47 pages • 1 hour read
Agatha ChristieThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1926A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Parker”
After the funerals of Ackroyd and Mrs. Ferrars, Poirot calls Parker to his house. He reveals a relationship between Parker and a former drug-connected employer. Parker panics and confesses to listening at the door to gather information about the blackmail, to confirm the past was not catching up to him.
Poirot, Sheppard, and Caroline have lunch together. Caroline talks about Sheppard’s apparent weakness and lack of a strong character. Poirot responds by telling a story about a man who does not think about murder but has growing malice in him. When the opportunity arises, he kills and returns to the person he was before, but now he has the potential within him to kill again.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Charles Kent”
The American stranger is in custody, and the police want Sheppard to confirm it is the same person he met. Poirot and Sheppard meet the man, Charles Kent, who refuses to provide information until they say what the charges are. When they inform him about the murder of Ackroyd, he confirms he was at Fernly Park that night but was gone before the murder occurred.
Poirot produces the goose quill, which Kent recognizes. Poirot asks Charles where he was born and if it was in Kent. Kent neither confirms nor denies, but that is enough of an answer for Poirot. At this moment, Sheppard makes an aside that Poirot has the crime solved already, despite his cluelessness at the time.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Flora Ackroyd”
The next day, Inspector Raglan informs Poirot and Sheppard that Kent’s alibi checks out and he must be released. Poirot asks that Raglan not release Kent yet. Since the time of the murder is still unconfirmed, Kent may have been present at the time of the murder. The inspector reminds Poirot that Flora was with Ackroyd at 9:30pm, but Poirot does not believe that.
They go to Fernly Park and confront Flora, who admits that she was never in Ackroyd’s study the night of the murder and, instead, was stealing the money from his bedroom. Major Blunt tries to cover for her, but Poirot will not allow it. After Flora leaves, Poirot reveals Blunt’s secret—he is in love with Flora. He sends Blunt to tell Flora his true feelings.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Miss Russell”
Poirot finds Sheppard in his workshop tinkering with mechanical devices. They discuss Sheppard’s hobby, and Poirot tells him that Miss Russell will be coming by at Poirot’s instruction to discuss the investigation. When she arrives, Poirot tells her about Kent being in custody for the murder. This revelation leads Miss Russell to confess that Kent is her illegitimate son, who was at Fernly Park that night to get money from her. He left her in the summerhouse, and Miss Russell returned to the house via the open window in the drawing room.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Paragraph in the Paper”
Poirot intends to draw out more information about Paton’s location by printing a paragraph in the paper saying he is in custody. That morning, Caroline sees a stranger arrive at Poirot’s house. The case is ending, and Poirot wants Sheppard to join him on a trip to Fernly Park so Sheppard can invite all the household members to Poirot’s house that night.
Sheppard enters Fernly Park alone, and Poirot conducts an experiment on the grounds—an experiment he does not tell Sheppard about at the time. Mrs. Ackroyd tells Sheppard that Flora and Major Blunt are engaged; she is worried about how it would have appeared to others if Flora and Paton were engaged. Sheppard presents Poirot’s invitation, and Mrs. Ackroyd accepts on behalf of everyone.
Sheppard and Poirot arrive at Sheppard’s house, where Caroline greets them at the door by saying Ursula Bourne is there and needs to see Poirot. They enter the dining room to find Ursula lifting her head from the table; her eyes are tear-stained. Sheppard says her name, and Poirot adds a correction—a new piece of information: not Ursula Bourne, but Ursula Paton. Ursula is Paton’s wife, and she tells her story.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Ursula’s Story”
Ursula comes from a family of seven and left home at a young age to make a living for herself. She chose to be a parlourmaid, and her sister provided a reference by pretending to be a former employer. She did not work at Fernly Park long before she and Paton fell in love, but they keep it secret because of the class difference.
They secretly married, and Paton convinced her to keep their marriage quiet until he is financially independent of Ackroyd. That never happens, and Ackroyd arranged for Paton and Flora to marry. They agreed to keep the engagement quiet and planned to break it off after a reasonable period. Then Ackroyd announced the engagement.
Ursula was hurt and told Paton that she would tell Ackroyd about their marriage. She and Ackroyd fought on the night he was killed, and she gave her notice at Fernly Park. After the meeting with Ackroyd, Ursula met Paton in the summerhouse, and they argued about the situation. She left the summerhouse first, leaving Paton alone, and returned to her room. Once Ursula finishes her story, Poirot asks if Ursula can tell him anything about Paton’s shoes; she cannot.
Chapters 17-22 Analysis
The Funnel section continues. As foreshadowed by the game of Mahjong, characters are now less conscious about the information they provide Poirot. Characters make mistakes and give away pieces of the story that otherwise would not have come to light. Poirot has manipulated his way into their trust by nudging each in a way that would most impact them. He admitted to understanding psychology and how the mind works. He then uses that knowledge for his gain.
Poirot’s methods continue to blend the themes of The Human Capacity for Evil and Ethics and the Law. He applies pressure so suspects provide information through the shock factor. In Chapters 17-20, characters are less willing to provide their story, yet Poirot makes them. In previous conversations, Poirot was subtle and indirect. In these conversations, he openly pushes the suspects. Though he is doing so in pursuit of the truth (a matter that should be ethically good), his approach begins to overstep the line of ethics when he shows less compassion toward people and draws out their secrets only for the sake of having the whole story rather than simply solving the crime. However, thus far, Poirot has not lied to anyone except for lies of omission (not unlike Sheppard).
That changes at the end of Chapter 20. Poirot admits that he “took advantage of [Raglan’s] state of mental chaos to induce him to grant me a favor” (226). The paragraph printed is a fabrication with the goal that “very interesting results would follow its appearance in print” (226). Raglan concedes but does not want to bear the responsibility for the backlash from publishing it. This moment is near the height of the conflict between Ethics and the Law that has been at play throughout Poirot’s investigation. Poirot is following his intuition and his “little ideas” that he reaches by using the “little grey cells” (226) in the brain, as he calls them. In Christie’s Poirot novels, the “little grey cells” (226) represent logic and deduction. In previous chapters, the reader was brought along with Poirot and invited to understand all the clues; now, they are becoming more abstract, and Poirot expects his assistant, and the reader, to apply logic to follow him. He combines deduction, logic, and intuition to arrive at a conclusion, and in this chapter, he pushes everyone else to do the same.
In Chapter 21, “The Paragraph in the Paper,” the results of his fabrication are revealed. Ursula Bourne is actually Ursula Paton and has the most prominent connection to Paton because of their secret marriage. This connection expands in Chapter 22, “Ursula’s Story,” where the wedding ring symbol comes into play. Ursula casts away her wedding ring, symbolically casting away her relationship with Paton. When she believes Paton is in trouble, however, she comes forward. She must do her duty and fill in this final part of the puzzle to attempt to prove Paton’s innocence. Just as Poirot discovered the wedding ring in the pond, he already used his deductive reasoning to know that Ursula was Paton’s wife. Paton is no longer a suspect in the murder, but Poirot needs this moment to play out to demonstrate the severity of the situation for the guilty party, who has been working with him the whole time—Sheppard. The end goal of Poirot’s game is to make an appeal of compassion to Sheppard. Poirot wants Sheppard to make the morally correct choice, even if it goes against the process of law.
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