Mr Cust drew himself up still further. A beam of delight irradiated his face.

‘Do you know, I believe you’re right! Famous! In all the papers. I shall take your advice, M. Poirot. The money will be most agreeable—most agreeable. I shall have a little holiday…And then I want to give a nice wedding present to Lily Marbury—a dear girl—really a dear girl, M. Poirot.’

Poirot patted him encouragingly on the shoulder.

‘You are quite right. Enjoy yourself. And—just a little word—what about a visit to an oculist? Those headaches, it is probably that you want new glasses.’

‘You think that it may have been that all the time?’

‘I do.’

Mr Cust shook him warmly by the hand.

‘You’re a very great man, M. Poirot.’

Poirot, as usual, did not disdain the compliment. He did not even succeed in looking modest.

When Mr Cust had strutted importantly out, my old friend smiled across at me.

‘So, Hastings—we went hunting once more, did we not? Vive le sport.’

E-Book Extras

The Poirots

Essay by Charles Osborne

The Poirots

The Mysterious Affair at Styles ; The Murder on the Links ; Poirot Investigates ; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ; The Big Four ; The Mystery of the Blue Train ; Black Coffee ; Peril at End House ; Lord Edgware Dies ; Murder on the Orient Express ; Three-Act Tragedy ; Death in the Clouds ; The ABC Murders ; Murder in Mesopotamia ; Cards on the Table ; Murder in the Mews ; Dumb Witness ; Death on the Nile ; Appointment with Death ; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas ; Sad Cypress ; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe ; Evil Under the Sun ; Five Little Pigs ; The Hollow ; The Labours of Hercules ; Taken at the Flood ; Mrs McGinty’s Dead ; After the Funeral ; Hickory Dickory Dock ; Dead Man’s Folly ; Cat Among the Pigeons ; The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding ; The Clocks ; Third Girl ; Hallowe’en Party ; Elephants Can Remember ; Poirot’s Early Cases ; Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the ‘country-place’ of John’s autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe—she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man twenty years her junior. When Emily’s sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.

Of note: Written in 1916, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie’s first published work. Six houses rejected the novel before it was finally published—after puzzling over it for eighteen months before deciding to go ahead—by The Bodley Head.

• Times Literary Supplement: ‘Almost too ingenious…very clearly and brightly told.’