The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Hercule Poirot is among the most famous fictional detectives ever created, a man committed to using the “little grey cells” of his brain to clear away fiendishly complex chains of false and misleading evidence. Everyone he meets tends to underestimate him, partly due to his strange and unassuming appearance (a small man, with a head “exactly the shape of an egg” (16)). He is also greeted with careless indulgence by the English he meets, due to the gentle strangeness of his manner and his strong Belgian accent. Thus, he is allowed into confidences to which no other investigator has access.

His nemeses never fear him, mostly because Poirot does not take his quarry personally. Instead, he is a very self-focused person, becoming deeply immersed in his investigation and taking it personally when his “little grey cells” fail him. Poirot is not bent on delivering justice or avenging wrongs; rather, he is on a crusade against carelessness. Poirot’s fastidiousness can border on mania: When he is really overwrought, his hands shake, he raises his voice, or he pounds his fists on the table. Every investigation is a chance to set the world to rights—to undo the chaos that led to World War and led to Poirot’s becoming a refugee.

Emily Inglethorp does not fire the passions of her friends and family, even as a victim of murder. “The dead woman had not the gift of commanding love,” notes Poirot when running down the considerable number of suspects in her murder (30). Emily wielded her fortune as a weapon, rewriting her will at the drop of a hat to punish or reward family members, which is a good formula for generating ill-will and motives for assassination. Nevertheless, her charity forcefully demands her killer be brought to justice. Poirot is in Styles by her request, having been displaced with more than a dozen of his own countrymen by the German occupation of Belgium, so it is due to her hospitality that Poirot commits his genius to solving her murder.

Emily’s secretary Alfred Inglethorp is suspected of the crime from the start, having the motive, means, and opportunity to commit the murder, not to mention an indefinable and unsettling outsider quality that everyone in the story comments on. His manner is stiff and cold, and his appearance is a villainous caricature: bold hat, glasses, and beard. Everything about him is an irritant designed to get under the reader’s skin.

By contrast, when Evelyn Howard, Emily’s best friend and main secretary, provides  seemingly unflinching support for her murdered friend, readers assume she must be on the side of justice, even if her condemnation of Alfred seems just a touch too vehement. As Poirot points out, her stubbornness and literal-mindedness paints Evie as distinctly English, which makes her murderous betrayal of her supposedly beloved friend all the greater (not to mention nearly impossible to ascertain from the clues provided by the plot).

Emily’s stepson John does what he can to measure up to the Cavendish name and legacy, while being a little too dull and unimaginative to really pull it off. When John is put on trial for Emily’s murder, he handles himself with the incompetence in practical matters one might expect from a member of the gentry class. He can’t possibly imagine himself as guilty and takes offense at the idea that anyone thinks otherwise. Though he and his wife Mary flirt with the idea of leaving each other for more exciting lovers, Mary’s jealousy of John ultimately makes her his key supporter, and vice versa.