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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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The Mysterious Affair At Styles first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1921
Murder On The Links first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1923
Poirot Investigates first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1924
Copyright © 1921, 1923, 1924 Agatha Christie Ltd. All rights reserved.
“Essay by Charles Osborne” excerpted from The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by Charles Osborne. Reprinted with permission.
Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007431731
Version: 2017-04-11
Contents
Copyright
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
www.agathachristie.com
About the Publisher
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
To my mother
Contents
1 I Go to Styles
2 The 16th and 17th of July
3 The Night of the Tragedy
4 Poirot Investigates
5 ‘It isn’t Strychnine, is it?’
6 The Inquest
7 Poirot Pays his Debts
8 Fresh Suspicions
9 Dr Bauerstein
10 The Arrest
11 The Case for the Prosecution
12 The Last Link
13 Poirot Explains
Credits
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
