“Two of the people I accused have given me the truth.”
“You think Major Blunt has something to conceal also?”
“As for that,” remarked Poirot nonchalantly, “there is a saying, is there not, that Englishmen conceal only one thing—their love? And Major Blunt, I should say, is not good at concealments.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “I wonder if we haven’t rather jumped to conclusions on one point.”
“What is that?”
“We’ve assumed that the blackmailer of Mrs. Ferrars is necessarily the murderer of Mr. Ackroyd. Mightn’t we be mistaken?”
Poirot nodded energetically.
“Very good. Very good indeed. I wondered if that idea would come to you. Of course it is possible. But we must remember one point. The letter disappeared. Still, that, as you say, may not necessarily mean that the murderer took it. When you first found the body, Parker may have abstracted the letter unnoticed by you.”
“Parker?”
“Yes, Parker. I always come back to Parker—not as the murderer—no, he did not commit the murder; but who is more suitable than he as the mysterious scoundrel who terrorized Mrs. Ferrars? He may have got his information about Mr. Ferrars’s death from one of the King’s Paddock servants. At any rate, he is more likely to have come upon it than a casual guest such as Blunt, for instance.”