Inspector1 Raglan had received a bad jolt2. He was not deceived by Blunt’s valiant3 lie any more than we had been. Our way back to the village was punctuated4 by his complaints.
“This alters everything, this does. I don’t know whether you’ve realized it, Monsieur Poirot?”
“I think so, yes, I think so,” said Poirot. “You see, me, I have been familiar with the idea for some time.”
Inspector Raglan, who had only had the idea presented to him a short half-hour ago, looked at Poirot unhappily, and went on with his discoveries.
“Those alibis6 now. Worthless! Absolutely worthless. Got to start again. Find out what every one was doing from nine-thirty onwards. Nine-thirty—that’s the time we’ve got to hang on to. You were quite right about the man Kent—we don’t release him yet awhile. Let me see now—nine-forty-five at the Dog and Whistle. He might have got there in a quarter of an hour if he ran. It’s just possible that it was his voice Mr. Raymond heard talking to Mr. Ackroyd—asking for money which Mr. Ackroyd refused. But one thing’s clear—it wasn’t he who sent the telephone message. The station is half a mile in the other direction—over a mile and a half from239 the Dog and Whistle, and he was at the Dog and Whistle until about ten minutes past ten. Dang that telephone call! We always come up against it.”
“We do indeed,” agreed Poirot. “It is curious.”
“It’s just possible that if Captain Paton climbed into his uncle’s room and found him there murdered, he may have sent it. Got the wind up, thought he’d be accused, and cleared out. That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Why should he have telephoned?”
“May have had doubts if the old man was really dead. Thought he’d get the doctor up there as soon as possible, but didn’t want to give himself away. Yes, I say now, how’s that for a theory? Something in that, I should say.”
The inspector swelled7 his chest out importantly. He was so plainly delighted with himself that any words of ours would have been quite superfluous8.
We arrived back at my house at this minute, and I hurried in to my surgery patients, who had all been waiting a considerable time, leaving Poirot to walk to the police station with the inspector.
Having dismissed the last patient, I strolled into the little room at the back of the house which I call my workshop—I am rather proud of the home-made wireless9 set I turned out. Caroline hates my workroom. I keep my tools there, and Annie is not allowed to wreak10 havoc11 with a dustpan and brush. I was just adjusting the interior of an alarm clock which had been denounced as wholly unreliable by the household, when the door opened and Caroline put her head in.
240
“Oh! there you are, James,” she said, with deep disapproval12. “M. Poirot wants to see you.”
“Well,” I said, rather irritably13, for her sudden entrance had startled me and I had let go of a piece of delicate mechanism14, “if he wants to see me, he can come in here.”
“In here?” said Caroline.
“That’s what I said—in here.”
Caroline gave a sniff15 of disapproval and retired16. She returned in a moment or two, ushering17 in Poirot, and then retired again, shutting the door with a bang.
“Aha! my friend,” said Poirot, coming forward and rubbing his hands. “You have not got rid of me so easily, you see!”
“Finished with the inspector?” I asked.
“For the moment, yes. And you, you have seen all the patients?”
“Yes.”
Poirot sat down and looked at me, tilting18 his egg-shaped head on one side, with the air of one who savors19 a very delicious joke.
“You are in error,” he said at last. “You have still one patient to see.”
“Not you?” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Ah, not me, bien entendu. Me, I have the health magnificent. No, to tell you the truth, it is a little complot of mine. There is some one I wish to see, you understand—and at the same time it is not necessary that the whole village should intrigue20 itself about the matter—which is what would happen if the lady were seen to241 come to my house—for it is a lady. But to you she has already come as a patient before.”
“Miss Russell!” I exclaimed.
“Précisément. I wish much to speak with her, so I send her the little note and make the appointment in your surgery. You are not annoyed with me?”
“On the contrary,” I said. “That is, presuming I am allowed to be present at the interview?”
“But naturally! In your own surgery!”
“You know,” I said, throwing down the pincers I was holding, “it’s extraordinarily21 intriguing22, the whole thing. Every new development that arises is like the shake you give to a kaleidoscope—the thing changes entirely23 in aspect. Now, why are you so anxious to see Miss Russell?”
“Surely it is obvious?” he murmured.
“There you go again,” I grumbled25. “According to you everything is obvious. But you leave me walking about in a fog.”
“You mock yourself at me. Take the matter of Mademoiselle Flora27. The inspector was surprised—but you—you were not.”
“I never dreamed of her being the thief,” I expostulated.
“That—perhaps no. But I was watching your face and you were not—like Inspector Raglan—startled and incredulous.”
I thought for a minute or two.
242
“Perhaps you are right,” I said at last. “All along I’ve felt that Flora was keeping back something—so the truth, when it came, was subconsciously28 expected. It upset Inspector Raglan very much indeed, poor man.”
“Ah! pour ça, oui! The poor man must rearrange all his ideas. I profited by his state of mental chaos29 to induce him to grant me a little favor.”
“What was that?”
Poirot took a sheet of notepaper from his pocket. Some words were written on it, and he read them aloud.
“The police have, for some days, been seeking for Captain Ralph Paton, the nephew of Mr. Ackroyd of Fernly Park, whose death occurred under such tragic30 circumstances last Friday. Captain Paton has been found at Liverpool, where he was on the point of embarking31 for America.”
He folded up the piece of paper again.
“That, my friend, will be in the newspapers to-morrow morning.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded.
“But—but it isn’t true! He’s not at Liverpool!”
Poirot beamed on me.
“You have the intelligence so quick! No, he has not been found at Liverpool. Inspector Raglan was very loath32 to let me send this paragraph to the press, especially as I could not take him into my confidence. But I assured him most solemnly that very interesting results would follow its appearance in print, so he gave in, after stipulating33 that he was, on no account, to bear the responsibility.”
243
I stared at Poirot. He smiled back at me.
“It beats me,” I said at last, “what you expect to get out of that.”
“You should employ your little gray cells,” said Poirot gravely.
He rose and came across to the bench.
“It is that you have really the love of the machinery,” he said, after inspecting the débris of my labors34.
Every man has his hobby. I immediately drew Poirot’s attention to my home-made wireless. Finding him sympathetic, I showed him one or two little inventions of my own—trifling things, but useful in the house.
“Decidedly,” said Poirot, “you should be an inventor by trade, not a doctor. But I hear the bell—that is your patient. Let us go into the surgery.”
Once before I had been struck by the remnants of beauty in the housekeeper35’s face. This morning I was struck anew. Very simply dressed in black, tall, upright and independent as ever, with her big dark eyes and an unwonted flush of color in her usually pale cheeks, I realized that as a girl she must have been startlingly handsome.
“Good-morning, mademoiselle,” said Poirot. “Will you be seated? Dr. Sheppard is so kind as to permit me the use of his surgery for a little conversation I am anxious to have with you.”
Miss Russell sat down with her usual composure. If she felt any inward agitation36, it did not display itself in any outward manifestation37.
244
“It seems a queer way of doing things, if you’ll allow me to say so,” she remarked.
“Miss Russell—I have news to give you.”
“Indeed!”
“Charles Kent has been arrested at Liverpool.”
Not a muscle of her face moved. She merely opened her eyes a trifle wider, and asked, with a tinge38 of defiance39:
“Well, what of it?”
But at that moment it came to me—the resemblance that had haunted me all along, something familiar in the defiance of Charles Kent’s manner. The two voices, one rough and coarse, the other painfully ladylike—were strangely the same in timbre40. It was of Miss Russell that I had been reminded that night outside the gates of Fernly Park.
I looked at Poirot, full of my discovery, and he gave me an imperceptible nod.
In answer to Miss Russell’s question, he threw out his hands in a thoroughly41 French gesture.
“I thought you might be interested, that is all,” he said mildly.
“Well, I’m not particularly,” said Miss Russell. “Who is this Charles Kent anyway?”
“He is a man, mademoiselle, who was at Fernly on the night of the murder.”
“Really?”
“Fortunately for him, he has an alibi5. At a quarter to ten he was at a public-house a mile from here.”
“Lucky for him,” commented Miss Russell.
245
“But we still do not know what he was doing at Fernly—who it was he went to meet, for instance.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you at all,” said the housekeeper politely. “Nothing came to my ears. If that is all——”
She made a tentative movement as though to rise. Poirot stopped her.
“It is not quite all,” he said smoothly42. “This morning fresh developments have arisen. It seems now that Mr. Ackroyd was murdered, not at a quarter to ten, but before. Between ten minutes to nine, when Dr. Sheppard left, and a quarter to ten.”
I saw the color drain from the housekeeper’s face, leaving it dead white. She leaned forward, her figure swaying.
“But Miss Ackroyd said—Miss Ackroyd said——”
“Miss Ackroyd has admitted that she was lying. She was never in the study at all that evening.”
“Then——?”
“Then it would seem that in this Charles Kent we have the man we are looking for. He came to Fernly, can give no account of what he was doing there——”
“I can tell you what he was doing there. He never touched a hair of old Ackroyd’s head—he never went near the study. He didn’t do it, I tell you.”
She was leaning forward. That iron self-control was broken through at last. Terror and desperation were in her face.
“M. Poirot! M. Poirot! Oh, do believe me.”
246
Poirot got up and came to her. He patted her reassuringly43 on the shoulder.
“But yes—but yes, I will believe. I had to make you speak, you know.”
“Is what you said true?”
“That Charles Kent is suspected of the crime? Yes, that is true. You alone can save him, by telling the reason for his being at Fernly.”
“In the summer-house, yes, I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Mademoiselle, it is the business of Hercule Poirot to know things. I know that you went out earlier in the evening, that you left a message in the summer-house to say what time you would be there.”
“Yes, I did. I had heard from him—saying he was coming. I dared not let him come to the house. I wrote to the address he gave me and said I would meet him in the summer-house, and described it to him so that he would be able to find it. Then I was afraid he might not wait there patiently, and I ran out and left a piece of paper to say I would be there about ten minutes past nine. I didn’t want the servants to see me, so I slipped out through the drawing-room window. As I came back, I met Dr. Sheppard, and I fancied that he would think it queer. I was out of breath, for I had been running. I had no idea that he was expected to dinner that night.”
She paused.
247
“Go on,” said Poirot. “You went out to meet him at ten minutes past nine. What did you say to each other?”
“It’s difficult. You see——”
“Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, interrupting her, “in this matter I must have the whole truth. What you tell us need never go beyond these four walls. Dr. Sheppard will be discreet46, and so shall I. See, I will help you. This Charles Kent, he is your son, is he not?”
She nodded. The color had flamed into her cheeks.
“No one has ever known. It was long ago—long ago—down in Kent. I was not married....”
“So you took the name of the county as a surname for him. I understand.”
“I got work. I managed to pay for his board and lodging47. I never told him that I was his mother. But he turned out badly, he drank, then took to drugs. I managed to pay his passage out to Canada. I didn’t hear of him for a year or two. Then, somehow or other, he found out that I was his mother. He wrote asking me for money. Finally, I heard from him back in this country again. He was coming to see me at Fernly, he said. I dared not let him come to the house. I have always been considered so—so very respectable. If any one got an inkling—it would have been all up with my post as housekeeper. So I wrote to him in the way I have just told you.”
“And in the morning you came to see Dr. Sheppard?”
“Yes. I wondered if something could be done. He was not a bad boy—before he took to drugs.”
248
“I see,” said Poirot. “Now let us go on with the story. He came that night to the summer-house?”
“Yes, he was waiting for me when I got there. He was very rough and abusive. I had brought with me all the money I had, and I gave it to him. We talked a little, and then he went away.”
“What time was that?”
“It must have been between twenty and twenty-five minutes past nine. It was not yet half-past when I got back to the house.”
“Which way did he go?”
“Straight out the same way he came, by the path that joined the drive just inside the lodge48 gates.”
Poirot nodded.
“And you, what did you do?”
“I went back to the house. Major Blunt was walking up and down the terrace smoking, so I made a detour49 to get round to the side door. It was then just on half-past nine, as I tell you.”
Poirot nodded again. He made a note or two in a microscopic50 pocket-book.
“I think that is all,” he said thoughtfully.
“Ought I——” she hesitated. “Ought I to tell all this to Inspector Raglan?”
“It may come to that. But let us not be in a hurry. Let us proceed slowly, with due order and method. Charles Kent is not yet formally charged with murder. Circumstances may arise which will render your story unnecessary.”
Miss Russell rose.
249
“Thank you very much, M. Poirot,” she said. “You have been very kind—very kind indeed. You—you do believe me, don’t you? That Charles had nothing to do with this wicked murder!”
“There seems no doubt that the man who was talking to Mr. Ackroyd in the library at nine-thirty could not possibly have been your son. Be of good courage, mademoiselle. All will yet be well.”
Miss Russell departed. Poirot and I were left together.
“So that’s that,” I said. “Every time we come back to Ralph Paton. How did you manage to spot Miss Russell as the person Charles Kent came to meet? Did you notice the resemblance?”
“I had connected her with the unknown man long before we actually came face to face with him. As soon as we found that quill51. The quill suggested dope, and I remembered your account of Miss Russell’s visit to you. Then I found the article on cocaine52 in that morning’s paper. It all seemed very clear. She had heard from some one that morning—some one addicted53 to drugs, she read the article in the paper, and she came to you to ask a few tentative questions. She mentioned cocaine, since the article in question was on cocaine. Then, when you seemed too interested, she switched hurriedly to the subject of detective stories and untraceable poisons. I suspected a son or a brother, or some other undesirable54 male relation. Ah! but I must go. It is the time of the lunch.”
“Stay and lunch with us,” I suggested.
250
Poirot shook his head. A faint twinkle came into his eye.
“Not again to-day. I should not like to force Mademoiselle Caroline to adopt a vegetarian55 diet two days in succession.”
It occurred to me that there was not much which escaped Hercule Poirot.
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1
inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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jolt
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| v.（使）摇动，（使）震动，（使）颠簸 | |
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valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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4
punctuated
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| v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 )；不时打断某事物 | |
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5
alibi
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| n.某人当时不在犯罪现场的申辩或证明；借口 | |
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6
alibis
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| 某人在别处的证据( alibi的名词复数 )； 不在犯罪现场的证人； 借口； 托辞 | |
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7
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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8
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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9
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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10
wreak
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| v.发泄；报复 | |
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11
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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12
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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irritably
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| ad.易生气地 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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15
sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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16
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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ushering
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
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18
tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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savors
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| v.意味，带有…的性质( savor的第三人称单数 )；给…加调味品；使有风味；品尝 | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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23
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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25
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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genially
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| adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地 | |
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27
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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subconsciously
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| ad.下意识地，潜意识地 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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embarking
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| 乘船( embark的现在分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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stipulating
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| v.（尤指在协议或建议中）规定，约定，讲明（条件等）( stipulate的现在分词 )；规定，明确要求 | |
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labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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timbre
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| n.音色，音质 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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45
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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46
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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47
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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49
detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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50
microscopic
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| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
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51
quill
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| n.羽毛管；v.给（织物或衣服）作皱褶 | |
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52
cocaine
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| n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂） | |
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53
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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54
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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55
vegetarian
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| n.素食者；adj.素食的 | |
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