The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘you’ve been reading detective stories.’

She admitted that she had.

‘The essence of a detective story,’ I said, ‘is to have a rare poison – if possible something from South America, that nobody has ever heard of – something that one obscure tribe of savages use to poison their arrows with. death is instantaneous, and Western science is powerless to detect it. Is that the kind of thing you mean?’

‘Yes. Is there really such a thing?’

I shook my head regretfully.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t. There’s curare, of course.’

I told her a good deal about curare, but she seemed to have lost interest once more. She asked me if I had any in my poison cupboard, and when I replied in the negative I fancy I fell in her estimation.

I should never have suspected Miss Russell of a fondness for detective stories. It pleases me very much to think of her stepping out of the housekeeper’s room to rebuke a delinquent housemaid, and then returning to a comfortable perusal of The Mystery of the Seventh Death, or something of the kind.