Summary
Hastings goes straight to the boardinghouse where Poirot is staying with other Belgian refugees of the war. On his way up the garden path toward the house, he runs into Alfred Inglethorp bounding in the opposite direction. Alfred exclaims about how terrible it is that his "poor wife" has died and claims to have just heard the news that morning. Hastings asks him where he's been and how he heard the news, and Alfred explains that his lawyer, Denby, kept him late into the night, and he realized that he had not, after all, taken the latchkey with him when he left the estate. So, he stayed overnight at the boardinghouse, and he heard the news of Emily's death through Denby, who was informed by Dr. Wilkins. Hastings thinks Alfred is a liar and a hypocrite, but he keeps his thoughts to himself and simply excuses himself on toward the house to alert his friend Poirot of what has occurred.
Hastings relates the facts of the previous evening, but he is flustered and fails to present a succinct, precise timeline. Poirot excuses Hastings' botched attempt to communicate the facts—he calls it "deplorable" but attributes it to him being upset by what's taken place right under his nose. Poirot and Hastings head to the estate together, and Poirot is struck by the beauty of the gardens. He remarks sorrowfully to Hastings that he feels for the family, assuming they are "prostrated by grief" (40). This comment causes Hastings to consider the odd lack of grief or really any sort of emotional distress among the Styles inhabitants following Emily's demise, and upon reflection, he finds it quite odd, as if they all could be possible suspects and all had unique motives as to why they might benefit from her death.
Upon arriving at the house, Hastings and Poirot are led in by John Cavendish, who is, at this point, quite stressed, because Dr. Bauerstein's urgency and insistence upon keeping the bedroom doors locked seem to confirm that Mrs. Inglethorp was, in fact, murdered. John asks Poirot to try to keep his investigation discreet, as he would prefer to avoid media attention. Poirot assures him that he understands and will remain as discreet as possible. John confides in Arthur that he's having a hard time knowing how to regard Alfred while Alfred is the primary suspect in his mother's murder. Poirot and Arthur follow John into his mother's bedroom after he unlocks the door for them. Poirot notes that the door was, in fact, locked, and John tells him that the doctors insisted upon locking it. This indicates to Poirot that they are already quite certain that Mrs. Inglethorp was poisoned. Poirot chides Arthur for standing in the corner of the room rather than helping him investigate; Arthur tells him that he is trying to avoid leaving footprints, but Poirot dismisses his concern as ridiculous, seeing as so many people have already tramped through the room since the night before.
Upon further inspection, Poirot finds a cup of what recently contained cocoa with rum. There are a few broken items from when a table allegedly fell over, but Poirot notices a glaring inconsistency—while most of the broken items are fractured in one or two places, the coffee mug has been ground to powder, as if someone were intentionally destroying it beyond what would naturally occur if it fell off of the table. Of this discovery, Poirot says, "somebody stepped on that cup, grinding it to powder, and the reason they did so was either because it contained strychnine or—which is far more serious—because it did not contain strychnine!" (45). He continues to search the room, finds a ring of keys, and unlocks a case containing Emily's private papers. Poirot remarks that he "has no authority to go through" the papers, but that "it should be done—at once!" (46).
Poirot enumerates five of the six "points of interest" he has found in the room: the crushed cup of coffee; the case; a fresh, damp stain on the floor; a shred of green fabric; and a bit of spilled candle grease (46). He refuses to tell Hastings the sixth point. Before they leave the room, Poirot also finds a burned fragment of Emily's will, which prompts him to demand an interview with Dorcas, the maidservant of the house. As they walk through the garden, Poirot notices a perfectly arranged patch of begonias and suggests to Hastings that they may be pertinent to the case. They then meet with Dorcas, who is at first suspicious of Poirot, but quickly lets down her defenses when she sees that he's trying to help bring justice to Emily, a woman Dorcas clearly admired and describes as "a very good mistress" (50). Dorcas immediately casts aspersions on Alfred Inglethorp. Poirot asks Dorcas about the nature of the quarrel that took place in Emily's bedroom the day before, the same quarrel that Mary Cavendish overheard. Dorcas is positive that Emily was arguing with Alfred Inglethorp, though she could barely hear the man's side of the argument. For Emily's part, Dorcas clearly heard her say "How dare you? I have kept you and clothed you and fed you! You owe everything to me! And this is how you repay me! By bringing disgrace upon our name!" Emily continued to say, according to Dorcas, "Nothing you can say will make any difference. I see my duty clearly. My mind is made up. You need not think that any fear of publicity, or scandal between husband and wife will deter me" (51).
Though Dorcas is certain that Emily was talking to Alfred, Poirot's line of questioning suggests that he is unconvinced that this is the case. Dorcas goes on to describe attending to Emily in her bedroom, and Emily finding a letter and being shocked by its contents. Dorcas recalls Emily telling her, upon reading the letter, never to trust a man. Poirot finishes questioning Dorcas and moves on to Annie, another servant, though younger than Dorcas and new to the estate; unlike Dorcas, Annie is not bereaved but rather seems quite thrilled by the intrigue of Emily Inglethorp's possible murder. Annie unwittingly reveals what Hastings believes to be a pivotal detail—she says that she noticed coarse grains of salt on the serving tray when she brought Emily her cocoa. Hastings is sure that the "salt" Annie tells them about is actually strychnine, but after the interview concludes, Poirot seems wholly uninterested in this theory, and suggests that the salt could simply have been salt. Before they leave Emily's boudoir, however, Poirot produces a crumpled note from his pocket upon which, in Emily's handwriting, the phrase "I am possessed" is written over and over again (61).
After looking at the note, it occurs to Hastings that perhaps Emily was mentally ill and ended her own life. Poirot wastes no time moving right along with the investigation, though, and seems to ascribe less importance to the note than Hastings. When Poirot goes to investigate the coffee cups, Hastings questions his judgment on the basis that he thinks the cocoa was clearly the culprit. Poirot chides Hastings for putting so much stock in "that miserable cocoa" (62). Poirot determines that with five coffee cups, all are accounted for (because Alfred doesn't drink coffee) and both he and Hastings emerge from the sitting room. John greets them in the hallway and invites them both to breakfast with everyone else. John asks Poirot for the status of his preliminary investigation, hoping that he doesn't suspect foul play, but Poirot tells John not to "buoy [himself] up with any false hopes" (64), meaning that Poirot is quite certain that Emily was murdered. Poirot asks John for the opinions of other members of the household, and John reports that his brother, Lawrence, thinks the investigation is preposterous and that Emily died from heart failure. Poirot asks what Mary thinks, and John says he doesn't have any idea what his wife thinks about it—Hastings notes an awkwardness in the air after that. Poirot presses on to ask John whether he thinks Alfred actually forgot the latchkey, thus substantiating his absence from the estate the night before, or whether he thinks Alfred is making that up. John says he doesn't know, but he can check to see if the latchkey is in its usual spot. Poirot assures him that the time for checking has passed—if he had seen it there in the morning, before Alfred had returned, it would have substantiated Alfred's story, and if not, would be a point against him.
At breakfast, Hastings observes all of the inhabitants of the estate in their various states of exhaustion, composure, and grief. He is privately disgusted by what he concludes is Alfred Inglethorp's performance of grief, and not genuine grief. Cynthia looks ill and confesses to a massive headache, and he describes Mary as looking elegant and composed. As they eat, Mr. Wells arrives to speak with John. Wells was Emily's lawyer, but he is also a coroner. John invites Hastings and Poirot to join him in speaking with Wells. Wells confirms that there will be an inquest because the doctors will not grant a death certificate claiming that Emily died of natural causes, so the cause must be determined.
Poirot asks Mr. Wells about the contents of a letter Emily wrote to him the day before. Wells says that the letter contained no details, just a request to meet with him at once about an urgent matter. Poirot asks Wells and John about Emily's will, to whom they think she left her money, and the effect of her remarriage on the beneficiaries of her will. They inform him that her marriage to Alfred does entitle him to her home and fortune and renders her previous wills null and void, unless she wrote a new will stipulating otherwise.
Poirot maintains that he knows Emily wrote a new will the day before, but that she burned it before it could be notarized. He asks John to call in the gardeners so he can prove his claim. John does, and a man named Manning enters the office in heavy boots. Manning recounts being brought into Mrs. Inglethorp's study and being asked to sign a long document, the contents of which were hidden beneath blotting paper. From Manning's story, Wells concludes that Emily wrote a new will that morning, then burned it later after having an intense argument with someone later in the day. Wells proposes that it is no coincidence that Emily wrote a new will the day before she was murdered. The key questions they're left with are why she would amend the will in the first place, and what would prompt her to burn the emendations.
After they dismiss Manning, Eve Howard arrives. She's greeted by John, Hastings, and Poirot. Immediately, she accuses Alfred Inglethorp of committing the murder. She insists that he is the culprit, and that any investigation aiming to prove otherwise is a farce. Poirot enlists her help. He tells her that he believes she would be a valuable ally in the investigation, because she appears to be the only person at Styles who has actually cried over the death of Emily Inglethorp. Eve explains that her fondness for Emily was made possible because she never accepted any gifts from her. She explains that Emily Inglethorp was a generous woman, but she liked to remind people that they were in her debt, and so she never had any real close friends. Eve maintains that her refusal of any gifts, "not a pair of gloves, nor a theatre ticket," (80) made their true friendship possible.
After they meet Eve, John, Hastings, Poirot, and Wells go to Emily's office to look in her despatch case; Poirot goes to unlock it, for he took both keys earlier in the day to prevent anyone from tampering with it, but finds that it is already unlocked and that the lock has been forced open. Poirot concludes that there was a vital piece of evidence in the case that was so significant that the guilty party decided it was more worth it to risk being caught tampering with the case than to risk Poirot finding whatever they swiped from it. Poirot and Hastings return to Poirot's room at the boardinghouse to review the evidence they have so far. While they're talking it through, the young man from the chemist's comes knocking at Poirot's door. He asks Poirot if Mrs. Inglethorp was poisoned, and if, by chance, the poison used was strychnine. He then whispers something to Poirot which Hastings cannot make out. And the young man leaves, Poirot states to Hastings that there are two major details of importance at the moment—the weather the day before, and the fact that Alfred Inglethorp has a very enigmatic fashion sense. Poirot grows emotional as he declares that he will avenge Emily, whose generosity has kept him and his fellow countrymen housed. He says, "She would never forgive me if I let Alfred Inglethorp, her husband, be arrested now—when a word from me could save him!" (93).
Analysis
Christie keeps her reader in suspense by frequently introducing inconsistencies into the narrative—the case against Alfred Inglethorp seems at this point to be the strongest and most obvious, but it comes with its fair share of obstacles. Meanwhile, she teases details that suggest no one in the Styles estate is beyond suspicion. John Cavendish, as natural heir to the Cavendish fortune, had a motive to obfuscate Emily's intentions regarding her will if she faced indecision about whether to revoke his claim to an inheritance; and yet, he seems so cooperative and supportive, even, when it comes to Poirot's investigation. Hastings casts his suspicion on Mary, who he observes the day after Emily's death as being "graceful, composed, [and] enigmatic" (66). Mary, as John's wife, had a motive to ensure she and her husband were taken care of in the event of Emily's death. And finally, there is Lawrence, whose training as a physician would surely make him more qualified than the average person to see that Emily's death was not of natural causes; his insistence that it was marks him with guilt. The web of guilty-acting suspects with disparate and conflicting motives points to a reality in which several different schemes played out on the evening of Emily's death, and not all of them were meant to kill her.
Christie incorporates illustrations into her debut novel, a unique and unconventional way to invite the reader into the process of solving the Inglethorp murder. Illustrations include maps and pieces of evidence. The maps are assumed to be drawn up by Hastings himself and are referred to as tools of clarification for the reader by Hastings. The whole novel is a conscious presentation of the case by Hastings to a wider audience at the alleged request of the Cavendish family, according to Hastings' account in Chapter 1 (1). The maps, one of the living quarters (28) and a more detailed one specifically of Emily Inglethorp's bedroom (43), allow Christie via Hastings to refer to the space with reportorial prose, taking for granted the reader's knowledge of the space being described. These visual aids allow Hastings to adopt the efficient, observational tone of a detective without relying on language alone to render space. Other visuals include evidence found by Poirot—the first is a fragment of a document "reproduced" by Hastings as an illustration (48), and the second is a fragment of paper on which Emily has written the phrase "I am possessed" over and over again (61). These illustrations serve to further immerse the reader in the mystery by creating the feeling of being presented with primary sources and hard evidence. Seeing Emily's "handwriting" interrupts the uniformity of typeface and serves to make her more "real" to the reader, a real person with a unique and recognizable script.
On the subject of Emily Inglethorp's handwritten notes, the "I am possessed" note is a prime example of Christie's frequent use of "red herrings." A red herring is a literary device used to misdirect the reader's suspicion by presenting them with evidence that would lead to an obvious conclusion. Red herrings often lead the reader to assume the guilt of an innocent suspect while the actual guilty party evades suspicion in plain sight. In the case of Emily Inglethorp's "I am possessed" note, the red herring is that the combination of words and their mystifying presentation naturally lead the reader to believe that Emily was deeply troubled—however, upon closer inspection, Poirot points out that the word "possessed" is spelled several different ways on the note. Poirot didn't rest on the most obvious and superficial conclusion, that Emily was crazed and writing the phrase "I am possessed" to indicate that she was possessed by some demon; rather, he interpreted the repetition as her testing out the spelling of the word as she drew up an amended will. This is an example of a relatively short-lived red herring. In some cases, the misdirection is sustained for an entire novel.
At this point in the story, Alfred Inglethorp is the most obvious suspect, and Christie plays into this expectation by reintroducing Evelyn Howard, Alfred's obstinate opponent who has suspected him from the beginning, before any crime was even committed. Poirot, on the other hand, is at this point committed to preventing Inglethorp's arrest. By perpetually placing Poirot in opposition to the most obvious conclusion, Christie keeps her reader, and Hastings—who serves as a surrogate of the reader in the text—guessing.
