“Doctor, how can you? Have you forgotten? That dreadful little Frenchman—or Belgian—or whatever he is. Bullying us all like he did. It has quite upset me. Coming on the top of Roger’s death.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Ackroyd,” I said.
“I don’t know what he meant—shouting at us like he did. I should hope I know my duty too well to dream of concealing anything. I have given the police every assistance in my power.”
Mrs. Ackroyd paused, and I said, “Quite so.” I was beginning to have a glimmering of what all the trouble was about.
“No one can say that I have failed in my duty,” continued Mrs. Ackroyd. “I am sure Inspector Raglan is perfectly satisfied. Why should this little upstart of a foreigner make a fuss? A most ridiculous-looking creature he is too—just like a comic Frenchman in a revue. I can’t think why Flora insisted on bringing him into the case. She never said a word to me about it. Just went off and did it on her own. Flora is too independent. I am a woman of the world and her mother. She should have come to me for advice first.”
I listened to all this in silence.
“What does he think? That’s what I want to know. Does he actually imagine I’m hiding something? He—he—positively accused me yesterday.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It is surely of no consequence, Mrs. Ackroyd,” I said. “Since you are not concealing anything, any remarks he may have made do not apply to you.”
Mrs. Ackroyd went off at a tangent, after her usual fashion.
“Servants are so tiresome,” she said. “They gossip, and talk amongst themselves. And then it gets round—and all the time there’s probably