The Mysterious Affair at Styles Playbook 1 — The Return and the Tragedy
A Playbook Series Adaptation · Verified public domain in the United States · Adapted by Kateule Sydney · E-cyclopedia Resources Hub
A wounded officer returns from the Front to a country house he remembers from boyhood. Within a fortnight, the household he has just rejoined is broken by a death no one can explain — and the quiet Belgian refugee in the village is the only man who refuses to accept the obvious answer.
Series Plan
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Author: Agatha Christie
First published: 1920 (United States)
Public domain: Verified for the United States; other jurisdictions should be checked independently
Source length: Approximately 57,000 words (13 chapters)
This Playbook: Playbook 1 of 5, covering Chapters I–III
Target length: 6,000–8,500 words
Source reference: Project Gutenberg, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (public-domain edition)
Method declaration: This post is an original adaptation of a verified public-domain source. Narrative events, characters, settings, and historical elements are derived from the source where applicable. The prose, dialogue, organization, pacing, framing, commentary, and presentation are newly written for this adaptation. No copyrighted modern translation or later adaptation has been reproduced.
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Previously in the Series: Beginning of the Series.
Table of Contents — The Return and the Tragedy
Chapter I — The Invitation to Styles
Chapter III — A Warning at the Gate
Chapter IV — The Quarrel in the Boudoir
Chapter V — A Bazaar and a Recitation
Chapter VI — The Night of the Tragedy
Chapter I — The Invitation to Styles
The letter that brought me back to Essex arrived on a Tuesday, forwarded twice and smelling faintly of hospital disinfectant. I had been three months at the convalescent home near Weymouth, where the days passed in a slow and curiously painless rhythm and the nights were given over to the sort of dreams that a man does not describe in company. The envelope was addressed in a hand I had not seen since before the war. John Cavendish, I remembered, had never been a careful writer. He wrote as he lived, with a broad and confident sweep, and the sight of that familiar script lying on the breakfast tray brought back the whole of a boyhood summer in a single rush.
I had known John only slightly as a boy. He was fifteen years my senior, already a young man at Oxford while I was still being measured for my first school cap. But his mother had been kind to me in the way that certain older women are kind to boys who have no mothers of their own, and I had spent two long holidays at Styles Court in the years before the century turned. I remembered the house better than I remembered any of the people in it: a great rambling red-brick place with a wide park before it and a wood behind, and inside, room after room opening one into another in a way that seemed to a child like the inside of a puzzle box.
John's letter was brief. He had heard from a mutual acquaintance that I was invalided home and at something of a loose end. The mater would be delighted to see me again. There was plenty of room, and no obligation to be amusing. I was to telegraph my train, and he would meet me at Styles St. Mary.
I read the letter twice. The invitation was precisely what I wanted, though I could not have explained why. I had no people of my own, no house to go back to, no work that could be taken up until the medical board pronounced me fit. The war had taken my profession away and given me a wound in exchange, and I was at that stage of convalescence when a man is well enough to be restless and not well enough to be useful. A country house in Essex, with old acquaintance and long walks and no one expecting anything of me, seemed a small and permissible luxury.
I telegraphed that I would come on the fifth of July. Three days later, I found myself in a compartment of a slow train, watching the flat green country slide past the window and trying to remember what I had been told about the changes at Styles. There had been changes. John had married, I knew, some two years before — a woman I had never met, of whom I had heard only that she was handsome and that she was not, in the general opinion of the family, an easy person to know. There had been a second marriage, too, and that one I could not at first credit. Mrs. Cavendish, who had been a widow when she married John's father and a handsome woman of middle age when I last saw her, must now be close upon seventy. And yet John wrote that she had married again — a man named Alfred Inglethorp, of whom nobody seemed to be able to say a good word except the bride herself.
The train slowed. Outside the window, a small and improbable station had arranged itself at the edge of a field, with a wooden sign and a single porter and no apparent reason for existing at all. I took down my bag and stepped out onto the platform, where a tall man in a tweed suit was waiting for me with his hands in his pockets and a broad and rueful grin on his face.
John Cavendish had aged in the way that country men age — slowly, and without much drama. He was forty-five now, and looked perhaps forty, with the same easy bearing I remembered from boyhood and the same habit of speaking before he had quite decided what he meant to say. He shook my hand with both of his, and told me I looked like a corpse, and took my bag out of my hand before I could protest.
"You're a sight for sore eyes, Hastings," he said, as we walked out to the car. "I say, I hope you don't mind a bit of a muddle. The mater's got a bazaar on at the moment, and the house is full of people cutting out paper flowers."
I said that I did not mind in the least.
"And there's the war work, of course," he added, as he started the engine. "The mater's got about forty committees on the go. And Alfred — that's her husband — Alfred helps her with all of it. You'll have heard about the marriage, I suppose?"
I said that I had heard something of it.
"Rotten little bounder," John said, with a suddenness that surprised me. He stared straight ahead at the road. "I can tell you, Hastings, it's made life jolly difficult for all of us. The fellow turned up out of nowhere about a year ago, on the pretext of being some sort of cousin of Evie's — you remember Evie?"
I did not.
"Oh, well, she was after your time, I suppose. Evelyn Howard. The mater's companion, and general factotum, and a great sport altogether. Not young, not beautiful, but as game as they make them. Well, this fellow Inglethorp arrived with a story about being a distant connection of hers, though Evie didn't seem particularly keen to own him. He'd got a great black beard, and patent leather boots in all weathers, and the mater took to him at once. She always does take to that sort of man. She made him her secretary, and then — well, you could have knocked us all down with a feather when she announced they were engaged. The fellow must be twenty years younger than she is. It's bare-faced fortune-hunting, and there's an end of it. But she's her own mistress, and she married him."
We had turned in at the lodge gates by now, and were running up a long drive between heavy old trees. The afternoon sun lay across the park in broad bands of light, and the house itself was just coming into view at the far end — the same house I remembered, the same long line of windows, the same red brick glowing in the sun. It was strange to think that all of this had gone on without me, through the whole of the war, and would go on after me too.
"It's a beautiful old place," I said, meaning it.
John nodded, but his face had clouded over.
"Yes. It's a fine property. It'll be mine some day, if things go on as they are. Should be mine now, by rights, if my father had only made a decent will. As it is, the mater has it for her lifetime, and she's been awfully good to us, I must say. But since her marriage, of course —" He broke off, and shook his head, and did not finish the sentence.
I looked out at the park, and said nothing. It seemed to me, even then, before I had met any of them, that the house was carrying a weight it had not been built to carry. But that may be the wisdom of hindsight. At the time I was simply glad to be out of the hospital and in the country, and willing to let the rest of it be somebody else's business.
Chapter II — Tea on the Lawn
Tea was laid out under the big sycamore on the south lawn, and a small group of people was already gathered there when John and I came round the house. I had a moment, before any of them saw me, to take in the scene. It was one of those long golden afternoons in early July when the whole of England seems to be holding its breath. The war might have been on another planet. The grass was cut, the flower beds were weeded, the tea things were laid on a white cloth with the sort of quiet precision that only a good housekeeper can achieve, and beyond the lawn the park stretched away into a green and peaceful haze.
A tall woman in a tweed skirt and heavy boots rose from her knees by a flower bed as we approached. She had a square, sensible face, burnt brown by the sun, and a grip of the hand that made me wince.
"Miss Howard," said John. "Mr. Hastings. Our wounded hero."
"How do you do," said Miss Howard, in a deep voice that was almost manly. "Weeds grow like house afire. Can't keep even with them. You'll have to lend a hand, I'm afraid. Better be careful what you say, though. Never volunteer for anything in this house."
I laughed and said I should be only too delighted to make myself useful.
"Don't say it. You'll wish you hadn't, later."
She turned and led the way to the tea table, where a woman I had not yet seen was sitting in a basket chair, a cup balanced on the arm and a book open on her lap. She rose as we came up. John said simply, "My wife, Hastings," and I had my first sight of Mary Cavendish.
I have never forgotten it. She was tall and very slender, and she held herself with an easy stillness that made everything around her seem a little hurried by comparison. Her hair was dark, her face was pale, and her eyes — I have never seen eyes quite that colour, a sort of tawny amber, remarkable in a way I cannot quite put into words. There was a fire in them, banked down and under perfect control. She gave me her hand, and said a few quiet words of welcome in a low, clear voice, and I found myself, before I had finished my first cup of tea, trying to think of things to say that might amuse her. It is not a habit of mine, and I was aware of it even as it happened.
I described the more absurd incidents of the convalescent home — the colonel who insisted on drilling the gardeners, the matron's terror of the new electric bell — and she laughed in the right places, and asked the right questions, and I flattered myself that I had made a good impression. John, who had never been a conversationalist, sat and smoked and looked pleased with himself, as a man does when his wife has done him credit in front of his friends.
The peace of the afternoon was broken by a voice from the open French window behind us — a voice I remembered from boyhood, a little shriller now, and with a good deal more of the platform manner in it.
"Then you'll write to the Princess after tea, Alfred? I'll write to Lady Tadminster for the second day, myself. Or shall we wait until we hear from the Princess? In case of a refusal, Lady Tadminster might open it the first day, and Mrs. Crosbie the second. Then there's the Duchess — about the school fête."
The murmur of a man's voice answered her, and the French window swung open a little wider. A tall, white-haired old lady stepped out onto the lawn, and behind her, a man. Mrs. Inglethorp greeted me with an effusion that I had entirely forgotten, and which came back to me the moment she spoke. She had always been a woman who made a great deal of everyone she met, and she had never quite learned to distinguish between making a great deal of a person and making that person uncomfortable.
"Why, if it isn't too delightful to see you again, Mr. Hastings, after all these years! Alfred, darling, Mr. Hastings — my husband."
I looked at Alfred Inglethorp with some curiosity, and did not much care for what I saw. He was a man of about forty-five, I should say, with a great black beard that was clearly the pride of his life, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and the sort of curious impassivity of feature that one associates with the stage rather than the drawing-room. He put out a wooden hand and said, in a deep and unctuous voice, that it was a pleasure to meet me. Then he turned to his wife, and said that the cushion she was sitting on was a little damp, and substituted another with every demonstration of tender care. She beamed at him fondly. It was, I thought, a curious sort of performance to watch, and I could not decide whether he was acting for our benefit or whether he had simply got into the habit and could not stop.
With the arrival of the Inglethorps, something went out of the afternoon. Miss Howard in particular made no attempt to conceal her feelings. She sat with her back very straight and her jaw set, and answered any remark addressed to her in the shortest possible form. Mrs. Inglethorp, however, appeared to notice nothing unusual. She talked without pause, on the bazaar, on the war, on the various committees she had founded, on the Duchess and the Princess and Lady Tadminster, and the arrangements for the school fête. Occasionally she consulted her husband about a date, and he answered with great care and attention, as if each date were a matter of considerable importance. I began to understand why John had called him a bounder. The man was perfectly correct, and perfectly attentive, and perfectly impossible.
At half past five a young girl in the uniform of a V.A.D. ran lightly across the lawn — a fresh, bright creature, with auburn hair that came loose from under her cap, and a small white hand that she held out to me without the least shyness.
"Cynthia Murdoch," said John. "Mr. Hastings."
"How do you do," she said. "I'm so sorry I'm late. I always am. Sit down on the grass, do — it's ever so much nicer."
I dropped down obediently. She had a way of speaking that was half child and half young woman, and I found myself liking her at once. She worked at the Red Cross Hospital at Tadminster, she told me, seven miles away, in the dispensary. She had been there two years, and she was quite certain she was the most useful person in the house.
"Do they bully you?" I asked.
"I should like to see them," she said, with great dignity, and then spoiled it by laughing.
I asked her whether she poisoned people, and she said, quite seriously, "Oh, hundreds!" — and then caught herself, and laughed again, and the sound of her laughter carried across the lawn, and I saw Lawrence Cavendish, who had been walking slowly across the grass towards us, stop for a moment as if the sound had reached him somewhere private, and then come on again.
Chapter III — A Warning at the Gate
I did not see Lawrence Cavendish to speak to until the following day. He had come to dinner on the evening of my arrival, and had been introduced to me as John's younger brother, and I had been struck then by the contrast between the two men. John was broad and easy and open, with the sort of face that tells you nothing you did not already know. Lawrence was dark, and slender, and unusually reserved. He had the look of a man who has spent a good deal of his life inside his own head. He had qualified as a doctor, I was told, but had given up the profession early and had come home to live at Styles and write. His verses, it appeared, had never had any marked success. He was about forty, with a melancholy clean-shaven face, and I noticed that he did not look at his brother's wife when he spoke to her, and that she did not look at him.
On the second morning of my visit, I walked down through the wood to the village to buy stamps. The path ran along the edge of the estate and came out at a small gate in the wall that separated the park from the lane. As I came up to the gate, a woman was coming through it in the opposite direction. She was young, dark, with a vivid little face of a gipsy cast, and she gave me a bold, smiling glance as she passed. I lifted my hat, and she smiled again, and went on up the path towards the house.
John was coming down the lane a few minutes later, and I mentioned the woman, and asked who she was.
His face changed.
"That's Mrs. Raikes," he said shortly.
"The one that Miss Howard —"
"Exactly," he said, and did not let me finish the sentence. He walked on in silence for a few paces, and then began to talk of something else, and I thought no more about it — or told myself I did not.
The real warning came later that same day, and it came from Miss Howard, whom I had begun to like more than I could quite account for. She was a plain-spoken woman of about forty, with no nonsense about her, and a manner that some people found brusque and that I found restful. She had been with Mrs. Inglethorp for years — first as a sort of secretary-companion, then as the manager of her many charitable schemes, and finally as the one person in the house who could speak to her plainly and be listened to. She was, I gathered, a distant cousin of some kind, though the exact relationship was never made clear.
I came upon her that afternoon in the hall, pulling on her gardening gloves, and she stopped me with a look.
"Mr. Hastings," she said, "you're an honest man. I want a word with you."
I said I was at her service.
She glanced over her shoulder, and then drew me aside into the morning-room, and closed the door.
"There's going to be trouble in this house," she said, "and I want you to know it. I'm off tomorrow. I've had a row with Emily — with Mrs. Inglethorp — and I've said my mind, and I'm not sorry. But before I go, I want to say something to you, because you're a stranger, and you've got eyes in your head, and you're not mixed up in it."
"Mixed up in what?" I asked.
"In the whole business. Look here." She laid her hand on my arm. "That man — Inglethorp. You've seen him. You've seen what he is. Do you think he married Emily for love?"
I said, cautiously, that I had formed no opinion.
"Well, form one," she said. "He married her for her money, and for nothing else, and he'll have it if he can. And there's others in this house who want her money too, and don't you forget it. There's John, who's been in a hole for years and has been living on his mother's generosity, and there's Lawrence, who's spent every penny he ever had and has nothing to show for it but a shelf full of his own poetry. And there's me, I suppose, and there's the girl Cynthia, who's a dependent and has no claim on anyone. And there's Mary —" she stopped, and then went on — "well, never mind Mary. The point is, there isn't one of them that isn't hard up and trying to get money out of her. I've watched them, and I've protected her as much as I could, and now I'm out of the way and they'll have it all their own road."
I said that she was overwrought, and that Mrs. Inglethorp was plainly a woman of considerable strength of character, and that I did not see what any of them could do.
She shook her head slowly.
"Young man, trust me. I've lived in the world rather longer than you have. All I ask is that you keep your eyes open. And above all —" she lowered her voice to a whisper — "above all, watch that devil, her husband."
I was startled, and said something to the effect that I was sure she was letting her feelings run away with her.
She gave me a long look, and then let go of my arm.
"You'll see," she said. "You'll see what I mean."
She went out into the garden, and I stood in the morning-room for a moment, feeling more disturbed than I cared to admit. I had come to Styles for rest, and here, within two days of my arrival, I had been warned, in the plainest terms, that the household I had joined was a nest of people with designs on a rich old woman's money, and that her husband was the worst of them. It seemed to me an absurd and theatrical business, and I told myself so; but the warning stayed with me, in a way I could not quite put aside.
That evening, at dinner, I watched Alfred Inglethorp more carefully than I had done before. He was attentive to his wife in a way that was almost painful to see, and she received his attentions with a fondness that sat oddly on a woman of her age and character. He poured her coffee, and placed her chair, and handed her the salt, and asked after her health, and all the time his face wore the same curious wooden impassivity, as if there were a mask behind the mask. I told myself I was being fanciful. But I could not help noticing, once or twice, that when he thought no one was looking at him, his eyes rested on his wife with an expression that was not at all the expression of a devoted husband.
Chapter IV — The Quarrel in the Boudoir
The day after Miss Howard's departure was a Saturday, and the bazaar was held in the village hall. I had been at Styles for two weeks by then, and had settled into the comfortable routine of a country-house guest in wartime: long walks in the morning, a late luncheon, an afternoon in the garden or on the tennis court, tea under the sycamore, and the long quiet evenings that ended early because no one had the coal to keep the house warm. The war had changed Styles in small ways — the reduced staff, the economies, the way every scrap of paper was saved and sent away in sacks — but it had not changed the essential rhythm of the place, which was the rhythm of a house that had been lived in by the same family for generations.
The bazaar had been a great success, and there was to be an entertainment that evening in connection with the same charity, at which Mrs. Inglethorp was to recite a war poem. She had been rehearsing it for days, and had talked of little else, and on the Saturday morning the whole household was busy with the arrangements.
The quarrel, when it came, came on the following Tuesday — the sixteenth of July — and it came, as these things do, out of a clear sky. I had spent the morning helping with the decorations for the evening's entertainment, and had come back to the house for luncheon. Mrs. Inglethorp was in her briskest mood, and swept Lawrence and me off with her to a luncheon party at the Rollestons', some miles away. Mary had excused herself — she had, she said, an engagement with Dr. Bauerstein. I noticed that John's face darkened when she said it, and that Lawrence looked at his plate.
We had a pleasant luncheon, and on the way back Mrs. Inglethorp suggested that we should stop at Tadminster and pay a visit to Cynthia in her dispensary. We were detained under suspicion by the hospital porter until Cynthia appeared to vouch for us, looking very cool and sweet in her long white overall, and she took us up to her sanctum and showed us the little room with its rows of bottles and its neat labelled drawers, and introduced us to her fellow dispenser, a rather awe-inspiring individual whom she cheerily addressed as "Nibs."
"What a lot of bottles!" I said, and Cynthia groaned, and said that every single person who came up there said that, and that they were thinking of bestowing a prize on the first person who did not.
She showed us the poison cupboard — a small one, on the far side of the room, kept locked, the key taken out whenever the room was left — and said, quite seriously, that if people only knew how fatally easy it was to poison someone by mistake, they would not joke about it. I have thought of that remark many times since. I have thought of it more often than I care to say.
We drove home in the pony-trap, and as we came through the village I stopped at the post office for stamps, and cannoned into a small man who was just coming out. I drew aside and apologised, and the little man — a foreigner, by his appearance, with an egg-shaped head and a very stiff moustache — suddenly clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly on both cheeks, exclaiming, in a voice of great delight, "Mon ami Hastings! It is indeed mon ami Hastings!"
It was Hercule Poirot. I had not seen him for years — not since before the war, when I had come across him in Belgium, in the course of a case that had interested me greatly at the time. He had been one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police, and had since, I knew, retired, and I had heard nothing of him since the German invasion. It appeared that he was now living in the village, one of a number of Belgian refugees whom Mrs. Inglethorp had generously housed at her own expense. He was lame, I noticed — he limped badly — and looked older and greyer than I remembered him, but his eyes were as bright and as shrewd as ever, and his manner as dandified and precise.
I promised to go and see him at an early date, and we drove on. Cynthia was delighted to learn that I knew him. "He's a dear little man," she said. "I'd no idea you knew him." I told her that she had been entertaining a celebrity unawares, and spent the rest of the drive reciting to them the various exploits and triumphs of Hercule Poirot.
We arrived back in a very cheerful mood. As we entered the hall, Mrs. Inglethorp came out of her boudoir. She looked flushed and upset.
"Oh, it's you," she said.
"Is there anything the matter, Aunt Emily?" asked Cynthia.
"Certainly not," said Mrs. Inglethorp sharply. "What should there be?" She called to Dorcas, the parlourmaid, to bring some stamps into the boudoir, and Dorcas, an old servant who had been with her for ten years, hesitated, and said, diffidently, that Mrs. Inglethorp looked very tired, and had better get to bed. Mrs. Inglethorp said that she had letters to finish by post-time, and asked whether the fire had been lighted in her room as she had ordered. Dorcas said that it had. Mrs. Inglethorp said that she would go to bed directly after supper, and went back into the boudoir and shut the door.
I had intended to change for tennis, and had gone halfway up the stairs, when I remembered that I had left my racquet in the hall. I came down again, and as I passed the boudoir window, which stood open to the evening air, I heard voices raised inside. I could not help overhearing what was said. Mary Cavendish was speaking, in a voice of a woman desperately controlling herself.
"Then you won't show it to me?"
"My dear Mary, it has nothing to do with that matter."
"Then show it to me."
"I tell you it is not what you imagine. It does not concern you in the least."
And Mary Cavendish replied, with a rising bitterness, "Of course, I might have known you would shield him."
I went on into the garden, and found Cynthia waiting for me on the tennis court, and played a very bad game of tennis, and thought about what I had heard. It was, I told myself, none of my business. But I could not make it fit with anything I knew, and I could not put it out of my mind.
That evening there was a scene. I had gone down to the drawing-room before supper, and found Mr. Inglethorp there alone, standing by the window with his back to the room. He did not turn when I came in, and I had the curious impression, for a moment, that he had not heard me, and that whatever he was thinking about had carried him a long way off. Then he turned, and the mask was on again, and he said something polite about the weather, and the moment passed.
Mrs. Inglethorp came down last. She still looked agitated, and during the meal there was a somewhat constrained silence. Inglethorp, as a rule, surrounded his wife with little attentions; tonight he was unusually quiet, and sat with his eyes on his plate, and spoke only when he was spoken to. Immediately after supper, Mrs. Inglethorp retired to her boudoir again, and called to Mary to send her coffee in there, as she had five minutes to catch the post.
Cynthia and I went and sat by the open window in the drawing-room. Mary brought our coffee to us, and then went back to the tray to pour out Mrs. Inglethorp's. Inglethorp said that he would take it to her, and poured it out himself, and went out of the room carrying it carefully. Lawrence followed him, and Mrs. Cavendish sat down by us, and we three sat for some time in silence. It was a glorious night, hot and still, and she fanned herself gently with a palm leaf, and said that it was almost too hot, and that we should have a thunderstorm.
A few minutes later, Dr. Bauerstein arrived. He had been walking in the woods, it appeared, and had slipped into a pond, and was plastered with mud from head to foot, and Mr. Inglethorp had insisted on bringing him in. He made his apologies, and sat down, and had some coffee, and stayed far longer than I, for one, could have wished. When at last he rose to go, Mr. Inglethorp said that he would walk down to the village with him, as he had to see their agent about the estate accounts, and that no one need sit up for him, as he would take the latch-key.
I went up to bed, and lay for a long time listening to the house settling around me. Somewhere below, a door closed. Then the house was quiet.
Chapter V — A Bazaar and a Recitation
The evening of the entertainment passed, as such evenings do, in a blur of small anxieties and small triumphs. Mrs. Inglethorp's recitation was received with tremendous applause, and Cynthia took part in some tableaux, and afterwards was asked to a supper party and to stay the night with friends who had also been acting in the tableaux, so that she did not return with us. John drove the car, and Mary sat beside him, and I sat in the back with Lawrence, and no one said very much. The evening had been a success. But there was a tension in the air that no amount of applause could quite dispel, and I was glad when we reached Styles and could go to our rooms.
The next morning — the sixteenth — Mrs. Inglethorp stayed in bed to breakfast, as she was rather overtired, and appeared in her briskest mood about half past twelve, when she swept Lawrence and me off to a luncheon party at the Rollestons'. It was, as I have said, a pleasant luncheon, and I remember very little of it now, except that Mrs. Inglethorp talked a great deal about the bazaar, and that Lawrence was unusually quiet, and that I found myself thinking, at odd moments, about the scrap of conversation I had overheard the previous evening, and about Miss Howard's warning, and about the little Belgian in the village who was the only person I knew of who might be able to make sense of any of it.
We came back by way of Tadminster, to visit Cynthia at the hospital, and it was on that visit that I began, for the first time, to have a sense of how close the ordinary and the terrible can lie together. The dispensary was a small room with a high window and a great many bottles. The poison cupboard was locked, and the key was taken out whenever the room was left. Cynthia showed us the bottles, and told us the story of the salt on the cocoa tray, and we laughed about it, and thought no more of it. I have gone over that afternoon a hundred times in my mind since. There was nothing in it — nothing at all — that a reasonable man could have called a warning. And yet, looking back, it seems to me that everything was there, laid out on the table, if only one had had the eyes to see it.
We came home in the pony-trap, and as we drove through the village I stopped at the post office for stamps, and met Hercule Poirot, and promised to call on him. And then we drove on to Styles, and came into the hall, and found Mrs. Inglethorp coming out of her boudoir, flushed and upset, and Cynthia asking what was the matter, and Mrs. Inglethorp saying sharply that nothing was the matter, and calling to Dorcas for stamps, and going back into the boudoir and shutting the door.
I have thought since that if I had known, that afternoon, what was going to happen, I would have done things very differently. But one never knows. One goes on from hour to hour, doing the small ordinary things, and the great terrible things happen quietly in the next room.
The quarrel, whatever it was, took place that afternoon, and it was between Mrs. Inglethorp and her husband. I did not hear it myself — I was on the tennis court with Cynthia — but Dorcas heard it, and repeated it to us afterwards, and it is from her account that I know what was said. Mrs. Inglethorp had discovered something, or had been told something, and she had taxed her husband with it, and he had denied it, and she had told him plainly that she had kept him and clothed him and fed him, and that this was how he repaid her. And she had said that nothing he could say would make any difference, and that she saw her duty clearly, and that no fear of publicity or scandal between husband and wife would deter her.
I have often wondered what it was she had discovered. It may have been the business with Mrs. Raikes. It may have been something else altogether. But whatever it was, it changed her, and it changed the house, and nothing was ever quite the same again.
That evening there was another scene, and this one I did see, though I did not understand it at the time. Mrs. Inglethorp had gone up to her room early, and had asked for her coffee to be sent up to her. Mary and Cynthia and I were in the drawing-room, and Mr. Inglethorp was there too, and there was some question of who was to take the coffee up. In the end, Inglethorp took it himself, and carried it out of the room, and a few minutes later we heard Mrs. Inglethorp's voice in the hall, asking Cynthia to carry up her despatch-case, as she was going to bed. Cynthia went out, and I rose to go with her, and John was close by me, and so there were three of us who saw Mrs. Inglethorp standing there in the hall, with her coffee in her hand, untasted.
That is the last time I saw her alive.
Chapter VI — The Night of the Tragedy
It was the middle of the night when Lawrence Cavendish woke me. He had a candle in his hand, and the agitation on his face told me at once that something was wrong.
"What's the matter?" I asked, sitting up in bed.
"We are afraid my mother is very ill. She seems to be having some kind of fit. Unfortunately she has locked herself in."
I sprang out of bed, and pulled on my dressing-gown, and followed him along the passage and through the gallery to the right wing of the house. John was already there, and one or two of the servants were standing round in a state of awe-stricken excitement. Lawrence turned to his brother and asked what they had better do, and I thought I had never seen his indecision of character more plainly than at that moment.
John rattled the handle of Mrs. Inglethorp's door violently, but with no effect. It was locked or bolted on the inside, and the whole household was aroused by now, and from the interior of the room came the most alarming sounds. Clearly something had to be done. Dorcas suggested that we should try to get in through Mr. Inglethorp's room, and it was then that I realized, for the first time, that Alfred Inglethorp was not with us — that he alone, of all the household, had given no sign of his presence.
John opened the door of his room. It was pitch dark, but Lawrence was following with the candle, and by its feeble light we saw that the bed had not been slept in, and that there was no sign of the room having been occupied. We went straight to the connecting door, and found that it, too, was locked or bolted on the inside. What was to be done?
It occurred to someone that there was a door into Cynthia's room, and John ran down the corridor to see, but that was bolted too. There was nothing for it but to break in the door. We strained and heaved together, and for a long time the framework resisted our efforts, but at last we felt it give beneath our weight, and with a resounding crash it was burst open.
We stumbled in together, Lawrence still holding his candle. Mrs. Inglethorp was lying on the bed, her whole form agitated by violent convulsions, in one of which she must have overturned the table beside her. As we entered, her limbs relaxed, and she fell back upon the pillows. John strode across the room and lit the gas. I unbolted the door that gave on the corridor, and Lawrence held the candle, and I turned to him to say that I had better leave them now that there was no further need of my services, and the words were frozen on my lips. Never have I seen such a ghastly look on any man's face. He was white as chalk, the candle in his shaking hand was sputtering onto the carpet, and his eyes, petrified with terror, or some such kindred emotion, stared fixedly over my head at a point on the further wall. I followed the direction of his eyes, and I could see nothing unusual. The still feebly flickering ashes in the grate, and the row of ornaments on the mantelpiece, were surely harmless enough.
The violence of Mrs. Inglethorp's attack seemed to be passing. She was able to speak in short gasps.
"Better now — very sudden — stupid of me — to lock myself in."
A shadow fell on the bed, and I saw Mary Cavendish standing near the door with her arm around Cynthia, who looked utterly dazed and unlike herself. Her face was heavily flushed, and she yawned repeatedly.
"Poor Cynthia is quite frightened," said Mrs. Cavendish in a low clear voice. She herself, I noticed, was dressed in her white land smock. Then it must be later than I thought. I saw that a faint streak of daylight was showing through the curtains, and that the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to close upon five o'clock.
A strangled cry from the bed startled me. A fresh access of pain seized the unfortunate old lady. The convulsions were of a violence terrible to behold. Everything was confusion. We thronged round her, powerless to help or alleviate. A final convulsion lifted her from the bed, until she appeared to rest upon her head and her heels, with her body arched in an extraordinary manner. In vain Mary and John tried to administer more brandy. The moments flew. Again the body arched itself in that peculiar fashion.
At that moment, Dr. Bauerstein pushed his way authoritatively into the room. For one instant he stopped dead, staring at the figure on the bed, and, at the same instant, Mrs. Inglethorp cried out in a strangled voice, her eyes fixed on the doctor: "Alfred — Alfred —" Then she fell back motionless on the pillows.
With a stride, the doctor reached the bed, and seizing her arms worked them energetically, applying what I knew to be artificial respiration. He issued a few short sharp orders to the servants. An imperious wave of his hand drove us all to the door. We watched him, fascinated, though I think we all knew in our hearts that it was too late. I could see by the expression on his face that he himself had little hope.
Finally he abandoned his task, shaking his head gravely. At that moment, we heard footsteps outside, and Dr. Wilkins, Mrs. Inglethorp's own doctor, a portly, fussy little man, came bustling in. In a few words Dr. Bauerstein explained how he had happened to be passing the lodge gates as the car came out, and had run up to the house as fast as he could, whilst the car went on to fetch Dr. Wilkins. With a faint gesture of the hand, he indicated the figure on the bed.
"Ve—ry sad. Ve—ry sad," murmured Dr. Wilkins. "Poor dear lady. Always did far too much — far too much — against my advice. I warned her. Her heart was far from strong. 'Take it easy,' I said to her. But no — her zeal for good works was too great. Nature rebelled."
Dr. Bauerstein, I noticed, was watching the local doctor narrowly. He still kept his eyes fixed on him as he spoke.
"The convulsions were of a peculiar violence, Dr. Wilkins. I am sorry you were not here in time to witness them. They were quite — tetanic in character."
"Ah!" said Dr. Wilkins wisely.
"I should like to speak to you in private," said Dr. Bauerstein. He turned to John. "You do not object?"
"Certainly not."
We all trooped out into the corridor, leaving the two doctors alone, and I heard the key turn in the lock behind us.
Chapter VII — A Locked Door and a Dying Word
We went slowly down the stairs. I was violently excited. I have a certain talent for deduction, and Dr. Bauerstein's manner had started a flock of wild surmises in my mind. Mary Cavendish laid her hand upon my arm, and asked what it was, and why Dr. Bauerstein had seemed so peculiar. I looked at her.
"Do you know what I think?" I said.
"What?"
I looked round. The others were out of earshot. I lowered my voice to a whisper. "I believe she has been poisoned! I'm certain Dr. Bauerstein suspects it."
"What?" She shrank against the wall, the pupils of her eyes dilating wildly. Then, with a sudden cry that startled me, she cried out: "No, no — not that — not that!" And breaking from me, she fled up the stairs. I followed her, afraid that she was going to faint. I found her leaning against the banisters, deadly pale. She waved me away impatiently.
"No, no — leave me. I'd rather be alone. Let me just be quiet for a minute or two. Go down to the others."
I obeyed her reluctantly. John and Lawrence were in the dining-room. I joined them. We were all silent, but I suppose I voiced the thoughts of us all when I at last broke it by saying:
"Where is Mr. Inglethorp?"
John shook his head.
"He's not in the house."
Our eyes met. Where was Alfred Inglethorp? His absence was strange and inexplicable. I remembered Mrs. Inglethorp's dying words. What lay beneath them? What more could she have told us, if she had had time?
At last we heard the doctors descending the stairs. Dr. Wilkins was looking important and excited, and trying to conceal an inward exultation under a manner of decorous calm. Dr. Bauerstein remained in the background, his grave bearded face unchanged. Dr. Wilkins was the spokesman for the two. He addressed himself to John.
"Mr. Cavendish, I should like your consent to a post-mortem."
"Is that necessary?" asked John gravely. A spasm of pain crossed his face.
"Absolutely," said Dr. Bauerstein.
"You mean by that — ?"
"That neither Dr. Wilkins nor myself could give a death certificate under the circumstances."
John bent his head.
"In that case, I have no alternative but to agree."
"Thank you," said Dr. Wilkins briskly. "We propose that it should take place to-morrow night — or rather to-night." And he glanced at the daylight. "Under the circumstances, I am afraid an inquest can hardly be avoided — these formalities are necessary, but I beg that you won't distress yourselves."
There was a pause, and then Dr. Bauerstein drew two keys from his pocket, and handed them to John.
"These are the keys of the two rooms. I have locked them and, in my opinion, they would be better kept locked for the present."
The doctors then departed.
I had been turning over an idea in my head, and I felt that the moment had now come to broach it. Yet I was a little chary of doing so. John, I knew, had a horror of any kind of publicity, and was an easygoing optimist, who preferred never to meet trouble half-way. It might be difficult to convince him of the soundness of my plan. Lawrence, on the other hand, being less conventional, and having more imagination, I felt I might count upon as an ally. There was no doubt that the moment had come for me to take the lead.
"John," I said, "I am going to ask you something."
"Well?"
"You remember my speaking of my friend Poirot? The Belgian who is here? He has been a most famous detective."
"Yes."
"I want you to let me call him in — to investigate this matter."
"What — now? Before the post-mortem?"
"Yes, time is an advantage if — if — there has been foul play."
"Rubbish!" cried Lawrence angrily. "In my opinion the whole thing is a mare's nest of Bauerstein's! Wilkins hadn't an idea of such a thing, until Bauerstein put it into his head. But, like all specialists, Bauerstein's got a bee in his bonnet. Poisons are his hobby, so of course he sees them everywhere."
I confess that I was surprised by Lawrence's attitude. He was so seldom vehement about anything.
John hesitated.
"I can't feel as you do, Lawrence," he said at last. "I'm inclined to give Hastings a free hand, though I should prefer to wait a bit. We don't want any unnecessary scandal."
"No, no," I cried eagerly, "you need have no fear of that. Poirot is discretion itself."
"Very well, then, have it your own way. I leave it in your hands. Though, if it is as we suspect, it seems a clear enough case. God forgive me if I am wronging him!"
I looked at my watch. It was six o'clock. I determined to lose no time. Five minutes' delay, however, I allowed myself. I spent it in ransacking the library until I discovered a medical book which gave a description of strychnine poisoning.
Chapter VIII — The Little Man in the Village
The house which the Belgians occupied in the village was quite close to the park gates. One could save time by taking a narrow path through the long grass, which cut off the detours of the winding drive. So I, accordingly, went that way. I had nearly reached the lodge, when my attention was arrested by the running figure of a man approaching me. It was Mr. Inglethorp. Where had he been? How did he intend to explain his absence?
He accosted me eagerly.
"My God! This is terrible! My poor wife! I have only just heard."
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"Denby kept me late last night. It was one o'clock before we'd finished. Then I found that I'd forgotten the latch-key after all. I didn't want to arouse the household, so Denby gave me a bed."
"How did you hear the news?" I asked.
"Wilkins knocked Denby up to tell him. My poor Emily! She was so self-sacrificing — such a noble character. She over-taxed her strength."
A wave of revulsion swept over me. What a consummate hypocrite the man was.
"I must hurry on," I said, thankful that he did not ask me whither I was bound.
In a few minutes I was knocking at the door of Leastways Cottage. Getting no answer, I repeated my summons impatiently. A window above me was cautiously opened, and Poirot himself looked out. He gave an exclamation of surprise at seeing me. In a few brief words, I explained the tragedy that had occurred, and that I wanted his help.
"Wait, my friend, I will let you in, and you shall recount to me the affair whilst I dress."
In a few moments he had unbarred the door, and I followed him up to his room. There he installed me in a chair, and I related the whole story, keeping back nothing, and omitting no circumstance, however insignificant, whilst he himself made a careful and deliberate toilet.
I told him of my awakening, of Mrs. Inglethorp's dying words, of her husband's absence, of the quarrel the day before, of the scrap of conversation between Mary and her mother-in-law that I had overheard, of the former quarrel between Mrs. Inglethorp and Evelyn Howard, and of the latter's innuendoes.
I was hardly as clear as I could wish. I repeated myself several times, and occasionally had to go back to some detail that I had forgotten. Poirot smiled kindly on me.
"The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited — it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine — and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf!" — he screwed up his cherub-like face, and puffed comically enough — "blow them away!"
"That's all very well," I objected, "but how are you going to decide what is important, and what isn't? That always seems the difficulty to me."
Poirot shook his head energetically. He was now arranging his moustache with exquisite care.
"Not so. Voyons! One fact leads to another — so we continue. Does the next fit in with that? A merveille! Good! We can proceed. This next little fact — no! Ah, that is curious! There is something missing — a link in the chain that is not there. We examine. We search. And that little curious fact, that possibly paltry little detail that will not tally, we put it here!" He made an extravagant gesture with his hand. "It is significant! It is tremendous!"
"Y — es —"
"Ah!" Poirot shook his forefinger so fiercely at me that I quailed before it. "Beware! Peril to the detective who says: 'It is so small — it does not matter. It will not agree. I will forget it.' That way lies confusion! Everything matters."
"I know. You always told me that. That's why I have gone into all the details of this thing whether they seemed to me relevant or not."
"And I am pleased with you. You have a good memory, and you have given me the facts faithfully. Of the order in which you present them, I say nothing — truly, it is deplorable! But I make allowances — you are upset. To that I attribute the circumstance that you have omitted one fact of paramount importance."
"What is that?" I asked.
"You have not told me if Mrs. Inglethorp ate well last night."
I stared at him. Surely the war had affected the little man's brain. He was carefully engaged in brushing his coat before putting it on, and seemed wholly engrossed in the task.
"I don't remember," I said. "And, anyway, I don't see —"
"You do not see? But it is of the first importance."
"I can't see why," I said, rather nettled. "As far as I can remember, she didn't eat much. She was obviously upset, and it had taken her appetite away. That was only natural."
"Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully, "it was only natural."
He opened a drawer, and took out a small despatch-case, then turned to me.
"Now I am ready. We will proceed to the château, and study matters on the spot. Excuse me, mon ami, you dressed in haste, and your tie is on one side. Permit me." With a deft gesture, he rearranged it.
"Ça y est! Now, shall we start?"
We hurried up the village, and turned in at the lodge gates. Poirot stopped for a moment, and gazed sorrowfully over the beautiful expanse of park, still glittering with morning dew.
"So beautiful, so beautiful, and yet, the poor family, plunged in sorrow, prostrated with grief."
He looked at me keenly as he spoke, and I was aware that I reddened under his prolonged gaze. Was the family prostrated by grief? Was the sorrow at Mrs. Inglethorp's death so great? I realized that there was an emotional lack in the atmosphere. The dead woman had not the gift of commanding love. Her death was a shock and a distress, but she would not be passionately regretted.
Poirot seemed to follow my thoughts. He nodded his head gravely.
"No, you are right," he said, "it is not as though there was a blood tie. She has been kind and generous to these Cavendishes, but she was not their own mother. Blood tells — always remember that — blood tells."
We walked on towards the house, and I felt, for the first time since I had come to Styles, that the quiet of the place had been broken, and that nothing would ever quite put it together again.
Historical Context — Country Houses in Wartime England
The England of Styles Court in 1917 was an England in transition. The great country houses that had dominated rural life for centuries were being pressed into unfamiliar service. Staffs had been reduced as servants left for the forces or for munitions work; economies that would have been unthinkable before the war — saved waste paper, reduced dinners, home-grown vegetables — had become patriotic duties; and the women of the household, like Mary Cavendish, were working on the land or in hospitals. Christie's novel captures this moment precisely: the rituals of tea on the lawn and dinner at half past seven continue, but underneath them the old certainties are shifting. The war is never far away — the refugees in the village, the convalescent officer, the hospital at Tadminster — but the novel's real subject is the household itself, and what happens when a closed and privileged world is forced to confront a crime from within.
Literary Note — The Country-House Mystery
The Mysterious Affair at Styles belongs to a long tradition of English detective fiction in which a small, enclosed community becomes the scene of a crime, and the investigation becomes a way of exposing the secrets and tensions that the community has been at pains to conceal. The form has roots in Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle, but Christie's contribution was to make the puzzle itself the central pleasure, and to construct her plots with a mathematical precision that has seldom been equalled. This first novel establishes the template: a closed circle of suspects, each with a motive; a body of physical evidence that can be read in more than one way; and a detective whose method is not action but attention. The country house is not merely a setting; it is a machine for producing suspicion, because everyone in it is both known and unknown to everyone else.
Original Value — Narrative Technique in the Opening Chapters
Christie's decision to tell the story through the eyes of Arthur Hastings is one of the most consequential choices in the history of detective fiction. Hastings is not a fool, but he is not a detective; he notices what a sensitive and observant man would notice, and he draws the conclusions that a sensitive and observant man would draw, and he is wrong. The reader is placed, deliberately, in the position of an intelligent witness who is not quite intelligent enough, and the gap between what Hastings sees and what Poirot sees becomes the engine of the plot. This is not a trick played on the reader; it is a technique, and it is fair. Everything Hastings records is true. It is his interpretation that is incomplete, and the reader is invited to do better. The result is a narrative voice that is at once reliable and misleading — one of the most useful instruments any mystery writer has ever devised.
Continue the Series
In Playbook 2 — The Investigation Begins — Poirot arrives at Styles and begins the slow, methodical work of examining the room where the tragedy occurred. A fragment of green fabric, a stain on the carpet, and a half-charred piece of paper in the grate will set him on a trail that no one else in the house has even noticed. The investigation has begun, and nothing in the case will ever be quite what it seems.
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References
Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. New York: John Lane, 1920. Public-domain edition available via Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/863
Library of Congress. Catalogue record for The Mysterious Affair at Styles. https://catalog.loc.gov
Adapted from the original work by Agatha Christie
Public-domain status verified for the United States; other jurisdictions should be checked independently.