Ackroyd

As advertised at reference 1, I have been reading the story at reference 2 - and have now read as much as I am going to, having skimmed over the last few pages. Not to mention some earlier pages.

Much the same experience as I have had before with Agatha. First, one is a bit irritated by the flatness of her prose. Second, you get interested in her story. This carries you through most of it. Third, you get lost in a maze of clues and end up deciding that you can't bothered with it all. Certainly not to the extent of drawing up the chart which would get you through the maze. Perhaps I am too used to Simenon stories which make much less use of clues and much more of character and atmosphere.

But a point of similarity with Simenon is that in this story, one of the earlier Poirot stories, Poirot has just retired to the country to grow vegetable marrows. Simenon also retires Maigret quite early on, in his case to fish the Loire, then brings him back into active service a year or so later, presumably having realised that he quite likes the easy money that the Maigret stories bring in.

A maze of a different sort is presented by wondering how many nurses there are in the UK. Reference 3 talks of there being 670,000 in the UK while reference 4 talks of there being 300,000 in England. This jump from England to the UK is far too much, but the only clue I have so far is that the latter figure does not include student nurses. Maybe I will be bothered with this one later in the day.

The interest arising from sums like: if 4,000 nurses could maintain a rate of 250 injections a week each, they would be doing a million a week and would get through the country as a whole in a year. Remembering that they would not have been doing whatever it is they would normally have been doing. Stuff which one would have liked to have got done. Presumably there are whole rafts of Cummins-like people hunched over such sums as I type.

Reference 1: psmv4: Series 3, Episode IX.

Reference 2: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie - 1926.

Reference 3: https://www.statista.com.

Reference 4: https://www.gov.uk/government.