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
Late that night, Hastings is awakened by Lawrence Cavendish. Lawrence, who is holding a candle, tells Hastings that Emily Inglethorp is incredibly sick but seems to have locked herself in her bedroom. Hastings jumps out of bed and follows Lawrence toward Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom, from which they can hear her struggling in agony. John is by the door, too, along with several servants, and the entire house is slowly coming to life with excitement and worry. Before trying to break down the door, Hastings and the others go to Cynthia’s room, which shares a wall with Mrs. Inglethorp’s. There’s a door leading between the two rooms, but it’s always bolted shut—still, they must check. They find Mary Cavendish already in Cynthia’s room shaking her awake. When they try the door, though, they find it locked.
It appears that the novel’s mounting suspense has come to a breaking point, as everyone realizes Emily Inglethorp is in some kind of distress in the middle of the night. However, it's still not clear what has happened—nor will it necessarily be clear until the very end of the novel. For now, though, Hastings simply continues to provide a detailed account of everyone’s whereabouts, which will later come under greater scrutiny.
Themes
Hastings, John, and Lawrence break down Mrs. Inglethorp’s door. They find her writhing on the bed, her back arched in terrible convulsions. As Hastings turns to tell Lawrence that he’ll leave to get out of the way, he is struck by Lawrence’s facial expression—the man is completely pale, as if he has just seen a ghost. He’s staring at the wall behind Hastings’s head, as if something terrible is there. But when Hastings looks himself, he sees nothing out of the ordinary: just the trinkets on the mantelpiece and the ashes of the fire Mrs. Inglethorp had burning in the fireplace earlier that night.
Hastings has no idea why Lawrence looks so stricken in this moment, since there are no glaring details that would reasonably cause him such horror. And yet, this confusion is exactly the kind of thing Hastings will soon have to get used to, since what happens at Styles Court is shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Some details, it seems, might seem small and unimportant to Hastings but profoundly significant to others—it all depends on what a person knows; and Hastings, of course, knows very little.
Themes
Mrs. Inglethorp’s convulsions subside for a moment, but then they get even worse. John and Mary try to give her brandy, but it doesn’t help. Dr. Bauerstein rushes into the room right as Mrs. Inglethorp’s entire body arches on the bed, with her shoulders and feet on the mattress and the middle of her body pushed into the air. “Alfred—Alfred—,” she says, but she dies before finishing the sentence.
The violent nature of Emily Inglethorp’s death is important, since she seemed completely fine before going to bed. Indeed, it’s not as if she felt ill the last time everyone saw her, ultimately suggesting that something sinister happened between the time she went upstairs and the time she died.
Themes
Hastings realizes it’s actually early in the morning, not the middle of the night. Dr. Bauerstein had been walking past Styles when he saw a car rushing out to fetch Mrs. Inglethorp’s doctor, Mr. Wilkins. He now confers with Mr. Wilkins, who arrived shortly after Mrs. Inglethorp’s death. He explains to Wilkins that the convulsions he witnessed were very extreme—so extreme that he wishes Wilkins had been there himself to see them. The two doctors then ask everyone to leave them to speak privately for a moment.
Dr. Bauerstein’s presence is somewhat suspicious, since it’s unclear why he would just happen to be walking by Styles Court at such an hour. But Hastings doesn’t make much of this coincidence, even though he himself is acutely aware of the possibility that Bauerstein and Mary are having an affair. Again, then, Hastings’s powers of deduction seem somewhat weak, despite his desire to be a detective.
Themes
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While the doctors confer in private, Hastings can hardly control himself. He’s quite excited by these events, especially since he suspects foul play. Judging by Dr. Bauerstein’s reaction, he strongly believes Mrs. Inglethorp was poisoned.
Despite Hastings’s somewhat undiscerning nature, he does intuit that something is amiss, realizing that Emily clearly didn’t die of natural causes. But the question of how Emily died remains—and, for that matter, who killed her?
Themes
As everyone waits for the doctors to finish, they realize Alfred Inglethorp isn’t present. Nobody knows where he is, and John notes that he’s nowhere to be found in the entire house. The doctors then reemerge and inform John that they won’t be able to furnish a death certificate before an official autopsy is performed. In fact, Bauerstein says that, due to the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Inglethorp’s death, there will most likely have to be an official inquest. John begrudgingly agrees and then takes the keys to Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom from Dr. Bauerstein, who advises him to keep the room locked until the inquest takes place.
An inquest is an official court proceeding aimed at gathering information about an incident and, more often than not, a death. The fact that Bauerstein thinks there will have to be an inquest suggests that he thinks there was foul play involved. Furthermore, his advice to lock the doors adds a great deal of suspense to the novel, as the scene of the crime remains untouched, just waiting for further investigation.
Themes
Hastings takes John and Lawrence aside. He knows John is going to be wary of attracting publicity, since he tends to be an optimist who would rather focus on positive things. Lawrence, however, has a more nervous disposition, so Hastings thinks he will see the importance of investigating the murder before things progress too far. He asks the brothers if he can bring in Hercule Poirot to investigate, explaining that it’s important to get a jumpstart on a case before there’s too much attention surrounding it.
Although Hastings is sometimes a bit unobservant, he does seem to understand a few things about detective work. His suggestion to bring in Hercule Poirot at this early stage shows that he grasps how important it is to begin an investigation before there’s time for the criminal to get rid of any pertinent evidence. Since John has locked the doors to Emily’s bedroom, there might still be plenty of clues waiting at the scene of the crime.
Themes
To Hastings’s surprise, Lawrence immediately pushes against this idea, saying that Dr. Bauerstein is inventing things—he only suspects poisoning, Lawrence believes, because he himself specializes in poison and is obsessed with it. But his brother disagrees and gives Hastings permission to bring in Poirot, though he doesn’t think the case will be hard to crack: Alfred Inglethorp, he believes, is clearly to blame. Before Hastings goes to fetch Poirot, he stops in the house’s library, where he finds a book about the effects of strychnine poisoning.
Lawrence’s response to Hastings’s suggestion is somewhat alarming, since it seems so unlikely that his stepmother died of natural causes. The mere suggestion that this is what happened throws some suspicion on Lawrence, though Hastings doesn’t seem too bothered by the comment. Instead, he quickly makes his way to the house’s library to read about strychnine, indicating that he has a good hunch about the specific poison that killed Emily. Hastings therefore proves that he is capable of using his intuition, though he doesn’t seem to be very skilled in the art of reading other people.
Themes
