LITMIR.BIZ

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‘For me, my arrival at Styles St Mary was a sad and painful time. I was a refugee, wounded, exiled from home and country, existing by charity in a foreign land.’

      What was he to do now, the famous Hercule Poirot, suddenly without aim and far from young? Time must have passed very slowly in this quiet sanctuary ‘in the midst of green fields and country lanes’.

      I am sure that, as an occasional diversion, Poirot and his compatriots were hospitably summoned to Styles Court – Styles, as the family called it – to have tea with Mrs Inglethorp and her ménage. At Mrs Inglethorp’s side would have been her new husband, her junior by twenty years, the black-bearded Alfred Inglethorp (the ‘fortune hunter’, her bitter family called him). The refugees would have been introduced as well to Mrs Inglethorp’s two stepsons from an earlier marriage, John Cavendish, who played at being a country squire, and Lawrence, who published ‘rotten verses in fancy bindings’. And they would have met Mary, John Cavendish’s stormy-eyed wife, and plucky Cynthia Murdoch, another of Mrs Inglethorp’s protégées.

      ‘You’ve been entertaining a celebrity unawares,’ Hastings was to tell them later, and it is interesting to imagine Poirot observing this promising group as he politely sipped a cup of the dreaded English tea. Perhaps, for the first time since coming to England, a gleam of professional interest appeared in those inquiring green eyes?

      NOTES

1 For reasons not explained, some researchers and obituaries have taken a mention in The Mysterious Affair at Styles that Poirot and Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard first met in Brussels in 1904, while working on the Abercrombie Forgery Case, as the year of Poirot’s retirement and have concluded that he was born between 1839 and 1844. Assumptions have then been made that he worked as a private detective in Belgium or France between 1904 and 1914. Adding to the confusion, a charming but suspect foreword to Hercule Poirot: Master Detective, an omnibus collection published in 1936, has Poirot stating: ‘I began work as a member of the detective force in Brussels on the Abercrombie Forgery Case in 1904.’ As we know Poirot joined the Belgian police force as a young man, this red herring would have us believe he was born about 1884 and arrived in England at about the age of thirty-two.

2 His family name was to cause difficulties later on. Pwarrit, Porritt, Peerer, Porrott and Prott were some of the ways the English attempted to pronounce it. On three different occasions, in the interests of subterfuge, Poirot himself garbled his name and gave it as Poirier, Pontarlier and Parotti.

3 First published as ‘The Clue of the Chocolate Box’ in The Sketch, 23 May 1923.

4 Some prefer to believe that a triple bluff was played in The Big Four and that Achille really did exist, despite Poirot’s assurances that ‘Brother Achille has gone home again – to the land of myths.’

5 This quotation is from ‘Christmas Adventure’, the first version of ‘The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding’.

6 In one of his last cases, Hallowe’en Party, Poirot expressed a slight change of mind: ‘There were times when he almost regretted that he had not taken to the study of theology, instead of going into the police force in his early days. The number of angels who could dance on the point of a needle; it would be interesting to feel that that mattered and to argue passionately on the point with one’s colleagues.’

7 Also published under the titles ‘The Clue of the Chocolate Box’ and ‘The Time Hercule Poirot Failed’. There is some confusion as to when this case actually occurred. In Cards on the Table, set in 1937, Poirot spoke of it as having happened ‘twenty-eight years ago’, which places it in 1909, but in Peril at End House he referred to it as ‘a bad failure in Belgium in 1893’.

       2 THE ENGLISH DEBUT

      ‘He stepped forward, beaming’.

      —‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’

      Towards five o’clock on the afternoon of 17 July 1916, an incongruous figure advanced steadily upon the post office of the village of Styles St Mary:

      … an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg … His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible.

      It was Poirot, limping gallantly and no doubt bored to tears. On that fateful afternoon, however, deliverance from ennui was at hand, for out of the post office, and straight into Poirot, there catapulted a large boyish man. As Hastings was later to write:

      I drew aside and apologized, when suddenly, with a loud exclamation, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly. ‘Mon ami Hastings!’ he cried. ‘It is indeed mon ami Hastings!’

      The surprise and excitement of Captain Arthur Hastings at this chance meeting equalled Poirot’s. Had he not, just a few days before, described this very gnome to Mary Cavendish?

      ‘I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method … He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.’

      After further exclamations and explanations, and after promising to visit Poirot at the refugees’ cottage, Hastings returned to Styles, where he had recently arrived to stay with the Cavendishes during the last of his convalescence from a war injury. But what a momentous encounter occurred on that warm sleepy day! No doubt the post office of Styles St Mary now bears a plaque commemorating the genesis of Poirot’s English career? For early the next morning the household at Styles was awakened by agonized sounds coming from Mrs Inglethorp’s bedroom. Someone had poisoned her with strychnine.

      ‘I am going to ask you something,’ said Hastings to his old friend, John Cavendish, within an hour of his stepmother’s death. ‘You remember my speaking of my friend Poirot? The Belgian who is here? He has been a most famous detective … I want you to let me call him in – to investigate this matter.’ So began an illustrious association that was to span almost sixty years, and so began that celebrated landmark of detective fiction, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

      Styles!

‘We will proceed to the château,’ said Poirot, when summoned, ‘and study matters on the spot.’ How many millions have since gazed upon the historic plan of the eleven bedrooms and the one bathroom of Styles Court drawn by Arthur Hastings in 1916?¹

      It was a household at war. Petrol was rationed. Supper was at half-past seven (‘We have given up late dinner for some time now’). Every scrap of paper was saved and sent away in sacks. Only three gardeners were left (one of them ‘a new-fashioned woman gardener in breeches and such-like’). John Cavendish helped with the farms and drilled with the volunteers. Mary Cavendish was up and dressed in her white land smock every morning at five. Cynthia Murdoch worked in the dispensary of the nearby Red Cross Hospital. The formidable Mrs Inglethorp continually presided at patriotic events. A German spy (soon to be unmasked) dropped by from time to time. And, nearby, Leastways Cottage sheltered seven refugees, ‘them Belgies’.

      ‘WEALTHY

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