The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

“Cynthia,” called Mrs. Inglethorp, “do you think you could write a few notes for me?”
“Certainly, Aunt Emily.”
She jumped up promptly, and something in her manner reminded me that her position was a dependent one, and that Mrs. Inglethorp, kind as she might be in the main, did not allow her to forget it.

She beamed fondly at him, as he substituted another with every demonstration of the tenderest care. Strange infatuation of an otherwise sensible woman!
With the

“My wife, Hastings,” said John.
I shall never forget my first sight of Mary Cavendish. Her tall, slender form, outlined against the bright light; the vivid sense of slumbering fire that seemed to find expression only in those wonderful tawny eyes of hers, remarkable eyes, different from any other woman’s that I have ever known; the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilized body—all these things are burnt into my memory. I shall never forget them.
She greeted me with a few words of pleasant welcome in a low clear voice, and I sank into a basket chair feeling distinctly glad that I had accepted John’s invitation.

an account of the genesis of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first published novel written some fifty years earlier. It had its origins in a challenge from her sister Madge: “I bet you can’t write a good detective story.” At the time Agatha was working in the dispensary of the local hospital and had a professional knowledge of poisons. This, coupled with the fact that Belgian refugees fleeing the First World War were arriving in her hometown of Torquay on the south coast of England, provided Agatha with both her murder method and her detective’s background