The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

‘Had you seen her since you’d been down this time?’

‘Went with Ackroyd to call. Last Tuesday, think it was. fascinating woman – but something queer about her. Deep – one would never know what she was up to.’

I looked into his steady grey eyes. Nothing there surely. I went on:

‘I suppose you’d met her before?’

‘Last time I was here – she and her husband had just come here to live.’ He paused a minute and then added: ‘Rum thing, she had changed a lot between then and now.’

‘How – changed?’ I asked.

‘Looked ten years older.’

‘Were you down here when her husband died?’ I asked, trying to make the question sound as casual as possible.

‘No. from all I heard it would be good riddance. Uncharitable, perhaps, but the truth.’

I agreed.

‘Ashley Ferrars was by no means a pattern husband,’ I said cautiously.

‘Blackguard, I thought,’ said Blunt.

‘No,’ I said, ‘only a man with more money than was good for him.’

‘Oh! Money! All the troubles in the world can be put down to money – or the lack of it.

‘Which has been your particular trouble?’ I asked.

‘Enough for what I want. I’m one of the lucky ones.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I’m not too flush just now, as a matter of fact. Came into a legacy a year ago, and like a fool let myself be persuaded into putting it into some wild-cat scheme.’

I sympathized, and narrated my own similar trouble.

Then the gong pealed out, and we all went in to lunch.

Poirot drew me back a little.

‘he’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Nothing – disturbing?’

‘He had a legacy just a year ago,’ I said. ‘But why not? Why shouldn’t he? I’ll swear the man is perfectly square and above board.’

‘Without doubt, without doubt,’ said Poirot soothingly. ‘Do not upset yourself.’

He spoke as though to a fractious child.

We all trooped into the dining-room. It seemed incredible that less than twenty-four hours had passed since I last sat at that table.

Afterwards, Mrs Ackroyd took me aside and sat down with me on a sofa.

‘I can’t help feeling a little hurt,’ she murmured, producing a handkerchief of the kind obviously not meant to be cried into. ‘hurt, I mean, by Roger’s lack of confidence in me. That twenty thousand pounds ought to have been left to me – not to Flora. A mother could be trusted to safeguard the interests of her child. A lack of trust, I call it.