The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

I want your advice – I can’t carry the whole weight by myself. As I said just now, I don’t know what to do.’

‘Can you tell me the whole story?’ I said. ‘I’m still in the dark. How did Mrs Ferrars come to make this confession to you?’

‘It’s like this. Three months ago I asked Mrs Ferrars to marry me. She refused. I asked her again and she consented, but she refused to allow me to make the engagement public until her year of mourning was up. Yesterday I called upon her, pointed out that a year and three weeks had now elapsed since her husband’s death, and that there could be no further objection to making the engagement public property.

I had noticed that she had been very strange in her manner for some days. Now, suddenly, without the least warning, she broke down completely. She – she told me everything. Her hatred of her brute of a husband, her growing love for me, and the – the dreadful means she had taken. Poison! My god! It was murder in cold blood.’

I saw the repulsion, the horror, in Ackroyd’s face.

So Mrs Ferrars must have seen it. Ackroyd’s is not the type of the great lover who can forgive all for love’s sake. He is fundamentally a good citizen. All that was sound and wholesome and law-abiding in him must have turned from her utterly in that moment of revelation.

‘Yes,’ he went on, in a low, monotonous voice, ‘she confessed everything. It seems that there is one person who has known all along – who has been blackmailing her for huge sums. It was the strain of that that drove her nearly mad.

’

‘Who was the man?’

Suddenly before my eyes there arose the picture of Ralph Paton and Mrs Ferrars side by side. Their heads so close together. I felt a momentary throb of anxiety. Supposing – oh! but surely that was impossible. I remembered the frankness of Ralph’s greeting that very afternoon. Absurd!

‘She wouldn’t tell me his name,’ said Ackroyd slowly. ‘As a matter of fact, she didn’t actually say that it was a man. But of course – ’

‘Of course,’ I agreed.

‘It must have been a man. And you’ve no suspicion at all?’

For answer Ackroyd groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘I’m mad even to think of such a thing. No, I won’t even admit to you the wild suspicion that crossed my mind. I’ll tell you this much, though. Something she said made me think that the person in question might be actually among my household – but that can’t be so. I must have misunderstood her.