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couchdetective · 4 years

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The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

This is the first of the Hercule Poirot novels. It’s where Hastings first re-encounters Poirot in Britain. We never actually see their first meeting in Belgium in any of Christie’s books.

Styles was written in 1916, in the thick of WWI, and published shortly after in 1920 (in the US) and 1921 (in the UK). The story itself is set in WWI. The war forms the foundation of the plot, providing the reason why these characters are in this place at this time. The story’s not about the war, but the war allows for the story, and haunts the characters. There is so much quiet trauma in this book. Hercule Poirot is in the village of Styles St. Mary because he is a refugee, fleeing Belgium because of the war. Mrs. Inglethorpe, the grande dame of the village, has given him and other refugees aid. He’s a retired police detective, which is extremely weird to think about. Poirot is such an eccentric little bundle of quirks that it’s hard to imagine him working as part of an institution. He has also already had a distinguished career before his adventures in Britain even start.

As for Arthur Hastings (is there a more lolariously British name?), he is 30 years old, and has been invalided home from the Front, only to find a murder right there in the idyllic countryside. He’s at Styles Court because his friend John Cavendish lives there, with his stepmother Mrs. Inglethorpe (who is very rich and recently remarried to a much-younger man) and brother Lawrence. Hastings doesn’t know what he’s going to do with himself after the war, but his secret dream job is being a detective. He fancies himself very good at it. He thinks he’s progressed further than Poirot with Poirot’s own methods. Arthur Hastings gets compared to Dr. Watson, which is unjust; Watson is much smarter and more cognizant of his own limits, but Hastings is still endearing.

The Detective Work: Poirot in Styles uses methods that are less quintessentially Poirot than in later books. In the very next book, Murder on the Links, Poirot is militantly in favor of conducting his investigation based almost entirely on the psychology of the individuals concerned. Physical evidence-gathering is for people like Giraud, the detective Poirot mocks in Murder on the Links. It’s all very well, but the Hercule Poirots, the real great ones, just sit back, contemplate and reflect on the psychology, let the Girauds and Japps bring in the results of the physical investigation, contemplate the physical evidence in light of the psychology, and then come to the correct conclusion. It’s beneath Poirot to go around examining cigarette ash or fingerprints, and the real truth won’t be found there in any case.

But in Styles, Poirot personally conducts a close physical investigation, and relies heavily on the results of that investigation, in the manner of Giraud, or Sherlock Holmes. Here’s Poirot’s preliminary investigation of the murder scene in Styles (emphases added by me):

Poirot locked the door on the inside, and proceeded to a minute inspection of the room. He darted from one object to the other with the agility of a grasshopper...

...A small purple despatch-case, with a key in the lock, on the writing-table, engaged his attention for some time. He took out the key from the lock, and passed it to me to inspect. I saw nothing peculiar, however. It was an ordinary key of the Yale type, with a bit of twisted wire through the handle.

Next, he examined the framework of the door we had broken in, assuring himself that the bolt had really been shot. Then he went to the door opposite leading into Cynthia’s room. That door was also bolted, as I had stated. However, he went to the length of unbolting it, and opening and shutting it several times; this he did with the utmost precaution against making any noise. Suddenly something in the bolt itself seemed to rivet his attention. He examined it carefully, and then, nimbly whipping out a pair of small forceps from his case, he drew out some minute particle which he carefully sealed up in a tiny envelope.

On the chest of drawers there was a tray with a spirit lamp and a small saucepan on it. A small quantity of a dark fluid remained in the saucepan, and an empty cup and saucer that had been drunk out of stood near it...Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and tasted it gingerly.

For comparison, here’s Sherlock Holmes’s inspection of the murder scene at Number 3, Lauriston Gardens in his first story, A Study in Scarlet:

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. In one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile of grey dust from the floor, and packed it away in an envelope. Finally, he examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness. This done, he appeared to be satisfied, for he replaced his tape and his glass in his pocket.

Obviously, these aren’t exactly the same! I’m not accusing Christie of plagiarizing Arthur Conan Doyle by any means. But there are elements in common: the animal comparisons, the whipping instruments out, the taking away tiny bits of evidence in an envelope. Christie, in Styles, is drawing Poirot in roughly the same tradition as Holmes, whereas later on she will have Poirot reject and mock the entire “foxhound” school of detecting. In Styles, Poirot also deduces the murder method by using scientific knowledge about bromides in the medicine precipitating the strychnine. This is another atypical detection method for Poirot. I think these atypicalities in Styles are largely due to Christie still figuring out the character in her first book. There is also a plausible in-universe explanation, however: in Styles, Poirot is just a refugee, not an established and famous private detective. The “foxhound” detectives won’t bring him their evidence. He has to get it himself.

At the same time, you can still see the importance of psychology in Poirot’s methods, even here. The murderer is the husband. It’s always the husband, and all the more so when it’s the much-younger husband of an older, extremely rich wife. On top of this, Poirot solves the case through his key psychological insight that Alfred Inglethorpe wants to be arrested, and his romantic insight as to who exactly Mrs. Raikes is having an affair with. Once he figures out that (1) Inglethorpe is trying to get arrested and tried before there’s sufficient evidence against him, thus obtaining protection against double jeopardy; (2) it is John Cavendish, and not Alfred Inglethorpe, who is carrying on with Mrs. Raikes, Poirot knows what’s going on and can solve the case. The famous “little grey cells” get their first mention in Styles: it’s only in passing, and only once, not the mantra they will become later on, but they do show up.

The Detectives: Poirot keeps Hastings in the dark in this story, not by lying to him, but by allowing Hastings to rush to whatever absurd conclusion his mind finds appealing without correcting him. Hastings and Poirot don’t have a partnership, or even a mentor-protegé relationship. They are, and will remain, a perpetual quirky genius/amazed straight-man couple.

Poirot’s match-making, romantic tendencies also make their first appearance here. This isn’t a distraction from the mystery at all. Correctly figuring out who is romantically entangled with who, and who has feelings for who, is crucial to solving the mystery, like I said above about the Alfred Inglethorpe/Mrs. Raikes red herring and the John Cavendish/Mrs. Raikes dalliance. On top of that, realizing that Lawrence Cavendish was trying to shield Cynthia Murdoch, because he was in love with her and there was a ton of evidence against her, was important to figuring out Lawrence’s own behavior and his own innocence of the crime. But Poirot’s shipper tendencies don’t limit themselves to what’s relevant to solving the mystery. He actually allows John Cavendish to be tried for murdering Mrs. Inglethorpe (a hanging offense!), purely to spark a reconciliation between John and his wife Mary, who would otherwise be too proud to admit that they truly love each other after all. Good thing this is a Christie novel and no one suffers any trauma from being tried for their lives--at least no trauma that can’t be cured by the love of a good woman.

Poirot’s not the only romantic here, though. Hastings’s overly romantic sensibility, and loneliness (he’s staying with John Cavendish because he has no family or other close friends), leads him to propose to Cynthia Murdoch out of the blue. She correctly laughs at him and tells him to be careful, next time someone might accept him. The whole thing is funny, but with a background of sadness. The difference between Poirot and Hastings is that Poirot is a sort of cupid, arranging others’ romances, while Hastings is fundamentally a participant and not a background string-puller. He wants a romance for himself, and Poirot suggests their next mystery might provide him with one. Mon ami Hastings displays a total lack of deductive ability and a sentimental outlook. He’s a quintessential British stereotype, but the flattering kind, the way the British (at the height of their empire, too) wanted to see their average man: not the brightest (too much cleverness is foreign, not quite manly, hence why the detective here is a Belgian), but the most honorable and decent.

The Characters: Christie gets flack for her characterization that I think is undeserved. She frequently perpetrates the most flat, stereotypical characters ever, but also frequently manages to sketch depths and complications of character in just a few simple words. Styles features several examples of the latter. There’s Mrs. Inglethorpe, a rich woman who is generous but tries to dominate people through use of her charity, who is smart and yet foolish enough to marry a younger man out for her money. There’s her son John, who seems like a beef-witted country squire, but is (as Poirot points out) sensitive enough to seek out a separate life when it seems his wife isn’t going to fall in love with him. Above all, there’s Mary Cavendish: proud, reserved, married her husband without love, but then fell in love with him after, only to see him pull away and have an affair because he doesn’t think she loves him, and then pulls away in her own turn, working as a Land Girl during the war, madly jealous of her husband, drugging people so she can snoop to find out about his affairs, and finally, passionately defending him when he’s on trial for his life.

Japp makes his first appearance in this novel as well, but does not mess anything up, nor does he make much of an impression.

The Tropes: There are many standard Christie tropes that make their first appearance here. There’s Mrs. Inglethorpe, the moneybags matriarch who is controlling and nurturing in the same breath, whose adult children are taken care of by her but also trapped in stifling dependence on her. This is echoed in Gordon Cloade in Taken at the Flood/There is a Tide, Aristide Leonides in Crooked House, and probably others that aren’t coming to my mind as well. There’s the gold-digger, much-younger spouse of the moneybags, Alfred Inglethorpe, the murderer. Some other examples of this trope are a red herring or a frame-up victim instead of the true murderer. Look at Rosaleen Cloade in Taken at the Flood, or Brenda Leonides in Crooked House, or Nofret in Death Comes as the End.

There is also the married couple who believed (perhaps correctly) that at least one of them had entered the marriage without loving the other, but then find--in the shadow of a murder investigation--that they’ve both fallen truly and mutually in love with each other and will walk through fire for each other. John and Mary Cavendish here are echoed by Jeremy and Frances Cloade in Taken at the Flood, and Stephen and Sandra Farraday in Sparkling Cyanide/Remembered Death. Christie likes this one a lot, and so do I. It’s very heartwarming.

There’s Dr. Bauerstein, the suspicious foreigner (usually Germanic or Eastern European) who is there for the sole purpose of looking sketchy and being innocent (at least, of the murder) and confusing the reader. This character may be Up To Something, but he’s never the real villain, never the actual murderer. JK Rowling echoes this in Goblet of Fire with Igor Karkaroff.

Then there is the loyal servant, who is none too bright (Dorcas), and the “obvious dislike = love” trope, with Cynthia and Lawrence: Cynthia claims Lawrence dislikes her, and she doesn’t care that he does, when he acts like that because he loves her, and she does care very much. Dislike = love is also there with Evelyn Howard and Alfred Inglethorpe: their pretended animosity hides a passionate romantic attachment.

The Author and the Setting: Christie wrote this in a war. That same war pervades the setting, affecting the lives and livelihoods of Poirot, Hastings, Mary Cavendish, and the entire economy of Styles. Waste paper is never thrown out, which is important to solving the mystery: it helps Poirot realize Mrs. Inglethorpe had to light a fire to destroy the will she made in favor of her husband, which explains why she had a fire in her room in the heat of July. There’s a ton of Christie’s own prejudices on display here, too: the dumb servants (classism), and the racism (Jewish blood is a sign of intelligence! It’s fine to put on black-face and to refer to black people as the n-word!).

The Murder Method: Chemistry. Bromides in the medicine, precipitating strychnine. Secret chemistry. But there’s more to it than the physical murder. The coverup requires the deliberate incurring of suspicion by Alfred Inglethorpe, all the better to decisively dispel it--and the secret cahoots of him and Miss Howard, pretending to hate each other while working together to get Mrs. Inglethorpe’s money. It’s a very clever method!

The Law: The legal system plays an important part in this story: the prohibition against double jeopardy; the marital privilege so that Mary Cavendish can’t be called to testify against her husband; the attempts to cast suspicion on Lawrence by John’s attorneys.

Poirot Explains it All: There’s a classic explanation scene, with everyone gathered in the drawing-room at the end. Before getting to the actual point, Poirot has to explain all of his reasoning, and you know what, I get it. If I had been through everything in this novel, I’d want a full accounting of everyone’s odd behavior, not just the actual murderer’s. He explains that: (1) it was Mary Cavendish who was in Mrs. Inglethorpe’s room and in Cynthia’s room; (2) Mrs. Inglethorpe who had destroyed her own will, which is why she had a fire in her room in July; (3) when she twice referred to “scandal between husband and wife” on the day of her death, the first reference was to her son’s affair with Mrs. Raikes, but the second was to her own husband’s wrongdoings, evidenced in a letter to Miss Howard; (4) Mary Cavendish drugged Cynthia and Mrs. Inglethorpe so she could snoop around for a piece of paper she thought would prove John was having an affair; and finally (5) there was no need for the murderer to be in Mrs. Inglethorpe’s room that night, since the bromides in the medicine that precipitated the strychnine had already been introduced by the murderer, Alfred, who kindly and considerately wrote about the scheme in a letter to his co-conspirator Evelyn, which is now in Poirot’s hands. After which, of course, Alfred blurts out his own guilt, instead of keeping his mouth safely shut.

But then there’s a follow-up scene, where he explains even more to Hastings, about how he knew something was up when he realized Alfred wanted to be arrested, where he hid the incriminating letter, how Poirot stopped him from getting it back (by enlisting the household), Miss Howard’s role (especially in impersonating Alfred Inglethorpe), the logistics of the bromide crime, and how the murderers undid themselves by trying to incriminate John Cavendish. And finally, his own shippy thoughts, his Lawrence/Cynthia insights, and his plot to bring John and Mary together. The Hastings-explanation, after the general explanation, is meant to tie up loose ends, explain Poirot’s more personal motives, and address Hastings’s own feelings, including his romantic melancholy.

It’s a solid Christie. Not one of my favorites, but definitely enjoyable.

#agatha christie #the mysterious affair at styles #hercule poirot #arthur hastings #mystery novels #golden age #poirot the hopeless romantic #moneybags matriarch #gold-digger spouse #married couple falling in love with each other #dislike = love #suspicious non-villain foreigner

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