“... The calls on my purse have been so frequent of late that I fear it is impossible for me to accede to your request. Does nothing strike you as odd about that?”
“I don’t think so,” said Raymond. “He has frequently dictated letters to me, using almost exactly those same words.”
“Exactly,” cried Poirot. “That is what I seek to arrive at. Would any man use such a phrase in talking to another? Impossible that that should be part of a real conversation. Now, if he had been dictating a letter——”
“You mean he was reading a letter aloud,” said Raymond slowly. “Even so, he must have been reading to some one.”
“But why? We have no evidence that there was any one else in the room. No other voice but Mr. Ackroyd’s was heard, remember.”
“Surely a man wouldn’t read letters of that type aloud to himself—not unless he was—well—going balmy.”
“You have all forgotten one thing,” said Poirot softly: “the stranger who called at the house the preceding Wednesday.”
They all stared at him.
“But yes,” said Poirot, nodding encouragingly, “on Wednesday. The young man was not of himself important. But the firm he represented interested me very much.”
“The Dictaphone Company,” gasped Raymond. “I see it now. A dictaphone. That’s what you think?”