MRS. ACKROYD
After all, you don't repeat every little detail to the police, do you? There are family matters sometimes—nothing to do with the question of the murder. But if the girl was spiteful, she may have made out all sorts of things."
I was shrewd enough to see that a very real anxiety lay behind these outpourings. Poirot had been justified in his premises. Of the six people round the table yesterday, Mrs. Ackroyd at least had had something to hide. It was for me to discover what that something might be.
"If I were you, Mrs. Ackroyd," I said brusquely, "I should make a clean breast of things."
She gave a little scream.
"Oh! doctor, how can you be so abrupt. It sounds as though—as though——— And I can explain everything so simply."
"Then why not do so," I suggested.
Mrs. Ackroyd took out a frilled handkerchief, and became tearful.
"I thought, doctor, that you might put it to M. Poirot—explain it, you know—because it's so difficult for a foreigner to see our point of view. And you don't know—nobody could know—what I've had to contend with. A martyrdom—a long martyrdom. That's what my life has been. I don't like to speak ill of the dead—but there it is. Not the smallest bill, but it had all to be gone over—just as though Roger had had a few miserly hundreds a year instead of being (as Mr. Hammond told me yesterday) one of the wealthiest men in these parts."
Mrs. Ackroyd paused to dab her eyes with the frilled handkerchief.
[169]
