The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Chapter 4: Poirot Investigates Summary & Analysis

On his way to get Poirot, Hastings encounters Alfred Inglethorp in town. Inglethorp acts devastated about his wife’s death, saying that he just heard the news. Suspicious, Hastings asks where he has been, and he claims that the accountant he visited the night before kept him late, and then he realized he’d forgotten to bring the key, so he stayed with the banker in town. He laments the loss of his wife, talking about how “noble” she was, and his words disgust Hastings, who thinks he’s a hypocrite to say such nice things about a woman he clearly murdered. 

Hastings leaves Alfred Inglethorp and goes to Poirot’s and explains everything that has happened. Poirot urges him to take a moment to collect his thoughts—that way, they will be able to put the events together and arrange the details. They will then discard the facts that are unimportant. But Hastings has trouble identifying which facts are important and which ones aren’t, so Poirot explains that each detail has to make sense with everything else. They have to put the facts in sequential order, and if each one leads logically to the next, then they can continue on with their thought process. But if a fact doesn’t lead logically to the next, they must find the missing link in the chain of events. No detail, he says, is too small to investigate.

Poirot points out that Hastings has left out an important detail—namely, whether or not Mrs. Inglethorp ate well on the night of her death. Hastings is dumbfounded by this question and doesn’t understand why it’s important. Poirot is surprised by his friend’s ignorance, but he doesn’t say why the detail is so crucial. Slightly annoyed, Hastings says he doesn’t think Mrs. Inglethorp ate very much, since she was too upset to have a big appetite. Satisfied with this answer, Poirot says he’s ready to go to Styles.

When they reach Styles, Poirot and Hastings pause outside the house. Poirot remarks how beautiful it is but notes that the family’s grief has surely tempered this beauty. His comment prompts Hastings to think about how nobody really seems to care much about Mrs. Inglethorp’s death. Poirot senses what he’s thinking and revises what he has said, acknowledging that Mrs. Inglethorp wasn’t related by blood to anybody currently living at Styles, so it makes sense that nobody is prostrate with grief. 

Hastings still wants to know why Poirot cares about what Mrs. Inglethorp ate the night before. Poirot, for his part, reminds Hastings that he doesn’t usually like to explain his thought process until he has figured everything out, but he acquiesces: the reason Mrs. Inglethorp’s dinner is important is because strychnine usually takes effect very quickly. But Mrs. Inglethorp didn’t show any effects of poisoning until 5 in the morning, roughly nine hours after she most likely drank the coffee. If she had eaten a very heavy meal, it’s possible that the large amount of food would have slowed the process, but the fact that she didn’t eat much doesn’t account for this discrepancy.

After obtaining the key from John, Poirot and Hastings go through Emily’s room. Poirot pays meticulous attention to every small detail. He inspects the bolt on the door between Mrs. Inglethorp and Cynthia’s rooms, eventually taking out some forceps and extracting something delicate from the bolt itself. He also finds a cup and saucer on a chest of drawers. There’s liquid on the saucer, so he dips his finger into it and tastes it, discovering that it’s cocoa with a little bit of rum. There’s also a bedside table that has been knocked over. Beside it there’s a coffee cup that has been crushed. What’s strange, though, is that a lamp lying next to it is broken very neatly. In contrast, the coffee cup has been ground into a fine powder, suggesting that somebody stepped on it.

Poirot finds a ring of keys on the floor. He discovers that one of them opens Mrs. Inglethorp’s purple dispatch case, but he doesn’t read the papers contained inside—he doesn’t have the “authority” to do that, though he says somebody should review the papers as soon as possible. He then examines a brown stain on the carpet before declaring that the room has yielded a handful of “points of interest.” They are: (1) the coffee cup that has been ground into a powder; (2) Mrs. Inglethorp’s dispatch case and the key that opens it; (3) the stain on the carpet, which is damp and smells like coffee; (4) a small strand of green fabric taken from the bolt on the door leading to Cynthia’s room; and (5) some spots of candlewax on the rug. 

Hastings thinks the candlewax on the rug was from Lawrence’s candle the previous night, but Poirot disagrees—Lawrence’s candle, after all, is still sitting nearby and is made of pink wax, whereas the wax on the carpet is white. Poirot believes that Mrs. Inglethorp didn’t have a candle in the room with her, but he won’t tell Hastings what this implies, instead urging his friend to use his own powers of deduction. To that end, he withholds his final “point[] of interest,” saying that he’d like to keep the sixth thing he’s found to himself for a while. 

Before leaving Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom, Poirot checks the fireplace for any clues. Sure enough, he finds a small scrap of unburnt paper. The only legible letters on it are: “ll and.” However, the paper itself seems thick and official, suggesting that it was once a will. Although Hastings is quite surprised, Poirot is not—he expected to find the remnants of a will in the fire.

Poirot goes to ask Dorcas some questions in the boudoir. On his way, he stops to admire some beautiful flowerbeds outside Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom. Hastings hurries him along by saying they have more important things to do, but Poirot suggests that the begonias before them might be just as important as anything else. Finally, though, he moves on and begins his interview with Dorcas, who tells him that she overheard Mrs. Inglethorp’s argument with her husband the previous day. Apparently, Emily Inglethorp accused Alfred of lying to and tricking her, and she said that he had brought disgrace to her household. She also said that she had already decided what to do and that the prospect of a “scandal” wouldn’t stop her from doing what she must.

Poirot asks Dorcas if she’s sure that Mrs. Inglethorp was arguing with her husband. Dorcas is confident in this regard, asking who else it would have been, if not Alfred Inglethorp. She continues by saying that Mrs. Inglethorp summoned her a little later. She was holding a piece of paper with writing on it, and she seemed very troubled. She said, “These few words—and everything’s changed.” She also told Dorcas to never trust a man. Before Dorcas left, Mrs. Inglethorp also muttered something about marital scandals, saying she would certainly “hush” everything up if she could.

Dorcas notes that Mrs. Inglethorp probably put the piece of paper she’d been holding into her purple dispatch case. Moving on, Poirot asks Dorcas if Mrs. Inglethorp took a sleeping powder last night. She normally does, Dorcas informs him, but she didn’t last night, since she took her last dose two days ago. After Dorcas leaves, Hastings asks how Poirot knew that Mrs. Inglethorp uses sleeping powders. Poirot takes out a small box that pharmacists use to store bromide powder, and though it looks normal to Hastings, Poirot points out that the box doesn’t have the name of the pharmacist on it.

Next, Poirot interviews Annie, a younger servant at Styles. Annie knows about the letters Mrs. Inglethorp wrote the previous night—specifically, who they were addressed to, since she was the one who sent them out. One was to Evelyn Howard, the other was to her lawyer (Mr. Wells), one was to a caterer’s establishment, and the fourth letter Annie can’t recall. Before letting Annie go, Poirot asks about the saucepan of cocoa in Mrs. Inglethorp’s room. Annie explains that she herself brought Mrs. Inglethorp this cocoa every night. It consisted of cocoa, milk, sugar, and a little bit of rum. She would bring it to Mrs. Inglethorp just before bed, though not before letting the cocoa sit on a side table in the hall for a while first.

Annie becomes increasingly agitated as she talks about the cocoa. She finally admits that there was salt on the tray and that it might have gotten into the cocoa, though she served it to Mrs. Inglethorp anyway. Hastings becomes incredibly excited, thinking that he and Poirot have found the cause of Mrs. Inglethorp’s death. Poirot, however, stays calm and moves on. He asks if Annie saw candle wax on the carpet when she brought the cocoa to Mrs. Inglethorp, and Annie says that she didn’t—Mrs. Inglethorp never had a candle, just a reading lamp.

After Annie leaves, Hastings giddily congratulates Poirot, thinking he’s made a great discovery. But Poirot doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so Hastings explains that the “salt” in the cocoa must have been the strychnine—what else could it have been? “It might have been salt,” Poirot says. His comment annoys Hastings, who secretly thinks his friend might have lost his touch for detective work. Poirot senses his annoyance and asks if he disagrees with him, but Hastings standoffishly remarks that they’re both entitled to their own opinions. 

Before they leave the boudoir, Poirot goes over to Alfred Inglethorp’s writing desk. It’s locked, but he manages to open it with one of the keys from Mrs. Inglethorp’s keyring, which he has in his possession—the key itself isn’t a perfect fit, but it still opens the desk. Inside, Poirot sees that Alfred is incredibly organized, which he admires. To Hastings’s surprise, he doesn’t look at any of the documents, though he makes a remark that Hastings finds inscrutable: that there aren’t any stamps in the desk but that there could have been. He then closes the door and turns to leave.

The boudoir didn’t give them much information, Poirot says. It did, however, produce something of interest. He pulls out a wrinkled envelope, upon which somebody has written the following in a nonlinear fashion: “posessed I am posessed He is possessed I am possessed possessed.”