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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Logic and Deduction
Love and Passion
Suspense, Intrigue, and Secrecy
Wealth, Inheritance, and Power
Summary
Analysis
Japp is grateful to Poirot for preventing him from arresting Alfred Inglethorp, which he now believes would have been a mistake. Alfred, for his part, says he didn’t talk about the alibi at the inquest because there are already rumors circulating about him and Mrs. Raikes—rumors, he clarifies, that are malicious and untrue.
Whether or not Alfred is having an affair with Mrs. Raikes is somewhat unclear. What is clear, though, is that he was seen walking with her on the very same afternoon that someone impersonated him and bought strychnine. He therefore has a perfectly good alibi, even if he doesn’t want to use it for fear of sullying his reputation and making him look like a dishonest husband.
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After discussing Alfred’s innocence, Japp asks to be shown to Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom. On the way out of the room, Poirot takes Hastings aside and tells him to go stand in the other wing and wait there until Poirot returns. Hastings obliges but has no idea why he’s supposed to do this. When Poirot finally returns, Hastings tells him that nothing happened. But Poirot presses him, saying that he must have heard a big bump. Hastings, however, heard nothing, even though Poirot knocked over Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedside table.
Poirot’s experiment replicates what happened on the night of Emily’s death. What’s interesting is that Mary Cavendish claims to have been awoken by the sound of Emily’s bedside table falling over—and yet, Hastings doesn’t hear anything while standing in her part of the upstairs wing. Although Poirot doesn’t make much of his findings in this moment, his experiment ultimately casts suspicion on Mary, essentially confirming that she’s trying to hide something.
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Looking out the window, Hastings sees Dr. Bauerstein and talks about how much he dislikes him. He admits that he enjoyed seeing Bauerstein covered in mud on Tuesday evening. Poirot gapes at him and asks him to clarify what he means, not knowing that Dr. Bauerstein was seen at the house on Tuesday evening. He can’t believe Hastings originally glossed over this detail, but Hastings thought it was insignificant.
Once again, Hastings fails to grasp Poirot’s belief that no detail is too small to consider when conducting an investigation. To that end, it’s not as if Dr. Bauerstein’s presence on Tuesday evening is even all that insignificant, since it means that Bauerstein must be considered a possible suspect (a small plot hole here is that Poirot should already have known about Bauerstein’s presence on that Tuesday evening, since Alfred himself mentioned it during the inquest, though he doesn’t actually use Bauerstein’s name during his testimony).
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Poirot rushes to find John Cavendish and asks to borrow his car, announcing that he has some business in the nearby town of Tadminster. Once in the car, he tells Hastings that Dr. Bauerstein’s presence at Styles on Tuesday evening changes everything. They already know that Alfred Inglethorp poured Mrs. Inglethorp’s coffee but then set it down. The presence of yet another person complicates matters.
By helping Poirot learn that Dr. Bauerstein visited Styles Court on the evening of Emily’s death, Hastings unwittingly plays an essential role in the investigation. In a way, this is how Hastings is useful to Poirot—although he often doesn’t know how he’s helping, his naivety sometimes enables him to unknowingly deliver important information. Although he might not be able to connect the dots during an investigation, then, there’s no denying that he observes everything that goes on.
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Poirot asks Hastings if he has any suspicions of his own, and Hastings admits that he finds something fishy about Evelyn Howard’s hatred for Alfred Inglethorp. He doesn’t necessarily suspect that she killed Emily Inglethorp, but he makes a weak argument for the possibility that she burned her friend’s will to make sure Alfred wouldn’t inherit anything. But Poirot says Hastings isn’t thinking clearly. He’s right, however, about the strange nature of Evelyn’s hatred for Alfred—there’s something unnaturally intense about it. Poirot has his own theory about this hatred, but he is going to keep it to himself.
Poirot is always on the lookout for details that are out of place. Nobody at Styles Court likes Alfred, but Evelyn’s passionate hatred for him still seems out of place, especially because she already disliked him so much before the murder. Of course, Poirot doesn’t necessarily imply that Evelyn herself is the murderer simply because she has the capacity to hold onto such vehement hatred, but he does suggest that the general nature of her rage is a bit fishy.
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Moving on from the topic of Evelyn Howard, Poirot wants Hastings to say something to Lawrence Cavendish the next time they’re alone together: “Find the extra coffee cup, and you can rest in peace!” Hastings has no idea what this means, but he agrees to pass the message along. At this point, they pull up to the “Analytical Chemist” laboratory in Tadminster, where Poirot drops off a sample of the cocoa he took from the saucepan in Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom. When Hastings reminds him that Dr. Bauerstein already tested the cocoa, Poirot says he knows—he simply wants to have it tested again, though he won’t say why.
Poirot’s message to Lawrence is very cryptic, but the mere fact that he wants to convey a riddle to him in the first place suggests that he has been carefully considering how Lawrence fits into the broader picture of Emily’s murder. Without dwelling on the message, though, he moves on by having the cocoa analyzed, apparently doublechecking the work Bauerstein did—perhaps suggesting that he doesn’t trust that Bauerstein did what he said he would do.
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A few days later, Hastings and Poirot look for a green dress in a box of dress-up costumes in the attic. They don’t find one, but they do find a big, fake black beard. It looks newly made. Back downstairs, Poirot asks Dorcas about how often the costume box was used, and she says that they would sometimes have a “dress-up” night. Lawrence once dressed as the Char of Persia, she says. But when Poirot asks if Lawrence wore the fake beard for that role, Dorcas says he made his own beard out of some wool he borrowed from her—she didn’t know the costume box even had a professionally-made beard in it, remarking that it must be a very new addition.
The reason Hastings and Poirot go through the dress-up box is that they’re trying to find the green garment that Poirot discovered on the bolt between Cynthia and Emily’s rooms. Instead, they find a black beard, which was most likely used by whomever impersonated Alfred while buying the strychnine. The fact that it’s hidden in the attic further confirms that the murderer is someone living at Styles Court.
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After speaking with Dorcas, Poirot explains to Hastings that the murderer is clearly very intelligent, having placed the beard in the only place it wouldn’t attract suspicion. But Poirot and Hastings need to be even more intelligent than the murderer—so intelligent, in fact, that the murderer thinks they’re unintelligent and suspects nothing. Still, Poirot needs help, so he tries yet again to win over Evelyn Howard as an ally.
What Poirot says about outsmarting the murderer is indicative of his entire approach to detective work. Indeed, sometimes being clever means acting naïve or innocent, which, in turn, puts people at ease and increases the likelihood that they’ll accidentally slip up and reveal something crucial to the investigation.
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Poirot asks Evelyn Howard if she really still thinks Alfred Inglethorp killed Emily. She says she does, but then Poirot rephrases the question to suggest that he doesn’t believe she ever thought Alfred was guilty; she only wants to trick herself into thinking this as a way of downplaying her intuition that it was somebody else; somebody she couldn’t bear to accuse. Miss Howard breaks down, agreeing that she suspects somebody else but can’t bring herself to believe her own suspicions. In the end, though, she decides to help Poirot, though she doesn’t say who, exactly, she thinks killed her friend. When Evelyn leaves, Poirot refuses to explain things to Hastings, who becomes annoyed and decides to keep any discoveries he makes to himself, hoping to eventually surprise Poirot with his conclusions whenever he’s able to formulate them.
Poirot and Evelyn’s conversation is confounding, since the person they’re talking about goes unnamed throughout the entire exchange. Hastings—and the readers—are therefore left to guess at Poirot’s thought process once again, as Poirot continues to work in the dark as a way of hiding his own cunning intelligence as a detective.
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