The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

me attentively.
    ‘I think you have,’ he said quietly.
    ‘But-’ ‘Have you told me everything known to you about this young man Paton?’ He smiled as I grew red. ‘Oh! do not fear. I will not press you. I shall learn it in good time.’ ‘I wish you’d tell me something of your methods,’ I said hastily, to cover my confusion. ‘The point about the fire, for instance?’ ‘Oh! that was very simple. You leave Mr Ackroyd at - ten minutes to nine, was it not?’ ‘Yes, exactly, I should say.’ ‘The window is then closed and bolted and the door unlocked. At a quater past ten when the body is discovered, the door is locked and the window is open. Who opened it?
    Clearly only Mr Ackroyd himself could have done so, and for one of two reasons. Either because the room became unbearably hot but since the fire was nearly out and there was a sharp drop in temperature last night, that cannot be the reason, or because he admitted someone that way. And if he admitted someone that way, it must have been someone well known to him, since he had previously shown himself uneasy on the subject of that same window.’ ‘It sounds very simple,’ I said.
    ‘Everything is simple, if you arrange the facts methodically. We are concerned now with the personality of the person who was with him at nine-thirty last night. Everything goes to show that that was the individual admitted by the window, and though Mr Ackroyd was seen alive later by Miss Flora, we cannot approach a solution of the mystery until we know wno that visitor was. The window may have been left open after his departure and so afforded entrance to the murderer, or the same person may have returned a second time. Ah! here is the colonel who returns.’ Colonel Melrose entered with an animated manner.
    ‘That telephone call has been traced at last,’ he said. ‘It did not come from here. It was put through to Dr Sheppard at 10.15 last night from a public call office at King’s Abbot station. And at 10.23 the night mail leaves for Liverpool.’?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Chapter 8
    Inspector Raglan is Confident
    We looked at each other.
    ‘You’ll have inquiries made at the station, of course?’ I said.
    ‘Naturally, but I’m not over sanguine as to the result.
    You know what that station is like.’ I did. King’s Abbot is a mere village, but its station happens to be an important junction. Most of the big expresses stop there, and trains are shunted, re-sorted, and made up. It has two or three public telephone boxes. At that time of night, three local trains come in close upon each other, to catch the connection with the express for the north which comes in at 10.19 and leaves at 10.23. The whole place is in a bustle, and the chances of one particular person being noticed telephoning or getting into the express are very small indeed.
    ‘But why telephone at all?’ demanded Melrose. ‘That is what I find so extraordinary. There seems no rhyme or reason in the thing.’ Poirot carefully straightened a china ornament on one of the bookcases.
    ‘Be sure there was a reason,’ he said over his shoulder.
    ‘But what reason could it be?’ ‘When we know that, we shall know everything. This case is very curious and very interesting.’ There was something almost indescribable in the way he said those last words. I felt that he was looking at the case from some peculiar angle of his own, and what he saw I could not tell.
    He went to the window and stood there looking out.
    ‘You say it was nine o’clock, Dr Sheppard, when you met this stranger outside the gate?’ He asked the question without turning round.
    ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I heard the church clock chime the hour.’ ‘How long would it take him to reach the house - to reach this window, for instance?’ ‘Five minutes at the outside. Two or three minutes only if he took the path at the right of the drive and came straight here.’ ‘But to do that he would have to know the way. How can I