The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Summary

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided home from the Western Front in 1916, meets his old friend John Cavendish and is invited to Styles Court, the Cavendish family's country house in Essex. The house belongs for her lifetime to John's stepmother, the generous and domineering Emily Inglethorp, who has recently married Alfred Inglethorp, a bearded man about twenty years younger whom the family suspect of wanting her money. The household includes John's reserved wife Mary, his brother Lawrence, the orphaned Cynthia Murdoch, who works in the dispensary of the Red Cross hospital at Tadminster, and Mrs. Inglethorp's blunt companion Evelyn Howard, who leaves after a quarrel, warning Hastings to watch Alfred. In the nearby village Hastings meets Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian detective whom Mrs. Inglethorp has sheltered with other refugees. On 17 July a violent quarrel is heard from her boudoir, and that afternoon she makes a new will. Early the next morning the household is roused: Mrs. Inglethorp, behind bolted doors, dies in convulsions, crying out her husband's name. The doctors find strychnine poisoning. Poirot examines the room, collecting a coffee stain, candle grease, a forced despatch-case, a fragment of green cloth and the charred remains of a will in the grate on a hot July night. At the inquest a chemist's assistant testifies that Alfred Inglethorp bought strychnine, but Inglethorp refuses to say where he was; Poirot surprises Hastings by preventing his arrest, producing proof that he was elsewhere. Suspicion moves to Dr. Bauerstein, a toxicologist who turns out to be under watch as a spy, and then to John Cavendish, who is arrested and tried. At the trial, defended by Sir Ernest Heavywether, John is in danger of conviction when Poirot finds the last link: torn strips of a letter that Inglethorp had rolled into spills in the vase on the mantelpiece, which Poirot himself had straightened in a moment of nervous tidiness. Poirot explains that Alfred Inglethorp and Evelyn Howard, secretly lovers and cousins, plotted together: Evelyn, disguised as Alfred, bought the poison to give him a deliberate, provable alibi, and bromide powders added to Mrs. Inglethorp's strychnine tonic made the last dose deadly. Mary had drugged the cocoa with a harmless narcotic for her own reasons, which delayed the symptoms. Inglethorp and Miss Howard are arrested, John and Mary are reconciled, and Lawrence and Cynthia are engaged. Written during the war, the novel was published in the United States by John Lane in 1920 and in Britain in 1921.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters I-II: Arrival at Styles

  Hastings comes to Styles; the family, Alfred Inglethorp, Evelyn Howard's warning and departure; the meeting with Poirot in Styles St. Mary; the quarrel and the new will on 17 July.

• Chapter III: The night of the tragedy

  The household breaks into the bolted bedroom; Mrs. Inglethorp's convulsions and death; Dr. Bauerstein's appearance in the night.

• Chapters IV-V: Poirot investigates

  Poirot's search of the room, the burnt will, the coffee cup and cocoa, the despatch-case; Dorcas's account of the quarrel; the doctors' finding of strychnine.

• Chapters VI-VII: The inquest and Poirot's debts

  Evidence of the chemist's assistant, the will witnesses and the servants; Inglethorp's silence; Poirot repays Mrs. Inglethorp's kindness by keeping her husband from arrest.

• Chapters VIII-IX: Fresh suspicions and Dr. Bauerstein

  Evelyn Howard's return; Hastings's clumsy theories; Bauerstein's arrest for espionage; Poirot's hints about the case against a second man.

• Chapters X-XI: The arrest and the trial

  John Cavendish arrested; the prosecution's case, the beard and pince-nez in the chest, the conflicting handwriting; Sir Ernest Heavywether's defence.

• Chapters XII-XIII: The last link and Poirot explains

  The letter in the spill-vase; Poirot's reconstruction of the plot between Inglethorp and Miss Howard, the bromide, Mary's narcotic and the green armlet; reconciliations and an engagement.

Characters

• Hercule Poirot, detective

  A small, fastidious Belgian refugee and former police officer who trusts order, method and his little grey cells.

• Captain Arthur Hastings, narrator

  A wounded officer, honest and impressionable, who misreads most of the clues.

• Emily Inglethorp, victim

  The mistress of Styles, charitable and imperious, poisoned with strychnine.

• Alfred Inglethorp, husband

  Mrs. Inglethorp's much younger, bearded second husband, suspected by everyone.

• Evelyn Howard, companion

  Mrs. Inglethorp's gruff, loyal-seeming companion, who hates Alfred openly.

• John Cavendish, stepson

  The elder stepson, short of money and estranged from his wife, who is tried for murder.

• Mary Cavendish, John's wife

  A cool, proud woman whose secrets confuse the evidence.

• Lawrence Cavendish, younger stepson

  A sensitive former medical student who fears that Cynthia is guilty.

• Cynthia Murdoch, protégée

  A cheerful young woman working in the hospital dispensary at Tadminster.

• Dr. Bauerstein, toxicologist

  A London specialist in poisons staying nearby, arrested as a spy.

• Inspector Japp, Scotland Yard detective

  An old acquaintance of Poirot's from Belgium, brisk and good-humoured.

• Dorcas, parlourmaid

  A faithful old servant whose memory of the quarrel helps Poirot.

Lessons

• Let the theory go

  Poirot scolds Hastings for ignoring a fact that does not fit his idea. The whole novel trains the reader in this discipline: every clue, from the candle grease to the spill-vase, must be accounted for, and the obvious suspect is cleared precisely because the evidence against him is too neat.

  • Which facts does Hastings ignore because they do not fit his theory?
  • Why does Poirot become suspicious when the evidence against Alfred Inglethorp is so strong?
  • What small clue finally solves the case, and why did Poirot nearly miss it?

• Gratitude as a debt

  Poirot came to Styles St. Mary as a refugee helped by Mrs. Inglethorp, and he speaks of paying his debts to her. His work is an act of gratitude and justice for a benefactress, not a game, even though he enjoys the puzzle.

  • What did Mrs. Inglethorp do for Poirot and the other Belgians?
  • Why does Poirot keep Alfred Inglethorp from being arrested even though he dislikes him?
  • Is Poirot's secrecy toward Hastings fair to his friend?

• Masks within a family

  Nearly everyone at Styles hides something: Mary her drugging of the cocoa and her friendship with Bauerstein, John his visits to Mrs. Raikes, Lawrence his fear for Cynthia. These smaller secrets almost hang an innocent man and shelter the guilty. Christie shows how ordinary concealments can obstruct justice.

  • Why does Mary Cavendish keep silent about what she did that night?
  • How do John's and Mary's pride and coldness toward each other affect the case?
  • What does Poirot mean when he says the happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in the world?

Context

The story is set in July 1916, during the First World War. Hastings has been wounded at the front; Cynthia and Mary do war work at a hospital and on the land; rationing and economies are mentioned; and some 250,000 Belgian refugees had come to Britain after the German invasion of 1914, many of them housed by local committees and private benefactors such as Mrs. Inglethorp. Fear of German spies was widespread, as Bauerstein's arrest shows.

Composition

Christie wrote the novel around 1916, partly in a hotel on Dartmoor, after a bet with her sister Madge that she could write a detective story; she drew on her work in the Torquay hospital dispensary and on the Belgian refugees she had seen in Torquay. After several rejections it was accepted by John Lane of The Bodley Head, who asked her to change the final chapter, in which Poirot originally explained the solution in the witness-box. It was serialized in The Times Weekly Edition in 1920 and published by John Lane in New York in October 1920 and in London in January 1921.

Reception

Reviewers praised the ingenuity of the plot, and the Pharmaceutical Journal commended the accuracy of its account of strychnine poisoning. Poirot went on to appear in thirty-three novels and more than fifty stories, ending with Curtain (1975), which returns to Styles. The novel established the conventions of the country-house mystery of the interwar years: the closed circle of suspects, the misleading narrator-friend and the final assembly at which the detective reveals all.

Comparisons

• the-murder-on-the-links

  Poirot's second case, published in 1923, brings Hastings and Poirot to France and again turns on a crime staged to mislead the police.

• the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes

  Christie models the pair of Poirot and Hastings on Holmes and Watson, with an admiring, slower narrator, though Poirot prizes psychology and order over Holmes's chemical experiments and disguises.

• the-moonstone

  Collins's country-house mystery also involves a narcotic secretly given, a misread night, and a family whose private secrets confuse the search for a stolen object.

• the-innocence-of-father-brown

  Chesterton's priest-detective, like Poirot, is a small, unassuming foreigner to the police mind who solves crimes by understanding human nature.

• testament-of-youth

  Vera Brittain's memoir describes from inside the VAD nursing that Christie herself did and that Cynthia's dispensary work reflects.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Every object Poirot notices in Mrs. Inglethorp's room in Chapter IV, and which ones Hastings dismisses.
• Poirot's habit of straightening ornaments on the mantelpiece, mentioned early and important at the end.
• Evelyn Howard's loud hatred of Alfred Inglethorp from the first chapter onward.
• The times: when the coffee and cocoa were served, when the poison was bought, and when the symptoms began.
• The hints Poirot gives Hastings that John Cavendish will be acquitted.

Key terms and names

Strychnine

A bitter poison causing convulsions, used in small doses in tonics of the period; Mrs. Inglethorp's own medicine contained it.

Bromide

A sedative powder; added to the strychnine tonic, it made the poison settle to the bottom of the bottle so the last dose was fatal.

Inquest

The coroner's public inquiry into a sudden death, held in the village in Chapter VI.

Despatch-case

Mrs. Inglethorp's locked case for papers, found forced open after her death.

Spills

Twists of paper kept in a vase for lighting candles and pipes; the missing letter is hidden among them.

Little grey cells

Poirot's name for the brain cells he uses to reason out a case from within rather than by searching for footprints.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How did Poirot come to be living in Styles St. Mary, and what did Mrs. Inglethorp do for him?
2. Comprehension What does Poirot find in the grate of Mrs. Inglethorp's room, and why is it strange in July?
3. Comprehension Who really bought the strychnine at the chemist's, and why was it done?
4. Interpretation Why does Poirot keep his thoughts from Hastings, and is he right to do so?
5. Interpretation How do the secrets of Mary, John and Lawrence make the case harder to solve?
6. Interpretation Why does Christie make the guilty man the one everybody suspects from the start?
7. Big Question Is it enough for a guilty person to be suspected, or must the truth be proved? What is the difference?

Faith Connections

• Luke 8:17 (Scripture)

  Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. The torn letter hidden among the spills in plain sight is brought to light by Poirot's patience.

• Deuteronomy 19:15 (Scripture)

  The Law requires two or three witnesses to establish a charge. Poirot refuses to let Alfred Inglethorp or John Cavendish be condemned on evidence that looks strong but has been arranged.

• Ephesians 4:26 (Scripture)

  Paul warns against letting the sun go down on one's anger. John and Mary's pride keeps them apart until the crisis forces them to speak truly to each other.

• G. K. Chesterton, The Blue Cross (1910) (Great Conversation)

  Chesterton's Father Brown solves crimes by knowing the human heart, as Poirot does by order and psychology; both detectives treat a crime as a moral act, not only a puzzle.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A crime can be designed so that evidence points loudly at the guilty man, who can then disprove it and be safe for ever. Therefore evidence that is too convenient should raise suspicion, and the detective must account for every fact, however small, until only one explanation fits. The spill-vase proves Poirot's method: the clue he ignored had been under his own hand.

Rhetorical device: unreliable (mistaken) narrator. Hastings narrates throughout and misreads the clues, as Poirot's rebuke in Chapter V shows, so that the reader shares his wrong conclusions until Chapter XIII.

Debate: Resolved: that Poirot was justified in letting John Cavendish stand trial in order to catch the real murderers.

Memory Work

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Hastings is the narrator, but Poirot is the hero. Argue why Christie tells the story through a friend who keeps getting things wrong.

Comparison with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Compare Poirot and Hastings with Holmes and Watson. How are the detectives' methods and the narrators' roles alike, and how does Christie make her pair different?

Medical Lens

The novel is built on accurate pharmacology. Mrs. Inglethorp takes a tonic containing strychnine, then a common stimulant ingredient; the solution turns on the chemical fact that adding a bromide to such a mixture precipitates the strychnine, so that the last dose in the bottle becomes lethal. Her death, with convulsions, rigidity and a delayed onset explained by a narcotic in her cocoa, follows the textbook course of strychnine poisoning, and the Pharmaceutical Journal praised the book's accuracy. Christie drew on her own war work in the dispensary of the Red Cross hospital in Torquay, which also lies behind Cynthia's poison cupboard at Tadminster and its rules for scheduled drugs. The inquest shows the period's machinery of medical evidence: the general practitioner Dr. Wilkins, the toxicologist Dr. Bauerstein, the post-mortem and the analyst's report, and the poison register that purchasers had to sign at the chemist's. Hastings's convalescence from a war wound frames the story, and Mary's use of a sleeping draught on Mrs. Inglethorp and Cynthia shows how freely hypnotics were kept in households.

• Chapter III

  Mrs. Inglethorp's convulsions behind the bolted doors, Dr. Bauerstein's artificial respiration and her death.

  Pharmacology Poisons Death Dying Physicians Doctors
• Chapter VI

  The inquest: medical evidence of strychnine, the chemist's poison register and the question of when the dose was taken.

  Pharmacology Poisons Physicians Doctors
• Chapters II and IX

  Hastings visits Cynthia's dispensary at the Tadminster hospital with its poison cupboard, and later arranges for Poirot to see it.

  Pharmacology Poisons Nursing Caregiving
• Chapter XIII

  Poirot explains the bromide precipitation of strychnine in the tonic and the narcotic in the cocoa that delayed the symptoms.

  Pharmacology Poisons Sleep Insomnia

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Have students list every clue Poirot collects in Chapter IV and decide, before reading Chapter XIII, what each one means; then compare with Poirot's explanation.

• Fiction

  Retell the night of 17-18 July from Dorcas's point of view, using only what she could have seen and heard.

Further Reading

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

• An Autobiography, Agatha Christie

  Christie's own account of her dispensary work and the writing of Styles.

• A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, Kathryn Harkup

• Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, Laura Thompson