“Oh! doctor, how can you be so abrupt. It sounds as though—as though——And I can

explain everything so simply.”

 

“Then why not do so,” I suggested.

 

Mrs. Ackroyd took out a frilled handkerchief, and became tearful.

 

“I thought, doctor, that you might put it to M. Poirot—explain it, you

know—because it’s so difficult for a foreigner to see our point of view. And you

don’t know—nobody could know—what I’ve had to contend with. A martyrdom—a long

martyrdom. That’s what my life has been. I don’t like to speak ill of the

dead—but there it is. Not the smallest bill, but it had all to be gone over—just

as though Roger had had a few miserly hundreds a year instead of being (as Mr.

Hammond told me yesterday) one of the wealthiest men in these parts.”

 

Mrs. Ackroyd paused to dab her eyes with the frilled handkerchief.

 

“Yes,” I said encouragingly. “You were talking about bills?”

 

“Those dreadful bills. And some I didn’t like to show Roger at all.

 

They were things a man wouldn’t understand. He would have said the things

weren’t necessary. And of course they mounted up, you know, and they kept coming

in——”