Styles: the Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case Free

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Styles was Christie's first published novel. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery. The book includes maps of the house, the murder Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was as a weekly serial in The Timesincluding the maps of the house and other illustrations included in the book. This novel was one of the first ten books published by Penguin Books when it began in This first mystery novel by Agatha Christie was well received by reviewers. An analysis in was positive about the plot, considered the novel one of the few by Christie that is well-anchored in time and place, a story that knows it describes the end of an era, and mentions that the plot is clever. Christie had not mastered cleverness in her first novel, as "too many clues tend to cancel each other out"; this was judged a difficulty "which Conan Doyle never satisfactorily overcame, but which Christie would. The manuscript was rejected by Hodder and Stoughton and Methuen. Christie then submitted the manuscript to The Bodley Head. After keeping the submission for several months, The Bodley Head's founder, John Lane offered to accept it, provided that Christie make slight changes to the ending. She revised the next-to-last chapter, changing the scene of Poirot's grand revelation from a courtroom to the Styles library. On the morning of 18 July, at Styles Court, an Essex country manor, its household wake to the discovery that the owner, elderly Emily Inglethorp, has died. She had been poisoned with strychnine. Arthur Hastings, a soldier from the Western Front staying there as a guest on his sick leave, ventures out to the nearby village of Styles St. Mary, to enlist help from his friend staying there - Hercule Poirot. Poirot learns that Emily was a woman of wealth - upon the death of her previous husband, Mr. Cavendish, she inherited from him both the manor and a large portion of his income. Her household includes: her husband Alfred Inglethorp, a younger man she recently married; her stepsons from her first husband's previous marriage John and Lawrence Cavendish; John's wife Mary Cavendish; Cynthia Murdoch, the daughter of a deceased friend of the family; and Evelyn Howard, Emily's companion. Poirot learns that per Emily's will, John is the vested remainderman of the manor - he inherits the property from her, per his father's will. However, the money she inherited would be distributed according to her own will, which she changed at least once per year; her most recent will favours Alfred, who will inherit her fortune. She had been quite distressed after this, and apparently made a new will - no one can find any evidence that it exists. Alfred left the manor early that evening, and stayed overnight in the village. Meanwhile, Emily ate little at dinner and retired early to her room, taking her document case with her; when her body was found, the case had been forced open. Nobody can explain how or when the poison was administered to her. Inspector Japp, the investigating officer, considers Alfred to be the prime suspect, as he gains the most from his wife's death. The Cavendishes suspect him to be a fortune hunter, as he was much younger than Emily. Poirot notes his behaviour is suspicious during the investigation - he refuses to provide an alibiand openly denies purchasing the strychnine in the village, despite evidence to the contrary. Although Japp is keen to arrest him, Poirot intervenes by proving he couldn't have purchased the poison; the signature for the purchase is not in his handwriting. Suspicion now falls on John - he is the next to gain from Emily's will, and has no alibi for the murder. Japp soon arrests him - the signature for the poison is in his handwriting; a phial that contained the poison is found in his room; a beard and a pair of pince-nez identical Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case Alfred's, are found within the manor. Poirot soon exonerates John of the crime. He reveals that the murder was committed by Alfred Inglethorp, with aid from his cousin Evelyn Howard. The pair pretended to be enemies, but were romantically involved. They added bromide to Emily's regular evening medicine, obtained from her sleeping powder, which made the final dose lethal. The pair then left false evidence that would incriminate Alfred, which they knew would be refuted at his trial; once acquitted, he could not be tried for the crime again if genuine evidence against him was found, per the law of double jeopardy. John was framed by the pair as part of their plan; his handwriting was forged by Evelyn, and the evidence against him was fabricated. Poirot reveals that when Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case realised that Alfred wanted to be arrested, he prevented Japp from doing so Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case he could discover why. He also reveals that he found a Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case in Emily's room, thanks to a chance remark by Hastings, that detailed Alfred's intentions for his wife. Emily's distress on the afternoon of the murder was because she had found it in his desk while searching for stamps. Her case was forced open by Alfred as he had discovered she had taken the letter and needed to recover it from the case. He then hid it in the room to avoid being found with it. Christie's mother, Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case "Clara" Boehmer Miller —was a strong influence on her life and someone to whom Christie was extremely close, especially after the death of her father in It was while Christie was ill circa that her mother suggested she write a story. The result was The House of Beautynow a lost work which hesitantly started her writing career. Christie also dedicated her debut novel as Mary Westmacott, Giant's Breadto her mother who, by that time, had died. The Times Literary Supplement 3 February gave the book an Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case, if short, review, which stated: "The only fault this story has is that it is almost too ingenious. Every reader must admit that the bet was won. Though this may be the first published book of Miss Agatha Christie, she betrays the cunning of an old hand You must wait for the last-but-one chapter in the book for the last link in the chain of evidence that enabled Mr. Poirot to unravel the whole complicated plot and lay the guilt where it really belonged. And you may safely make a wager with yourself that until you have heard M. Poirot's final word on the mysterious affair at Styles, you will be kept guessing at its solution and will most certainly never lay down this most entertaining book. The novel's review in The Sunday Times of 20 Februaryquoted the publisher's promotional blurb concerning Christie writing the book as the result of a bet that she would not be able to do so without the reader being able to guess the murderer, then said, "Personally we did not find the "spotting" so very difficult, but we are free to admit that the story is, especially for a first adventure in fiction, very well contrived, and that the solution of the mystery is the result of logical deduction. The story, moreover, has no lack of movement, and the several characters are well drawn. The contributor who wrote his column under the pseudonym of "A Man of Kent" in the 10 February issue of the Christian newspaper The British Weekly praised the novel but was overly generous in giving away the identity of the murderers. To wit. It will rejoice the heart of all who truly relish detective stories, from Mr. McKenna downwards. I have heard that this is Miss Christie's first book, and that she wrote it in response to a challenge. If so, the feat was amazing, for the book is put together so deftly that I can remember no recent book of the kind, which approaches it in merit. It is well written, well proportioned, and full of surprises. When does the reader first suspect the murderer? For my part, I made up my mind from the beginning that the middle-aged husband of the old lady was in every way qualified to murder her, and I refused to surrender this conviction when suspicion of him is scattered for a moment. But I was not in the least degree prepared to find that his accomplice was the woman who pretended to be a friend. I ought to say, however, that an expert in detective stories with whom I discussed it, said he was convinced from the beginning that the true culprit was the woman whom the victim in her lifetime believed to be her staunchest friend. I hope I have not revealed too much of the plot. Lovers of good detective stories will, without exception, rejoice in this book. The Bodley Head quoted excerpts from this review in future books by Christie but, understandably, did not use those passages which gave away the identity of the culprits. The victim is the wealthy mistress of Styles Court, found in her locked bedroom with the name of her late husband on her dying lips. Poirot has a few questions for her fortune-hunting new spouse, her aimless stepsons, her private doctor, and her hired companion. The answers are positively poisonous. Who's responsible, and why, can only be revealed by the master detective himself. The Big House in wartime, with privations, war work and rumours of spies. Her hand was over-liberal with clues and red herrings, but it was a highly cunning hand, even at this stage [4] : In general The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case achievement for a first-off author. The country-house-party murder is a stereotype in the detective-story genre, which Christie makes no great use of. Not her sort of occasion, at least later in life, and perhaps not really her class. The family party is much more in her line, and this is what we have here. This is one of the few Christies anchored in time and space: we are in Essex, during the First World War. The family is kept together under one roof by the exigencies of war and of a matriarch demanding rather than tyrannical — not one of her later splendid monsters, but a sympathetic and lightly shaded characterisation. If the lifestyle of the family still seems to us lavish, even wasteful, nevertheless we have the half sense that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Edwardian summer, that the era of country-house living has entered its final phase. Christie takes advantage of this end-of-an-era feeling in several ways: while she uses the full range of servants and their testimony, a sense of decline, of break-up is evident; feudal attitudes exist, but they crack easily. The marriage of the matriarch with a mysterious nobody is the central out-of-joint event in an intricate web of subtle changes. The family is lightly but effectively Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case, and on the outskirts of the story are the villagers, the small businessmen, and the surrounding farmers — the nucleus of Mayhem Parva. It is, too, a very clever story, with clues and red herrings falling thick and fast. We are entering the age when plans of the house were an indispensable aid to the aspirant solver of detective stories, and when cleverness was more important than suspense. But here we Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case to a problem that Agatha Christie has not yet solved, for cleverness over the long length easily becomes exhausting, and too many clues tend to cancel each other out, as far as reader interest is concerned. These were problems which Conan Doyle never satisfactorily overcame, but which Christie would. In the "Binge! The story is told in the first person by Hastings, and features many of the elements that have become icons of the Golden Age of Detective Fictionlargely due to Christie's influence. It is set in a large, isolated country manor. There are a half-dozen suspects, most of whom are hiding facts about themselves. The plot includes a number of red herrings and surprise twists. The Mysterious Affair at Styles launched Christie's writing career. Christie and her husband subsequently named their house "Styles". Hercule Poirot, who first appeared in this novel, would go on to become one of the most famous characters in detective fiction. Decades later, when Christie told the story of Poirot's final case in Curtainshe set that novel at Styles. The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Wikipedia

The novel features Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings in their final appearances in Christie's works see below. Christie wrote the novel in the early s, during World War II. Partly fearing for her own survival, and partly wanting to have a fitting end to Poirot's series of novels, Christie had the novel locked away in a bank vault for over thirty years. Knowing that she could no longer write any novels, the elderly Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case authorised Curtain's removal from the vault and subsequent publication. It was the last of her books to be published during her lifetime. Not only does the novel return the characters to the setting of her first, The Mysterious Affair at Stylesbut it reunites Poirot and Hastings, who had not appeared together since Dumb Witness in After a year apart Hercule Poirot, now crippled with arthritis, is reunited with his old companion Captain Hastings, who has since become a widower. When they receive a letter from Styles Courtthe place where they solved their first murder together, it seems like fate and they readily accept. However, after the great detective brands one of the seemingly harmless guests, whom he will only identify as 'X', a ruthless serial killer, people begin having doubts about the capability of his once renowned 'little grey cells'. But Poirot is aware that he alone must work quickly before the murderer strikes again, even if it means putting his life on the line The murderer, identified by Poirot simply by the letter X, has been completely unsuspected of involvement in five previous murders, in all of which there was a clear suspect. Four of these suspects have subsequently died one of them hangedbut in the case of Freda Clay, who gave her aunt an overdose of morphinethere was considered to be too little evidence to prosecute. Hastings agrees that it is highly unlikely to be coincidence if X was connected with all five deaths, but Poirot, now using a wheelchair due to arthritis and attended by his new valet Curtiss, will not give him X's name. He merely makes it clear that X is in the house, which has been turned into a private hotel by the new owners: Colonel and Mrs Luttrell. Hastings makes certain discoveries in the next few days. Elizabeth Cole, another guest at the hotel, reveals to him that she is in fact the sister of Margaret Litchfield, who had confessed to the murder of their father in one of the five cases. Margaret had died in Broadmoor Asylum and Elizabeth feels stigmatised by the case. Later that day Hastings and several other people overhear an argument between Colonel Luttrell and his wife. Shortly afterwards, he wounds her with a rook rifle, apparently mistaking her for a rabbit. Hastings reflects that this is precisely the sort of accident with which X is associated, but Mrs Luttrell rapidly recovers. Hastings is concerned by the attentions paid to his daughter Judith by Major Allerton, whom he discovers is married but Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case from his Catholic wife. While he and Elizabeth are out with Stephen Norton, another guest and a birdwatcher, Norton sees something through his binoculars that seems to upset him. Hastings suspects that it is something to do with Allerton and, when his clumsy attempts to persuade Judith to give Allerton up merely antagonise her, he plans Allerton's murder. He falls asleep while waiting to poison Allerton, and feels differently about things when he awakes the next day. She has been poisoned with physostigmine sulphatean extract from the Calabar bean that her husband has been researching. After Poirot's testimony at the inquest — that Mrs Franklin had been upset and that she had emerged from Dr Franklin's laboratory with a small bottle — a verdict of suicide is brought in, but Hastings suspects that the death was murder and Poirot confirms this. Norton, still evidently upset about what he has seen through the binoculars, asks Hastings for his advice, which is to confide in Poirot. Poirot arranges a meeting between them and says that Norton must not speak to anyone further of what he has seen. That night, Hastings is awakened by a noise and sees Norton — with his dressing-gown, untidy grey hair and Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case limp — go into his bedroom. The next morning, however, Norton is found dead in his locked room with a bullet-hole perfectly in the centre of his forehead, the key in his dressing-gown pocket and a pistol remembered by a housemaid as belonging to him nearby. Apparently, X has struck again. Poirot takes Hastings over the evidence, pointing out that his belief that he saw Norton that night relies on loose evidence: the dressing-gown, the hair, the limp. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no one in the house who could have impersonated Norton, who was a short man. Hastings despairs that the mystery will ever be solved when Poirot himself dies that night, apparently of natural causes. He nevertheless leaves Hastings three conscious clues: a copy of Othelloa copy of John Ferguson a play by St. John Greer Ervine that is now — unluckily for readers of Curtain — largely forgotten and a note telling Hastings to speak to his permanent valet, Georges. In the weeks that follow the death of Poirot, Hastings is staggered to discover that Judith has all along been in love with Dr Franklin, and is now marrying him and going with him to do research in Africa. Was Judith the murderer? When Hastings speaks to Georges, he discovers that Poirot wore a wig, and also that Poirot's reasons for employing Curtiss were vague. Perhaps the murderer was Curtiss all along? The solution, and one of the greatest of Christie's twist endings, is contained in a written confession that is sent to Hastings from Poirot's lawyers, four months after Poirot's death. In it, Poirot reveals that he wore a false moustache as well as a wig and explains that X was Norton, a man who had perfected the technique of which Iago in Othello like a character in Ervine's play is master: applying just such psychological pressure as is needed to provoke someone to commit murder, where normally they would let the other live and dismiss their desires as simply the heat of the moment, without anyone ever truly realising what he is doing. Again and again Norton had demonstrated this ability, first by apparently clumsy remarks that goaded Colonel Luttrell to take a homicidal shot at his wife, and then by his careful manipulation of Hastings to resolve upon the murder of Major Allerton. It was Norton's contrivances that created the impression that Judith loved Allerton when in fact she has been in love with Franklin all along. Hastings's potential murder had, however, been averted by Poirot's presence of mind in forcing drugged hot chocolate upon him Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case the night that he had intended it to take place, the same action resolving Poirot to take action; he knew that Hastings was not a murderer, but if he had not intervened Hastings would have hanged Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case a crime while the 'true' murderer would have escaped seemingly innocent. Deprived of his prey twice, Norton turned to Mrs Franklin, who was soon persuaded to attempt the murder of her husband, after which she could be reunited with the wealthy and attractive Boyd Carrington. By an ironic twist of Fate, however, Hastings himself had intervened in this murder; by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking out a book in order to solve a crossword clue coincidentally Othello again he had swapped the cups of coffee so that the one with poison in it was actually drunk by Mrs Franklin herself. Poirot knew all this but could not prove it. He sensed that Norton, who had been deliberately vague about whom he had seen through the binoculars when attempting to imply that he had seen Allerton and Judith, was now intending to reveal that he had seen Franklin and Judith, almost certainly implicating them in the apparent murder of Franklin's wife. The only solution was for Poirot to murder Norton himself. At their meeting, he revealed to Norton what he suspected Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case said that he intended to 'execute' him. He then gave him hot chocolate. Norton, arrogantly self-assured in the face of both the accusation and the threat, insisted on swapping cups, but both contained the same sleeping pills that had previously been used by Poirot to drug Hastings; guessing that Norton would request the swap, Poirot had drugged Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case cups, knowing that his time taking Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case pills would give him a higher tolerance for a dose that would put Norton out. With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was and would accept his word without question moved the body back to Norton's room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his wig, putting on Norton's dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot's room, Poirot shot him — with characteristic but unnecessary symmetry — in the centre of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot's own room, but Poirot had said that he had changed rooms before Norton's arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key. Poirot's last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach, seeking to avoid the traditional arrogance of the murderer where he might come to believe that he had the right to kill those he deemed it necessary to eliminate. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career. In a review titled The last labour of HerculesMatthew Coady in The Guardian of October 9, said that the book was both "a curiosity and a triumph. The seemingly artless, simplistic Christie prose is mined with deceits. Inside the old, absurd conventions of the Country House mystery she reworks the least likely person trick with a freshness rivalling the originality she displayed nearly 50 years ago in The Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case of Roger Ackroyd. Coady concluded, "For the egotistic Poirot, hero of some 40 books…it is a dazzlingly theatrical finish. Two months later, Coady nominated Curtain as his Book of the Year in a column of critic's choices. He said, "No crime story of has given me more undiluted pleasure. As a critic, I welcome it, as a reminder that sheer ingenuity can still amaze. Maurice Richardson in The Observer of October 5, summed up: "One of her most highly contrived jobs, artificial as a mechanical birdcage, but an unputdownable swansong. Robert Barnard: "Written in the 'forties, designed for publication after Christie's death, but in fact issued just before it. Based on an idea toyed with in Peril at End House chapter 9 — a clever and interesting one, but needing greater subtlety in the handling than Christie's style or characterisation will allow the characters here are in any case quite exceptionally pallid. In fact, for a long-cherished idea, and as an exit for Poirot, this is oddly perfunctory in execution. Due to its early date of composition, Curtain takes no account of Poirot's later career. While details are only very occasionally anachronistic Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case as the mentions of hanging, which had been abolished in Great Britain in they often have implications for the series as a whole that can only be dismissed by remembering that Christie probably intended the novel to be published earlier than it was; the fifth paragraph "Wounded in the war that for me would always be the war--the war that was wiped out now by a second and more desperate war. Hastings, who had been invalided out of the First World War, became involved in the first Styles investigation inat which time he was around thirty years old. We know that Poirot was alive to solve the mystery in Elephants Can Rememberwhich was set in Quite apart from Poirot's age, Hastings must therefore himself be around ninety years old at the time of Curtain. While this does not make it impossible that he should marry Elizabeth Cole, who is thirty-five, it certainly makes it exceptional. Hastings himself estimates in Chapter 8 that Elizabeth is "well over ten years my junior" and an age of fifty is far more suitable for the way that he describes himself in the novel. Another detail is Poirot's reference to a trip to Egypt for his health. At the time that Curtain was written this was almost certainly intended to be a reference to Death on the Nilebut if Hastings Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case seen Poirot a year before his Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case, then we must suppose that Poirot made a second trip there in about This, however, is merely to tie oneself in knots attempting to suggest a true, consistent biography that stands behind an entirely fictional sequence of events. Poirot mentions that once in Egypt he attempted to warn a murderer before the person committed the crime. That case is the one retold in Death on the Nile. In another book, Japp asks Poirot how he would commit a murder. Poirot replies that if he did, there would be no body to find. This is proved wrong in this book. In The A. MurdersInspector Japp says to Poirot: "Shouldn't Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case if you ended by detecting your own death". A clue of Curtain already being formed in the author's mind in The novel was adapted in starring David Suchet as Poirot. It was the final episode of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot. This wiki. This wiki All wikis. Sign In Don't have an account? Start a Wiki. The final chapters of the novel tell of the death of Hercule Poirot. Categories :. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. Curtain | Agatha Christie Wiki | Fandom

CURTAIN, written 25 years later but not published untiltakes the elderly Belgian detective and his old friend Captain Hastings back to Styles, the rambling country house where they solved their first murder together — and where history seems determined to repeat itself. Miss Agatha Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case knows her job. Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 30 plays, and six novels written under Styles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Curtain: Poirots Last Case name of Mary Westmacott. If you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you! Christie, Agatha. Publisher: HarperCollins This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. View all copies of this ISBN edition:. Create a Want. Customers who bought this item also bought.