The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Everywhere he went, I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had
been nearly all over the world. It was a splendid life—I loved it.”
There was a smile on her face, and her head was thrown back. She seemed
living in the memory of those old glad days.
“Then my father died. He left me very badly off. I had to go and live
with some old aunts in Yorkshire.” She shuddered. “You will understand
me when I say that it was a deadly life for a girl brought up as I had
been. The narrowness, the deadly monotony of it, almost drove me mad.”
She paused a minute, and added in a different tone: “And then I met
John Cavendish.”
“Yes?”
“You can imagine that, from my aunts’ point of view, it was a very good
match for me. But I can honestly say it was not this fact which weighed
with me. No, he was simply a way of escape from the insufferable
monotony of my life.”
I said nothing, and after a moment, she went on:
“Don’t misunderstand me. I was quite honest with him. I told him, what
was true, that I liked him very much, that I hoped to come to like him
more, but that I was not in any way what the world calls ‘in love’ with
him. He declared that that satisfied him, and so—we were married.”
She waited a long time, a little frown had gathered on her forehead.
She seemed to be looking back earnestly into those past days.
“I think—I am sure—he cared for me at first. But I suppose we were not
well matched. Almost at once, we drifted apart. He—it is not a pleasing
thing for my pride, but it is the truth—tired of me very soon.” I must
have made some murmur of dissent, for she went on quickly: “Oh, yes, he
did! Not that it matters now—now that we’ve come to the parting of the
ways.”
“What do you mean?”
She answered quietly:
“I mean that I am not going to remain at Styles.”
“You and John are not going to live here?”
“John may live here, but I shall not.”
“You are going to leave him?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
She paused a long time, and said at last:
“Perhaps—because I want to be—free!”
And, as she spoke, I had a sudden vision of broad spaces, virgin tracts
of forests, untrodden lands—and a realization of what freedom would
mean to such a nature as Mary Cavendish. I seemed to see her for a
moment as she was, a proud wild creature, as untamed by civilization as
some shy bird of the hills. A little cry broke from her lips:
“You don’t know, you don’t know, how this hateful place has been prison
to me!”
“I understand,” I said, “but—but don’t do anything rash.”
“Oh, rash!” Her voice mocked at my prudence.
Then suddenly I said a thing I could have bitten out my tongue for:
“You know that Dr. Bauerstein has been arrested?”
An instant coldness passed like a mask over her face, blotting out all
expression.
“John was so kind as to break that to me this morning.”
“Well, what do you think?” I asked feebly.
“Of what?”
“Of the arrest?”
“What should I think? Apparently he is a German spy; so the gardener
had told John.”
Her face and voice were absolutely cold and expressionless. Did she
care, or did she not?
She moved away a step or two, and fingered one of the flower vases.
“These are quite dead. I must do them again. Would you mind
moving—thank you, Mr. Hastings.” And she walked quietly past me out of
the window, with a cool little nod of dismissal.
No, surely she could not care for Bauerstein. No woman could act her
part with that icy unconcern.
Poirot did not make his appearance the following morning, and there was
no sign of the Scotland Yard men.
But, at lunch-time, there arrived a new piece of evidence—or rather
lack of evidence. We had vainly tried to trace the fourth letter, which
Mrs. Inglethorp had written on the evening preceding her death. Our
efforts having been in vain, we had abandoned the matter, hoping that
it might turn up of itself one day. And this is just what did happen,
in the shape of a communication, which arrived by the second post from
a firm of French music publishers, acknowledging Mrs. Inglethorp’s
cheque, and regretting they had been unable to trace a certain series
of Russian folksongs. So the last hope of solving the mystery, by means
of Mrs. Inglethorp’s correspondence on the fatal evening, had to be
abandoned.
Just before tea, I strolled down to tell Poirot of the new
disappointment, but found, to my annoyance, that he was once more out.
“Gone to London again?”
“Oh, no, monsieur, he has but taken the train to Tadminster. ‘To see a
young lady’s dispensary,’ he said.”
“Silly ass!” I ejaculated. “I told him Wednesday was the one day she
wasn’t there! Well, tell him to look us up to-morrow morning, will
you?”
“Certainly, monsieur.”
But, on the following day, no sign of Poirot. I was getting angry. He
was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.
After lunch, Lawrence drew me aside, and asked if I was going down to
see him.
“No, I don’t think I shall. He can come up here if he wants to see us.”
“Oh!” Lawrence looked indeterminate. Something unusually nervous and
excited in his manner roused my curiosity.
“What is it?” I asked. “I could go if there’s anything special.”
“It’s nothing much, but—well, if you are going, will you tell him——” he
dropped his voice to a whisper—“I think I’ve found the extra
coffee-cup!”
I had almost forgotten that enigmatical message of Poirot’s, but now my
curiosity was aroused afresh.
Lawrence would say no more, so I decided that I would descend from my
high horse, and once more seek out Poirot at Leastways Cottage.
This time I was received with a smile. Monsieur Poirot was within.
Would I mount? I mounted accordingly.
Poirot was sitting by the table, his head buried in his hands. He
sprang up at my entrance.
“What is it?” I asked solicitously. “You are not ill, I trust?”
“No, no, not ill. But I decide an affair of great moment.”
“Whether to catch the criminal or not?” I asked facetiously.
But, to my great surprise, Poirot nodded gravely.
“‘To speak or not to speak,’ as your so great Shakespeare says, ‘that
is the question.’”
I did not trouble to correct the quotation.
“You are not serious, Poirot?”
“I am of the most serious. For the most serious of all things hangs in
the balance.”
“And that is?”
“A woman’s happiness, _mon ami_,” he said gravely.
I did not quite know what to say.
“The moment has come,” said Poirot thoughtfully, “and I do not know
what to do. For, see you, it is a big stake for which I play. No one
but I, Hercule Poirot, would attempt it!” And he tapped himself proudly
on the breast.
After pausing a few minutes respectfully, so as not to spoil his
effect, I gave him Lawrence’s message.
“Aha!” he cried. “So he has found the extra coffee-cup. That is good.
He has more intelligence than would appear, this long-faced Monsieur
Lawrence of yours!”
I did not myself think very highly of Lawrence’s intelligence; but I
forebore to contradict Poirot, and gently took him to task for
forgetting my instructions as to which were Cynthia’s days off.
“It is true. I have the head of a sieve. However, the other young lady
was most kind. She was sorry for my disappointment, and showed me
everything in the kindest way.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then, and you must go to tea with Cynthia
another day.”
I told him about the letter.
“I am sorry for that,” he said. “I always had hopes of that letter. But
no, it was not to be. This affair must all be unravelled from within.”
He tapped his forehead. “These little grey cells. It is ‘up to them’—as
you say over here.” Then, suddenly, he asked: “Are you a judge of
finger-marks, my friend?”
“No,” I said, rather surprised, “I know that there are no two
finger-marks alike, but that’s as far as my science goes.”
“Exactly.”
He unlocked a little drawer, and took out some photographs which he
laid on the table.
“I have numbered them, 1, 2, 3. Will you describe them to me?”
I studied the proofs attentively.
“All greatly magnified, I see. No. 1, I should say, are a man’s
finger-prints; thumb and first finger. No. 2 are a lady’s; they are
much smaller, and quite different in every way. No. 3”—I paused for
some time—“there seem to be a lot of confused finger-marks, but here,
very distinctly, are No. 1’s.”
“Overlapping the others?”
“Yes.”
“You recognize them beyond fail?”
“Oh, yes; they are identical.”
Poirot nodded, and gently taking the photographs from me locked them up
again.
“I suppose,” I said, “that as usual, you are not going to explain?”
“On the contrary. No. 1 were the finger-prints of Monsieur Lawrence.
No. 2 were those of Mademoiselle Cynthia. They are not important. I
merely obtained them for comparison. No. 3 is a little more
complicated.”
“Yes?”
“It is, as you see, highly magnified. You may have noticed a sort of
blur extending all across the picture. I will not describe to you the
special apparatus, dusting powder, etc., which I used. It is a
well-known process to the police, and by means of it you can obtain a
photograph of the finger-prints of any object in a very short space of
time. Well, my friend, you have seen the finger-marks—it remains to
tell you the particular object on which they had been left.”
“Go on—I am really excited.”
“_Eh bien!_ Photo No. 3 represents the highly magnified surface of a
tiny bottle in the top poison cupboard of the dispensary in the Red
Cross Hospital at Tadminster—which sounds like the house that Jack
built!”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “But what were Lawrence Cavendish’s
finger-marks doing on it? He never went near the poison cupboard the
day we were there!”
“Oh, yes, he did!”
“Impossible! We were all together the whole time.”
Poirot shook his head.
“No, my friend, there was a moment when you were not all together.
There was a moment when you could not have been all together, or it
would not have been necessary to call to Monsieur Lawrence to come and
join you on the balcony.”
“I’d forgotten that,” I admitted. “But it was only for a moment.”
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
Poirot’s smile became rather enigmatical.
“Long enough for a gentleman who had once studied medicine to gratify a
very natural interest and curiosity.”
Our eyes met. Poirot’s were pleasantly vague. He got up and hummed a
little tune. I watched him suspiciously.
“Poirot,” I said, “what was in this particular little bottle?”
Poirot looked out of the window.
“Hydro-chloride of strychnine,” he said, over his shoulder, continuing
to hum.
“Good heavens!” I said it quite quietly. I was not surprised. I had
expected that answer.
“They use the pure hydro-chloride of strychnine very little—only
occasionally for pills. It is the official solution, Liq. Strychnine
Hydro-clor. that is used in most medicines. That is why the
finger-marks have remained undisturbed since then.”
“How did you manage to take this photograph?”
“I dropped my hat from the balcony,” explained Poirot simply. “Visitors
were not permitted below at that hour, so, in spite of my many
apologies, Mademoiselle Cynthia’s colleague had to go down and fetch it
for me.”
“Then you knew what you were going to find?”
“No, not at all. I merely realized that it was possible, from your
story, for Monsieur Lawrence to go to the poison cupboard. The
possibility had to be confirmed, or eliminated.”
“Poirot,” I said, “your gaiety does not deceive me. This is a very
important discovery.”
“I do not know,” said Poirot. “But one thing does strike me. No doubt
it has struck you too.”
“What is that?”
“Why, that there is altogether too much strychnine about this case.
This is the third time we run up against it. There was strychnine in
Mrs. Inglethorp’s tonic. There is the strychnine sold across the