The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

‘Mr Ackroyd. About a week ago. he is very pleased about it – has long desired that such a thing should come to pass, or so I understood from him. I even believe that he brought some pressure to bear upon the young man. That is never wise. A young man should marry to please himself – not to please a stepfather from whom he has expectations.’

My ideas were completely upset. I could not see Ackroyd taking a hairdresser into his confidence, and discussing the marriage of his niece and stepson with him. Ackroyd extends a genial patronage to the lower orders, but he has a very great sense of his own dignity. I began to think that Porrott couldn’t be a hairdresser after all.

To hide my confusion, I said the first thing that came into my head.

‘What made you notice Ralph Paton? His good looks?’

‘No, not that alone – though he is unusually good-looking for an Englishman – what your lady novelists would call a greek god. No, there was something about that young man that I did not understand.’

He said the last sentence in a musing tone of voice which made an indefinable impression upon me. It was as though he was summing up the boy by the light of some inner knowledge that I did not share. It was that impression that was left with me, for at that moment my sister’s voice called me from the house.