Poirot was busy on his own account.
I got to hear of what he was doing, because in King’s Abbot, you get to hear of everything, but he did not take me into his confidence beforehand.
And I, too, had my own preoccupations.
On looking back, the thing that strikes me most is the piecemeal character of this period.
Everyone had a hand in the elucidation of the mystery.
It was rather like a jigsaw puzzle to which everyone contributed their own little piece of knowledge or discovery. But their task ended there.
To Poirot alone belongs the renown of fitting those pieces into their correct place.
Some of the incidents seemed at the time irrelevant and unmeaning.
There was, for instance, the question of the black boots. But that comes later... To take things strictly in chronological order, I must begin with the summons from Mrs Ackroyd. She sent for me early on Tuesday morning, and since the summons sounded an urgent one, I hastened there, expecting to find her in extremis.
The lady was in bed. So much did she concede to the etiquette of the situation.
She gave me her bony hand, and indicated a chair drawn up to the bedside.
‘Well, Mrs Ackroyd,’ I said, ‘and what’s the matter with you?’ I spoke with that kind of spurious geniality which seems to be expected of general practitioners.
‘I’m prostrated,’ said Mrs Ackroyd in a faint voice.
‘Absolutely prostrated.
It’s the shock of poor Roger’s death. They say these things often aren’t felt at the time, you know. It’s the reaction afterwards.’
It is a pity that a doctor is precluded by his profession from being able sometimes to say what he really thinks.
I would have given anything to be able to answer
‘Bunkum!’
Instead, I suggested a tonic.
Mrs Ackroyd accepted the tonic.
One move in the game seemed now to be concluded.
Not for a moment did I imagine that I had been sent for because of the shock occasioned by Ackroyd’s death.
But Mrs Ackroyd is totally incapable of pursuing a straightforward course on any subject. She always approaches her object by tortuous means.
I wondered very much why it was she had sent for me.
‘And then that scene - yesterday,’ continued my patient. She paused as though expecting me to take up a cue.
‘What scene?’
‘Doctor, how can you? Have you forgotten?
That dreadful little Frenchman - or Belgian - or whatever he is.
Bullying us all like he did.
It has quite upset me.
Coming on the top of Roger’s death.’ ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Ackroyd,’ I said.