Agatha Christie's Hotel on the Moors

I've recently learned that the Moorland Hotel at Hay Tor, or Moorlands House, was sold earlier this year to a company called Hieronymous Gruff Limited, which sounds as if it must be associated with Harry Potter in some way. The company plans to renovate the hotel, and even hire actors and drama students to help energize the new hotel's ambiance. 

When my wife and I planned our trip to England last year, we tried to book a room in Moorlands House. After all, to stay in the hotel where Agatha Christie stayed and wrote would have to be inspiring, right? But it had no vacancies, so we stayed in a nice, homey Bed & Breakfast nearby. But I couldn't leave Hay Tor without stopping by Moorlands House, and taking a quick photograph of the hotel Agatha Christie stayed in. There, in a room without a computer, or even electricity, she picked up her pen, and a pad of paper, and wrote a major portion of her rough draft of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916. Or, as she put it, "I used to write laboriously all morning until my hand ached."

.

Then, in the afternoon, she would take a walk across the moors, and think about what she had just written, as well as how to carry the story forward. No doubt during these walks she also climbed nearby Hay Tor numerous times, and gazed around the surrounding moors.

I'd like to return to Devon, and Dartmoor, to explore more of Agatha Christie's English landscape. If, in a few years time, I were to book a night in Moorlands House, I wonder if I might find a well dressed Belgian refugee, with an exquisitely tailored mustache, working there. Or perhaps a handsome Army officer walking with a slight limp, as a result of his WWI injuries? I'd like that. It'd certainly be something to see.

If you go there before I can return, let me know what the revamped hotel was like, okay?

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links:

Hay Tor Hotel Sale

Arthur Hastings & the Battle of Messines

Recently, a reader wrote in to enhance my understanding of the setting for The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The clues she caught, but I had missed, set Agatha Christie's novel in 1917. Initially, this confused me, as Agatha Christie wrote her novel in 1916. She booked a room in the Moorland Hotel at Hay Tor in Dartmoor, and finished her novel. Unless she could hop into Doctor Who's TARDIS, and travel forward in time, how could she know what the next year would bring, and set the story, during World War I, in a specific month? 

But then I thought about the situation some more. Although she wrote the first draft of her novel in 1916, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was not published in the United States until 1920. (It wasn't published in her home country of England until 1921!) This means that, during 1917, 1918, or 1919, or perhaps even 1920, she could look back on WWI, how it affected her home town of Torquay, and decide when to "set" her story. 

So she wasn't envisioning the future when she wrote her first draft. Which is too bad, for those who are looking for more links between Doctor Who and Agatha Christie, aside from those covered in "The Unicorn and the Wasp," in which the Tenth Doctor encountered Agatha Christie during a crucial period of her life.

Agatha Christie, Donna, and the Doctor

Anyway, back to Captain Hastings, and how Agatha Christie's decision to set The Mysterious Affair at Styles means for his life.

In the TV production of "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", Captain Hastings watches Black & White Newsreel Footage of the "New Flanders Offensive." 

At first, I linked this footage with Battle of Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres, which occurred from late July until November 1917. But Christie (as Hastings) writes that Hastings leaves his English convalescent hospital and travels to Styles House on July 5, 1917. A review of the newsreel footage suggests that what Hastings was actually watching was the Battle of Messines, in which the British army set a series of explosives beneath German lines, and turned a defensive ridge into a series of craters. Although only lasting seven days, from 7 to 14 June 1917, it was one of those complicated, bloody land battles of WWI that caused thousands of injuries and deaths. 

Somehow, this makes it easier for me to imagine what Arthur Hastings is feeling. He's just spent seven months or so in this "rather depressing Convalescent Home," as he puts it. Now (in the TV adaptation) he sees all the deaths and injuries his fellow British soldiers are suffering. Surrounded by so many soldiers suffering, and presumably dying, this hits him hard. 

He's got to wonder how many more troops will be evacuated to stay in the place where he's been recuperating, and how many of those will die instead of getting better. And this is just from a little, preliminary battle, which involves getting British troops into better strategic positions, so that the real battle, The Third Battle of Ypres, (or, if you prefer, the slaughter) can begin.

Dragon Dave

Related Poirot And Friends entries
Arthur Hastings, a Beautiful Lady & the Battle of the Somme

Agatha Christie's Murder Garden

Gardens play a significant role in many Agatha Christie stories. Consider a few examples. In her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the day on which the gardener works near the house proves a vital clue for Hercule Poirot, as does the woman who sits reading in the garden, where she can hear an argument taking place inside the house. In her third Hercule Poirot novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot has tired of conducting his sleuthing from his flat in London. He retires to a village where he buys a house, and grows marrows (squash). Although he applies his little gray cells to this task successfully, raises exceptionally healthy and large vegetables sure to compete favorably in the village show, he grows so dissatisfied with his life there that he picks up and hurls a marrow over the fence, narrowly missing the doctor who lives next door. And in Nemesis, Miss Marple accepts the challenge of a dead man (through his lawyer), and agrees to carry out an investigation, even if at the outset she doesn't know precisely what she is supposed to investigate. As events unfold, she soon learns she has been invited to join an all-expenses-paid garden tour. As the bus travels between towns and great English Manor houses, and she tours these carefully manicured gardens, she meets many interesting people. Gradually, she begins to understand the mystery her deceased benefactor wished her to investigate.

As we toured the English county of Devon on this year's trip, we found flowers blooming in boxes, containers, and hanging baskets on nearly every street of every town we visited. Torquay, Agatha Christie's hometown, showed off many impressive gardens. There we discovered one dedicated to the writer. It holds a number of flowers and plants mentioned in her stories. From these plants, the poisons used in her novels can be produced. This garden resides within the walls of Torre Abbey. We enjoyed seeing all these plants, and racking our brains for the answers to the trivia questions on the placards. 

Today we're so used to getting medicines and poisons in specially marked containers that we tend to think of them as only things that can be produced in the most sophisticated laboratories. Agatha Christie's stories remind me of a time when people lived closer to nature, and knew how to utilize and appreciate what sprang naturally from the soil. True, sometimes they used these fruits-of-the-earth for terrible purposes, but I'm sure that the majority of the time that closeness to nature enhanced their lives in innumerable ways.

If you live in England, and are attending the International Agatha Christie Festival, you can get a guided tour today of the writer's murder garden at Torre Abbey. If you'd like to visit Torquay someday, consider adding the gardens of Torre Abbey to your prospective itinerary. Either way, when you get there, take a moment to appreciate the beauty of all those plants. Bend close to inhale the sweet fragrance of the flowers. But whatever you do, don't contemplate taking a nibble of the leaves or petals. The consequences could be...deadly.

The Organ in the Mansion

In "Agatha Christie's Poirot," the Cavendish family lives in a large English country manor house. When the matron, Emily Inglethorp, is murdered, suspicion falls upon the man who recently married her: Alfred Inglethorp. Hercule Poirot seems anxious to dissuade the police from arresting him. Yet Inspector Japp and his superior arrive anyway, intent on doing so. It's up to Poirot to give Alfred a seemingly rock solid alibi, as the widower seems reluctant to do so.

When I watched this scene, taking place in what looks like the great hall, I couldn't help but notice the pipes behind Alfred. A close-up of Alfred on the upper floor reveals what look like musical pipes, as if for an organ.

We're all used to churches having pipe organs, but English country manor houses? It's not a feature I've noticed in watching any other British TV show or movie, nor can I remember reading a novel in which the rich live in a grand old house and have a large pipe organ like this. A piano, certainly, but an organ? Does this seem as strange to you as it does to me?

Disappearing Belgians & English Hospitality

In the "Agatha Christie's Poirot" adaptation of The Mysterious Affair At Styles, Hercule Poirot preaches the importance of knowing English history and customs to his fellow Belgians. He tries to instill in them how imperative it is to "become British" if they are to remain in their adoptive country. To this end, he instructs them in such minutia as the names and growth patterns of flowers, and even has them practice singing popular WWI era British songs, such as "It's a Long Road to Tipperary."

They sing the latter as they march over this rustic stone bridge. One can only imagine what the man and woman bathing their horse in the river below think of the procession. 

Had they worn knitted sock-hats, they could have sung "Whistle While You Work." I'm referring to the original Disney song, not the recent "Whistle While You Work It" by Katy Tiz. Come to think of it, the latter's a fun song too, with a video featuring hand-drawn animation. so why not? The Belgians might have liked that song too.

A recent online article details the events of what led hundreds of thousands of Belgians to flee their native country, to settle in England, and why they left. I wonder how many, like Hercule Poirot, remained behind, to make new lives in their adoptive country. Could Hercule Poirot's lasting popularity be partly due to his serving as a symbol of the country's growing multicultural diversity after WWI? 

These scenes involving Poirot and his fellow Belgians only occur in Clive Exton's script, not in the original novel. Still, this really happened. England really took in hundreds of thousands of refugees during World War I. That may not seem like a lot compared to an overall population of approximately 40 million. But then you have to remember that so many of the men were oversees, fighting in the war, or otherwise away from their families. Also, all the people living in England were subject to limited resources and rationing. Such generosity on the part of the English people impresses me immensely. Of course, the presence of so many Belgians impressed Agatha Christie too. Clive Exton's little addition to her novel remind us of that time, that era, and the British peoples' sacrifices. 

The story also makes me wonder if the refugees at the time really felt as if their home had been utterly destroyed, with no hope of return. Such battles as the Third Battle of Ypres must have seemed catastrophic. And World War I was called the first world war for a reason. It was the war so incomprehensible that it couldn't possibly happen, or so people thought at the time. Did the Belgian refugees have any reason to hold out hope of a return home, or did they always view their stay in England as a temporary measure?

At least they had a place to go and consider their futures, thanks to the English cities that fed and housed them during that time, such as Agatha Christie's hometown of Torquay.

Related Article
How 250,000 Belgian Refugees Didn't Leave A Trace
Disney version
Katy Tiz version

Curious About John Cavendish's Car

For me, trains have always been relegated to America's past. Perhaps things would be different if I lived on the East Coast. As it is, I grew up taking buses when a car wasn't available. The only times I took a train anywhere were at amusement parks like Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm, where I got to see train robbers and dinosaurs. That was cool.

Trains such as the one above, that transports Captain Hastings to the station near Styles Court, aren't just a part of England's heritage. Every time we visit England, we take a train, whether it transports us from Heathrow Airport to London, across a big city like London above or below-ground, or across the beautiful English countryside from one city to another. England even has high-speed trains, like the one featured in the movie "Mission Impossible," in which secret agent Ethan Hunt hangs onto the rear carriage pursued by a helicopter firing volleys of gunfire his way. The helicopter even follows the train into an underground tunnel, where the pilot eventually discovers that underground train tunnels weren't designed with helicopters in mind. Someday I'd love to take a high-speed train across England. I wonder if there's anyway to ensure that a secret agent like Ethan Hunt isn't riding on it before I purchase my ticket?

I'm not a car-guy. I don't attend auto shows. I don't subscribe to car magazines. I don't lust over the horsepower numbers of Detroit's latest muscle cars. But somehow, when I watch a period show like "Agatha Christie's Poirot", the cars really draw my eye. I wonder about them, such as the one that John Cavendish drives when he picks up his friend Captain Hastings at the train station. This one looks real basic. It doesn't even have a trunk, so John Cavendish has to tie Hasting's suitcase down on the back. I don't know if it has a foot-pedal for a brake, but it has a lever that John yanks to stop the car. It's located outside the car, so he has to reach out over the door, grab the lever, and pull it toward him to come to a complete stop. I don't know about you, but that sounds like his hand and arm (not to mention his suit) would get soaked if he had to drive it in the rain.

Agatha Christie's no help in identifying what type of car John Cavendish likes, or why he bought that make and model. She simply calls it "a motor," and mentions that, as his step-mother uses the car to help out the community, the government gives the family authorization to buy a limited amount of petrol. (This is a big deal, as all resources are rationed during World War I). Still, I really like the looks of these old cars, and I wish the TV producers would include a list of what automobiles they used in their period productions. Maybe they would be forced to, if these old cars had a better union.

I don't know about you, but it'd be a way of making the credits more interesting to the viewer, instead of seeing a list of the person who supplied the vanilla shot for the tea latte of the third production assistant's secretary. Oh, and don't forget the person who supplied the pencils for the purchasing agent who authorized the hire company to supply three exact copies of the dress the actress below is wearing. That's essential information!

If there's any vintage car buffs out there, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what make and model of car you think John Cavendish drives. I'm not sure what I'd do with the knowledge, but I am curious.

Agatha Christie: Inspiration For Hercule Poirot

In the TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Hercule Poirot lectures a group of fellow Belgian refugees on English horticulture: specifically, the Scarlet Pimpernel. As this scene doesn't appear in the novel, this got me wondering if screenwriter Clive Exton saw any similarities between the two fictional characters. When Agatha Christie invented Hercule Poirot for his first novel, writer Baroness Emma Orczy's own creation, The Scarlet Pimpernel (SP), was flying high in the British public mindset. Her play of the same name had caused a sensation, which led her to write a novelization, and then a series of bestselling novels on her famous hero. In time, Agatha Christie's character of Hercule Poirot would overtake Orczy's creation, but I couldn't help but wonder, given his popularity at the time, if Christie's creation of Poirot might have been in any way inspired by that of Orczy.

While reading Baroness Emma Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, I noticed the two novels share some intriguing similarities. Both occur during wartime, with SP set during the French Revolution, and Styles set during World War I. Both concern the fate of refugees, with SP rescuing the French aristocracy, and Mrs. Emily Inglethorp arranging for the housing of Belgian refugees in her village. Both are largely written from the point of view of someone who initially underestimates the hero: in Styles, the narrator is Hastings, who sees Poirot as intelligent, but can't help but feeling he'd make a better detective. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite sees her husband as simple-minded, and wonders how she could have been so stupid to have married him. This is because both protagonists hide their intelligence like a cloak, and wish others to underestimate them. 

The third act of both novels concern a dramatic rescue. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite sails across a storm-tossed sea to France, where she attempts to warn SP that a trap has been set for him, while he is attempting to rescue more of the French aristocracy. In Styles, Hercule Poirot races against time, taking a cab from London down to Styles Court, to search for the vital clue that would save an innocent man from a courtroom prosecutor's utterly-convincing arguments. In both cases, the fate the protagonists eventually save the innocent from is death: in SP, by the guillotine. In Styles, the hangman's noose.

Both heroes are particular about their appearance. In Styles, when Captain Hastings races to Poirot's home to tell him of Emily Inglethorp's murder, Poirot urges Hastings to calm down, to recount the important incidents of the last few days, while he dresses and combs his mustache. He then straightens Hasting's tie, and remarks on his friend's disheveled appearance, before he will allow his friend to accompany him back to Styles Court. This is hardly an aberration for Poirot, as he is always impeccably dressed, with his smart suits, hats, and walking stick, which makes him stand out in the TV series. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, SP's alter ego Sir Percy Blakeney is also renowned for his impeccable dress sense. In fact, he leads the London fashion scene, wearing new styles of clothing that others in society take note of, and begin wearing as a result. Both men form a focal point at parties, their unique appearance and magnetic personalities enhancing the appeal of any social do. Hercule Poirot may not toss out the verbal witticisms like Percy, but those who speak with him find his dialogue no less memorable.

I've no doubt that more similarities could be drawn between the two characters and novels, and if you've spotted any that I've overlooked, I'd love to hear from you. I'm also curious what you think of my analysis. Based on the similarities I've listed above, do you think Agatha Christie, at least in part, base Hercule Poirot on this other popular fictional hero? Or are all these attributes simply elements that make for an interesting character and a popular series of novels?

Hercule Poirot in the Post Office

The village post office, in the TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, might pose something of a mystery to viewers in the United States. For it is there that we find our friend Hercule Poirot, purchasing two bags of his evening cocoa. Actually, the post office sells any number of items, including fresh breads, tinned food, and baking supplies. It seems more like an early American general store than a post office. Yet it is here Captain Hastings bumps into his old Belgian friend, the famous detective, when he pops out of Styles Court to mail a few letters. 

Of course, all this happens amid World War I, when most of the menfolk would be away, fighting in the British Army. Additionally, this is a tiny community, where many of the charities and community functions are orchestrated and sponsored by the great benefactress, Mrs. Emily Ingelthorpe, from her mansion at Styles Court. It's easy to imagine how during this time of scarcity, when labor, food, and fuel are in short supply, any businesses that managed to remain open had to fulfill a number of roles. So perhaps it's not too difficult to imagine an English village Post Office carrying out a number of functions that would normally be handled by specialists shops in larger cities like London.

As Poirot values order, he makes a suggestion as to how the shop might be better organized. Each item could be arranged along the wall of the store (North, South, East, or West) to illustrate the region of the world in which the product originates. Thus the shop would not just supply necessary goods, but educate patrons as well. The Proprietress seems somewhat amused by his idea, but as she tells him, as far as she's concerned, each item comes from the wholesaler, who delivers all the items to her shop. 

Oops. I mean, her Post Office.

On my visits to England, I've popped into a few post offices. While I never saw one that sold food, I had previously learned from various Britcoms about characters who had money stored in the Post Office. So on one visit, I asked the clerk about that, and he told me that anyone could invest money in the Post Office, in a similar manner to opening a savings account in the United States. 

I don't know what the advantages of investing money in a Post Office are over that of an English bank, but I certainly prefer visiting banks in the United States to my local post office. I've never been offered a cup of hot cocoa while the Post Office counter staff weigh my packages and sell me stamps, but bank clerks usually have some kind of treat available. Over the years, they've offered me bags of hot popcorn, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, lollipops, and even packets of candy corn around Halloween. But then, Post Offices in the United States don't seem to get much government funding, and people don't mail letters or collect stamps like they used to. Meanwhile, our banks seem flush with funds, probably as a result of their paying out such measly interest on our checking and savings accounts.

I wonder what suggestions Hercule Poirot might make to improve Post Offices in the United States. I certainly don't expect to bump into him there any time soon. Still, I'll have to keep an eye out for him the next time I visit, perhaps when I bring in the Christmas presents I'm sending to all my far-flung relatives. Sadly, none of them live in Belgium.

Those Mysterious Spills...and Puppies

I'm going to do something now that is particularly nasty, or at least terribly unkind: I am going to discuss a major plot point in Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. So if you haven't read it yet, if you don't want to read a major SPOILER, then now's the time to close this tab or browser window, and read about the latest Hollywood socialite to adopt a puppy. Or watch a funny amateur video about a puppy. Or, you know, anything puppy related.

Warning: This post has nothing to do with cute, cuddly puppies!

Notice the objects on the fireplace in the picture below. Can any of you identify the object on the left?

This is called a spill vase, and they were apparently used in homes until the early 20th Century. Today we take matches for granted. Actually, matches are starting to get outdated now, in this age of cheap lighters. But in 1916, when Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, matches wouldn't have been readily available to most people, let alone cheap lighters. So they would endeavor to keep fires going in their houses, and transfer a fire from one source to another via some kind of small, cheap object, such as a stick of wood or a twisted-up piece of paper. Thus, you needed to store these tapers somewhere so you could have them readily at hand.

I'll admit, this item passed over me when I read the novel. I guess I just couldn't visualize it. Nor does it readily make sense, as Mrs. Ingelthorp tells Hastings that they send every scrap of paper they don't use to the English troops fighting in WWI. (This is a point of pride for her). Yet Poirot discovers that Mrs. Ingelthorp burned some papers the day before her death. Why else would she order her staff to start a fire in the fireplace on a hot day? And the way the maid started the fire was apparently by transferring the fire from a candle, to one of those long twisted pieces of paper, then using that to light the kindle in the fireplace.

Even when I saw the TV adaptation for the first time, the notion of paper spills holding a clue to the identity of the murderer wasn't something that particularly resonated with me. It wasn't the method of Mrs. Ingelthorp's poisoning, after all. But the handwriting on those spills, as Poirot discovers, tells him the identity of her murderer. And this he demonstrates at the end of the novel, when he gathers all the suspects together, and slowly unrolls the paper spills he found in Mrs. Ingelthorp's spill vase.

Just try getting a definition of a paper spill on Google. It's impossible. Today, you'll learn about spilling liquids, or taking a fall, or perhaps even what happens when you get a cute, cuddly puppy overly excited. (Okay, my apologies: this post does have a little to do with puppies). But the meaning of a paper spill has been overwritten by the necessities of today's vocabulary. I finally found information on it by looking under spill vases, which led me to an article by Dan Pinnell, an early American lighting collector and researcher. If you're interested, you can read his article, "Spilling the Whole Story," by following the link below. You can even purchase a spill vase for your fireplace, if you're so inclined. 

But then, if you're so outdated that you're still using a fireplace for your heating...well, what can I say? Get with the times! Upgrade your home!! Buy yourself a central heating unit, and above all, adopt a puppy!!!

They're so cute and adorable, aren't they?

Related Internet Link
Spilling the Whole Story

The Mysterious Battle of Ypres

Agatha Christie wrote her first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, during World War I. Her day job--filling prescriptions in a dispensary--gave her the idea of how the killer would poison Mrs. Inglethorp. She wrote her first draft by hand, then typed up a second. But according to Bill Peschal's notes in The Complete, Annotated Mysterious Affair At Styles, the story grew more complicated with each draft, until her ingenuity crashed into a brick wall. With her creativity stifled, she left Torquay to spend some solitary time at the Moorland Hotel in Dartmoor. When she returned home, she had figured out the intricacies of the plot, and carried a completed manuscript.

No doubt she had some work still to do, massaging and fine-tuning her writing. But Peschal states that she finished it in 1916. World War I was still going on at that point, and although she began submitting her manuscript to publishers, The Mysterious Affair at Styles would not be published until 1920, two years after the war had ended. 

Agatha Christie introduces us to Lieutenant Arthur Hastings by having him narrate the novel. In the first few paragraphs, he explains that he was recovering from injuries in a military hospital when he happened to bump into his old friend John Cavendish. In his adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, screenwriter Clive Exton introduces us to Arthur Hastings by showing him in a dark projection room. There he sits with other wounded soldiers and watches newsreel footage of the Battle of Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres. The silent black and white images play out on the screen, accompanied only by the sound of the projector's clicking, as the operator turns the film reel with a hand-operated crank. Hastings watches soldiers climbing from their trenches, fighting on the battlefield, and tanks blasting at enemy positions. Then the images change, and he sees Belgian refugees disembarking from the ships that brought them to England. Although Hastings doesn't know it yet, one of those Belgian refugees is none other than his old friend Hercule Poirot. Or, at least, that's what Clive Exton suggests, by inserting this scene into his TV adaptation.

The Battle of Passchendale, or the Third Battle of Ypres, was a controversial campaign that, all told, cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet refugees began arriving in cities and towns all over England shortly after the war began in 1914. Their presence in Torquay inspired Agatha Christie to feature them in her novel, and make the star of her novel a Belgian police officer. So here's the question: Why do you think Clive Exton set his adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1917 instead of two or three years earlier, when Agatha Christie actually conceived it? And does it alter Christie's story in a substantial way? 


Some related links
See The B&W Newsreel Footage that Arthur Hastings watched.

Hercules Poirot & the Scarlet Pimpernel Part 2

In the TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, soldiers charge through the trees, dive onto the ground, and aim at faraway targets with their rifles. Then someone shouts, "Hold your fire," and an elegantly attired foot alights on the fallen leaves beside one soldier. As he looks on, the feet mince past him, and the tip of a walking stick points to a particular plant. 

Then a cultured voice lectures, "Another example of the English bucolic beliefs." After stating the Latin name of the plant, which he translates into common English as the Scarlet Pimpernel, he says, "It is believed that when this flower is opened it is a sign of a prolonged spell of fine weather." The camera travels up to Hercule Poirot's face, and he smiles regretfully. "It is seldom open in this country."

As I said in Part 1, this scene does not appear in the novel. It therefore begs the question why Clive Exton, who dramatized it for TV, inserted it. Is it simply about Poirot instructing his fellow Belgian refugees that, as "guests in this country," they must learn the English language, beliefs, and culture, so that they can gain "the confidence of the natives?" Is it intended to demonstrate how Poirot often looks silly to other, as he blithely galavants through a muddy forest, in his formal clothes and delicate shoes, totally oblivious to the war games and the gunfire going on around him?

Or did Exton write it to introduce Poirot into the story far earlier than in Christie's novel?

What do you think?

A Storm Brewing At Styles Court

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