The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда - стр. 3

I nodded.

‘And ever since she’s been haunted by what she did. I can’t help feeling sorry for her.’

I don’t think Caroline ever felt sorry for Mrs Ferrars whilst she was alive. Now that she has gone where (presumably) Paris frocks can no longer be worn, Caroline is prepared to indulge in the softer emotions of pity and comprehension.

I told her firmly that her whole idea was nonsense.

I was all the more firm because I secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she had said. But it is all wrong that Caroline should arrive at the truth simply by a kind of inspired guesswork. I wasn’t going to encourage that sort of thing. She will go round the village airing her views, and everyone will think that she is doing so on medical data supplied by me.

Life is very trying.

‘Nonsense,’ said Caroline, in reply to my strictures. ‘you’ll see. Ten to one she’s left a letter confessing everything.’

‘She didn’t leave a letter of any kind,’ I said sharply, and not seeing where the admission was going to land me.

‘Oh!’ said Caroline. ‘So you did inquire about that, did you? I believe, James, that in your heart of hearts, you think very much as I do. you’re a precious old humbug.’

‘One always has to take the possibility of suicide into consideration,’ I said impressively.

‘Will there be an inquest?’

‘There may be. It all depends. If I am able to declare myself absolutely satisfied that the overdose was taken accidentally, an inquest might be dispensed with.’

‘And are you absolutely satisfied?’ asked my sister shrewdly.

I did not answer, but got up from the table.

Before I proceed further with what I said to Caroline and what Caroline said to me, it might be as well to give some idea of what I should describe as our local geography. Our village, king’s Abbot, is, I imagine, very much like any other village. our big town is Cranchester, nine miles away. We have a large railway station, a small post office, and two rival ‘general Stores’. Able-bodied men are apt to leave the place early in life, but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, ‘gossip’.

There are only two houses of any importance in king’s Abbot. One is king’s Paddock, left to Mrs Ferrars by her late husband. The other, Fernly Park, is owned by roger Ackroyd. Ackroyd has always interested me by being a man more impossibly like a country squire than any country squire could really be. He reminds one of the red-faced sportsmen who always appeared early in the first act of an old-fashioned musical comedy, the setting being the village green. They usually sang a song about going up to London. Nowadays we have revues, and the country squire has died out of musical fashion.