Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie [68]
“I doubt if it would be wise at the present juncture,” said Poirot primly, and I bit my lips to prevent a smile.
The little man really did it very well.
After some further parley, we were taken to interview the prisoner.
He was a young fellow, I should say not more than twenty-two or three. Tall, thin, with slightly shaking hands, and the evidences of considerable physical strength somewhat run to seed. His hair was dark, but his eyes were blue and shifty, seldom meeting a glance squarely. I had all along cherished the illusion that there was something familiar about the figure I had met that night, but if this were indeed he, I was completely mistaken. He did not remind me in the least of anyone I knew.
“Now then, Kent,” said the superintendent. “Stand up. Here are some visitors come to see you. Recognize any of them?”
Kent glared at us sullenly, but did not reply. I saw his glance waver over the three of us, and come back to rest on me.
“Well, sir,” said the superintendent to me, “what do you say?”
“The height’s the same,” I said, “and as far as general appearance goes it might well be the man in question. Beyond that, I couldn’t go.”
“What the hell’s the meaning of all this?” asked Kent. “What have you got against me? Come on, out with it! What am I supposed to have done?”
I nodded my head.
“It’s the man,” I said. “I recognize the voice.”
“Recognize my voice, do you? Where do you think you heard it before?”
“On Friday evening last, outside the gates of Fernly Park. You asked me the way there.”
“I did, did I?”
“Do you admit it?” asked the inspector.
“I don’t admit anything. Not till I know what you’ve got on me.”
“Have you not read the papers in the last few days?” asked Poirot, speaking for the first time.
The man’s eyes narrowed.
“So that’s it, is it? I saw an old gent had been croaked at Fernly. Trying to make out I did the job, are you?”
“You were there that night,” said Poirot quietly.
“How do you know, mister?”
“By this.” Poirot took something from his pocket and held it out.
It was the goose quill we had found in the summer house.
At the sight of it the man’s face changed. He half held out his hand.
“Snow,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “No, my friend, it is empty. It lay where you dropped it in the summer house that night.”
Charles Kent looked at him uncertainly.
“You seem to know a hell of a lot about everything, you little foreign cock duck. Perhaps you remember this: the papers say that the old gent was croaked between a quarter to ten and ten o’clock?”
“That is so,” agreed Poirot.
“Yes, but is it really so? That’s what I’m getting at.”
“This gentleman will tell you,” said Poirot.
He indicated Inspector Raglan. The latter hesitated, glanced at Superintendent Hayes, then at Poirot, and finally, as though receiving sanction, he said:
“That’s right. Between a quarter to ten and ten o’clock.”
“Then you’ve nothing to keep me here for,” said Kent. “I was away from Fernly Park by twenty-five minutes past nine. You can ask at the Dog and Whistle. That’s a saloon about a mile out of Fernly on the road to Cranchester. I kicked up a bit of a row there, I remember. As near as nothing to quarter to ten, it was. How about that?”
Inspector Raglan wrote down something in his notebook.
“Well?” demanded Kent.
“Inquiries will be made,” said the inspector. “If you’ve spoken the truth, you won’t have anything to complain about. What were you doing at Fernly Park anyway?”
“Went there to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head, my man,” the superintendent warned him.
“To hell with a civil tongue. I went there on my own business, and that’s all there is to it. If I was clear away before the murder was done, that’s all that concerns the cops.”
“Your name, it is Charles Kent,” said Poirot. “Where were you born?”
The man stared at