Spoiler alert: in line with common practice, I will not reveal who dunnit or the later parts of the plot.

‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ was 1) the first detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie and 2) introduced her fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, who was to go on to have a long career, not only in her books, but in umpteen movies and TV series right up to the present day.

In an oblique way, it has a claim to be a ‘war novel’, in the sense that:

1. she wrote it in the middle of the First World War, in 1916
2. it is set during the war
3. the narrator is an Army officer who has served, been wounded and invalided out of the service
4. the inhabitants of the posh country house where it is set repeatedly talk about the privations of war, about scrimping and recycling for the war effort (p.170)
5. then, about two-thirds of the way through, it has a little espionage sub-plot, as one of the characters (I won’t say who) is accused of being a German spy!

So a very strong wartime vibe throughout.

The novel made Christie’s reputation and kept a special place in her affections. When she’d made enough money from writing to buy a fine house, she named it ‘Styles’.

Hastings and Hercule

Just like the Sherlock Holmes stories, it is narrated by an Army officer recently invalided out of the service, in this case Captain Arthur J. M. Hastings, invalided out of the Great War (compare with Holmes’s Dr Watson, invalided out of the Second Afghan War (1878 to 1880)).

Hastings has a high opinion of himself which he reveals through numerous remarks which sound self-deprecating but in fact reveal his preening nature: ‘I am not a vain man where women are concerned…’ (p.137). He thinks he is smart and is quick to look down on others’ intelligence:

‘The dear fellow isn’t perhaps very bright,’ I said thoughtfully.

For most of the book Hastings laments that his friend Hercule Poirot seems to be on the wrong track, misunderstanding clues, getting worked up about nothing, is past his best, and so on. Of course, Christie makes it abundantly clear that it is Hastings who continually gets things wrong. Slowly we come to realise he has wrong opinions about more or less everyone and everything, which makes him a comic character.

The remark seemed so utterly irrelevant that I did not even take the trouble to answer it. But I decided that if I made any interesting and important discoveries—as no doubt I should—I would keep them to myself, and surprise Poirot with the ultimate result. There are times when it is one’s duty to assert oneself. (p.120)

To my surprise Poirot himself is an eccentric, oddball character. His most overt foible is a dapper attention to his own clothes and appearance, especially the famous waxed black moustache. But it is accompanied by a pronounced obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example his need, after lighting a cigarette, to place the spent match in a little China pot (p.77); or his habit, when excited by new information or disappointment, to fastidiously rearrange the objects on a mantelpiece or shelf.

And if Hastings’s view of Poirot is belittling, Poirot’s opinion of himself is a mirror image, a comic over-estimating of himself, a Napoleon complex:

‘I tell you, mon ami, it puzzles me. Me – Hercule Poirot!’

‘Mesdames and messieurs! I speak! Listen! I, Hercule Poirot!’

So at the heart of the story is this comic duo and it is their comic interplay – Hastings’ preening confidence in his own insights and their continual failure, contrasted with Poirot’s pompous self-importance and endless fussiness about details – which make the book so appealing, so amusing at so many moments that for long spells you forget it’s about a murder at all.

Detective story tropes

The story overflows with so many classic detective story tropes it’s hard to know where to start.

1. The victim is rich, 70-something Mrs Emily Inglethorpe.
2. She is murdered in her bedroom in her grand old house, Styles Court, in lovely countryside (in Essex).
3. She is the head of an extended household of family, friends of family, servants and professional services (doctor, lawyer).
4. So all the suspects are impeccably upper middle-class with perfect manners.
5. On the surface everything is wonderfully civilisé but one of the suspects tells Hastings that, below the surface, they all hate each other and all hate the old woman.

So a rich old lady is murdered in a grand old house. There are six or seven suspects. The narrator just happens to be on the spot and friendly with the whole family, so he gives us good portraits of them all. All the suspects are revealed to have motives for the murder.

And the whole thing is tied up, in the classic style, by Poirot calling all the main characters together in the drawing room for his detailed explanation of the murder, who did it, and summary the clues which led him to it.

A surfeit of information

As usual with crime or detective novels, it contains a great deal of information which the reader needs to process and bear in mind, far too much for me; I find reading Joseph Conrad or D.H. Lawrence much easier, because their plots are much simpler, but here there are hundreds of facts to be aware of, process and bear in mind.

First all the relationships between the main characters. Then the motives which (we slowly learn) pretty much all of them might have for bumping the old lady off. Then all the resentments among them (Miss Howard hates Alfred; John is estranged from his wife and hates Dr Bauerstein and so on).

Then the relationship stuff on the eve of the murder. We learn that only a few days before, Emily had an argument with her loyal companion, Evelyn Howard, which prompted the latter to pack her bags and leave (warning Hastings, on the way out, that they’re all a pack of sharks). We learn that on the day of her death, Mrs Inglethorpe had a standup argument with a man which was loud enough to be heard down the corridor from her room.

On a more micro level there is an incredible amount of information about minutiae. We are given a precise floor plan of the house; how the doors into Mrs Inglethorpe’s were locked or bolted from the inside; who prepared the coffee taken up to Mrs I that fateful night; just where in the hall the coffee was left to cool so that someone might or might not have slipped the poison into it. In the room of the deceased Poirot discovers a few fragments of a will someone had burned in the fireplace, fibres of a green dress or cloak on one of the bolts. What is the meaning of the smashed coffee cup on the floor? Why has Mrs Inglethorpe’s locked despatch case been forced? Why was the bedside table knocked over and what caused the large splash of candle grease on the carpet? These and scores of other details or designed to provide aficionados with a surfeit of clues.

Poirot discovers some of this by examining the scene of the crime himself; some of it emerges when he interviews everyone in the house, down to the lowliest servant; more emerges when a formal inquest is held in the local town and everyone testifies. And then there is a continual drip-drip of detail from casual conversations in between these set-piece events. The text amounts to a continual provision of data and clues.

And all this information allows some of the cast and Hastings in particular to concoct their own theories using various bits of information, to whip up entire conspiracies and postulate certain people as the murderer. Hastings, in particular, is given to wild speculations, rash assumptions and half-baked theories:

Suddenly I remembered that first conversation at tea on the day of my arrival, and the gleam in her eyes as she had said that poison was a woman’s weapon. How agitated she had been on that fatal Tuesday evening! Had Mrs. Inglethorp discovered something between her and Bauerstein, and threatened to tell her husband? Was it to stop that denunciation that the crime had been committed?

All of these are, of course, created, to fail and as foils to Poirot’s final masterly revelation. In a sense, the entire character of Hastings is an enormous red herring.

I suppose there are two attitudes to this blizzard of information. One type of person, the type who likes crosswords or sudoku, see the book as a puzzle to crack, might carefully note each new micro-detail and try , tracking the shifting kaleidoscope of clues, and work out the culprit before the book reveals it. The other type is like me, too tired, lazy or stupid to think about figuring it out – happy to follow the amiable narrative, bite or not at the numerous red herrings, content to be carried entertainingly along until Poirot’s final reveal.

Cast

The family

Emily Inglethorp – A wealthy old woman in her 70s. She married Mr Cavendish when he was a widower with two small boys and so became their stepmother. When Cavendish died she inherited his home, Styles Court, and care of the boys. That was long ago and they are all grown up and in their 40s when they learn to their dismay, that their mother is planning to marry again, to the tall, black-bearded Alfred Inglethorpe, who she first engaged as a secretary to help her with her many charities. She dies on the morning of 18 July, when other guests in the house hear banging and break down the locked door to find her expiring in the throes of some kind of poisoning. She was quite a cool, business-like lady, and no blood relative of her two ‘sons’.

Alfred Inglethorp – Tall, aloof, secretive man who joined the household as Emily’s secretary but then persuaded her to marry him. Twenty years younger than her, he is considered by her family to be a fortune-hunter and is, to begin with, the prime suspect.

John Cavendish – Emily’s elder stepson, from her first husband’s previous marriage, and the brother of Lawrence. John trained and practised before quitting to become a country squire at Styles. It is he who invites Hastings to come and stay at Styles near the beginning of the story. He is married to the fragrant Mary but she, it seems, has grown a tad too close to a local doctor, Dr Bauerstein.

Mary Cavendish – John’s wife and very beautiful. Hastings is smitten from the first moment he sees her but slowly learns that she has become close to a local physician, Dr Bauerstein.

Lawrence Cavendish – Emily’s younger stepson from her first husband’s previous marriage, and the brother of John. He studied medicine and qualified as a doctor although he doesn’t practice, and so would have a working knowledge of poisons.

Evelyn Howard – Emily’s companion and a second cousin of Alfred Inglethorp who she fiercely dislikes. She is a bluff woman in tweeds who speaks her mind in a telegraphic style. She came over to me as a certain type of lesbian.

Cynthia Murdoch – ‘The daughter of an old schoolfellow of [Emily’s] who married a rascally solicitor. He came a cropper, and the girl was left an orphan and penniless.’ Emily took her in but never stopped reminding her of her subservient status. She performs war work at the Red Cross Hospital at Tadminster, seven miles away. She works in the dispensary where she has access to medicines and poisons.

Servants

William Earl – under-gardener at Styles, sent by Mrs Inglethorpe to buy a blank will form on the day before her death.

Old Manning – gardener at Styles Court.

Dorcas – maid at Styles, very loyal to Mrs Inglethorp.

Annie – one of the housemaids, ‘a fine, strapping girl’.

Providers of professional services

Dr. Wilkins – Mrs Inglethorp’s own doctor, ‘a portly, fussy little man’.

Dr Bauerstein – a well-known toxicologist with an international reputation who happens to live close to Styles and who, we slowly learn, is seeing a lot of Mary Cavendish. Are they in love?

Mr. Wells – the family lawyer, testifies that old Mrs Inglethorpe made lots of wills.

Amy Hill – shop assistant who testified at the inquest to having sold a will form William Earl, under-gardener at Styles.

Albert Mace – chemist’s assistant who testified to selling strychnine poison to a man he claimed was Alfred Inglethorpe, who later turns out to be a man disguised as Alfred Inglethorpe.

The outsiders

Mrs Raikes – very attractive wife of a local farmer. Slowly it emerges that Alfred Inglethorpe might have been seeing her.

Hercule Poirot – Renowned Belgian private detective. He is a refugee. He fled Belgium after the Germans invaded and was kindly taken in by Emily Inglethorpe, along with half a dozen of his compatriots. He lives alone in a cottage, Leastways Cottage, in the grounds. So, like Hastings, he is right on the spot when the murder takes place and so it’s only natural that he should get involved.

Captain Arthur Hastings – Poirot’s friend and the narrator of the story. He had been serving on the Western Front but was invalided out, spent some time in a convalescent home then was given one month’s official leave. It was then that he happened to bump into his old friend John Cavendish who invited him to come and stay for the month at the Cavendish family home of Styles Court.

Detective-Inspector Inspector Japp – ‘Jimmy Japp’, a Scotland Yard detective sent to investigate the murder. He has worked with Poirot before on a number of cases (the Abercrombie forgery case, the tracking down of ‘Baron’ Altara, p.93) knows his quality and so respects his judgements.

Superintendent Summerhaye – sidekick to Jimmy Japp and his opposite regarding Poirot i.e. deeply sceptical of the Belgian’s abilities: ‘Summerhaye gave an incredulous snort’.

In court

Sir Ernest Heavywether – the famous K.C., for the defence. Heavyweather is another example of Christie’s comedy. He is James Robertson-Justice avant la letter, a blustering bear of a barrister who bullies yes or no answers out of his witnesses and so is extremely effective.

Mr. Philips, K.C. – for the prosecution.

The characterisation of Poirot

Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day

As you can see, Christie from the start has a very strong sense of Poirot’s individuality. Over and above his physical attributes, she deploys other strategies or tactics to really distinguish him.

One is that all the characters are made to underestimate Poirot. For a start he’s short, so everyone refers to him as that little man, a dear little man, such a dear little man etc. Hastings especially is made to systematically underestimate Poirot, dismissing him as obtuse, fussing about irrelevancies. He also tells everybody that Poirot used to be a great detective ‘in his day’ but has now rather gone to seed. Hastings refers to Poirot as ‘the little man’ more than all the other characters combined. Of course all this is designed to make Poirot’s triumphant solving of the case all the more triumphant rising, as it were, from the depths of such universal dismissal.

Poirot himself is given a number of memorable attributes. Short. Dapper and clothes conscious. Obsessive attention to detail. French accent but not actually French (Belgian is a sort of French without the historical animus), which means he can say Voila and Chut and other schoolboy French phrases at dramatic moments. He has green eyes which become particularly bright at moments of excitement.

I had often before noticed that, if anything excited him, his eyes turned green like a cat’s. They were shining like emeralds now. (p.73)

And other physiognomical indications:

Poirot, I noticed, was looking profoundly discouraged. He had that little frown between the eyes that I knew so well. (p.165)

Poirot’s procedures

Nothing Poirot says is as pithy as Sherlock Holmes’s ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’ or ‘You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.’ Poirot has his own set of principles which, of course, he shares with Hastings.

‘Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.’ (p.75)

‘What have I always told you? Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory – let the theory go.’ (p.77)

‘Now all is arranged and classified. One must never permit confusion.’ (p.78)

Jimmy Japp’s locutions

I enjoyed the way Christie makes Detective-Inspector Inspector Japp talk in hackneyed phrases, not quite Cockney but clichéd, suggesting the commonplace working of his mind:

‘My word,’ he cried, ‘you’re the goods! And no mistake, Mr. Poirot!’

‘And, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Poirot here, arrested you would have been, as sure as eggs is eggs!’

Antisemitism

Many of Christie’s novels between the wars show signs of antisemitism and employ antisemitic tropes. The animus several character in this novel show towards Dr Bauernstein is at least in part attributable to the fact that he is Jewish.

‘I tell you, Mary, I won’t have it.’
Mary’s voice came, cool and liquid: ‘Have you any right to criticize my actions?’
‘It will be the talk of the village! My mother was only buried on Saturday, and here you are gadding about with the fellow.’
‘Oh,’ she shrugged her shoulders, ‘if it is only village gossip that you mind!’
‘But it isn’t. I’ve had enough of the fellow hanging about. He’s a Polish Jew, anyway.’
‘A tinge of Jewish blood is not a bad thing. It leavens the’—she looked at him—’stolid stupidity of the ordinary Englishman.’
Fire in her eyes, ice in her voice. (Chapter 9)

And:

‘He is, of course, a German by birth,’ said Poirot thoughtfully, ‘though he has practised so long in this country that nobody thinks of him as anything but an Englishman. He was naturalized about fifteen years ago. A very clever man—a Jew, of course.’ (Chapter 10)

Why ‘of course’?

The end

I won’t give the plot away, not least because it would take pages to explain the complicated sequence of events and non-events which Poirot finally explains to Hastings in the final chapter.

‘Dear me, Poirot,’ I said with a sigh, ‘I think you have explained everything. I am glad it has all ended so happily.’ (p.188)

Credit

‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1920 by John Lane. References are to the 1971 Pan paperback edition.

Related links

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles online

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1920s reviews
• Sherlock Holmes reviews