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A character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Flora Ackroyd

Ackroyd's niece, engaged to Ralph, who asks Poirot to take the case and has a small theft of her own to hide.

What they want

Money of her own, and a way out of an engagement she did not choose.

The book

The Murder of Roger AckroydAgatha Christie, 1926

A village doctor tells the story of his neighbour's murder, and tells it honestly. That is the trick.

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At a glance

In the book
Ackroyd's niece, living at Fernly Park
Where she appears
Chapters 3 to 25

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Flora lives at Fernly with her mother on Ackroyd's charity and is engaged to Ralph Paton because Ackroyd wished it. She is pretty, cool and short of money. When Ralph vanishes she goes to Poirot to clear him, which is the act that brings the detective into the case.

She tells one lie that shapes the whole investigation: that she said goodnight to her uncle at a quarter to ten. The book's clock is built on that lie, and Poirot has to take it apart.

How Flora Ackroyd Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The visitShe goes to The Larches herself and asks the foreigner next door to help Ralph.
  • The goodnightShe says she saw her uncle alive at a quarter to ten; Poirot returns to the claim again and again.
  • The forty poundsMissing from Ackroyd's bedroom, and the reason she was on the stairs that night.
  • The engagementArranged, and she admits at last that she never loved Ralph.
  • Major BluntThe big-game hunter who watches her, and whom she does not notice until the end.
  • The motherMrs Cecil Ackroyd, whose debts and hints keep Flora short and the household tense.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Flora took the forty pounds and never went near her uncle's study. Her false goodnight fixed the time of death at after a quarter to ten, which was exactly what the murderer needed. She ends the book free of Ralph and turning to Blunt.

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