Like a good detective story myself. ... Lot of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in the last chapter. Every one dumbfounded. Real crime—you'd know at once.
During Hastings' first tea at Styles, Mary gets him to admit that he dreams of being a private detective. Evelyn Howard chimes in with her personal gripes about detective novels. Her comment is especially humorous and metafictional in the context of a detective novel—as if Christie were speaking through Howard to set her debut novel apart from the "lot of nonsense" being written. Another irony is the fact that Evelyn Howard will turn out to have been at the center of the scheme to murder Emily Inglethorp, and she manages to evade suspicion for the duration of the novel.
One fact leads to another—so we continue. Does the next fit in with that? A merveille! Good! We can proceed. This next little fact—no! Ah, that is curious! There is something missing—a link in the chain that is not there. We examine. We search. And that little curious fact, that possibly paltry little detail that will not tally, we put it here!
Here, Poirot outlines his method to Hastings, who, ironically, before he realized he would be working alongside Poirot, claimed to Mary Cavendish to have far surpassed Poirot's simple methods of deduction. This is the first moment in the novel where Poirot introduces his concept of clues as "links in a chain," a metaphor to which he frequently returns in the course of trying to solve the mystery.
So beautiful, so beautiful, and yet, the poor family, plunged in sorrow, prostrated with grief.
Poirot says this to Hastings as they cross the lawn toward Styles Court shortly after Emily Inglethorp's death. His words lead Hastings to reflect upon whether or not any of the Cavendishes or their friends were, in fact, grieving, or whether the matter of Emily's death was more of a financial and legal matter than a matter of the heart. Poirot, in his impishness, is conscious of this dynamic, and so speaks with a sense of verbal irony to bait Hastings into pondering the motives of people at Styles for killing Emily. Poirot's words also emphasize the idyllic atmosphere of the novel, which captures the conservative, "Merrie England" zeitgeist during the first half of the twentieth century that romanticized pastoral, landed gentry lifestyle.
I watched her as she sat at the head of the table, graceful, composed, enigmatic. In her soft grey frock, with white ruffles at the wrists falling over her slender hands, she looked very beautiful. When she chose, however, her face could be sphinxlike in its inscrutability. She was very silent, hardly opening her lips, and yet in some queer way I felt that the great strength of her personality was dominating us all.
Hastings makes no effort to conceal his romantic desire for Mary Cavendish, and here, as he describes her inscrutable countenance at the dining table the day after Emily's death, the only one of them who seems to be able to conceal her true feelings about Alfred Inglethorp, Hastings casts a shadow of suspicion on her. He suggests that her inscrutability is something that she controls and that her silence is oppressive in the tension it creates. However, this could very well be a Hastings-problem, a feeling that he has internalized and is projecting onto the rest of the diners, for he is the only one who feels his unique voyeuristic desire for Mary Cavendish.
It occurred to me very forcibly at that moment that to harbour Miss Howard and Alfred Inglethorp under the same roof, and keep the peace between them, was likely to prove a Herculean task, and I did not envy John.
When Eve Howard returns to Styles after Emily's death, the ingredients for a classic whodunnit are finally all incorporated, because at this point, the victim is dead, and all of the possible suspects are assembled under the same roof. The irony of this anxiety of Hastings is that Eve and Alfred turn out, in the end, to have been co-conspirators. Their animosity toward one anther is a performance.
[Insomnia] is a very good, or a very bad explanation. ... It covers everything, and explains nothing. I shall keep my eye on our clever Dr. Bauerstein.
Poirot expresses skepticism about Bauerstein's reason for wandering around the Styles Court estate late at night; Poirot's analysis that the excuse is either very good or very bad because it "covers everything, and explains nothing" emphasizes the trouble of innocent people sometimes unknowingly acting in a way that will incriminate them in the future. Of course, Poirot is not surprised later when Bauerstein is arrested on charges of espionage, because the charges explain why he might have been snooping around the property of socialites in frequent contact with royal and parliamentary officials.
Dear old Dorcas! As she stood there, with her honest face upturned to mine, I thought what a fine specimen she was of the old-fashioned servant that is so fast dying out.
Hastings personifies some of the conservative values underpinning the novel, and in this case, he demonstrates that personification with his Merrie England perception of Dorcas as a servant who, through her attitude and loyalty to her employer, supports the cultural hegemony of England and reinforces the idealized conception of feudal, pastoral life.
I have always been rather good at what is called, I believe, creating an atmosphere.
A prominent feature of Hastings' personality is his self-aggrandizement which often borders on self-delusion, and is deployed by Christie for comic effect. Hastings' takes himself very seriously, and here is another example of his self-seriousness, when he approaches Lawrence to deliver Poirot's message. Hastings drops his voice and "watch[es Lawrence] out of the corner of [his] eye" (145), emulating what he believes to be the "correct" way to act like a private detective, methods which Poirot often eschews, to far more successful ends.
Poirot gave me one look, which conveyed a wondering pity, and his full sense of the utter absurdity of such an idea.
In contrast to Hastings' sense of self-aggrandizement, there is Poirot's transparent regard of Hastings as an incompetent fool. Here, Hastings confesses to Poirot that he thought Poirot suspected Dr. Bauerstein of poisoning Emily Inglethorp. The moment also underscores the frequent and often sizable gaps in communication and shared knowledge between Hastings and Poirot, even when Hastings believes that he and Poirot are on the same page, so to speak.
And, as she spoke, I had a sudden vision of broad spaces, virgin tracts of forests, untrodden lands—and a realization of what freedom would mean to such a nature as Mary Cavendish. I seemed to see her for a moment as she was, a proud wild creature, as untamed by civilization as some shy bird of the hills.
Hastings idealizes Mary Cavendish and imposes a narrative onto her. He spends the majority of the novel hoping she is not guilty and harboring jealousy of Dr. Bauerstein, with whom Mary is having an affair. In this scene, Mary explains that she never really loved John, she just married him as a way out of the rut she was in after her father died and she was living with some aunts in Yorkshire. Her confession is later called into question by Poirot, when he declares that Mary actually is in love with John but requires the stressful event of John facing murder charges and several months in prison to awaken her to her own love of her husband. Hastings is constantly casting his gaze on Mary, and this moment is a prime example.
