In Chapter 1, Hastings meets and describes his first encounter with Mary Cavendish. Rather than revealing any significant information about Mary herself, the visual imagery he uses to convey his first impression of her reveals his own romantic, idealistic, overly excited personality:
I shall never forget my first sight of Mary Cavendish. Her tall, slender form, outlined against the bright light; the vivid sense of slumbering fire that seemed to find expression only in those wonderful tawny eyes of hers, remarkable eyes, different from any other woman’s that I have ever known; the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilized body—all these things are burnt into my memory. I shall never forget them.
Hastings’s immediate admiration for Mary Cavendish is indicative of one of his inherent qualities: namely, his propensity for making uninformed conclusions. The intensity of the emotional connection Hastings develops towards Mary in such a short time is merely one of the first in a long string of instances in which he allows his emotions and his gut to direct his opinion of another person or situation. His language is poetic and lush, as he touches on color, light, shapes, and movement to translate his idealized memory of Mary. Hastings’s romantic fondness for Mary is yet another factor that differentiates him from Poirot, whose levelheadedness allows him to effectively gather necessary evidence.
