nothing in it at all.”
“Have the servants been talking?” I asked. “What about?”
Mrs. Ackroyd cast a very shrewd glance at me. It quite threw me off my balance.
“I was sure you’d know, doctor, if anyone did. You were with M. Poirot all the time, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Then of course you know. It was that girl, Ursula Bourne, wasn’t it? Naturally—she’s leaving. She would want to make all the trouble she could. Spiteful, that’s what they are. They’re all alike. Now, you being there, doctor, you must know exactly what she did say? I’m most anxious that no wrong impression should get about. 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.