The Mysterious Affair at Styles
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | London, England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Bodley Head |
| Released | 1920 |
| Media Type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 194 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-58734-006-2 |
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (written in 1916 and published in 1920) is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie. It is her first novel, and introduces Hercule Poirot, Chief Inspector Japp and Captain Arthur Hastings. The novel is told in first person by Hastings, and features many of the elements that, thanks to Christie, have become icons of the Golden age of detective fiction. It is set in a large, isolated country manor; there are half-dozen suspects, most of whom are hiding facts about themselves; the book includes maps of the house, the murder scene and a drawing of a fragment of a will; and there are a number of red herrings and surprise plot twists.
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[edit] Characters
- Captain Hastings, on leave from the Western Front
- Hercule Poirot, a famous Belgian detective exiled in England
- Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard
- Emily Inglethorp, a wealthy old lady
- Alfred Inglethorp, her much younger new husband
- John Cavendish, her elder stepson
- Mary Cavendish, John's wife
- Lawrence Cavendish, John's younger brother
- Evelyn Howard, Mrs. Inglethorp's companion
- Cynthia Murdoch, the beautiful orphaned niece
- Dr. Bauerstein, a suspicious toxicologist
[edit] Plot
The novel is set in England during World War I at Styles, an English country manor. Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying of what proves to be strychnine poisoning. Captain Hastings, a house guest, enlists the help of his friend Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the nearby village, Styles St Mary.
Poirot pieces together events surrounding the murder. On the day she was killed, Emily Inglethorp was overheard arguing with someone, most likely her husband, Alfred, or her stepson, John. Afterwards, she seemed quite distressed and, apparently, made a new will - which no one can find. She ate little at dinner and retired early to her room with her document case. The case was later forced open by someone and a document removed. Alfred Inglethorp left Styles earlier in the evening and stayed overnight in the nearby village, so was not present when the poisoning occurred. Nobody can explain how or when the strychnine was administered to Mrs Inglethorp.
At first, Alfred is the prime suspect. He has the most to gain financially from his wife's death, and, since he is so much younger than Emily was, the Inglethorpes already despise him as a fortune hunter. Evelyn Howard, Emily's companion, seems to hate him most of all. His behaviour, too, is suspicious; he openly purchased strychnine in the village before Emily was poisoned, and although he denies it, he refuses to provide an alibi. The police are keen to arrest him, but Poirot intervenes by proving he could not have purchased the poison. Scotland Yard police later arrest Emily Inglethorp’s oldest stepson, John Cavendish. He inherits under the terms of her will, and there is evidence to suggest he also had obtained poison.
Poirot clears Cavendish by proving it was, after all, Alfred Inglethorp who committed the crime, assisted by Evelyn Howard, who turns out to be his lover, not his enemy. The guilty pair poisoned Emily by adding a precipitating agent to her regular evening medicine, causing its normally innocuous strychnine constituents to sink to the bottom of the bottle where they were finally consumed in a single, lethal dose. Their plan had been for Alfred Inglethorp to incriminate himself with false evidence, which could then be refuted at his trial. Once acquitted, he could not be tried for the crime a second time should any genuine evidence against him be discovered.
[edit] Trivia
- Styles was also the setting of Poirot's last book, Curtain, published in 1975.
- Supposedly based on a murder in Mussoorie; a doctor administered slow poison to a rich patient who also happened to be his lover. The patient succumbed when the doctor was conveniently away and the murder was never conclusively solved. The British press carried the scoop and noted author Rudyard Kipling wrote to Arthur Conan Doyle to write a story centred around the mysterious death. Conan Doyle mentioned it to Agatha Christie and the thriller The Mysterious Affair at Styles was born.
[edit] 1990 television adaptation
The story was adapted for television in 1990 for Series Two of Agatha Christie's Poirot. The adaptation was generally faithful to the novel, with some minor characters left out. The cast included:
- David Suchet as Hercule Poirot
- Hugh Fraser as Arthur Hastings
- Philip Jackson asChief Inspector Japp
- Gillian Barge as Emily Inglethorp
- Michael Cronin as Alfred Inglethorp
- David Rintoul as John Cavendish
- Anthony Calf as Lawrence Cavendish
- Beatie Edney as Mary Cavendish
- Joanna McCallum as Evelyn Howard
- Allie Byrne as Cynthia Murdoch
[edit] External links
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles, available freely at Project Gutenberg (without the illustrations)
- Agatha Christie's Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1990) at the Internet Movie Database
