Page:Murder of Roger Ackroyd - 1926.djvu/314



was a dead silence for a minute and a half.

Then I laughed.

"You're mad," I said.

"No," said Poirot placidly. "I am not mad. It was the little discrepancy in time that first drew my attention to youright at the beginning."

"Discrepancy in time?" I queried, puzzled.

"But yes. You will remember that every one agreedyou yourself includedthat it took five minutes to walk from the lodge to the houseless if you took the short cut to the terrace. But you left the house at ten minutes to nine-both by your own statement and that of Parker, and yet it was nine o'clock as you passed through the lodge gates. It was a chilly nightnot an evening a man would be inclined to dawdle; why had you taken ten minutes to do a five-minutes' walk? All along I realized that we had only your statement for it that the study window was ever fastened. Ackroyd asked you if you had done so-he never looked to see. Supposing, then, that the study window was unfastened? Would there be time in that ten minutes for you to run round the outside of the house, change your shoes, climb in through the window, kill Ackroyd, and get to the gate by nine