The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

What’s all this about blackmail?’

‘Blackmail!’ I exclaimed, very much startled.

‘Is it an effort of Parker’s imagination? Or is there something in it?’

‘If Parker heard anything about blackmail,’ I said slowly, ‘he must have been listening outside this door with his ear glued against the keyhole.’

Davis nodded.

‘Nothing more likely. You see, I’ve been instituting a few inquiries as to what Parker has been doing with himself this evening. To tell the truth, I didn’t like his manner. The man knows something.

When I began to question him, he got the wind up, and plumped out some garbled story of blackmail.’

I took an instant decision.

‘I’m rather glad you’ve brought the matter up,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to decide whether to make a clean breast of things or not. I’d already practically decided to tell you everything, but I was going to wait for a favourable opportunity. You might as well have it now.’

And then and there I narrated the whole events of the evening as I have set them down here.

The inspector listened keenly, occasionally interjecting a question.

‘Most extraordinary story I ever heard,’ he said, when I had finished. ‘And you say that letter has completely disappeared? It looks bad – it looks very bad indeed. It gives us what we’ve been looking for – a motive for the murder.’

I nodded. ‘I realize that.’

‘You say that Mr Ackroyd hinted at a suspicion he had that some member of his household was involved? household’s rather an elastic term.

’

‘You don’t think that Parker himself might be the man we’re after?’ I suggested.

‘It looks very like it. He was obviously listening at the door when you came out. Then Miss Ackroyd came across him later bent on entering the study. Say he tried again when she was safely out of the way. He stabbed Ackroyd, locked the door on the inside, opened the window, and got out that way, and went round to a side door which he had previously left open. How’s that?’

‘There’s only one thing against it,’ I said slowly.

‘If Ackroyd went on reading that letter as soon as I left, as he intended to do, I don’t see him continuing to sit on here and turn things over in his mind for another hour. he’d have had Parker in at once, accused him then and there, and there would have been a fine old uproar. remember, Ackroyd was a man of choleric temper.’

‘Mightn’t have had time to go on with the letter just then,’ suggested the inspector.