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The Mysterious Affair at Styles

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Overview

Who poisoned the wealthy Emily Inglethorpe, and how did the murderer penetrate and escape from her locked bedroom Sus-pects abound in the quaint village of Styles St. Mary-from the heiress's fawning new husband to her two stepsons, her volatile housekeeper, and a pretty nurse who works in a hospital dispensary. Making his unforgettable debut, the brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is on the case. "The key to the success of this style of detective novel," writes Elizabeth George in her Introduction, "lies in how the author deals with both the clues and the red herrings, and it has to be said that no one bettered Agatha Christie at this game." From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Author Information

Bio of Agatha Christie

One of the most successful and beloved writer of mystery stories, Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay, County Devon, England. She wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, launching a literary career that spanned decades. In her lifetime, she authored 79 crime novels and a short story collection, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language with another billion in 44 foreign languages. Some of her most famous titles include Murder on the Orient Express, Mystery of the Blue Train, And Then There Were None, 13 at Dinner and The Sittaford Mystery. Noted for clever and surprising twists of plot, many of Christie's mysteries feature two unconventional fictional detectives named Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Poirot, in particular, plays the hero of many of her works, including the classic, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and Curtain (1975), one of her last works in which the famed detective dies. Over the years, her travels took her to the Middle East where she met noted English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. They married in 1930. Christie accompanied Mallowan on annual expeditions to Iraq and Syria, which served as material for Murder in Mesopotamia (1930), Death on the Nile (1937), and Appointment with Death (1938). Christie's credits also include the plays, The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution (1953; film 1957). Christie received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1954-1955 for Witness. She was also named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. Christie died in 1976.

Bio of Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George was born Susan Elizabeth George in Warren, Ohio. When she was eighteen months old, her family relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area where they lived in what's now part of Silicon Valley but was then the small town of Mountain View. There, she was educated at St. Joseph's Grammar School and Holy Cross High School by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. She began her university education at Foothill Community College in Los Altos Hills, and from there she transferred to and graduated from the University of California in Riverside, California, picking up units along the way at UC Berkeley as well. She also attended California State University at Fullerton, where she was awarded a master's degree in Counseling/Psychology and UC Riverside again where she received a lifetime secondary teaching credential. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by California State University at Fullerton.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

613.75 KB

Number of Pages

208

eBook ISBN

9781588363947

Excerpt from: The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

CHAPTER I

I GO TO STYLES

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.

Their country-place, Styles Court, had been purchased by Mr. Cavendish early in their married life. He had been completely under his wife's ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income; an arrangement that was distinctly unfair to his two sons. Their stepmother, however, had always been most generous to them; indeed, they were so young at the time of their father's remarriage that they always thought of her as their own mother.

Lawrence, the younger, had been a delicate youth. He had qualified as a doctor but early relinquished the profession of medicine, and lived at home while pursuing literary ambitions; though his verses never had any marked success.

John practised for some time as a barrister, but had finally settled down to the more congenial life of a country squire. He had married two years ago, and had taken his wife to live at Styles, though I entertained a shrewd suspicion that he would have preferred his mother to increase his allowance, which would have enabled him to have a home of his own. Mrs. Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings.