Wednesday, 20 April 2016

The murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective fiction by Agatha Christie. It is one of Christie's controversial novel.It based on the most elegant of all twists, the narrator who is himself to be the murderer. There are no scenes of violence instead, the novel primarily features characters having civilized discussions and attending social gatherings. Every character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has a secret, and because of that everyone comes into danger of investigation.The novel moves all around the murder of Ackroyd.

Dr. James Sheppard,who narrated a novel and he is a physician in the town of King’s Abbott. The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow. Many people in town believe Mrs. Ferrars poisoned her husband a year before and due to guilt she commited suicide. On the other side Roger Ackroyd, the town’s wealthiest citizen who was expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars was in great distressed. Once he invites all his close people for dinner party,to discuss some important issue i.e Dr. Sheppard , Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger’s sister-in-law, Flora Ackroyd, his niece (who recently got engaged to Ackroyd’s stepson Ralph Paton), Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd’s young secretary, and Major Blunt, Ackroyd’s friend. Deeply worried, Ackroyd finally has a private discussion with Dr. Sheppard after dinner. In his study, he reveals to Dr. Sheppard that  Mrs. Ferrars killed her husband, and she was also blackmailed for it. Ackroyd receives a letter, a suicide note, in the post from Mrs Ferrars, which he will finish reading after Sheppard leaves. On the way home Dr. Sheppard ,he bumps into  a stranger who aks for directions to Fernly Park. At home, Dr. Sheppard and his sister Caroline are about to go to bed when the phone rings. He explains to Caroline that Parker has called from Fernly Park to tell him that Ackroyd has been murdered. Dr. Sheppard rushes over, but when he gets there Parker says he never made such a call.Nonetheless, they break into Ackroyd’s locked study and find him murdered in his chair.

The next day, Flora Ackroyd call the retired Belgian detective Hercule Poirot,Dr. Sheppard’s new neighbor,  to investigate the murder.As Flora is worried that the police suspect Ralph Paton (Flora's feonsay)for killing her uncle. The police have found footprints matching a pair of shoes that Ralph owned outside the window to Ackroyd’s study, and at 9:30 pm , Major Blunt and Geoffrey Raymond both  informed that Ackroyd speaking to someone in his office. Placing Ackroyd's death into a narrow time frame for which Parker, Raymond, Blunt, Mrs Ackroyd, and Miss Russell, the housekeeper, all have alibis . Although all members of Ackroyd’s household will have financial gain from his death, in that Ralph especially will have the bulk of his uncle’s fortune. Police trace the telephone call to Dr Sheppard to King's Abbott station and the position of a grandfather chair in Ackroyd’s office, which had been moved into the center of the room when Dr. Sheppard and Parker found the body. Poirot proceeds to collect more information on suspects not in the house, including the representative of a dictaphone company who had visited Ackroyd some days previously. He asks the exact time at which Dr Sheppard met the stranger at the Fernly Park gates. Poirot finds a goose quill and a scrap of starched cambric in the summer house, and a ring with the inscription "From R" in the backyard pool. Poirot notices that the parlourmaid Ursula Bourne has no alibi for the murder.

  The police, meanwhile, have tracked down the stranger ,Charles Kent who approached Fernly Park the night of the murder and arrest him.Meanwhile, Poirot came to know  that Flora lied about wishing her uncle goodnight instead, she had been busy in stealing money to settle some debts of her own and revealed that Major Blunt is  secret lover of Flora and  Flora and Ralph Paton are not really in love, but merely engaged for convenience’s sake.Poirot asks for a second  meeting in that the goose quill is a heroin holder belonging to the stranger Sheppard met , Miss Russell's illegitimate son Charles Kent .Poirot reveals the ring belongs to Ursula Bourne, who is secretly married to Ralph Paton and they met around 9:30 in the summerhouse and fought about his announced engagement to Flora Ackroyd.

Poirot summons all the suspects once again and reveals all these discoveries. He further reveals that he has determined Ackroyd purchased a dictaphone the week before and that is what Raymond and Blunt heard  Ackroyd was talking to someone at 9:30. He then reveals Ralph Paton, who Dr. Sheppard had been hiding him by pretending a patient in a local asylum.  Ralph admits that he fought with Ursula in the summerhouse, then walked around, frustrated. He does not have an alibi for the time of the murder.

He discharges the group, but asks Dr. Sheppard to stay behind. In a stunning plot twist, Poirot reveals that it is Dr. Sheppard who is the murderer. Sheppard  programmed the Dictaphone to go off at 9:30 and stabbed Ackroyd before leaving him that night,provide him with an alibi, then snuck around the side of the house, crawled into Ackroyd’s study, locked it from the inside, and planted the footprints with Ralph’s shoes in the mud. He hid Ralph so that the police would find him more suspicious. He murdered Ackroyd because it was he, Dr. Sheppard, who was Mrs. Ferrars’ blackmailer, and he knew if Ackroyd found out he would be ruined.  
Poirot will go to the police in the morning, and hoping that Poirot can keep the truth from his sister Caroline, Dr. Sheppard goes home and prepares to kill himself with an overdose of Veronal.

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