But the police focus on Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson and heir, and the person with the most to gain from Roger's death. There's no shortage of suspects, all the members of the household stand to gain from his death, from Roger's neurotic sister-in-law who has accumulated personal debts, to a parlormaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder. There are rumors she poisoned her first husband, rumors that she was being blackmailed, rumors that her secret lover was Roger Ackroyd, a man who knew too much, but no one is sure. Her death is believed to be an accident, until Roger Ackroyd is stabbed to death in his locked study. The Murder of the wealthy industrialist Roger Ackroyd begins the night before with the suicide of Mrs. But the brutal murder of a local squire reveals the truth: the peculiar little man is actually a detective par excellence. Sheppard, observing his new neighbor, is sure that he must be a former hairdresser. This is one of the last Christie novels I read, for some reason - probably because it was never on the shelf when I was checking them out at the library - and I still remember turning the last page and marveling at how it all came together.Belgian Inspector Hercule Poirot has retired to the countryside in the small English village of King's Abbot. It’s pure pleasure to watch Poirot pick his way through the testimony and solve the crime. It will be very instructive!”Īnd it is, of course. “That,” says Poirot, “is what I am counting upon.
And after all this time! Why, you’ll hear five accounts of five separate murders!”
The five other people who were in the house that day are still alive, and as Poirot investigates each of them, he can’t get the nursery rhyme “Five Little Pigs” out of his head - you know, the one that starts “This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.”Ī local policeman, exasperated with Poirot’s technique, tells him, “Don’t you grasp the elementary fact? No two people remember a thing in the same order anyway. More than a decade after Caroline Crale was convicted of poisoning her husband and died in prison, her daughter, Carla - never convinced of her mother’s guilt - asks Poirot to look into the case. “Five Little Pigs,” I think, which is Poirot’s most cerebral outing.
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