Summary
In the days leading up to the inquest, Hastings is offended by Poirot's caginess toward him. He's grown used to being a confidant to Poirot, and now he feels boxed out. Remembering that Poirot is particularly interested in the Inglethorp-Cavendishes' relationship with their neighbors at Raikes's farm, he takes it upon himself to walk over there and ask after him. At the farm, he speaks to "an aged rustic" (94) and confirms that Poirot has made several visits. The man he speaks to also alludes to another resident of the Styles estate making frequent visits to the farm, but his tone suggests that these calls were of a more social nature than Poirot's. When Hastings asks if "the gentlemen from the hall come [there] often," the man responds, "one does, mister. Naming no names, mind. And a very liberal gentleman too!" (95). Hastings automatically assumes that the man is referring to Alfred Inglethorp and is further disgusted by Inglethorp's manipulation of Emily.
Hastings describes the proceedings of the inquest. John is questioned and gives his account of the night Emily died. Emily's body is presented and John identifies it before the jury. After John, medical evidence is presented. Dr. Bauerstein takes the stand and testifies that Emily Inglethorp clearly died as a result of ingesting strychnine. He rules out the possibility of the strychnine being administered in the cocoa on account of strychnine being extremely bitter and difficult to conceal. He says that it could, however, be concealed in coffee, because coffee already has a bitter taste. They are unable to inspect Emily's coffee cup because it was smashed and ground up by someone who seemed to have deliberately done so to conceal evidence. The only remaining question for Bauerstein is how the effects of the strychnine were delayed until morning—there are substances they could test for, he claims, if the coffee cup remained intact.
Next to the stand was Lawrence Cavendish, who largely repeated his brother's account of the night. Before he left the stand, though, he proposed that Emily's death could very well have been of natural causes. He reveals that she took a nightly medication that contained strychnine, and the cumulative effects of the medication could have led to her ultimate demise. Dr. Wilkins, Emily's personal physician, then took the stand to refute Lawrence's claim. He admits that she did take a medication that contained trace amounts of strychnine, but posits that even a cumulative amount of strychnine from the medication would not have caused a sudden death like the one Emily Inglethorp experienced. The juror suggests that perhaps the chemist made an error when compounding the medication, and the doctor concedes that this is always a possibility, but he sees it as highly unlikely.
Following Lawrence, Dorcas takes the stand, and then Mary Cavendish. Mary gives her account of the night in question. She recalls hearing a loud thud early in the morning, presumably the table in Emily's bedroom. She then joined Dorcas and her husband in the hallway outside of Emily's door in response to a bell ringing from inside the room. She repeats the detail that the bedroom door was locked from the inside. The Coroner then asks her about an argument she overheard while sitting outside of Emily's bedroom. Mary reluctantly confirms that she heard Emily shouting about something related to a "scandal between husband and wife" (101). On the stand, Cynthia maintains that she heard nothing the night of the murder, because she was fast asleep. Miss Howard showed the jury a letter she received from Emily asking her to come to Styles after her dramatic exit. She claims that the letter clearly suggests that Emily realized she was in the wrong. Howard also suggests that the letter is proof that Emily had realized that Alfred was no good, but the lawyer dismissed her accusations, claiming that the letter provided no such proof.
Next up to the witness stand is Albert Mace, the young man from the chemist's who visited Poirot at the boardinghouse. Mace testifies to having sold strychnine to Alfred Inglethorp shortly before Emily's death. It was an unauthorized sale, but due to Alfred's status, Mace thought it wouldn't be an issue. He says that Alfred told him it was to kill a dog. Mace produces the ledger signed, supposedly, by Alfred Inglethorp, as proof of the sale of strychnine. Next, Inglethorp takes the stand. Inglethorp denies purchasing strychnine, and he denies any wrongdoing or connection to Emily's death. When the prosecutor asks him to provide an alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the murder, Inglethorp says he was alone, out on a walk, and claims to have forgotten where he was walking to. Poirot is shocked by Inglethorp's arrogance and wonders whether he wants to be arrested, for the terrible job he's doing appearing innocent. The judge hands down his verdict—"wilful [sic] murder against some person or persons unknown" (109).
As Poirot and Mr. Hastings leave the trial, they hang back to meet the two Scotland Yard agents. Detective-Inspector Japp and Poirot know each other from a previous case and Japp is curious to hear Poirot’s side. Under Poirot’s unfailing scrutiny, Japp all but confirms that he has come down to arrest Mr. Inglethorp. Poirot does not want to see Mr. Inglethorp arrested and attempts to persuade the Scotland Yard men to spurn their warrant, convincing Japp but not his partner, Superintendent Summerhaye, who has only heard of Poirot secondhand and quickly dismisses his concerns. Hastings finds himself agreeing with the latter of the two agents. Japp promises Poirot that he will hold off on the arrest and then come to Styles later to hear out the evidence that would destroy any case lobbied against Mr. Inglethorp. He leaves thanking the detective for saving Scotland Yard’s reputation.
Poirot and Hastings then go over the details of the trail together, debating whether Mr. Inglethorp’s silence on the witness stand was indicting or just a stupid way of responding to the situation. Hastings, convinced of Inglethorp’s guilt, reminds Poirot that the evidence points conclusively towards Inglethorp. Poirot argues that real proof never reveals itself so absolutely. Rather he believes that someone has manufactured the evidence against Inglethorp, “so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends” (114). The detective then maintains that only a fool would commit a murder with so much accusing them and not so much as a clever alibi. Rejecting the witness’s statement that confirmed Mr. Inglethorp bought the strychnine, Poirot posits instead that Mr. Inglethorp has such an unusual and distinctive appearance that it would be easy for someone to disguise themselves as him and be mistaken for him by the clerk. They then discuss the problem of Inglethorp’s alibi, to which Poirot already knows the answer, much to Hasting’s dissatisfaction. Sorting through the other moments that struck them in court, Poirot notes Lawrence’s insistence that his mother died from natural causes, Dr. Bauerstein’s insomnia, and the matter of Mary Cavendish hearing the table fall the night of the murder on the other side of the floor and not Claudia, who was sleeping in the next room.
The Scotland Yard agents rejoin the two men and they arrive at Styles together. Poirot assembles everyone in the drawing-room to reveal his defense of Mr. Inglethorp to the police and the family, though Hastings doubts Poirot has anything tangible to offer. Both John and the narrator struggle with the reality of being involved in a murder, a reality cemented by the looming threat of the agents’ presence in the house. To start, Poirot accuses Mr. Inglethorp directly of murdering his wife, hoping to provoke Mr. Inglethorp into revealing his alibi. Mr. Inglethorp once again refuses, so Poirot reveals in the widower’s stead that he has a list of witnesses placing the man across town with another woman, Mrs. Raikes, making it impossible for Mr. Inglethorp to have also bought the strychnine.
Analysis
A frequent tenet of mystery and detective novels is that in the course of the story, at least one key character must be lying. In the course of presenting however many conflicting testimonies, the reader knows that only one version of the story actually happened; but another frequent tenet of the genre is that this actuality occurs outside of the margins of the text, or, to use a film analogy, "offscreen." This obfuscation keeps the reader in the same place of tension and uncertainty as most of the characters in the story—but also like most of the characters in the story, the reader can never truly be at ease with any of the characters. Not only is there the sense that someone is lying, that one of the characters must be the culprit, but there is the sense that it could very well be any one of them. Since Christie makes sure to put no resident of Styles Hall totally above suspicion, except perhaps Hastings and Poirot, that tension persists. Early on in the novel, Christie, through the character of Evie Howard, criticizes the status quo tone and plots of the mystery genre as verging on farcical in their unreality; The Mysterious Affair at Styles strives for a more "realistic" atmosphere, and Christie's personal knowledge of poisons from working at a hospital dispensary allows characters like Cynthia, who also works at a dispensary, Dr. Bauerstein, Dr. Watkins, Lawrence Cavendish, who trained as a physician, and Eve Howard, whose father was a physician, to speak intelligently and factually about poisons, tinctures, and medication compounding. Christie also pushes into the archetype of the obvious culprit with her portrayal of Alfred Inglethorp.
Alfred Inglethorp has a target on his back from the beginning of the novel, well before Emily's death seems imminent. Of course, the framing of the novel from the beginning anticipates a crime—the events are being reported per the memory of Arthur Hastings, and the narrative is consciously and explicitly being written for the purpose of "silenc[ing] the sensational rumors" (1) about a well-known murder case. Though Hastings doesn't explicitly state that it is Emily who is the victim, her being the matriarch of the family, the holder of wealth, and, as Eve says, surrounded by "sharks" (13) leads the reader to the rather obvious conclusion that Emily won't be surviving the first few chapters. Alfred has just married Emily, he is considerably younger, and everyone close to her suspects that his sole motivation for marrying her is money. When Emily dies, everyone automatically assumes it is Alfred. Based on Eve's own testimony against the detective genre being full of "nonsense" stories in which the characters are all oblivious regarding the identity of the true culprit, Alfred's character seems to both lean into this trope Christie is consciously writing against while, at the same time, resisting it. Readers have, at this point in time, been trained to look out for the "red herring," the too-obvious villain, and Inglethorp embodies the perfect red herring. But Christie embraces his guilt and creates a second-order mystery in which Poirot has to prove Alfred innocent of certain elements of the crime, thus effectively clearing his name in both the other characters' and potentially the reader's eyes, until it is ultimately revealed that he is, after all, guilty of aiding in the crime. Eve Howard and Alfred Inglethorp conspire to commit a crime so obvious that their strategy is to lean into its obviousness, an innovative plot for a detective novel, akin to hiding in plain sight.
Through Poirot, Christie exposits the dichotomy of Inglethorp's terrible defense, and, in general, the dichotomy of guilt and innocence, and how guilty and innocent people respond to questioning. At one point during Inglethorp's testimony, after he claims not to remember where he was the night of his wife's recent death and claims to have been on a walk, alone, with no witnesses or alibi, Poirot says to Hastings, "Does this imbecile of a man want to be arrested?" (107). Of course, this seemingly rhetorical question turns out to be more of a premonition, because part of Alfred and Evelyn's plan was to have Alfred arrested on false evidence, and then once proven innocent, safe from being tried twice for the same crime. Poirot's sharp faculties of observation and deduction prevent this from happening. Later, when discussing Dr. Bauerstein's reason for walking around the Inglethorp estate late at night, Hastings reminds Poirot that the doctor allegedly has insomnia, to which Poirot responds, "[Insomnia] is a very good, or a very bad explanation. ... It covers everything, and explains nothing" (119). This dichotomy of "covering everything and explaining nothing" speaks to the frustrating notion that an innocent person may appear guilty because they cannot justify their whereabouts, but, as an innocent person, they were not anticipating having to justify their whereabouts. Of course, Bauerstein is hiding something, but it's not a murder. Poirot later reveals to Hastings that he had deduced Bauerstein may be a spy long before he was arrested on suspicion of espionage.
Though Christie nods to the nonsensical nature of many works in the detective genre, the plot of The Mysterious Affair at Styles nonetheless relies on many coincidences that muddy the plot and obstruct Poirot's legendary faculties of deduction. In the final third of the novel, Christie gradually reveals the actuality of events on the night of the tragedy, which include two marital affairs, a narcotic sleeping draught, medicinal salts, and a fake beard. Which is to say, while it does subvert many of the expectations of its time, it still very much partakes in the silliness and fancifulness of the brand of detective novel that literary critic Louis Menand refers to as "theatricals," in stark opposition to the hardboiled detective novels of, for instance, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammitt.
