"Perhaps one day, when this terrible war is ended,
we shall work again together, eh?
And Poirot will explain it all to you."
Hello everyone!
It's a shame really, because this piece tonight happens to be part of one of my all-time favourite series ever made, and I'm talking EVER.
There is nothing out there that can compare to it.
Basically, I'm someone who grew up watching Jeremy Brett play his way through Sherlock Holmes stories, then once I was old enough, I switched to this.
But apparently all I've ever done have been snippets and vague looks into the series, which won't do!
It's time to be more serious about it, possibly even gotta-catch-em-all serious.
So without further ado, let's hop straight into The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Agatha Christie's first ever detective novel, and it coincidentally also introduces her probably most famous detective protagonist, the little Belgian Hercule Poirot. She has several other sleuths in her arsenal (Miss Marple being another prime example), but she is DECIDEDLY best known for Poirot, he of the mustached fame.
In TMAAS, Poirot has been displaced. The Great War is on, and Belgium is no longer a place for people who do not support Germany, so he's a refugee in the UK when he runs into the most unlikely person he could ever have run into - Captain Arthur Hastings.
Hastings, wounded on the French front and sent home to recover, is in the same village as Poirot because he's staying with an old friend of his, John Cavendish. John lives at the village manor, Styles Court, owned and ruled by his mother Emily Inglethorp, who married a man twenty years her junior.
Others living in the manor are John's wife Mary, his brother Lawrence, Emily's ward Cynthia and her companion Evelyn. There's a decided air of tension because of Emily's recent marriage, something even clueless Hastings can very easily feel, and the first one to blow a gasket and leave is Evelyn, who warns him that Alfred Inglethorp is the devil and will kill her beloved Emily first chance he gets.
Hastings being Hastings (if you don't know, he ought to have been named Captain Not-So-Obvious), he's clueless about everything else, though by the time it's ass-hour in the night and he wakes to a commotion outside, it's pretty much already too late.
They manage to break into Emily's room where she seems to be having a fit, and the doctor DOES arrive in a pretty timely fashion, but it's too late - she dies in her eldest son's arms.
Things take an unexpected turn when the doctor says he wants an autopsy, because her symptoms all point to strychnine poisoning, and also, where's her husband in all this?
The hubs, conveniently, set out into the stormy night after dinner the previous evening, supposedly to talk to their realtor, but who goes to talk to people like that after 8 pm when it's hot outside?!?
Obviously you can see who the prime suspect is, and he doesn't try helping his case much at all.
Hastings has the brilliant idea to get Poirot, who, while initially confused because the English rise so early, is immediately wide awake and presentable when given the task, and so the duo go to examine the deceased's bedroom. Here, Poirot discovers several interesting facts.
The fire was lit, despite it being MELTING HOT outside even for summer; a blob of white candle wax on the carpet; a shattered coffee cup; a stain of coffee on the carpet, too; a piece of green material caught on the bolt to the ward's door; and an empty bottle for a sleeping tonic in one of her drawers.
This array of facts mean nothing to Hastings, but Poirot slowly deduces that other things were happening the previous days in the house: like a row between the Inglethorps, another row between Mary and Emily, and Emily being completely out of sorts, saying that scandal between husband and wife is a dreadful thing, and never to trust men.
The inquest reveals that she was, in fact, poisoned by strychnine, and Scotland Yard is getting involved.
This is a happy occasion for viewers because we get the final point in our Three Stooges triangle, aka one Inspector James Japp, who will later be wherever Poirot and Hastings are (or, vice versa; he can never have even one small murder to himself!). He's quite happy to see Poirot, and Poirot warns him that, while all signs SEEM to point to Alfred Inglethorp, he isn't so sure about it, despite the local pharmacist saying he sold strychnine to Inglethorp in the first place.
He manages to procure witnesses who place Inglethorp far away from the pharmacy at the time he should have been buying the poison, which means Scotland Yard can't arrest him (much to the Chief Inspector's annoyance, a feeling VERY common in any law enforcement officer that Poirot comes in contact with).
Then they arrest John Cavendish after finding an empty poison bottle in his room, and Poirot starts getting angry.
He's missing something. A crucial detail.
Then Hastings reminds him, while watching the Belgian make a house of cards, that he has remarkably steady hands and methods - in fact, the only time he ever saw his hands shake was in the deceased's bedroom the second time they were there, straightening objects on the mantle.
This spurs Poirot into action and he rushes back to Styles Court, recalling that he had ALREADY tidied everything up the first time they were there, the second time being with the solicitor when they discovered her personal case with correspondence broken into, meaning someone else had been in there again a second time, too.
He then orders everyone gathered at the Inglethorp London home, Japp included, and pops up again to tell the story of the true crime.
Emily argued with her son John about his affair with a village widow and a sum of money he lent her, threatening to disown him and actually making a new will about it. Mary, having overheard this, later begs her mother-in-law for irrefutable proof, but by that point, Emily's world is shaken to the core when she finds a letter IN HER HUSBAND'S DESK, addressed to 'My dearest Evelyn'.
And yes, Emily was in fact poisoned by strychnine. But it was already in her medicine - in small doses, it was helpful. However, after bromides were introduced into the liquid, they crystalised the poison and it settled at the bottom, so she essentially got one concentrated dose right at the end when she took the last drops.
As for the murderer - Alfred Inglethorp and Evelyn, the companion, were madly in love, didn't want to wait for the 'old bitch' to die, and neither one regrets a thing. The letter was torn up and hidden in Emily's fire starting papers, and Emily earlier burned the new will.
Japp, previously annoyed both because he hadn't yet had his afternoon tea and because Poirot was answering his questions with more questions, pissing him off (a fact that will become rather routine in the following years ...), happily makes his arrests and hops off with the prisoners.
Poirot then explains it was Evelyn who bought strychnine disguised as Alfred, because if he had been arrested once, they couldn't do it a second time for the same crime, ergo why he was so keen to get under lock and key.
Mary and John reconcile, and Cynthia and Lawrence become engaged. Hastings, who'd taken a fancy to the girl, mourns that he doesn't understand women at all. Poirot, in what will ALSO become a routine for them, consoles him, promising many more adventures to come in future times, and they walk off into the sunset together.
TMAAS is a masterpiece in introductions, as well as offering mild comedy even at the worst of times, something the English seem to excel at.
Our protagonists shine in all the best ways, the murder mystery is intriguing, but not too complicated so you can't follow along, and it's one of those episodes which just makes you WANT to watch more.
So have a look at what initially brings Poirot, Hastings and Japp together. It's well worth the watch!
xx
*images and video not mine
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