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A character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Mrs Ferrars

The rich widow found dead of an overdose before the story opens, whose letter sets everything moving.

What they want

To end the blackmail, and to be understood by the one man she told.

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
Widow of King's Abbot, dead before Chapter 1
Where she appears
In report only

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Mrs Ferrars is dead on the first page. Her husband Ashley had died a year earlier of what the village took for drink. She had been seen with Ackroyd, and the village expected a marriage. Her death by veronal is the fact the whole book grows from, and her letter to Ackroyd, arriving the evening after she died, is the one piece of evidence nobody reads on the page.

How Mrs Ferrars Is Portrayed

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

  • The deathAn overdose of veronal, which Caroline names as suicide at once.
  • The husbandAshley Ferrars, dead a year, whom she confessed to poisoning.
  • The confessionMade to Ackroyd the day before she died, and reported by him to Sheppard.
  • The letterPosted before her death, naming her blackmailer; it vanishes from the study.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Her blackmailer was Dr Sheppard, her own doctor. The letter named him, which is why Ackroyd had to die before he could read it.

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