The Mysterious Affair at Styles
- Downloads
- 100+
- First published
- 1920
- Pages
- 190
About this book
Agatha Christie's very first novel introduces a detective who would become one of fiction's most beloved: Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian refugee with his egg-shaped head and his little grey cells. Invalided home from the Great War, Captain Hastings visits the country house of Styles, where the wealthy Emily Inglethorp is soon found dead of strychnine poisoning. Suspicion falls first on her much younger husband, but a tangle of alibis, a burned scrap of a will, and a locked bedroom demands a sharper mind. Narrated by Hastings and built around a clever, fair-play puzzle, the book set the pattern for the classic English whodunit. It still makes a satisfying introduction to Christie's craft.
From the opening pages
The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as “The Styles Case” has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide 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. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist.
I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which led to my being connected with the affair.
I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month’s sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very little of him for some years. Indeed, I had never known him particularly well. He was a good fifteen years my senior, for one thing, though he hardly looked his forty-five years. As a boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles, his mother’s place in Essex.
We had a good yarn about old times, and it ended in his inviting me down to Styles to spend my leave there.
“The mater will be delighted to see you again—after all those years,” he added.
“Your mother keeps well?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she has married again?”
I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had married John’s father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic, autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady Bountiful. She was a most generous woman, and possessed a considerable fortune of her own.
Contents
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Book facts
- Author
- Agatha Christie
- First published
- 1920
- Reading time
- About 4 hours
- Pages
- 190
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Detective Books
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online