The Mysterious Affair at Styles Playbook 5 — The Trial and the Truth
A Playbook Series Adaptation · Verified public domain in the United States · Adapted by Kateule Sydney · E-cyclopedia Resources Hub
The last link in Poirot's chain is found. The trial of John Cavendish reaches its close, the murderer is named, and the mystery that began with a locked door and a broken coffee cup is unravelled at last. Every clue in the case pointed, from the very beginning, to the one person no one suspected.
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 5 of 5, covering Chapters XI–XIII
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.
Previous Playbook — Playbook 4 | Playbook 5 of 5 · Final Playbook | Next Playbook — End of Series
Previously in the Series: Dr. Bauerstein was revealed to be a German spy, not a murderer. John Cavendish was arrested and brought to trial at the Old Bailey, where the case for the Crown appeared overwhelming: the poison found in his room, the black beard ordered in his brother's name, the quarrel with his stepmother, the destroyed will. Poirot, certain of his innocence, withheld two pieces of evidence — the black beard from the attic and the torn letter from the vase on the mantelpiece — waiting for the right moment to produce them. Then, in a moment of sudden illumination, he rushed from the house, and did not return.
Table of Contents — The Trial and the Truth
Chapter IV — The Spills in the Vase
Chapter V — The Man Who Was Not There
Chapter VI — The Truth About Cynthia
Chapter I — Poirot Returns
Poirot's abrupt departure had intrigued us all greatly. Sunday morning wore away, and still he did not reappear. Mary Cavendish and I sat in the drawing-room and pretended to read, and did not talk about anything that mattered, and every few minutes one of us would get up and go to the window and look down the street. The street was empty. The rain had stopped, and the afternoon had turned fine, and a pale watery sunlight was lying across the pavement, and there was no sign of the little man in the neat grey suit and the absurdly precise hat.
At three o'clock, a ferocious and prolonged hooting outside drove us both to the window. A motor-car had drawn up at the door, and out of it, with an air of enormous satisfaction, stepped Hercule Poirot. Behind him came Japp, and behind Japp came Summerhaye, who looked, if anything, even more sceptical than usual. The little man was transformed. He radiated an absurd complacency. He saw us at the window and bowed with exaggerated respect, and a moment later he was in the hall, and Mary Cavendish was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at him with a face that could not quite decide whether to hope or to be afraid.
"Madame," said Poirot, "I have your permission to hold a little réunion in the salon? It is necessary for everyone to attend."
Mary smiled sadly.
"You know, Monsieur Poirot, that you have carte blanche in every way."
"You are too amiable, madame."
Still beaming, Poirot marshalled us all into the drawing-room, bringing forward chairs as he did so. He was, I saw, in one of his moods of intense and barely suppressed excitement, and he could not keep still, and he could not keep his hands from arranging things that did not need arranging. He put Miss Howard in one chair, and Cynthia in another, and Lawrence in a third, and Dorcas and Annie by the door, and then he stood in the middle of the room and looked at us all with the air of a conjurer who is about to produce a rabbit from a hat.
"Messieurs, mesdames," he said, "as you all know, I was called in by Monsieur John Cavendish to investigate this case. I at once examined the bedroom of the deceased, which, by the advice of the doctors, had been kept locked, and was consequently exactly as it had been when the tragedy occurred. I found: first, a fragment of green material; second, a stain on the carpet near the window, still damp; thirdly, an empty box of bromide powders."
He paused, and looked round the room. Everyone was listening now.
"To take the fragment of green material first, I found it caught in the bolt of the communicating door between that room and the adjoining one occupied by Mademoiselle Cynthia. I handed the fragment over to the police, who did not consider it of much importance. Nor did they recognize it for what it was — a piece torn from a green land armlet."
There was a little stir of excitement.
"Now there was only one person at Styles who worked on the land — Mrs. Cavendish. Therefore it must have been Mrs. Cavendish who entered the deceased's room through the door communicating with Mademoiselle Cynthia's room."
"But that door was bolted on the inside!" I cried.
"When I examined the room, yes. But in the first place we have only her word for it, since it was she who tried that particular door and reported it fastened. In the ensuing confusion she would have had ample opportunity to shoot the bolt across. I took an early opportunity of verifying my conjectures. To begin with, the fragment corresponds exactly with a tear in Mrs. Cavendish's armlet. Also, at the inquest, Mrs. Cavendish declared that she had heard, from her own room, the fall of the table by the bed. I took an early opportunity of testing that statement by stationing my friend Monsieur Hastings in the left wing of the building, just outside Mrs. Cavendish's door. I myself, in company with the police, went to the deceased's room, and whilst there I, apparently accidentally, knocked over the table in question, but found that, as I had expected, Monsieur Hastings had heard no sound at all. This confirmed my belief that Mrs. Cavendish was not speaking the truth when she declared that she had been dressing in her room at the time of the tragedy. In fact, I was convinced that, far from having been in her own room, Mrs. Cavendish was actually in the deceased's room when the alarm was given."
I shot a quick glance at Mary. She was very pale, but smiling.
"I proceeded to reason on that assumption. Mrs. Cavendish is in her mother-in-law's room. We will say that she is seeking for something and has not yet found it. Suddenly Mrs. Inglethorp awakens and is seized with an alarming paroxysm. She flings out her arm, overturning the bed table, and then pulls desperately at the bell. Mrs. Cavendish, startled, drops her candle, scattering the grease on the carpet. She picks it up, and retreats quickly to Mademoiselle Cynthia's room, closing the door behind her. She hurries out into the passage, for the servants must not find her where she is. But it is too late! Already footsteps are echoing along the gallery which connects the two wings. What can she do? Quick as thought, she hurries back to the young girl's room, and starts shaking her awake. The hastily aroused household come trooping down the passage. They are all busily battering at Mrs. Inglethorp's door. It occurs to nobody that Mrs. Cavendish has not arrived with the rest, but — and this is significant — I can find no one who saw her come from the other wing." He looked at Mary Cavendish. "Am I right, madame?"
She bowed her head.
"Quite right, monsieur. You understand that, if I had thought I would do my husband any good by revealing these facts, I would have done so. But it did not seem to me to bear upon the question of his guilt or innocence."
"In a sense, that is correct, madame. But it cleared my mind of many misconceptions, and left me free to see other facts in their true significance."
"The will!" cried Lawrence. "Then it was you, Mary, who destroyed the will?"
She shook her head, and Poirot shook his also.
"No," he said quietly. "There is only one person who could possibly have destroyed that will — Mrs. Inglethorp herself!"
"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "She had only made it out that very afternoon!"
"Nevertheless, mon ami, it was Mrs. Inglethorp. Because, in no other way can you account for the fact that, on one of the hottest days of the year, Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire to be lighted in her room."
I gave a gasp. What idiots we had been never to think of that fire as being incongruous! Poirot was continuing:
"The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade. Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy something, and could think of no other way. You will remember that, in consequence of the War economics practiced at Styles, no waste paper was thrown away. There was therefore no means of destroying a thick document such as a will. The moment I heard of a fire being lighted in Mrs. Inglethorp's room, I leaped to the conclusion that it was to destroy some important document — possibly a will. So the discovery of the charred fragment in the grate was no surprise to me. I did not, of course, know at the time that the will in question had only been made this afternoon, and I will admit that, when I learnt that fact, I fell into a grievous error. I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Inglethorp's determination to destroy her will arose as a direct consequence of the quarrel she had that afternoon, and that therefore the quarrel took place after, and not before the making of the will."
"Here, as we know, I was wrong, and I was forced to abandon that idea. I faced the problem from a new standpoint. Now, at four o'clock, Dorcas overheard her mistress saying angrily: 'You need not think that any fear of publicity, or scandal between husband and wife will deter me.' I conjectured, and conjectured rightly, that these words were addressed, not to her husband, but to Mr. John Cavendish. At five o'clock, an hour later, she uses almost the same words, but the standpoint is different. She admits to Dorcas, 'I don't know what to do; scandal between husband and wife is a dreadful thing.' At four o'clock she has been angry, but completely mistress of herself. At five o'clock she is in violent distress, and speaks of having had a great shock."
"Looking at the matter psychologically, I drew one deduction which I was convinced was correct. The second 'scandal' she spoke of was not the same as the first — and it concerned herself!"
Chapter II — The Last Link
"Let us reconstruct," Poirot went on. "At four o'clock, Mrs. Inglethorp quarrels with her son, and threatens to denounce him to his wife — who, by the way, overheard the greater part of the conversation. At four-thirty, Mrs. Inglethorp, in consequence of a conversation on the validity of wills, makes a will in favour of her husband, which the two gardeners witness. At five o'clock, Dorcas finds her mistress in a state of considerable agitation, with a slip of paper — 'a letter,' Dorcas thinks — in her hand, and it is then that she orders the fire in her room to be lighted. Presumably, then, between four-thirty and five o'clock, something has occurred to occasion a complete revolution of feeling, since she is now as anxious to destroy the will, as she was before to make it. What was that something?"
He looked round the room, and no one spoke.
"As far as we know, she was quite alone during that half-hour. Nobody entered or left that boudoir. What then occasioned this sudden change of sentiment?"
"One can only guess, but I believe my guess to be correct. Mrs. Inglethorp had no stamps in her desk. We know this, because later she asked Dorcas to bring her some. Now in the opposite corner of the room stood her husband's desk — locked. She was anxious to find some stamps, and, according to my theory, she tried her own keys in the desk. That one of them fitted I know. She therefore opened the desk, and in searching for the stamps she came across something else — that slip of paper which Dorcas saw in her hand, and which assuredly was never meant for Mrs. Inglethorp's eyes. On the other hand, Mrs. Cavendish believed that the slip of paper to which her mother-in-law clung so tenaciously was a written proof of her own husband's infidelity. She demanded it from Mrs. Inglethorp who assured her, quite truly, that it had nothing to do with that matter. Mrs. Cavendish did not believe her. She thought that Mrs. Inglethorp was shielding her stepson. Now Mrs. Cavendish is a very resolute woman, and, behind her mask of reserve, she was madly jealous of her husband. She determined to get hold of that paper at all costs, and in this resolution chance came to her aid. She happened to pick up the key of Mrs. Inglethorp's despatch-case, which had been lost that morning. She knew that her mother-in-law invariably kept all important papers in this particular case."
"Mrs. Cavendish, therefore, made her plans as only a woman driven desperate through jealousy could have done. Some time in the evening she unbolted the door leading into Mademoiselle Cynthia's room. Possibly she applied oil to the hinges, for I found that it opened quite noiselessly when I tried it. She put off her project until the early hours of the morning as being safer, since the servants were accustomed to hearing her move about her room at that time. She dressed completely in her land kit, and made her way quietly through Mademoiselle Cynthia's room into that of Mrs. Inglethorp."
He paused a moment, and Cynthia interrupted:
"But I should have woken up if anyone had come through my room?"
"Not if you were drugged, mademoiselle."
"Drugged?"
"Mais, oui!"
"You remember" — he addressed us collectively again — "that through all the tumult and noise next door Mademoiselle Cynthia slept. That admitted of two possibilities. Either her sleep was feigned — which I did not believe — or her unconsciousness was induced by artificial means."
"With this latter idea in my mind, I examined all the coffee-cups most carefully, remembering that it was Mrs. Cavendish who had brought Mademoiselle Cynthia her coffee the night before. I took a sample from each cup, and had them analysed — with no result. I had counted the cups carefully, in the event of one having been removed. Six persons had taken coffee, and six cups were duly found. I had to confess myself mistaken."
"Then I discovered that I had been guilty of a very grave oversight. Coffee had been brought in for seven persons, not six, for Dr. Bauerstein had been there that evening. This changed the face of the whole affair, for there was now one cup missing. The servants noticed nothing, since Annie, the housemaid, who took in the coffee, brought in seven cups, not knowing that Mr. Inglethorp never drank it, whereas Dorcas, who cleared them away the following morning, found six as usual — or strictly speaking she found five, the sixth being the one found broken in Mrs. Inglethorp's room."
"I was confident that the missing cup was that of Mademoiselle Cynthia. I had an additional reason for that belief in the fact that all the cups found contained sugar, which Mademoiselle Cynthia never took in her coffee. My attention was attracted by the story of Annie about some 'salt' on the tray of cocoa which she took every night to Mrs. Inglethorp's room. I accordingly secured a sample of that cocoa, and sent it to be analysed."
"But that had already been done by Dr. Bauerstein," said Lawrence quickly.
"Not exactly. The analyst was asked by him to report whether strychnine was, or was not, present. He did not have it tested, as I did, for a narcotic."
"For a narcotic?"
"Yes. Here is the analyst's report. Mrs. Cavendish administered a safe, but effectual, narcotic to both Mrs. Inglethorp and Mademoiselle Cynthia. And it is possible that she had a mauvais quart d'heure in consequence! Imagine her feelings when her mother-in-law is suddenly taken ill and dies, and immediately after she hears the word 'Poison'! She has believed that the sleeping draught she administered was perfectly harmless, but there is no doubt that for one terrible moment she must have feared that Mrs. Inglethorp's death lay at her door. She is seized with panic, and under its influence she hurries downstairs, and quickly drops the coffee-cup and saucer used by Mademoiselle Cynthia into a large brass vase, where it is discovered later by Monsieur Lawrence. The remains of the cocoa she dare not touch. Too many eyes are upon her. Guess at her relief when strychnine is mentioned, and she discovers that after all the tragedy is not her doing."
"We are now able to account for the symptoms of strychnine poisoning being so long in making their appearance. A narcotic taken with strychnine will delay the action of the poison for some hours."
Poirot paused. Mary looked up at him, the colour slowly rising in her face.
"All you have said is quite true, Monsieur Poirot. It was the most awful hour of my life. I shall never forget it. But you are wonderful. I understand now —"
"What I meant when I told you that you could safely confess to Papa Poirot, eh? But you would not trust me."
"I see everything now," said Lawrence. "The drugged cocoa, taken on top of the poisoned coffee, amply accounts for the delay."
"Exactly. But was the coffee poisoned, or was it not? We come to a little difficulty here, since Mrs. Inglethorp never drank it."
"What?" The cry of surprise was universal.
"No. You will remember my speaking of a stain on the carpet in Mrs. Inglethorp's room? There were some peculiar points about that stain. It was still damp, it exhaled a strong odour of coffee, and imbedded in the nap of the carpet I found some little splinters of china. What had happened was plain to me, for not two minutes before I had placed my little case on the table near the window, and the table, tilting up, had deposited it upon the floor on precisely the identical spot. In exactly the same way, Mrs. Inglethorp had laid down her cup of coffee on reaching her room the night before, and the treacherous table had played her the same trick."
"What happened next is mere guess work on my part, but I should say that Mrs. Inglethorp picked up the broken cup and placed it on the table by the bed. Feeling in need of a stimulant of some kind, she heated up her cocoa, and drank it off then and there. Now we are faced with a new problem. We know the cocoa contained no strychnine. The coffee was never drunk. Yet the strychnine must have been administered between seven and nine o'clock that evening. What third medium was there — a medium so suitable for disguising the taste of strychnine that it is extraordinary no one has thought of it?" Poirot looked round the room, and then answered himself impressively. "Her medicine!"
Chapter III — Poirot Explains
"Do you mean that the murderer introduced the strychnine into her tonic?" I cried.
"There was no need to introduce it. It was already there — in the mixture. The strychnine that killed Mrs. Inglethorp was the identical strychnine prescribed by Dr. Wilkins. To make that clear to you, I will read you an extract from a book on dispensing which I found in the Dispensary of the Red Cross Hospital at Tadminster:
"'The following prescription has become famous in text books: Strychninae Sulph. 1 gr.; Potass Bromide 3vi; Aqua ad 3viii. Fiat Mistura. This solution deposits in a few hours the greater part of the strychnine salt as an insoluble bromide in transparent crystals. A lady in England lost her life by taking a similar mixture: the precipitated strychnine collected at the bottom, and in taking the last dose she swallowed nearly all of it!'
"Now there was, of course, no bromide in Dr. Wilkins' prescription, but you will remember that I mentioned an empty box of bromide powders. One or two of those powders introduced into the full bottle of medicine would effectually precipitate the strychnine, as the book describes, and cause it to be taken in the last dose. You will learn later that the person who usually poured out Mrs. Inglethorp's medicine was always extremely careful not to shake the bottle, but to leave the sediment at the bottom of it undisturbed.
"Throughout the case, there have been evidences that the tragedy was intended to take place on Monday evening. On that day, Mrs. Inglethorp's bell wire was neatly cut, and on Monday evening Mademoiselle Cynthia was spending the night with friends, so that Mrs. Inglethorp would have been quite alone in the right wing, completely shut off from help of any kind, and would have died, in all probability, before medical aid could have been summoned. But in her hurry to be in time for the village entertainment Mrs. Inglethorp forgot to take her medicine, and the next day she lunched away from home, so that the last — and fatal — dose was actually taken twenty-four hours later than had been anticipated by the murderer; and it is owing to that delay that the final proof — the last link of the chain — is now in my hands."
Amid breathless excitement, he held out three thin strips of paper.
"A letter in the murderer's own hand-writing, mes amis! Had it been a little clearer in its terms, it is possible that Mrs. Inglethorp, warned in time, would have escaped. As it was, she realized her danger, but not the manner of it."
In the deathly silence, Poirot pieced together the slips of paper and, clearing his throat, read:
"'Dearest Evelyn: You will be anxious at hearing nothing. It is all right — only it will be to-night instead of last night. You understand. There's a good time coming once the old woman is dead and out of the way. No one can possibly bring home the crime to me. That idea of yours about the bromides was a stroke of genius! But we must be very circumspect. A false step —'
"Here, my friends, the letter breaks off. Doubtless the writer was interrupted; but there can be no question as to his identity. We all know this hand-writing and —"
A howl that was almost a scream broke the silence.
"You devil! How did you get it?"
A chair was overturned. Poirot skipped nimbly aside. A quick movement on his part, and his assailant fell with a crash.
"Messieurs, mesdames," said Poirot, with a flourish, "let me introduce you to the murderer, Mr. Alfred Inglethorp!"
Chapter IV — The Spills in the Vase
For a long moment, nobody moved. Alfred Inglethorp lay on the floor where he had fallen, his face twisted with rage, his gold-rimmed pince-nez knocked askew, and his black beard — his famous black beard — lying on the carpet beside him, where it had come away from his face in the violence of the struggle. It was, I realized with a kind of dull shock, a false beard. The real Alfred Inglethorp had a short, grizzled moustache, and a weak, receding chin, and a face that looked, without the beard, entirely different from the one we had all been looking at for weeks.
"Pick him up," said Poirot, to no one in particular. "But do not let him go. And Japp, if you please, the handcuffs."
Japp, who had been standing by the door with an expression of profound satisfaction on his face, stepped forward and did as he was asked. Inglethorp was lifted to his feet, still snarling, and the handcuffs were snapped on his wrists.
"How did you get it?" he said again, in a voice that was almost a sob. "How did you get that letter? I burnt it. I burnt it myself, in the grate, and I saw it burn."
"No," said Poirot, "you did not. You tore it into strips, and you hid it in the vase on the mantelpiece — the spill vase, monsieur, the one place in the room where you thought no one would look. And there it has been, all these weeks, under the noses of the police, under the noses of the family, under my own nose, until at last I remembered that on the morning after the murder, when I went into that room, the ornaments on the mantelpiece were not straight."
"I do not understand," said Mary Cavendish, in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper. "I do not understand at all. If Mr. Inglethorp killed his wife, why did he try to get himself arrested? Why did he refuse to say where he had been? Why did he not produce his alibi at once?"
"Ah, madame," said Poirot, "that is the cleverness of it. He wished to be arrested. He wished to be tried and acquitted. Because, under the English law, a man who has once been acquitted of a crime can never be tried again for the same offence. He had prepared a whole set of evidence against himself — the purchase of the strychnine at the chemist's, the quarrel with his wife, his absence from the house on the night of the murder — and all of it was false. The strychnine was bought by Miss Howard, disguised as him. The quarrel was real, but it was with John Cavendish, not with him. His absence from the house was because he was walking with Mrs. Raikes. If he had been arrested, he would have produced the alibi, and the case against him would have collapsed, and he would have been safe for life."
"And the letter?" asked Lawrence.
"The letter was the one piece of evidence he could not control. It was written by him, to Miss Howard, in his own hand, and it contained the whole plan of the crime. Mrs. Inglethorp found it in his desk on the afternoon of her death — when she went to look for stamps — and she realized, for the first time, what her husband was and what he intended. She burnt her will that same evening, because she did not want her money to go to him. But she did not destroy the letter, because she did not understand its full meaning, and because — I think — she could not quite believe that the man she had married was capable of murdering her. She kept it, and she wrote to Miss Howard, asking her to come back. And then she died."
"But the letter," said Lawrence again. "How did you find it?"
"It was in the vase," said Poirot simply. "The one place in the room I had not thought to look. And I found it because you, Hastings, made one remark to me that I could not forget. You said that your hand had shaken when you examined the lock of the despatch-case — the day we discovered that it had been forced — and that you had noticed my hand shaking too. And I remembered that on the morning after the murder, when I went into that room, I had straightened the ornaments on the mantelpiece. If they were already straight, there was no need to straighten them again — unless someone had touched them in the meantime. And the only person who could have touched them in the meantime was the person who had hidden something among them."
He looked at Inglethorp, who was standing between the two detectives with his head bowed, and then he looked at Miss Howard, who was sitting very still in her chair with her hands folded in her lap, and who had not said a word since the arrest.
"You knew," said Poirot to her, quietly. "You have known for weeks. You have known since the day you first saw that letter, and you have been trying to persuade yourself that it was not true. You told me, in this very room, that you had an instinct, and that your instinct told you the name of the murderer. And you would not say it, because you could not bear to say it. And yet, in the end, you helped me. You watched. You searched. You found the brown paper from Parkson's. You told me where it was. And when I asked you, in this room, whether you were on the side of justice, you said yes."
Miss Howard raised her head, and looked at him, and her face was old and tired and full of a grief that I had not seen in it before.
"Yes," she said. "I said yes. And I meant it. But I wish to God I had been wrong."
Chapter V — The Man Who Was Not There
When Inglethorp had been taken away, and the two Scotland Yard men had gone with him, and the house had settled back into the strange quiet that follows a storm, Poirot and I sat together in the library, and I asked him the question that had been burning in my mind since the moment of the arrest.
"Poirot, you old villain," I said, "I've half a mind to strangle you! What do you mean by deceiving me as you have done?"
"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself."
"Yes, but why?"
"Well, it is difficult to explain. You see, my friend, you have a nature so honest, and a countenance so transparent, that — enfin, to conceal your feelings is impossible! If I had told you my ideas, the very first time you saw Mr. Alfred Inglethorp that astute gentleman would have — in your so expressive idiom — 'smelt a rat'! And then, bonjour to our chances of catching him!"
"I think that I have more diplomacy than you give me credit for."
"My friend," besought Poirot, "I implore you, do not enrage yourself! Your help has been of the most invaluable. It is but the extremely beautiful nature that you have, which made me pause."
"Well," I grumbled, a little mollified. "I still think you might have given me a hint."
"But I did, my friend. Several hints. You would not take them. Think now, did I ever say to you that I believed John Cavendish guilty? Did I not, on the contrary, tell you that he would almost certainly be acquitted?"
"Yes, but —"
"And did I not immediately afterwards speak of the difficulty of bringing the murderer to justice? Was it not plain to you that I was speaking of two entirely different persons?"
"No," I said, "it was not plain to me!"
"Then again," continued Poirot, "at the beginning, did I not repeat to you several times that I didn't want Mr. Inglethorp arrested now? That should have conveyed something to you."
"Do you mean to say you suspected him as long ago as that?"
"Yes. To begin with, whoever else might benefit by Mrs. Inglethorp's death, her husband would benefit the most. There was no getting away from that. When I went up to Styles with you that first day, I had no idea as to how the crime had been committed, but from what I knew of Mr. Inglethorp I fancied that it would be very hard to find anything to connect him with it. When I arrived at the château, I realized at once that it was Mrs. Inglethorp who had burnt the will; and there, by the way, you cannot complain, my friend, for I tried my best to force on you the significance of that bedroom fire in midsummer."
"Yes, yes," I said impatiently. "Go on."
"Well, my friend, as I say, my views as to Mr. Inglethorp's guilt were very much shaken. There was, in fact, so much evidence against him that I was inclined to believe that he had not done it."
"When did you change your mind?"
"When I found that the more efforts I made to clear him, the more efforts he made to get himself arrested. Then, when I discovered that Inglethorp had nothing to do with Mrs. Raikes and that in fact it was John Cavendish who was interested in that quarter, I was quite sure."
"But why?"
"Simply this. If it had been Inglethorp who was carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Raikes, his silence was perfectly comprehensible. But, when I discovered that it was known all over the village that it was John who was attracted by the farmer's pretty wife, his silence bore quite a different interpretation. It was nonsense to pretend that he was afraid of the scandal, as no possible scandal could attach to him. This attitude of his gave me furiously to think, and I was slowly forced to the conclusion that Alfred Inglethorp wanted to be arrested. Eh bien! from that moment, I was equally determined that he should not be arrested."
"Wait a minute. I don't see why he wished to be arrested?"
"Because, mon ami, it is the law of your country that a man once acquitted can never be tried again for the same offence. Aha! but it was clever — his idea! Assuredly, he is a man of method. See here, he knew that in his position he was bound to be suspected, so he conceived the exceedingly clever idea of preparing a lot of manufactured evidence against himself. He wished to be arrested. He would then produce his irreproachable alibi — and, hey presto, he was safe for life!"
"But I still don't see how he managed to prove his alibi, and yet go to the chemist's shop?"
Poirot stared at me in surprise.
"Is it possible? My poor friend! You have not yet realized that it was Miss Howard who went to the chemist's shop?"
"Miss Howard?"
"But, certainly. Who else? It was most easy for her. She is of a good height, her voice is deep and manly; moreover, remember, she and Inglethorp are cousins, and there is a distinct resemblance between them, especially in their gait and bearing. It was simplicity itself. They are a clever pair!"
Chapter VI — The Truth About Cynthia
"I am still a little fogged as to how exactly the bromide business was done," I remarked.
"Bon! I will reconstruct for you as far as possible. I am inclined to think that Miss Howard was the master mind in that affair. You remember her once mentioning that her father was a doctor? Possibly she dispensed his medicines for him, or she may have taken the idea from one of the many books lying about when Mademoiselle Cynthia was studying for her exam. Anyway, she was familiar with the fact that the addition of a bromide to a mixture containing strychnine would cause the precipitation of the latter. Probably the idea came to her quite suddenly. Mrs. Inglethorp had a box of bromide powders, which she occasionally took at night. What could be easier than quietly to dissolve one or more of those powders in Mrs. Inglethorp's large sized bottle of medicine when it came from Coot's? The risk is practically nil. The tragedy will not take place until nearly a fortnight later. If anyone has seen either of them touching the medicine, they will have forgotten it by that time. Miss Howard will have engineered her quarrel, and departed from the house. The lapse of time, and her absence, will defeat all suspicion. Yes, it was a clever idea! If they had left it alone, it is possible the crime might never have been brought home to them. But they were not satisfied. They tried to be too clever — and that was their undoing."
Poirot puffed at his tiny cigarette, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"They arranged a plan to throw suspicion on John Cavendish, by buying strychnine at the village chemist's, and signing the register in his hand-writing.
"On Monday Mrs. Inglethorp will take the last dose of her medicine. On Monday, therefore, at six o'clock, Alfred Inglethorp arranges to be seen by a number of people at a spot far removed from the village. Miss Howard has previously made up a cock and bull story about him and Mrs. Raikes to account for his holding his tongue afterwards. At six o'clock, Miss Howard, disguised as Alfred Inglethorp, enters the chemist's shop, with her story about a dog, obtains the strychnine, and writes the name of Alfred Inglethorp in John's handwriting, which she had previously studied carefully.
"But, as it will never do if John, too, can prove an alibi, she writes him an anonymous note — still copying his hand-writing — which takes him to a remote spot where it is exceedingly unlikely that anyone will see him.
"So far, all goes well. Miss Howard goes back to Middlingham. Alfred Inglethorp returns to Styles. There is nothing that can compromise him in any way, since it is Miss Howard who has the strychnine, which, after all, is only wanted as a blind to throw suspicion on John Cavendish.
"But now a hitch occurs. Mrs. Inglethorp does not take her medicine that night. The broken bell, Cynthia's absence — arranged by Inglethorp through his wife — all these are wasted. And then — he makes his slip.
"Mrs. Inglethorp is out, and he sits down to write to his accomplice, who, he fears, may be in a panic at the non-success of their plan. It is probable that Mrs. Inglethorp returned earlier than he expected. Caught in the act, and somewhat flurried he hastily shuts and locks his desk. He fears that if he remains in the room he may have to open it again, and that Mrs. Inglethorp might catch sight of the letter before he could snatch it up. So he goes out and walks in the woods, little dreaming that Mrs. Inglethorp will open his desk, and discover the incriminating document.
"But this, as we know, is what happened. Mrs. Inglethorp reads it, and becomes aware of the perfidy of her husband and Evelyn Howard, though, unfortunately, the sentence about the bromides conveys no warning to her mind. She knows that she is in danger — but is ignorant of where the danger lies. She decides to say nothing to her husband, but sits down and writes to her solicitor, asking him to come on the morrow, and she also determines to destroy immediately the will which she has just made. She keeps the fatal letter."
"It was to discover that letter, then, that her husband forced the lock of the despatch-case?"
"Yes, and from the enormous risk he ran we can see how fully he realized its importance. That letter excepted, there was absolutely nothing to connect him with the crime."
"There's only one thing I can't make out, why didn't he destroy it at once when he got hold of it?"
"Because he did not dare take the biggest risk of all — that of keeping it on his own person."
"I don't understand."
"Look at it from his point of view. I have discovered that there were only five short minutes in which he could have taken it — the five minutes immediately before our own arrival on the scene, for before that time Annie was brushing the stairs, and would have seen anyone who passed going to the right wing. Figure to yourself the scene! He enters the room, unlocking the door by means of one of the other doorkeys — they were all much alike. He hurries to the despatch-case — it is locked, and the keys are nowhere to be seen. That is a terrible blow to him, for it means that his presence in the room cannot be concealed as he had hoped. But he sees clearly that everything must be risked for the sake of that damning piece of evidence. Quickly, he forces the lock with a penknife, and turns over the papers until he finds what he is looking for.
"But now a fresh dilemma arises: he dare not keep that piece of paper on him. He may be seen leaving the room — he may be searched. If the paper is found on him, it is certain doom. Probably, at this minute, too, he hears the sounds below of Mr. Wells and John leaving the boudoir. He must act quickly. Where can he hide this terrible slip of paper? The contents of the waste-paper-basket are kept and in any case, are sure to be examined. There are no means of destroying it; and he dare not keep it. He looks round, and he sees — what do you think, mon ami?"
I shook my head.
"In a moment, he has torn the letter into long thin strips, and rolling them up into spills he thrusts them hurriedly in amongst the other spills in the vase on the mantle-piece."
I uttered an exclamation.
"No one would think of looking there," Poirot continued. "And he will be able, at his leisure, to come back and destroy this solitary piece of evidence against him."
"Then, all the time, it was in the spill vase in Mrs. Inglethorp's bedroom, under our very noses?" I cried.
Poirot nodded.
"Yes, my friend. That is where I discovered my 'last link,' and I owe that very fortunate discovery to you."
"To me?"
"Yes. Do you remember telling me that my hand shook as I was straightening the ornaments on the mantelpiece?"
"Yes, but I don't see —"
"No, but I saw. Do you know, my friend, I remembered that earlier in the morning, when we had been there together, I had straightened all the objects on the mantelpiece. And, if they were already straightened, there would be no need to straighten them again, unless, in the meantime, someone else had touched them."
"Dear me," I murmured, "so that is the explanation of your extraordinary behaviour. You rushed down to Styles, and found it still there?"
"Yes, and it was a race for time."
"But I still can't understand why Inglethorp was such a fool as to leave it there when he had plenty of opportunity to destroy it."
"Ah, but he had no opportunity. I saw to that."
"You?"
"Yes. Do you remember reproving me for taking the household into my confidence on the subject?"
"Yes."
"Well, my friend, I saw there was just one chance. I was not sure then if Inglethorp was the criminal or not, but if he was I reasoned that he would not have the paper on him, but would have hidden it somewhere, and by enlisting the sympathy of the household I could effectually prevent his destroying it. He was already under suspicion, and by making the matter public I secured the services of about ten amateur detectives, who would be watching him unceasingly, and being himself aware of their watchfulness he would not dare seek further to destroy the document. He was therefore forced to depart from the house, leaving it in the spill vase."
"But surely Miss Howard had ample opportunities of aiding him."
"Yes, but Miss Howard did not know of the paper's existence. In accordance with their prearranged plan, she never spoke to Alfred Inglethorp. They were supposed to be deadly enemies, and until John Cavendish was safely convicted they neither of them dared risk a meeting. Of course I had a watch kept on Mr. Inglethorp, hoping that sooner or later he would lead me to the hiding-place. But he was too clever to take any chances. The paper was safe where it was; since no one had thought of looking there in the first week, it was not likely they would do so afterwards. But for your lucky remark, we might never have been able to bring him to justice."
"I understand that now; but when did you first begin to suspect Miss Howard?"
"When I discovered that she had told a lie at the inquest about the letter she had received from Mrs. Inglethorp."
"Why, what was there to lie about?"
"You saw that letter? Do you recall its general appearance?"
"Yes — more or less."
"You will recollect, then, that Mrs. Inglethorp wrote a very distinctive hand, and left large clear spaces between her words. But if you look at the date at the top of the letter you will notice that 'July 17th' is quite different in this respect. Do you see what I mean?"
"No," I confessed, "I don't."
"You do not see that that letter was not written on the 17th, but on the 7th — the day after Miss Howard's departure? The '1' was written in before the '7' to turn it into the '17th'."
"But why?"
"That is exactly what I asked myself. Why does Miss Howard suppress the letter written on the 17th, and produce this faked one instead? Because she did not wish to show the letter of the 17th. Why, again? And at once a suspicion dawned in my mind. You will remember my saying that it was wise to beware of people who were not telling you the truth."
"And yet," I cried indignantly, "after that, you gave me two reasons why Miss Howard could not have committed the crime!"
"And very good reasons too," replied Poirot. "For a long time they were a stumbling-block to me until I remembered a very significant fact: that she and Alfred Inglethorp were cousins. She could not have committed the crime single-handed, but the reasons against that did not debar her from being an accomplice. And, then, there was that rather over-vehement hatred of hers! It concealed a very opposite emotion. There was, undoubtedly, a tie of passion between them long before he came to Styles. They had already arranged their infamous plot — that he should marry this rich, but rather foolish old lady, induce her to make a will leaving her money to him, and then gain their ends by a very cleverly conceived crime. If all had gone as they planned, they would probably have left England, and lived together on their poor victim's money.
"They are a very astute and unscrupulous pair. While suspicion was to be directed against him, she would be making quiet preparations for a very different dénouement. She arrives from Middlingham with all the compromising items in her possession. No suspicion attaches to her. No notice is paid to her coming and going in the house. She hides the strychnine and glasses in John's room. She puts the beard in the attic. She will see to it that sooner or later they are duly discovered."
"I don't quite see why they tried to fix the blame on John," I remarked. "It would have been much easier for them to bring the crime home to Lawrence."
"Yes, but that was mere chance. All the evidence against him arose out of pure accident. It must, in fact, have been distinctly annoying to the pair of schemers."
"His manner was unfortunate," I observed thoughtfully.
"Yes. You realize, of course, what was at the back of that?"
"No."
"You did not understand that he believed Mademoiselle Cynthia guilty of the crime?"
"No," I exclaimed, astonished. "Impossible!"
"Not at all. I myself nearly had the same idea. It was in my mind when I asked Mr. Wells that first question about the will. Then there were the bromide powders which she had made up, and her clever male impersonations, as Dorcas recounted them to us. There was really more evidence against her than anyone else."
"You are joking, Poirot!"
"No. Shall I tell you what made Monsieur Lawrence turn so pale when he first entered his mother's room on the fatal night? It was because, whilst his mother lay there, obviously poisoned, he saw, over your shoulder, that the door into Mademoiselle Cynthia's room was unbolted."
"But he declared that he saw it bolted!" I cried.
"Exactly," said Poirot dryly. "And that was just what confirmed my suspicion that it was not. He was shielding Mademoiselle Cynthia."
"But why should he shield her?"
"Because he is in love with her."
I laughed.
"There, Poirot, you are quite wrong! I happen to know for a fact that, far from being in love with her, he positively dislikes her."
"Who told you that, mon ami?"
"Cynthia herself."
"La pauvre petite! And she was concerned?"
"She said that she did not mind at all."
"Then she certainly did mind very much," remarked Poirot. "They are like that — les femmes!"
"What you say about Lawrence is a great surprise to me," I said.
"But why? It was most obvious. Did not Monsieur Lawrence make the sour face every time Mademoiselle Cynthia spoke and laughed with his brother? He had taken it into his long head that Mademoiselle Cynthia was in love with Monsieur John. When he entered his mother's room, and saw her obviously poisoned, he jumped to the conclusion that Mademoiselle Cynthia knew something about the matter. He was nearly driven desperate. First he crushed the coffee-cup to powder under his feet, remembering that she had gone up with his mother the night before, and he determined that there should be no chance of testing its contents. Thenceforward, he strenuously, and quite uselessly, upheld the theory of 'Death from natural causes'."
"And what about the 'extra coffee-cup'?"
"I was fairly certain that it was Mrs. Cavendish who had hidden it, but I had to make sure. Monsieur Lawrence did not know at all what I meant; but, on reflection, he came to the conclusion that if he could find an extra coffee-cup anywhere his lady love would be cleared of suspicion. And he was perfectly right."
"One thing more. What did Mrs. Inglethorp mean by her dying words?"
"They were, of course, an accusation against her husband."
Chapter VII — A Woman's Happiness
"Dear me, Poirot," I said with a sigh, "I think you have explained everything. I am glad it has all ended so happily. Even John and his wife are reconciled."
"Thanks to me."
"How do you mean — thanks to you?"
"My dear friend, do you not realize that it was simply and solely the trial which has brought them together again? That John Cavendish still loved his wife, I was convinced. Also, that she was equally in love with him. But they had drifted very far apart. It all arose from a misunderstanding. She married him without love. He knew it. He is a sensitive man in his way, he would not force himself upon her if she did not want him. And, as he withdrew, her love awoke. But they are both unusually proud, and their pride held them inexorably apart. He drifted into an entanglement with Mrs. Raikes, and she deliberately cultivated the friendship of Dr. Bauerstein. Do you remember the day of John Cavendish's arrest, when you found me deliberating over a big decision?"
"Yes, I quite understood your distress."
"Pardon me, mon ami, but you did not understand it in the least. I was trying to decide whether or not I would clear John Cavendish at once. I could have cleared him — though it might have meant a failure to convict the real criminals. They were entirely in the dark as to my real attitude up to the very last moment — which partly accounts for my success."
"Do you mean that you could have saved John Cavendish from being brought to trial?"
"Yes, my friend. But I eventually decided in favour of 'a woman's happiness'. Nothing but the great danger through which they have passed could have brought these two proud souls together again."
I looked at Poirot in silent amazement. The colossal cheek of the little man! Who on earth but Poirot would have thought of a trial for murder as a restorer of conjugal happiness!
"I perceive your thoughts, mon ami," said Poirot, smiling at me. "No one but Hercule Poirot would have attempted such a thing! And you are wrong in condemning it. The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world."
His words took me back to earlier events. I remembered Mary as she lay white and exhausted on the sofa, listening, listening. There had come the sound of the bell below. She had started up. Poirot had opened the door, and meeting her agonized eyes had nodded gently. "Yes, madame," he said. "I have brought him back to you." He had stood aside, and as I went out I had seen the look in Mary's eyes, as John Cavendish had caught his wife in his arms.
"Perhaps you are right, Poirot," I said gently. "Yes, it is the greatest thing in the world."
Suddenly, there was a tap at the door, and Cynthia peeped in.
"I — I only —"
"Come in," I said, springing up.
She came in, but did not sit down.
"I — only wanted to tell you something —"
"Yes?"
Cynthia fidgeted with a little tassel for some moments, then, suddenly exclaiming: "You dears!" kissed first me and then Poirot, and rushed out of the room again.
"What on earth does this mean?" I asked, surprised.
It was very nice to be kissed by Cynthia, but the publicity of the salute rather impaired the pleasure.
"It means that she has discovered Monsieur Lawrence does not dislike her as much as she thought," replied Poirot philosophically.
"But —"
"Here he is."
Lawrence at that moment passed the door.
"Eh! Monsieur Lawrence," called Poirot. "We must congratulate you, is it not so?"
Lawrence blushed, and then smiled awkwardly. A man in love is a sorry spectacle. Now Cynthia had looked charming.
I sighed.
"What is it, mon ami?"
"Nothing," I said sadly. "They are two delightful women!"
"And neither of them is for you?" finished Poirot. "Never mind. Console yourself, my friend. We may hunt together again, who knows? And then —"
Chapter VIII — The End of the Affair
The trial of John Cavendish, which had seemed to be moving toward its inevitable close, ended instead in a scene that the newspapers described, for weeks afterwards, as one of the most extraordinary in the history of the Old Bailey. On the Monday morning, when the court reassembled, Poirot was called to the witness box. He was not called by the defence; he was called, unexpectedly, by Sir Ernest Heavywether, who had been privately instructed overnight, and who rose to his feet with the air of a man who has been waiting for this moment.
The evidence Poirot gave was brief and devastating. He produced the black beard, which he had preserved, and which was identified by the assistant from Parkson's as the one supplied to L. Cavendish at Styles Court. He produced the sheet of brown paper, found on top of the wardrobe. He produced the torn letter from the spill vase, and read it aloud, and there was a hush in the courtroom as he did so. And he produced, finally, the evidence of the Abbey Farm, which placed Alfred Inglethorp at a distance of two and a half miles from the village at six o'clock on the evening of the sixteenth of July, and which destroyed, for good and all, the case that the Crown had built against John Cavendish.
There was a brief consultation between the prosecuting counsel and the Attorney-General. Then Mr. Philips rose, and said, in a voice that was not quite steady, that the Crown asked leave to withdraw the charge against the prisoner. The judge, who had been listening with an expression of profound distaste, said that he had no objection to make, and that the prisoner was discharged. John Cavendish walked out of the dock a free man, and into the arms of his wife, and the courtroom, which had been silent, broke into a noise that the ushers took several minutes to quiet.
It was some days later that I saw Poirot again. He had taken a small house in London, near the British Museum, and I went to see him there on a grey November afternoon, and found him in his study, surrounded by his books and his papers, with a cup of chocolate at his elbow and a small black cat asleep on the rug before the fire.
"Well, my friend," he said, as I sat down, "and what do you think of it all now? It is finished."
"I think," I said, "that you are the most extraordinary man I have ever known."
"Ah, no, that is too much. I am a man of method, that is all. And I have been fortunate. If I had not had the good fortune to overhear certain things, and to notice certain things, and to have a friend who is honest and observant and — how do you say it? — a little slow of understanding, I would not have succeeded."
"I am not sure whether that is a compliment or not."
"It is a compliment," said Poirot, "and a very great one. You have a quality, Hastings, that is more valuable to a detective than any amount of cleverness. You are honest. You do not pretend to know what you do not know. You do not invent evidence. You do not twist facts to fit a theory. You record what you see, and you say what you think, and you are wrong, sometimes, but you are never dishonest. And that is a very rare quality, in any walk of life, but in a detective it is almost unknown."
I was rather touched by this, and said nothing, and Poirot went on.
"There is one thing, however, that I must tell you. I did not tell you at the time, because I was not sure, and because it was necessary that you should not know. But now it does not matter. The letter that Mrs. Inglethorp wrote to Miss Howard, on the afternoon of her death, was not the only letter she wrote that day. She also wrote a letter to her solicitor, Mr. Wells, which was delivered the following morning. It was in that letter that she described what she had found in her husband's desk, and asked Mr. Wells to come to her at once. And it was because Mr. Wells received that letter, and read it, and understood what it meant, that he came to Styles so promptly on the morning after the murder, and that he asked the questions he did at the inquest."
"But why did he not say anything?" I asked. "Why did he not tell us what he knew?"
"Because," said Poirot, "he was not sure. He suspected, but he could not prove. And he was too cautious a man to accuse the husband of his client of murder, on the strength of a letter he could not produce, and a suspicion he could not verify. He waited, and he watched, and he let me do the work. And when the moment came, he was ready to act. That is the English way, Hastings. It is slow, but it is thorough. And, in the end, it is more reliable than the French way, or the Belgian way, or any other way, because it does not depend on the brilliance of one man. It depends on the system."
"You sound almost English yourself, Poirot."
"I am a Belgian," said Poirot, with dignity. "But I have lived in England for many years, and I have come to admire the English character. It is not a brilliant character. It is not a quick character. But it is a solid character. And solidity, my friend, is not a thing to be despised."
He stirred his chocolate, and looked into the fire, and for a long moment he said nothing. And then he said, in a quieter voice:
"I am going back to Belgium, Hastings. When this war is over, and the world is a sane place again, I will go back to my own country, and I will live quietly, and I will grow vegetables, and I will not think about murder. But until then, I will stay here, and I will work, because there is work to be done. And if you ever need me — if you ever find yourself in a situation that is beyond the ordinary police, and beyond your own powers of deduction — you have only to send for me. And I will come."
He held out his hand, and I took it, and we shook hands in the firelight, and that was the end of the affair of the Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Historical Context — The Double Jeopardy Rule and the Wartime Spy Panic
Two legal and social realities shape the final movement of this novel. The first is the rule against double jeopardy — the principle, deeply rooted in English common law, that a person who has been acquitted of a crime cannot be tried again for the same offence. This is the principle that Alfred Inglethorp attempts to exploit: by manufacturing evidence against himself, arranging to be arrested, and then producing an alibi that he knows will be accepted, he hopes to secure a formal acquittal and be safe from further prosecution. The second reality is the spy panic of the First World War. From 1914 onward, the British public was gripped by a fear of German espionage, and the Defence of the Realm Act gave the authorities sweeping powers to arrest and intern suspected enemy agents. Dr. Bauerstein, a naturalized German who moves freely through the village and asks inconvenient questions, is exactly the sort of figure who would have attracted suspicion, and his arrest — for espionage, not murder — is a piece of historical realism that Christie weaves into the plot without ever making it the centre of the story.
Literary Note — The Solution and the Fair-Play Contract
The solution of The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a model of the fair-play method, and it is worth setting out exactly how Christie fulfils her contract with the reader. Every clue that Poirot uses is placed before the reader in the course of the investigation: the candle grease on the floor, the stain on the carpet, the shattered coffee cup, the scrap of green fabric, the empty bromide box, the missing key of the despatch-case, the spilled ornaments on the mantelpiece. Every suspect is introduced early and given a plausible motive. Every significant piece of evidence is either shown to the reader directly or described in a conversation that the reader is present at. What the reader is not given is the interpretation — the key that turns a random collection of facts into a coherent story. That key is withheld until the final chapter, when Poirot assembles the pieces and shows how they fit. This is the essential contract of the fair-play mystery: the reader is not cheated, but the reader is outwitted. And the pleasure of the form is not in the solution itself, but in the moment of recognition — the moment when the reader realizes that the answer was there all along, hidden in plain sight, and that the detective has been playing fair from the beginning.
Original Value — The Legacy of The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie's first novel, written during the First World War while she was working in a hospital dispensary in Torquay, and published in 1920 by John Lane in New York. It introduced Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian detective who would go on to appear in more than thirty novels and dozens of short stories, and it established the template that would define the Golden Age of detective fiction: a closed circle of suspects, a body of physical evidence that can be read in more than one way, and a detective whose method is not action but attention. Christie wrote the novel on a bet with her sister, who did not believe she could write a detective story in which the reader would not be able to guess the murderer. Christie won the bet. And she won it by inventing a technique — the fair-play method, the systematic misdirection of the reader, the gradual assembly of a truth that has been visible all along — that would be refined and imitated by generations of writers, and that remains the foundation of the detective story as we know it today. The novel has never been out of print. It has been translated into dozens of languages. And it is, in a very real sense, the beginning of the modern detective novel.
End of the Series
This is the final playbook of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The murderer has been named, the method has been explained, and the case that began with a locked door and a broken coffee cup has reached its close. Thank you for reading. If you have enjoyed this adaptation, you may want to explore the other titles in the series, and the adaptations of other classic detective stories that are available on this blog.
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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.