The Murder of Roger Ackroyd recap

In the village of King's Abbot, Mrs Ferrars dies of an overdose and the district whispers that she poisoned her husband a year earlier. Her friend Roger Ackroyd tells the local doctor, James Sheppard, that she confessed to the murder and had been blackmailed ever since by someone she would not name. A letter from her arrives while they talk; Ackroyd sends Sheppard away to read it alone, and that evening he is found stabbed in his locked study, the letter gone. His stepson Ralph Paton disappears, and Flora Ackroyd asks the retired detective who has taken the cottage next door to Sheppard, Hercule Poirot, to clear him. Poirot dismantles a series of small lies: Flora never saw her uncle alive that evening, the parlourmaid is secretly married to Ralph, the stranger at the gate is the housekeeper's son, and the telephone call that brought Sheppard back was made from a call box. Poirot finally names the murderer as Sheppard himself, the blackmailer, who killed Ackroyd at once and used a dictaphone to fake the time of death. He is given until morning, and ends his own account with a confession.

Dr James Sheppard, the doctor of the village of King's Abbot, is called out early to the death of Mrs Ferrars, a wealthy widow, who has died of an overdose of a sleeping draught. His sister Caroline, who runs the village's unofficial news service, is certain it was suicide and equally certain that Mrs Ferrars poisoned her husband a year before. The chief man of the district, Roger Ackroyd of Fernly Park, had been expected to marry her. Sheppard sketches the neighbourhood: Ackroyd's widowed sister-in-law and her daughter Flora living on his money, his charming and heavily indebted stepson Ralph Paton, his secretary Geoffrey Raymond, his friend Major Blunt, the butler Parker, the housekeeper Miss Russell, and the newcomer next door to the Sheppards, an eccentric retired man who grows vegetable marrows. Dining at Fernly that evening, Sheppard finds Ackroyd badly shaken. Ackroyd tells him that Mrs Ferrars did kill her husband, that she had confessed it to him, and that she had been blackmailed for a year by someone she refused to name. A letter from her is brought in during their talk. Ackroyd begins it, then says he will read it alone later, and Sheppard leaves. On his way out he passes a stranger at the lodge gates asking the way to the house.

At a quarter past ten Sheppard is telephoned at home and told that Ackroyd has been murdered. He goes back to Fernly, where Parker denies making any call. The study door is locked from within; they break in and find Ackroyd dead in his chair, stabbed with an ornamental Tunisian dagger taken from the hall. Mrs Ferrars's letter has gone. The window stands open and there are footmarks on the sill. Flora says she said goodnight to her uncle at a quarter to ten, and Raymond and Parker both heard him speaking in the study at half past nine, which fixes the time of death within a narrow span. Ralph Paton has vanished from the inn where he was staying and cannot be found, and Inspector Raglan builds his case against him with confidence. Flora refuses to accept it and calls on the neighbour with the marrows, who turns out to be Hercule Poirot, living in retirement under another name. He agrees to take the case on the condition that everyone concerned will have to face the whole truth, and Sheppard, as the doctor who found the body, becomes his companion in the investigation.

Poirot works through the household. He establishes that an armchair had been moved out of its usual place and put back, that Ackroyd had recently bought a dictaphone which is nowhere in the study, and that Parker has a history of blackmailing a former employer, which explains his eavesdropping without explaining the murder. In the summerhouse Poirot finds a scrap of starched cambric and a hollow goose quill of the kind used to take a drug. A gold wedding ring, engraved with an initial and a date in March, is fished out of the goldfish pond. He assembles the family and asks each of them for an account of the evening, warning them that anyone concealing something small will be suspected of something large. Mrs Cecil Ackroyd is evasive about her debts, Raymond about his, Miss Russell about her interest in drug addiction, and Flora about the minutes she claims to have spent with her uncle. Ralph Paton remains missing.

The concealed matters come out one by one. Mrs Ackroyd admits she was in the study looking for her brother-in-law's will. Raymond's debts have been settled by an unexplained windfall. Parker admits to listening at the door. The telephone call that brought Sheppard back to Fernly is traced to the call box at the railway station, made by a man whose voice nobody can identify. Poirot spends an evening at the Sheppards' mah jong table gathering village opinion, and afterwards tells Sheppard that he now knows how the murder was managed, though not by whom he will yet say. He begins to draw up a table of the times each person can be accounted for and asks Sheppard to keep writing his record of the case.

The stranger seen at the gates is identified as Charles Kent, a drug addict with a police record who was born in the district. He was at Fernly that night but can prove he left before the murder, and he was there to see Miss Russell, who is his mother. Flora then admits that she never saw her uncle alive after dinner at all: she had gone to his room to take forty pounds from his bureau, and invented the goodnight to explain her presence. That collapses a good deal of the timetable the police had built on it. Ursula Bourne, the parlourmaid, confesses that she is secretly married to Ralph Paton, that she told Ackroyd so on the day of the murder, and that she quarrelled with Ralph in the summerhouse that night. The ring from the pond is hers. Poirot, who has known where Ralph is for some time, produces him, and announces that he will name the murderer at a gathering the next day.

At the gathering Poirot lays out what each person had hidden, clears Ralph Paton, and says that the murderer is present. Afterwards he speaks to Dr Sheppard alone and names him. Sheppard was the blackmailer who had been extorting money from Mrs Ferrars over her husband's death, and he killed Ackroyd within minutes of leaving him, before the letter could be read to the end. He set the dictaphone to play back Ackroyd's recorded voice at half past nine so that the murder would appear to have happened after he had gone, moved the chair to hide the machine from the doorway, and arranged for a telephone call to reach him at a quarter past ten, so that he would be the one to return, break in, and carry the dictaphone away in his bag. His written account of that evening is true in every sentence and silent at the crucial minute. Poirot explains that he suspected him from the first because of that gap in the narrative, and tells him that for Caroline's sake there is another way out, since the police will hear everything in the morning. Ralph and Ursula are free to acknowledge their marriage, Flora is free to accept Major Blunt, and Sheppard writes a last chapter admitting what he left out before setting out a fatal dose of veronal for himself.

Poirot gathers the household and states that he knows who killed Roger Ackroyd, then tells Dr Sheppard privately that the murderer is Sheppard himself. Sheppard was the blackmailer who had been bleeding Mrs Ferrars for a year over her husband's death, and he killed Ackroyd within minutes of leaving him, before Ackroyd could finish the letter naming him. He propped a dictaphone to play back his employer's recorded voice at half past nine, so that witnesses would place the murder later than it happened, and he arranged for a telephone call to reach him at ten fifteen so that he would be the man to return and discover the body, and so recover the dictaphone in his bag. Every misleading time in his own written account is an omission rather than a lie. Poirot explains that he suspected him from the beginning because Sheppard's account of that evening contained a gap it could not explain. He offers no bargain but tells him that for his sister's sake a different ending is available, and that the police will be told in the morning. Ralph Paton, found and cleared, is free to acknowledge his marriage to Ursula Bourne; Flora Ackroyd, released from her pretended engagement, is free to accept Major Blunt. Sheppard adds a final chapter to his manuscript, admits what he has left out, addresses it to Poirot, and sets out veronal for himself.