Summary
Captain Arthur Hastings is staying at a convalescent home after incurring an injury in World War One, and after mostly recuperating, he's been granted a month's sick leave. He runs into an old acquaintance by the name of John Cavendish, a former barrister turned country squire and heir to the Styles estate, a place where Hastings had often stayed as a child. Hastings and John have a brief conversation in which John updates Hastings on his family's affairs: his mother has married a man twenty years her junior, Alfred Inglethorp, a man of whom John and the rest of his mother's close relations are highly suspicious—some are even downright hostile—because it seems clear to them that he is only interested in being married to her to benefit from her prodigious fortune and eventually inherit it for himself. Hastings, as narrator, also provides the reader with some noteworthy background on the Cavendish family—Mrs. Emily Cavendish (now Inglethorp) is not the biological mother of John and his younger brother, Lawrence; she is their step-mother, but she wed their father, a widower, when they were only boys.
John also informs Hastings that his brother Lawrence has abandoned the medical profession, despite having completed his degree and earned his license, in order to write and publish his poems, which John claims are nothing remarkable. John recounts how his mother met Alfred Inglethorp—through her many "hundreds" of charitable committees—and how Alfred is a distant cousin of his mother's close friend and confidante, Evelyn Howard. Evelyn recommended Alfred for a secretary position in one of Emily's committees, and their relationship blossomed from there. Over the course of the conversation, John insists that Hastings spend his leave at Styles for some well-earned rest and relaxation out in the country, and Hastings gladly accepts.
When Hastings arrives in the town of Styles St. Mary, he finds a sleepy town and a scantly inhabited train station where John Cavendish is waiting to collect him. John drives Hastings to the estate, where he is introduced promptly to Eve Howard, who is working in the garden. Hastings remarks to the reader on Eve's brusque, telegraphic manner of speaking. Hastings is enchanted by Mary Cavendish, John's wife, to whom he is introduced outside of the house. Hastings recounts his time at the convalescent home to Mary and believes her to be quite charmed by him. Then, as tea time approaches, Emily and Alfred Inglethorp emerge from the house; Hastings overhears them discussing committee affairs and debating whether or not and when to write their donors, among whom are princesses and nobles. They all gather for tea, and Hastings senses the tension at the table; clearly, no one likes or trusts Alfred except for Emily. Of everyone present, save for Hastings, who doesn't know the man, Eve's hostility toward Alfred is the most thinly veiled. Hastings tells the reader that though it is just a gut feeling, he also doesn't like Alfred from the start.
During tea, Cynthia Murdoch shows up; she is a young woman and somewhat of a caretaker for Emily. John characterizes the relationship as Emily having taken Cynthia under her wing. Cynthia works at the VAD dispensary and works closely with poisons and medicinal compounding. Alfred asks Hastings whether he is a career soldier, and Hastings replies that he is not; before the war, he worked at Lloyd's. Mary Cavendish asks Hastings what occupation he would take up if he had the choice, and he admits that he would very much like to be a detective. He alludes to meeting a remarkable Belgian detective some years back, and has since then developed his own style of deduction that he would very much like to apply to a real case someday. Eve Howard says that enjoys the occasional detective story, but that some mysteries are ridiculously written. She suggests that if a murder ever occurred around her, among people she knew, she would immediately know who the culprit was, because she'd simply sense it.
After tea, John shows Hastings to his room. The next morning, Hastings joins Mary on a walk around the grounds and through the woods. As they round back toward the house, John intercepts them and informs them of an ugly confrontation between Eve Howard and Emily Inglethorp earlier that is resulting in Eve's departure from Styles. According to John, Eve accused Alfred of taking advantage of Emily and only marrying her for her money. Eve even suggested that Alfred would "as soon murder [Emily] in [her] bed than look at [her]" (13). As Eve leaves the estate to much fanfare (Alfred and Emily are conspicuously absent from her farewell), she asks Hastings to keep an eye on Emily, because she is surrounded by "sharks" who want nothing more from her than what she can offer in her will (13). After Eve leaves, Mary goes over to converse with a bearded neighbor. Hastings asks John about the man, and John informs him that he is a physician named Dr. Bauerstein, a world-renowned poisons expert. John and Hastings walk back to the house and encounter "a pretty young woman of gipsy type coming in the opposite direction" (15). Hastings remarks on the young woman's prettiness, but John abruptly changes the subject. The young woman is Mrs. Raikes, a neighbor, and the person with whom Eve accused Alfred of cheating on Emily. As they reach the house, John confesses to Hastings that he is financially insolvent, and that his mother had always been more than generous and providing, "that is, up to now. Since her marriage, of course—" (15). Chapter One ends with Hastings considering Eve's foreboding words as she departed. With John and Lawrence in such financial need and domestic tensions being what they were, Hastings "had a premonition of approaching evil" (16).
Chapter Two focuses on July 16 and 17, two weeks into Hastings' stay at Styles, and roughly two weeks after Evelyn Howard made her exit from the estate. Hastings describes the events of the 16th, on which day the "famous bazaar" at Styles takes place in association with one of Emily's charity fundraisers for the war effort. Emily recites a war poem and Cynthia takes part in a tableau. The next morning, Mrs. Inglethorp takes Lawrence and Hastings to a luncheon—Mary is unable to attend due to previous plans with Dr. Bauerstein—and after the lunch, Lawrence suggests visiting Cynthia at work at the dispensary. They have tea with her and joke about poisons. Then she locks up the dispensary and they drive through the village together. Hastings notices a clear chemistry between Lawrence and Cynthia that afternoon, despite their usual constrained manner around one another. They make a pit-stop at the post office and Hastings is shocked to see his old friend, Monsieur Poirot, the Belgian detective whom he referred to as his inspiration to be a detective at tea on the day of his arrival. Poirot explains to Hastings that he is there along with seven other Belgian refugees thanks to the charity and hospitality of Emily Inglethorp.
When they return to the estate, Emily is curt and clearly bothered; she takes Dorcas's (her maidservant's) advice and plans to retire to bed "directly after supper" (23). Emily also confirms with Dorcas that she's lighted a fire in her bedroom. Hastings challenges Cynthia to a tennis match, and on his way to retrieve his racquet from his room, he runs into Mary Cavendish, who he notices also looks rather bothered in a fashion similar to Emily. He asks how her afternoon with Dr. Bauerstein went, and she curtly replies that she didn't go. Then, as Hastings crosses the grounds to the tennis courts, he is "unable to help overhearing the following scrap of dialogue" emanate from Emily Inglethorp's boudoir: Mary says, "Then you won't show it to me?" and Emily replies, "My dear Mary, it has nothing to do with that matter." Mary persists, "Then show it to me," and Emily says, "I tell you it is not what you imagine. It does not concern you in the least." Mary ends the conversation by saying, "Of course, I might have known you would shield him" (23-24).
When Cynthia finally catches up to Hastings by the tennis courts, she informs him of "the most awful row" that allegedly broke out between Alfred and Emily; she tells Hastings that she got her information from Dorcas, but doesn't know the details of their argument or its cause. Cynthia hopes that the row spells the end of the Inglethorp marriage. Hastings is surprised to find Alfred inexpressive at dinner, despite the rumors of conflict. Emily, however, seems rather short and eager to get to bed. She retires to her bedroom immediately after dinner. Alfred volunteers to take Emily her coffee. Hastings sat and briefly enjoyed the twilight with Mary Cavendish until Dr. Bauerstein showed up, much to Hastings' dismay. At this point, Mrs. Inglethorp came back out into the hall to ask Cynthia to carry in her despatch case, and Hastings remarks, "The door into the hall was a wide one. I had risen when Cynthia did, John was close by me. There were, therefore, three witnesses who could swear that Mrs. Inglethorp was carrying her coffee, as yet untasted, in her hand" (26). Alfred volunteers to accompany Dr. Bauerstein to the village and makes a point to tell everyone that they don't need to wait up for him, because he's taking the latchkey.
Very early the next morning, Lawrence alerts Hastings that his mother, Emily, has grown severely ill, but that she is locked inside her room and no one can access her to help. Hastings rushes out of bed and organizes an effort to break down the door after they check the doors of all the neighboring rooms and find them locked. Alfred is conspicuously absent. Once they manage to break down the door, they find Emily convulsing violently and in waves. Mary rushes in with Cynthia, who is curiously drowsy and looks like she's struggling to stay awake. Lawrence calls for his mother's physician, Dr. Wilkins. Dr. Bauerstein arrives on the scene first and begins manipulating Emily's arm to induce respiration. He tries to assist her breathing, but to no avail, and by the time Wilkins arrives, Emily Inglethorp née Cavendish is dead. Bauerstein asks for a private audience with Wilkins, and after they consult, they tell John that they must insist on performing a post-mortem examination to determine the cause of death. Hastings appeals to John and Lawrence to involve Poirot before Scotland Yard launches an official inquest. Hastings is surprised to see that Lawrence is staunchly against a private investigation and is highly defensive about there not being any foul play, as opposed to John, who is quite open to the idea of involving Poirot. Before retrieving his friend from the boardinghouse, Hastings goes to the estate library and takes out a medical book that includes a description of strychnine poisoning.
Analysis
Agatha Christie is a pioneering figure in the genre of mystery and detective novels; while modernists like Henry James experimented with new rhetorical strategies in fiction like utilizing unreliable narrators, Christie applied the same spirit of experimentation in novels like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, keeping readers on their toes and retaining freshness while working in a genre particularly susceptible to procedural patterns. The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduces two of her staple characters, Captain Arthur Hastings and Detective Hercule Poirot. Hastings narrates the novel, and one of the first things he does is establish his position as narrator. The first line of the novel indicates that the circumstances, or, a cloud of rumor surrounding the circumstances, is public knowledge: "The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as 'The Styles Case' has now somewhat subsided." Hastings continues to spell out his call-to-action for relating the story: "In view of the worldwide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story" (1). Very quickly, Christie establishes her narrator's authority; not only does he possess, firsthand, the facts which allow him to relate the story, he has been asked by those it most intimately concerns to tell it. The conceit that "The Styles Case" is a case of "worldwide notoriety" also immediately manufactures intrigue. The reader desires to be "in the know," even if it is a fictional parallel universe.
Speaking of parallel universes, other than inventing a murder case of international intrigue, Christie writes in and of her contemporary world. The First World War is still going on, and Arthur Hastings is a captain on leave. Before the War, he worked at Lloyd's of London, a real, well-known insurance firm. Christie draws on her firsthand knowledge of poisons, having worked in a hospital dispensary. The novel therefore carries a sense of realism eschewed by some of Christie's predecessors. The novel is also aware of the pantheon of detective novels with which it enters conversation, and moments of metafictional self-awareness set Christie apart, formally, from other mystery writers of the time. For example, when Hastings first arrives at Styles, Mary Cavendish asks him what he would choose as his profession "if [he] could just consult [his] inclination" (8) and he tells her he would like to be a detective to the tune of Sherlock Holmes. Miss Howard chimes in that she likes "a good detective story," but continues to say that there is "lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last chapter. Every one dumbfounded. Real crime—you'd know at once" (9). Howard continues to explain, against Hastings' bemused counterarguments, that she's not necessarily arguing that there are no unsolved cases, but that if a crime occurred under her nose, she would absolutely be able to identify the guilty party. The obvious irony of her statement becomes clear at the end of the novel, when she is revealed as a co-conspirator in Emily's murder, but the most remarkable quality of this exchange is the way it cheekily sets the novel apart from other novels in the same genre. Through one of her characters, Christie acknowledges the great deal of "nonsense" written in the genre, and implies to her reader that this novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, will be in a different league.
Like many mystery and detective novels, there is no shortage of foreshadowing, even in these first few chapters. Most notably and immediately relevant to the plot is when Emily Inglethorp objects to Mary's comments on poisoning. Mary says, "Dr. Bauerstein was saying yesterday that, owing to the general ignorance of the more uncommon poisons among the medical profession, there were probably countless cases of poisonings quite unexpected," to which Emily replies, "Why, Mary, what a gruesome conversation! ... It makes me feel as if a goose were walking over my grave" (9). The idiom Emily uses here originates from the belief that when a person walks over the future site of another person's burial, that other person will feel chills or have a shiver travel down their spine. The addition of "goose" may result from variations on the phrase that acknowledge the "goosebumps" that accompany such shivers. All of that to say that Emily Inglethorp feels as if Mary and Howard's discussion of poisonings somehow relate to her own demise, which readers learn shortly after to be all too true. Emily dies in the very next chapter due to poisoning.
