‘Good-morning, mademoiselle,’ said Poirot. ‘Will you be seated? Dr Sheppard is so kind as to permit me the use of his surgery for a little conversation I am anxious to have with you.’ Miss Russell sat down with her usual composure. If she felt any inward agitation, it did not display itself in any outward manifestation.
‘It seems a queer way of doing things, if you’ll allow me to say so,’ she remarked.
‘Miss Russell – I have news to give you.’ ‘Indeed!’ ‘Charles Kent has been arrested at Liverpool.’ Not a muscle of her face moved. She merely opened her eyes a trifle wider, and asked, with a tinge of defiance: ‘Well, what of it?’ But at that moment it came to me – the resemblance that had haunted me all along, something familiar in the defiance of Charles Kent’s manner. The two voices, one rough and coarse, the other painfully ladylike – were strangely the same in timbre. It was of Miss Russell that I had been reminded that night outside the gates of Fernly Park.
I looked at Poirot, full of my discovery, and he gave me an imperceptible nod.
In answer to Miss Russell’s question, he threw out his hands in a thoroughly French gesture.
‘I thought you might be interested, that is all,’ he said mildly.
‘Well I’m not particularly,’ said Miss Russell. ‘Who is this Charles Kent anyway?’ ‘He is a man, mademoiselle, who was at Fernly on the night of the murder.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Fortunately for him, he has an alibi. At a quarter to ten he was at a public-house a mile from here.’ ‘Lucky for him,’ commented Miss Russell.
‘But we still do not know what he was doing at Fernly who it was he went to meet, for instance.’ ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you at all,’ said the housekeeper politely. ‘Nothing came to my ears. If that is all ‘ She made a tentative movement as though to rise. Poirot stopped her.
‘It is not quite all,’ he said smoothly. ‘This morning fresh developments have arisen. It seems now that Mr Ackroyd was murdered, not at a quarter to ten, but before. Between ten minutes to nine, when Dr Sheppard left, and a quarter to ten.’ I saw the colour drain from the housekeeper’s face, leaving it dead white. She leaned forward, her figure swaying.
‘But Miss Ackroyd said – Miss Ackroyd said ‘ ‘Miss Ackroyd has admitted that she was lying. She was never in the study at all that evening.’ Then-‘ ‘Then it would seem that in this Charles Kent we have the man we are looking for. He came to Fernly, can give no account of what he was doing there ‘ ‘I can tell you what he was doing there. He never touched a hair of old Ackroyd’s head – he never went near the study.
He didn’t do it, I tell you.’ She was leaning forward. That iron self-control was broken through at last. Terror and desperation was in her face.
‘M. Poirot! M. Poirot! Oh, do believe me.’ Poirot got up and came to her. He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.
‘But yes – but yes, I will believe. I had to make you speak, you know.’ For an instant suspicion flared up in her.
‘Is what you said true?’ ‘That Charles Kent is suspected of the crime? Yes, that is true. You alone can save him, by telling the reason for his being at Fernly.’ ‘He came to see me.’ She spoke in a low, hurried voice. ‘I went out to meet him ‘ ‘In the summer-house, yes, I know.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Mademoiselle, it is the business ofHercule Poirot to know things. I know that you went out earlier in the evening, that you left a message in the summer-house to say what time you would be there.’ ‘Yes, I did. I had heard from him – saying he was coming. I dared not let him come to the house. I wrote to the address he gave me and said I would meet him in the summerhouse, and described it to him so that he would be able to find it.