Roger Ackroyd is an immensely successful businessman who ironically looks like a country squire. The life and soul of King’s Abbot, he is a charitable man who extends his patronage to the church and society. However, he is extremely frugal in personal expenditure. Mrs Ackroyd complains about it. This frugality extends to the relatives financially dependent on him. Being a widower with no children of his own, he has brought up his stepson as his own. He is fundamentally a good citizen who lives by the law, is hot-tempered and has a righteous indignation against all kinds of wrong doing. He lacks the imagination and the flexibility to forgive and forget all for the sake of love. He shrewdly uses Ralph’s perpetual money troubles and financial dependence as a leverage to get him engaged to the girl he approves of – his niece Flora.