The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

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.

Of course, Ackroyd is not really a country squire. He is an immensely successful manufacturer of (I think) wagon wheels. He is a man of nearly fifty years of age, rubicund of face and genial of manner. He is hand and glove with the vicar, subscribes liberally to parish funds (though rumour has it that he is extremely mean in personal expenditure), encourages cricket matches, Lads’ clubs, and disabled Soldiers’ Institutes. He is, in fact, the life and soul of our peaceful village of king’s Abbot.