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Agatha Christie
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 — Dr. Sheppard at the Breakfast Table
Chapter 2 — Who’s Who in King’s Abbot
Chapter 3 — The Man Who Grew Vegetable Marrows
Chapter 4 — Dinner at Fernly
Chapter 5 — Murder
Chapter 6 — The Tunisian Dagger
Chapter 7 — I Learn My Neighbour’s Profession
Chapter 8 — Inspector Raglan Is Confident
Chapter 9 — The Goldfish Pond
Chapter 10 — The Parlourmaid
Chapter 11 — Poirot Pays a Call
Chapter 12 — Round the Table
Chapter 13 — The Goose Quill
Chapter 14 — Mrs. Ackroyd
Chapter 15 — Geoffrey Raymond
Chapter 16 — An Evening at Mah Jong
Chapter 17 — Parker
Chapter 18 — Charles Kent
Chapter 19 — Flora Ackroyd
Chapter 20 — Miss Russell
Chapter 21 — The Paragraph in the Paper
Chapter 22 — Ursula’s Story
Chapter 23 — Poirot’s Little Reunion
Chapter 24 — Ralph Paton’s Story
Chapter 25 — The Whole Truth
Chapter 26 — And Nothing but the Truth
Chapter 27 — Apologia
Chapter1— Dr. SheppardattheBreakfastTable
Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September—a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.
It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with my latchkey, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably upset and worried. I am not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of the next few weeks. I emphatically did not do so. But my instinct told me that there were stirring times ahead.
From the dining room on my left there came the rattle of teacups and the short, dry cough of my sister Caroline.
“Is that you, James?” she called.
An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the truth, it was precisely my sister Caroline who was the cause of my few minutes’ delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells us, is: “Go and find out.” If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.
It was really this last named trait of hers which was causing me these pangs of indecision. Whatever I told Caroline now concerning the demise of Mrs. Ferrars would be common knowledge all over the village within the space of an hour and a half. As a professional man, I naturally aim at discretion. Therefore I have got into the habit of continually withholding all information possible from my sister. She usually finds out just the same, but I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that I am in no way to blame.
Mrs. Ferrars’ husband died just over a year ago, and Caroline has constantly asserted, without the least foundation for the assertion, that his wife poisoned him.
She scorns my invariable rejoinder that Mr. Ferrars died of acute gastritis, helped on by habitual overindulgence in alcoholic beverages. The symptoms of gastritis and arsenical poisoning are not, I agree, unlike, but Caroline bases her accusation on quite different lines.
“You’ve only got to look at her,” I have heard her say.
Mrs. Ferrars, though not in her first youth, was a very attractive woman, and her clothes, though simple, always seemed to fit her very well, but all the same, lots of women buy their clothes in Paris, and have not, on that account, necessarily poisoned their husbands.
As I stood hesitating in the hall, with all this passing through my mind, Caroline’s voice came again, with a sharper note in it.
“What on earth are you doing out there, James? Why don’t you come and get your breakfast?”
“Just coming, my dear,” I said hastily. “I’ve been hanging up my overcoat.”
“You could have hung up half a dozen overcoats in this time.”
She was quite right. I could have.
I walked into the dining room, gave Caroline the accustomed peck on the cheek, and sat down to eggs and bacon. The bacon was rather cold.
“You’ve had an early call,” remarked Caroline.
“Yes,” I said. “King’s Paddock. Mrs. Ferrars.”
“I know,” said my sister.
“How did you know?”
“Annie told me.”
Annie is the house parlourmaid. A nice girl, but an inveterate talker.
There was a pause. I continued to eat eggs and bacon. My sister’s nose, which is long and thin, quivered a little at the tip, as it always does when she is interested or excited over anything.
“Well?” she demanded.
“A sad business. Nothing to be done. Must have died in her sleep.”
“I know,” said my sister again.
This time I was annoyed.
“You can’t know,” I snapped. “I didn’t know myself until I got there, and haven’t mentioned it to a soul yet. If that girl Annie knows, she must be a clairvoyant.”
“It wasn’t Annie who told me. It was the milkman. He had it from the Ferrarses’ cook.”
As I say, there is no need for Caroline to go out to get information. She sits at home and it comes to her.
My sister continued:
“What did she die of? Heart failure?”
“Didn’t the milkman tell you that?” I inquired sarcastically.
Sarcasm is wasted on Caroline. She takes it seriously and answers accordingly.
“He didn’t know,” she explained.
After all, Caroline was bound to hear sooner or later. She might as well hear from me.
“She died of an overdose of Veronal. She’s been taking it lately for sleeplessness. Must have taken too much.”
“Nonsense,” said Caroline immediately. “She took it on purpose. Don’t tell me!”
It is odd, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial. I burst immediately into indignant speech.
“There you go again,” I said. “Rushing along without rhyme or reason. Why on earth should Mrs. Ferrars wish to commit suicide? A widow, fairly young still, very well off, good health, and nothing to do but enjoy life. It’s absurd.”
“Not at all. Even you must have noticed how different she has been looking lately. It’s been coming on for the last six months. She’s looked positively hag-ridden. And you have just admitted that she hasn’t been able to sleep.”
“What is your diagnosis?” I demanded coldly. “An unfortunate love affair, I suppose?”
My sister shook her head.
“Remorse,” she said, with great gusto.
“Remorse?”
“Yes. You never would believe me when I told you she poisoned her husband. I’m more than ever convinced of it now.”
“I don’t think you’re very logical,” I objected. “Surely if a woman committed a crime like murder, she’d be sufficiently cold-blooded to enjoy the fruits of it without any weak-minded sentimentality such as repentance.”
Caroline shook her head.
“There probably are women like that—but Mrs. Ferrars wasn’t one of them. She was a mass of nerves. An overmastering impulse drove her on to get rid of her husband because she was the sort of person who simply can’t endure suffering of any kind, and there’s no doubt that the wife of a man like Ashley Ferrars must have had to suffer a good deal—”
I nodded.
“And ever since she’s been haunted by what she did. I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
I don’t think Caroline ever felt sorry for Mrs. Ferrars whilst she was alive. Now that she has gone where (presumably) Paris frocks can no longer be worn, Caroline is prepared to indulge in the softer emotions of pity and comprehension.
I told her firmly that her whole idea was nonsense. I was all the more firm because I secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she had said. But it is all wrong that Caroline should arrive at the truth simply by a kind of inspired guesswork. I wasn’t going to encourage that sort of thing. She will go round the village airing her views, and everyone will think that she is doing so on medical data supplied by me. Life is very trying.
“Nonsense,” said Caroline, in reply to my strictures. “You’ll see. Ten to one she’s left a letter confessing everything.”
“She didn’t leave a letter of any kind,” I said sharply, and not seeing where the admission was going to land me.
“Oh!” said Caroline. “So you did inquire about that, did you? I believe, James, that in your heart of hearts, you think very much as I do. You’re a precious old humbug.”
“One always has to take the possibility of suicide into consideration,” I said impressively.
“Will there be an inquest?”
“There may be. It all depends. If I am able to declare myself absolutely satisfied that the overdose was taken accidentally, an inquest might be dispensed with.”
“And are you absolutely satisfied?” asked my sister shrewdly.
I did not answer, but got up from the table.
Chapter2— Who’s Who in King’s Abbot
Before I proceed further with what I said to Caroline and what Caroline said to me, it might be as well to give some idea of what I should describe as our local geography. Our village, King’s Abbot, is, I imagine, very much like any other village. Our big town is Cranchester, nine miles away. We have a large railway station, a small post office, and two rival “General Stores.” Able-bodied men are apt to leave the place early in life, but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, “gossip.”
There are only two houses of any importance in King’s Abbot. One is King’s Paddock, left to Mrs. Ferrars by her late husband. The other, Fernly Park, is owned by Roger Ackroyd. Ackroyd has always interested me by being a man more impossibly like a country squire than any country squire could really be. He reminds one of the red-faced sportsmen who always appeared early in the first act of an old-fashioned musical comedy, the setting being the village green. They usually sang a song about going up to London. Nowadays we have revues, and the country squire has died out of musical fashion.
Of course, Ackroyd is not really a country squire. He is an immensely successful manufacturer of (I think) wagon wheels. He is a man of nearly fifty years of age, rubicund of face and genial of manner. He is hand and glove with the vicar, subscribes liberally to parish funds (though rumour has it that he is extremely mean in personal expenditure), encourages cricket matches, Lads’ Clubs, and Disabled Soldiers’ Institutes. He is, in fact, the life and soul of our peaceful village of King’s Abbot.
Now when Roger Ackroyd was a lad of twenty-one, he fell in love with, and married, a beautiful woman some five or six years his senior. Her name was Paton, and she was a widow with one child. The history of the marriage was short and painful. To put it bluntly, Mrs. Ackroyd was a dipsomaniac. She succeeded in drinking herself into her grave four years after her marriage.
In the years that followed, Ackroyd showed no disposition to make a second matrimonial adventure. His wife’s child by her first marriage was only seven years old when his mother died. He is now twenty-five. Ackroyd has always regarded him as his own son, and has brought him up accordingly, but he has been a wild lad and a continual source of worry and trouble to his stepfather. Nevertheless we are all very fond of Ralph Paton in King’s Abbot. He is such a good-looking youngster for one thing.
As I said before, we are ready enough to gossip in our village. Everybody noticed from the first that Ackroyd and Mrs. Ferrars got on very well together. After her husband’s death, the intimacy became more marked. They were always seen about together, and it was freely conjectured that at the end of her period of mourning, Mrs. Ferrars would become Mrs. Roger Ackroyd. It was felt, indeed, that there was a certain fitness in the thing. Roger Ackroyd’s wife had admittedly died of drink. Ashley Ferrars had been a drunkard for many years before his death. It was only fitting that these two victims of alcoholic excess should make up to each other for all that they had previously endured at the hands of their former spouses.
The Ferrars only came to live here just over a year ago, but a halo of gossip has surrounded Ackroyd for many years past. All the time that Ralph Paton was growing up to manhood a series of lady housekeepers presided over Ackroyd’s establishment, and each in turn was regarded with lively suspicion by Caroline and her cronies. It is not too much to say that for at least fifteen years the whole village has confidently expected Ackroyd to marry one of his housekeepers. The last of them, a redoubtable lady called Miss Russell, has reigned undisputed for five years, twice as long as any of her predecessors. It is felt that but for the advent of Mrs. Ferrars, Ackroyd could hardly have escaped. That—and one other factor—the unexpected arrival of a widowed sister-in-law with her daughter from Canada. Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, widow of Ackroyd’s ne’er-do-well younger brother, has taken up her residence at Fernley Park, and has succeeded, according to Caroline, in putting Miss Russell in her proper place.
I don’t know exactly what a “proper place” constitutes—it sounds chilly and unpleasant—but I know that Miss Russell goes about with pinched lips, and what I can only describe as an acid smile, and that she professes the utmost sympathy for “poor Mrs. Ackroyd—dependent on the charity of her husband’s brother. The bread of charity is so bitter, is it not? I should be quite miserable if I did not work for my living.”
I don’t know what Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd thought of the Ferrars affair when it came on the tapis. It was clearly to her advantage that Ackroyd should remain unmarried. She was always very charming—not to say gushing—to Mrs. Ferrars when they met. Caroline says that proves less than nothing.
Such have been our preoccupations in King’s Abbot for the last few years. We have discussed Ackroyd and his affairs from every standpoint. Mrs. Ferrars has fitted into her place in the scheme.
Now there has been a rearrangement of the kaleidoscope. From a mild discussion of probable wedding presents, we had been jerked into the midst of tragedy.
Revolving these and sundry other matters in my mind, I went mechanically on my round. I had no cases of special interest to attend, which was, perhaps, as well, for my thoughts returned again and again to the mystery of Mrs. Ferrars’s death. Had she taken her own life? Surely, if she had done so, she would have left some word behind to say what she contemplated doing? Women, in my experience, if they once reach the determination to commit suicide, usually wish to reveal the state of mind that led to the fatal action. They covet the limelight.
When had I last seen her? Not for over a week. Her manner then had been normal enough considering—well—considering everything.
Then I suddenly remembered that I had seen her, though not to speak to, only yesterday. She had been walking with Ralph Paton, and I had been surprised because I had had no idea that he was likely to be in King’s Abbot. I thought, indeed, that he had quarrelled finally with his stepfather. Nothing had been seen of him down here for nearly six months. They had been walking along, side by side, their heads close together, and she had been talking very earnestly.
I think I can safely say that it was at this moment that a foreboding of the future first swept over me. Nothing tangible as yet—but a vague premonition of the way things were setting. That earnest tête-à-tête between Ralph Paton and Mrs. Ferrars the day before struck me disagreeably.
I was still thinking of it when I came face to face with Roger Ackroyd.
“Sheppard!” he exclaimed. “Just the man I wanted to get hold of. This is a terrible business.”
“You’ve heard then?”
He nodded. He had felt the blow keenly, I could see. His big red cheeks seemed to have fallen in, and he looked a positive wreck of his usual jolly, healthy self.
“It’s worse than you know,” he said quietly. “Look here, Sheppard, I’ve got to talk to you. Can you come back with me now?”
“Hardly. I’ve got three patients to see still, and I must be back by twelve to see my surgery patients.”
“Then this afternoon—no, better still, dine tonight. At 7:30. Will that suit you?”
“Yes, I can manage that all right. What’s wrong? Is it Ralph?”
I hardly knew why I said that—except, perhaps, that it had so often been Ralph.
Ackroyd stared blankly at me as though he hardly understood. I began to realize that there must be something very wrong indeed somewhere. I had never seen Ackroyd so upset before.
“Ralph?” he said vaguely. “Oh! no, it’s not Ralph. Ralph’s in London—Damn! Here’s old Miss Gannett coming. I don’t want to have to talk to her about this ghastly business. See you tonight, Sheppard. Seven-thirty.”
I nodded, and he hurried away, leaving me wondering. Ralph in London? But he had certainly been in King’s Abbot the preceding afternoon. He must have gone back to town last night or early this morning, and yet Ackroyd’s manner had conveyed quite a different impression. He had spoken as though Ralph had not been near the place for months.
I had no time to puzzle the matter out further. Miss Gannett was upon me, thirsting for information. Miss Gannett has all the characteristics of my sister Caroline, but she lacks that unerring aim in jumping to conclusions which lends a touch of greatness to Caroline’s manoeuvres. Miss Gannett was breathless and interrogatory.
Wasn’t it sad about poor dear Mrs. Ferrars? A lot of people were saying she had been a confirmed drug-taker for years. So wicked the way people went about saying things. And yet, the worst of it was, there was usually a grain of truth somewhere in these wild statements. No smoke without fire! They were saying too that Mr. Ackroyd had found out about it, and had broken off the engagement—because there was an engagement. She, Miss Gannett, had proof positive of that. Of course I must know all about it—doctors always did—but they never tell?
And all this with a sharp beady eye on me to see how I reacted to these suggestions. Fortunately, long association with Caroline has led me to preserve an impassive countenance, and to be ready with small noncommittal remarks.
On this occasion I congratulated Miss Gannett on not joining in ill-natured gossip. Rather a neat counterattack, I thought. It left her in difficulties, and before she could pull herself together, I had passed on.
I went home thoughtful, to find several patients waiting for me in the surgery.
I had dismissed the last of them, as I thought, and was just contemplating a few minutes in the garden before lunch when I perceived one more patient waiting for me. She rose and came towards me as I stood somewhat surprised.
I don’t know why I should have been, except that there is a suggestion of cast iron about Miss Russell, a something that is above the ills of the flesh.
Ackroyd’s housekeeper is a tall woman, handsome but forbidding in appearance. She has a stern eye, and lips that shut tightly, and I feel that if I were an under housemaid or a kitchenmaid I should run for my life whenever I heard her coming.
“Good morning, Dr. Sheppard,” said Miss Russell. “I should be much obliged if you would take a look at my knee.”
I took a look, but, truth to tell, I was very little wiser when I had done so. Miss Russell’s account of vague pains was so unconvincing that with a woman of less integrity of character I should have suspected a trumped-up tale. It did cross my mind for one moment that Miss Russell might have deliberately invented this affection of the knee in order to pump me on the subject of Mrs. Ferrars’s death, but I soon saw that there, at least, I had misjudged her. She made a brief reference to the tragedy, nothing more. Yet she certainly seemed disposed to linger and chat.
“Well, thank you very much for this bottle of liniment, doctor,” she said at last. “Not that I believe it will do the least good.”
I didn’t think it would either, but I protested in duty bound. After all, it couldn’t do any harm, and one must stick up for the tools of one’s trade.
“I don’t believe in all these drugs,” said Miss Russell, her eyes sweeping over my array of bottles disparagingly. “Drugs do a lot of harm. Look at the cocaine habit.”
“Well, as far as that goes—”
“It’s very prevalent in high society.”
I’m sure Miss Russell knows far more about high society than I do. I didn’t attempt to argue with her.
“Just tell me this, doctor,” said Miss Russell. “Suppose you are really a slave of the drug habit, is there any cure?”
One cannot answer a question like that off-hand. I gave her a short lecture on the subject, and she listened with close attention. I still suspected her of seeking information about Mrs. Ferrars.
“Now, Veronal, for instance—” I proceeded.
But, strangely enough, she didn’t seem interested in Veronal. Instead she changed the subject, and asked me if it was true that there were certain poisons so rare as to baffle detection.
“Ah!” I said. “You’ve been reading detective stories.”
She admitted that she had.
“The essence of a detective story,” I said, “is to have a rare poison—if possible something from South America, that nobody has ever heard of—something that one obscure tribe of savages use to poison their arrows with. Death is instantaneous, and Western science is powerless to detect it. Is that the kind of thing you mean?”
“Yes. Is there really such a thing?”
I shook my head regretfully.
“I’m afraid there isn’t. There’s curare, of course.”
I told her a good deal about curare, but she seemed to have lost interest once more. She asked me if I had any in my poison cupboard, and when I replied in the negative I fancy I fell in her estimation.
She said she must be getting back, and I saw her out at the surgery door just as the luncheon gong went.
I should never have suspected Miss Russell of a fondness for detective stories. It pleases me very much to think of her stepping out of the housekeeper’s room to rebuke a delinquent housemaid, and then returning to a comfortable perusal of The Mystery of the Seventh Death, or something of the kind.
Chapter3— The Man Who Grew Vegetable Marrows
I told Caroline at lunch that I should be dining at Fernly. She expressed no objection—on the contrary.
“Excellent,” she said. “You’ll hear all about it. By the way, what is the trouble with Ralph?”
“With Ralph?” I said, surprised; “there isn’t any.”
“Then why is he staying at the Three Boars instead of at Fernly Park?”
I did not for a minute question Caroline’s statement that Ralph Paton was staying at the local inn. That Caroline said so was enough for me.
“Ackroyd told me he was in London,” I said. In the surprise of the moment I departed from my valuable rule of never parting with information.
“Oh!” said Caroline. I could see her nose twitching as she worked on this.
“He arrived at the Three Boars yesterday morning,” she said. “And he’s still there. Last night he was out with a girl.”
That did not surprise me in the least. Ralph, I should say, is out with a girl most nights of his life. But I did rather wonder that he chose to indulge in the pastime in King’s Abbot instead of in the gay Metropolis.
“One of the barmaids?” I asked.
“No. That’s just it. He went out to meet her. I don’t know who she is.”
(Bitter for Caroline to have to admit such a thing.)
“But I can guess,” continued my indefatigable sister.
I waited patiently.
“His cousin.”
“Flora Ackroyd?” I exclaimed in surprise.
Flora Ackroyd is, of course, no relation whatever really to Ralph Paton but Ralph has been looked upon for so long as practically Ackroyd’s own son, that cousinship is taken for granted.
“Flora Ackroyd,” said my sister.
“But why not go to Fernly if he wanted to see her?”
“Secretly engaged,” said Caroline, with immense enjoyment. “Old Ackroyd won’t hear of it, and they have to meet this way.”
I saw a good many flaws in Caroline’s theory, but I forebore to point them out to her. An innocent remark about our new neighbour created a diversion.
The house next door, The Larches, has recently been taken by a stranger. To Caroline’s extreme annoyance, she has not been able to find out anything about him, except that he is a foreigner. The Intelligence Corps has proved a broken reed. Presumably the man has milk and vegetables and joints of meat and occasional whitings just like everybody else, but none of the people who make it their business to supply these things seem to have acquired any information. His name, apparently, is Mr. Porrott—a name which conveys an odd feeling of unreality. The one thing we do know about him is that he is interested in the growing of vegetable marrows.
But that is certainly not the sort of information that Caroline is after. She wants to know where he comes from, what he does, whether he is married, what his wife was, or is, like, whether he has children, what his mother’s maiden name was—and so on. Somebody very like Caroline must have invented the questions on passports, I think.
“My dear Caroline,” I said. “There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.”
Caroline dissented. She said that if the man was a hairdresser, he would have wavy hair—not straight. All hairdressers did.
I cited several hairdressers personally known to me who had straight hair, but Caroline refused to be convinced.
“I can’t make him out at all,” she said in an aggrieved voice. “I borrowed some garden tools the other day, and he was most polite, but I couldn’t get anything out of him. I asked him point blank at last whether he was a Frenchman, and he said he wasn’t—and, somehow, I didn’t like to ask him any more.”
I began to be more interested in our mysterious neighbour. A man who is capable of shutting up Caroline and sending her, like the Queen of Sheba, empty away, must be something of a personality.
“I believe,” said Caroline, “that he’s got one of those new vacuum cleaners—”
I saw a meditated loan and the opportunity of further questioning gleaming from her eye. I saw the chance to escape into the garden. I am rather fond of gardening. I was busily exterminating dandelion roots when a shout of warning sounded from close by and a heavy body whizzed by my ears and fell at my feet with a repellent squelch. It was a vegetable marrow!
I looked up angrily. Over the wall, to my left, there appeared a face. An egg-shaped head, partially covered with suspiciously black hair, two immense moustaches, and a pair of watchful eyes. It was our mysterious neighbour, Mr. Porrott.
He broke at once into fluent apologies.
“I demand of you a thousand pardons, monsieur. I am without defence. For some months now I cultivate the marrows. This morning suddenly I enrage myself with these marrows. I send them to promenade themselves—alas! not only mentally but physically. I seize the biggest. I hurl him over the wall. Monsieur, I am ashamed. I prostrate myself.”
Before such profuse apologies, my anger was forced to melt. After all, the wretched vegetable hadn’t hit me. But I sincerely hoped that throwing large vegetables over walls was not our new friend’s hobby. Such a habit could hardly endear him to us as a neighbour.
The strange little man seemed to read my thoughts.
“Ah! no,” he exclaimed. “Do not disquiet yourself. It is not with me a habit. But you can figure to yourself, monsieur, that a man may work towards a certain object, may labour and toil to attain a certain kind of leisure and occupation, and then find that, after all, he yearns for the old busy days, and the old occupations that he thought himself so glad to leave?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I fancy that that is a common enough occurrence. I myself am perhaps an instance. A year ago I came into a legacy—enough to enable me to realize a dream. I have always wanted to travel, to see the world. Well, that was a year ago, as I said, and—I am still here.”
My little neighbour nodded.
“The chains of habit. We work to attain an object, and the object gained, we find that what we miss is the daily toil. And mark you, monsieur, my work was interesting work. The most interesting work there is in the world.”
“Yes?” I said encouragingly. For the moment the spirit of Caroline was strong within me.
“The study of human nature, monsieur!”
“Just so,” I said kindly.
Clearly a retired hairdresser. Who knows the secrets of human nature better than a hairdresser?
“Also, I had a friend—a friend who for many years never left my side. Occasionally of an imbecility to make one afraid, nevertheless he was very dear to me. Figure to yourself that I miss even his stupidity. His naïveté, his honest outlook, the pleasure of delighting and surprising him by my superior gifts—all these I miss more than I can tell you.”
“He died?” I asked sympathetically.
“Not so. He lives and flourishes—but on the other side of the world. He is now in the Argentine.”
“In the Argentine,” I said enviously.
I have always wanted to go to South America. I sighed, and then looked up to find Mr. Porrott eyeing me sympathetically. He seemed an understanding little man.
“Will you go there, yes?” he asked.
I shook my head with a sigh.
“I could have gone,” I said. “A year ago. But I was foolish—and worse than foolish—greedy. I risked the substance for the shadow.”
“I comprehend,” said Mr. Porrott. “You speculated?”
I nodded mournfully, but in spite of myself I felt secretly entertained. This ridiculous little man was so portentously solemn.
“Not the Porcupine Oilfields?” he asked suddenly.
I stared.
“I thought of them, as a matter of fact, but in the end I plumped for a gold mine in Western Australia.”
My neighbour was regarding me with a strange expression which I could not fathom.
“It is Fate,” he said at last.
“What is Fate?” I asked irritably.
“That I should live next to a man who seriously considers Porcupine Oilfields, and also West Australian Gold Mines. Tell me, have you also a penchant for auburn hair?”
I stared at him openmouthed, and he burst out laughing.
“No, no, it is not the insanity that I suffer from. Make your mind easy. It was a foolish question that I put to you there, for, you see, my friend of whom I spoke was a young man, a man who thought all women good, and most of them beautiful. But you are a man of middle age, a doctor, a man who knows the folly and the vanity of most things in this life of ours. Well, well, we are neighbours. I beg of you to accept and present to your excellent sister my best marrow.”
He stooped, and with a flourish produced an immense specimen of the tribe, which I duly accepted in the spirit in which it was offered.
“Indeed,” said the little man cheerfully, “this has not been a wasted morning. I have made the acquaintance of a man who in some ways resembles my far-off friend. By the way, I should like to ask you a question. You doubtless know everyone in this tiny village. Who is the young man with the very dark hair and eyes, and the handsome face. He walks with his head flung back, and an easy smile on his lips?”
The description left me in no doubt.
“That must be Captain Ralph Paton,” I said slowly.
“I have not seen him about here before?”
“No, he has not been here for some time. But he is the son—adopted son, rather—of Mr. Ackroyd of Fernly Park.”
My neighbour made a slight gesture of impatience.
“Of course, I should have guessed. Mr. Ackroyd spoke of him many times.”
“You know Mr. Ackroyd?” I said, slightly surprised.
“Mr. Ackroyd knew me in London—when I was at work there. I have asked him to say nothing of my profession down here.”
“I see,” I said, rather amused by this patent snobbery, as I thought it.
But the little man went on with an almost grandiloquent smirk.
“One prefers to remain incognito. I am not anxious for notoriety. I have not even troubled to correct the local version of my name.”
“Indeed,” I said, not knowing quite what to say.
“Captain Ralph Paton,” mused Mr. Porrott. “And so he is engaged to Mr. Ackroyd’s niece, the charming Miss Flora.”
“Who told you so?” I asked, very much surprised.
“Mr. Ackroyd. About a week ago. He is very pleased about it—has long desired that such a thing should come to pass, or so I understood from him. I even believe that he brought some pressure to bear upon the young man. That is never wise. A young man should marry to please himself—not to please a stepfather from whom he has expectations.”
My ideas were completely upset. I could not see Ackroyd taking a hairdresser into his confidence, and discussing the marriage of his niece and stepson with him. Ackroyd extends a genial patronage to the lower orders, but he has a very great sense of his own dignity. I began to think that Porrott couldn’t be a hairdresser after all.
To hide my confusion, I said the first thing that came into my head.
“What made you notice Ralph Paton? His good looks?”
“No, not that alone—though he is unusually good-looking for an Englishman—what your lady novelists would call a Greek God. No, there was something about that young man that I did not understand.”
He said the last sentence in a musing tone of voice which made an indefinable impression upon me. It was as though he was summing up the boy by the light of some inner knowledge that I did not share. It was that impression that was left with me, for at that moment my sister’s voice called me from the house.
I went in. Caroline had her hat on, and had evidently just come in from the village. She began without preamble.
“I met Mr. Ackroyd.”
“Yes?” I said.
“I stopped him, of course, but he seemed in a great hurry, and anxious to get away.”
I have no doubt but that that was the case. He would feel towards Caroline much as he had felt towards Miss Gannett earlier in the day—perhaps more so. Caroline is less easy to shake off.
“I asked him at once about Ralph. He was absolutely astonished. Had no idea the boy was down here. He actually said he thought I must have made a mistake. I! A mistake!”
“Ridiculous,” I said. “He ought to have known you better.”
“Then he went on to tell me that Ralph and Flora are engaged.”
“I knew that, too,” I interrupted, with modest pride.
“Who told you?”
“Our new neighbour.”
Caroline visibly wavered for a second or two, much as if a roulette ball might coyly hover between two numbers. Then she declined the tempting red herring.
“I told Mr. Ackroyd that Ralph was staying at the Three Boars.”
“Caroline,” I said, “do you never reflect that you might do a lot of harm with this habit of yours of repeating everything indiscriminately?”
“Nonsense,” said my sister. “People ought to know things. I consider it my duty to tell them. Mr. Ackroyd was very grateful to me.”
“Well,” I said, for there was clearly more to come.
“I think he went straight off to the Three Boars, but if so he didn’t find Ralph there.”
“No?”
“No. Because as I was coming back through the wood—”
“Coming back through the wood?” I interrupted.
Caroline had the grace to blush.
“It was such a lovely day,” she exclaimed. “I thought I would make a little round. The woods with their autumnal tints are so perfect at this time of year.”
Caroline does not care a hang for woods at any time of year. Normally she regards them as places where you get your feet damp, and where all kinds of unpleasant things may drop on your head. No, it was good sound mongoose instinct which took her to our local wood. It is the only place adjacent to the village of King’s Abbot where you can talk with a young woman unseen by the whole of the village. It adjoins the Park of Fernly.
“Well,” I said, “go on.”
“As I say, I was just coming back through the wood when I heard voices.”
Caroline paused.
“Yes?”
“One was Ralph Paton’s—I knew it at once. The other was a girl’s. Of course I didn’t mean to listen—”
“Of course not,” I interjected, with patent sarcasm—which was, however, wasted on Caroline.
“But I simply couldn’t help overhearing. The girl said something—I didn’t quite catch what it was, and Ralph answered. He sounded very angry. ‘My dear girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t you realize that it is quite on the cards the old man will cut me off with a shilling? He’s been pretty fed up with me for the last few years. A little more would do it. And we need the dibs, my dear. I shall be a very rich man when the old fellow pops off. He’s mean as they make ’em, but he’s rolling in money really. I don’t want him to go altering his will. You leave it to me, and don’t worry.’ Those were his exact words. I remember them perfectly. Unfortunately, just then I stepped on a dry twig or something, and they lowered their voices and moved away. I couldn’t, of course, go rushing after them, so wasn’t able to see who the girl was.”
“That must have been most vexing,” I said. “I suppose, though, you hurried on to the Three Boars, felt faint, and went into the bar for a glass of brandy, and so were able to see if both the barmaids were on duty?”
“It wasn’t a barmaid,” said Caroline unhesitatingly. “In fact, I’m almost sure that it was Flora Ackroyd, only—”
“Only it doesn’t seem to make sense,” I agreed.
“But if it wasn’t Flora, who could it have been?”
Rapidly my sister ran over a list of maidens living in the neighbourhood, with profuse reasons for and against.
When she paused for breath, I murmured something about a patient, and slipped out.
I proposed to make my way to the Three Boars. It seemed likely that Ralph Paton would have returned there by now.
I knew Ralph very well—better, perhaps, than anyone else in King’s Abbot, for I had known his mother before him, and therefore I understood much in him that puzzled others. He was, to a certain extent, the victim of heredity. He had not inherited his mother’s fatal propensity for drink, but nevertheless he had in him a strain of weakness. As my new friend of this morning had declared, he was extraordinarily handsome. Just on six feet, perfectly proportioned, with the easy grace of an athlete, he was dark, like his mother, with a handsome, sunburnt face always ready to break into a smile. Ralph Paton was of those born to charm easily and without effort. He was self-indulgent and extravagant, with no veneration for anything on earth, but he was lovable nevertheless, and his friends were all devoted to him.
Could I do anything with the boy? I thought I could.
On inquiry at the Three Boars I found that Captain Paton had just come in. I went up to his room and entered unannounced.
For a moment, remembering what I had heard and seen, I was doubtful of my reception, but I need have had no misgivings.
“Why, it’s Sheppard! Glad to see you.”
He came forward to meet me, hand outstretched, a sunny smile lighting up his face.
“The one person I am glad to see in this infernal place.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“What’s the place been doing?”
He gave a vexed laugh.
“It’s a long story. Things haven’t been going well with me, doctor. But have a drink, won’t you?”
“Thanks,” I said, “I will.”
He pressed the bell, then coming back threw himself into a chair.
“Not to mince matters,” he said gloomily, “I’m in the devil of a mess. In fact, I haven’t the least idea what to do next.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked sympathetically.
“It’s my confounded stepfather.”
“What has he done?”
“It isn’t what he’s done yet, but what he’s likely to do.”
The bell was answered, and Ralph ordered the drinks. When the man had gone again, he sat hunched in the armchair, frowning to himself.
“Is it really—serious?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’m fairly up against it this time,” he said soberly.
The unusual ring of gravity in his voice told me that he spoke the truth. It took a good deal to make Ralph grave.
“In fact,” he continued, “I can’t see my way ahead…I’m damned if I can.”
“If I could help—” I suggested diffidently.
But he shook his head very decidedly.
“Good of you, doctor. But I can’t let you in on this. I’ve got to play a lone hand.”
He was silent a minute and then repeated in a slightly different tone of voice:
“Yes—I’ve got to play a lone hand...”
Chapter4— Dinner at Fernly
I
It was just a few minutes before half past seven when I rang the front door bell of Fernly Park. The door was opened with admirable promptitude by Parker, the butler.
The night was such a fine one that I had preferred to come on foot. I stepped into the big square hall and Parker relieved me of my overcoat. Just then Ackroyd’s secretary, a pleasant young fellow by the name of Raymond, passed through the hall on his way to Ackroyd’s study, his hands full of papers.
