In Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair At Styles, Arthur Hastings has spent several months convalescing from injuries suffered while fighting at the Front during World War I. After receiving a further one-month medical leave, he meets an old friend, John Cavendish, who invites him to spend it at his country house of Styles Court. Having visited the house often in his youth, he yearns to see the old place again. Staffed with servants, this old English manor house abounds in luxury and elegance. Who wouldn't prefer to take a respite from the fighting in WWI to catch up with an old friend in such genteel surroundings? Especially a house with so many happy associations from his childhood.
What Hastings doesn't realize, until he visits, is that a storm is brewing at Styles Court. John's stepmother Emily has recently married Alfred Inglethorp, a much younger man. Aside from his new wife, everyone at the house views Alfred as a scoundrel. Interestingly, few of the people living in the manor house really like Emily either. She may be a grand old dame, actively involved in her community, but one night she awakens in agony. When Hastings and John break through her locked bedroom door, her body is seized with violent convulsions, and she dies soon afterward. Although everyone seems shocked by her murder, when Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate her death, he discovers that everyone (except Hastings) has a motive for murder.
Suspicion especially falls on her new husband Alfred, as well as on Hasting's friend John, who stands to inherit the mansion and surroundings lands. He could benefit from his stepmother's death, depending on which version of her will is considered legally valid. He could certainly use additional funds, as keeping up a country manor requires a great deal of money.
Francois Riviere's book, In the Footsteps of Agatha Christie, offers a pictorial history of the Christie's life. I'd like to say that Christie based the fictional manor house of Styles Court on a hotel she had stayed in, but I can't with certainty, as I didn't take extensive notes before returning the coffee table book to the library. But Christie did stay at the Moorland Hotel in Dartmoor while writing her first novel, so its interiors and furnishings may have informed her depiction of Styles Court. The house is certainly a character in its own right, which Christie fleshes out with sketches of furniture placement and doorways in key rooms. I thought this a unique feature of the novel, and sets it apart from many of her other books.
She even sketches a small fragment of paper that Poirot retrieves from the fireplace, so we can read it along with Hastings and Poirot. Is that cool, or what?
John's desire to keep the country house in the family is laudable, but inevitably, due to property taxes and death duties, such large estates are destined to be sold. Many of these grand old houses no longer belong to their original families, and have been converted into apartments, schools, or office buildings. Some also operate as hotels, such as the manor house that formed our home for a week in 2011. Thankfully, no murder took place there during our visit, but if one had, I'd rather have someone like Hercule Poirot investigating my culpability--a person dedicated to determining the truth of the situation--rather than an inspector who was working under a deadline (and public pressure) to close the case.
Related Internet Link
Locations Used For Styles Court
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