The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда - стр. 7

I went home thoughtful, to find several patients waiting for me in the surgery.

I had dismissed the last of them, as I thought, and was just contemplating a few minutes in the garden before lunch when I perceived one more patient waiting for me. She rose and came towards me as I stood somewhat surprised. I don’t know why I should have been, except that there is a suggestion of cast iron about Miss Russell, a something that is above the ills of the flesh.

Ackroyd’s housekeeper is a tall woman, handsome but forbidding in appearance. She has a stern eye, and lips that shut tightly, and I feel that if I were an under housemaid or a kitchenmaid I should run for my life whenever I heard her coming.

‘Good morning, dr Sheppard,’ said Miss Russell. ‘I should be much obliged if you would take a look at my knee.’

I took a look, but, truth to tell, I was very little wiser when I had done so. Miss Russell’s account of vague pains was so unconvincing that with a woman of less integrity of character I should have suspected a trumped-up tale. It did cross my mind for one moment that Miss Russell might have deliberately invented this affection of the knee in order to pump me on the subject of Mrs Ferrars’s death, but I soon saw that there, at least, I had misjudged her. She made a brief reference to the tragedy, nothing more. yet she certainly seemed disposed to linger and chat.

‘Well, thank you very much for this bottle of liniment, doctor,’ she said at last. ‘Not that I believe it will do the least good.’

I didn’t think it would either, but I protested in duty bound. After all, it couldn’t do any harm, and one must stick up for the tools of one’s trade.

‘I don’t believe in all these drugs,’ said Miss Russell, her eyes sweeping over my array of bottles disparagingly. ‘drugs do a lot of harm. Look at the cocaine habit.’

‘Well, as far as that goes-’

‘It’s very prevalent in high society.’

I’m sure Miss Russell knows far more about high society than I do. I didn’t attempt to argue with her.

‘Just tell me this, doctor,’ said Miss Russell. ‘Suppose you are really a slave of the drug habit, is there any cure?’

One cannot answer a question like that off-hand. I gave her a short lecture on the subject, and she listened with close attention. I still suspected her of seeking information about Mrs Ferrars.

‘Now, veronal, for instance-’ I proceeded.

But, strangely enough, she didn’t seem interested in veronal. Instead she changed the subject, and asked me if it was true that there were certain poisons so rare as to baffle detection.