I refrained from comments, accepting Mrs. Ackroyd’s story on its merits. I even forbore to ask her why it was necessary to abstract what she wanted in such a surreptitious manner.
“Why did you leave the lid open?” I asked. “Did you forget?”
“I was startled,” said Mrs. Ackroyd. “I heard footsteps coming along the terrace outside. I hastened out of the room and just got up the stairs before Parker opened the front door to you.”
“That must have been Miss Russell,” I said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Ackroyd had revealed to me one fact that was extremely interesting. Whether her designs upon Ackroyd’s silver had been strictly honourable I neither knew nor cared. What did interest me was the fact that Miss Russell must have entered the drawing room by the window, and that I had not been wrong when I judged her to be out of breath with running. Where had she been? I thought of the summerhouse and the scrap of cambric.
“I wonder if Miss Russell has had her handkerchiefs starched!” I exclaimed on the spur of the moment.
Mrs. Ackroyd’s start recalled me to myself, and I rose.
“You think you can explain to M. Poirot?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, certainly. Absolutely.”
I got away at last, after being forced to listen to more justifications of her conduct.
The parlour maid was in the hall, and it was she who helped me on with my overcoat. I observed her more closely than I had done heretofore. It was clear that she had been crying.
“How is it,” I asked, “that you told us that Mr. Ackroyd sent for you on Friday to his study? I hear now that it was you who asked to speak to him.”
For a minute the girl’s eyes dropped before mine. Then she spoke.
“I meant to leave in any case,” she said uncertainly.
I said no more. She opened the front door for me. Just as I was passing out, she said suddenly in a low voice:
“Excuse me, sir, is there any news of Captain Paton?”
I shook my head, looking at her inquiringly.
“He ought to come back,” she said. “Indeed—indeed he ought to come back.”
She was looking at me with appealing eyes.
“Does no one know where he is?” she asked.
“Do you?” I said sharply.
She shook her head.
“No, indeed. I know nothing. But anyone who was a friend to him would tell him this: he ought to come back.”
I lingered, thinking that perhaps the girl would say more. Her next question surprised me.
“When do they think the murder was done? Just before ten o’clock?”
“That is the idea,” I said. “Between a quarter to ten and the hour.”
“Not earlier? Not before a quarter to ten?”
I looked at her attentively. She was so clearly eager for a reply in the affirmative.
“That’s out of the question,” I said. “Miss Ackroyd saw her uncle alive at a quarter to ten.”
She turned away, and her whole figure seemed to droop.
“A handsome girl,” I said to myself as I drove off. “An exceedingly handsome girl.”
Caroline was at home. She had had a visit from Poirot and was very pleased and important about it.
“I am helping him with the case,” she explained.
I felt rather uneasy. Caroline is bad enough as it is. What will she be like with her detective instincts encouraged?
“Are you going round the neighbourhood looking for Ralph Paton’s mysterious girl?” I inquired.
“I might do that on my own account,” said Caroline. “No, this is a special thing M. Poirot wants me to find out for him.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“He wants to know whether Ralph Paton’s boots were black or brown,” said Caroline with tremendous solemnity.
I stared at her. I see now that I was unbelievably stupid about these boots. I failed altogether to grasp the point.
“They were brown shoes,” I said. “I saw them.”
“Not shoes, James, boots. M. Poirot wants to know whether a pair of boots Ralph had with him at the hotel were brown or black. A lot hangs on it.”
Call me dense if you like. I didn’t see.
“And how are you going to find out?” I asked.
Caroline said there would be no difficulty about that. Our Annie’s dearest friend was Miss Gannett’s maid, Clara. And Clara was walking out with the boots at the Three Boars. The whole thing was simplicity itself, and by the aid of Miss Gannett, who cooperated loyally, at once giving Clara leave of absence, the matter was rushed through at express speed.
It was when we were sitting down to lunch that Caroline remarked, with would-be unconcern: “About those boots of Ralph Paton’s.”
“Well,” I said, “what about them?”
“M. Poirot thought they were probably brown. He was wrong. They’re black.”
And Caroline nodded her head several times. She evidently felt that she had scored a point over Poirot.
I did not answer. I was puzzling over what the colour of a pair of Ralph Paton’s boots had to do with the case.
XV
Geoffrey Raymond
I was to have a further proof that day of the success of Poirot’s tactics. That challenge of his had been a subtle touch born of his knowledge of human nature. A mixture of fear and guilt had wrung the truth from Mrs. Ackroyd. She was the first to react.
That afternoon when I returned from seeing my patients, Caroline told me that Geoffrey Raymond had just left.
“Did he want to see me?” I asked, as I hung up my coat in the hall.
Caroline was hovering by my elbow. “It was M. Poirot he wanted to see,” she said. “He’d just come from The Larches. Mr. Poirot was out. Mr. Raymond thought that he might be here, or that you might know where he was.”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“I tried to make him wait,” said Caroline, “but he said he would call back at The Larches in half an hour, and went away down the village. A great pity, because M. Poirot came in practically the minute after he left.”
“Came in here?”
“No, to his own house.”
“How do you know?”
“The side window,” said Caroline briefly.
It seemed to me that we had now exhausted
