While reading Agatha Christie's first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I was in the same boat as Hercule Poirot's rather guileless companion (and the narrator of the story) Arthur Hastings; the plot is a bit byzantine for my taste-- so many possibilities, so many characters-- and if you are a bit dim-witted (like Hastings and me) then you will certainly think this:
“Still you are right in one thing. It is always wise to suspect everybody until you can prove logically, and to your own satisfaction, that they are innocent."
and I suppose Christie plays fair-- if you follow the clues then you can unravel some of the mystery-- but Hastings doesn't feel this way and neither did I:
“Well, I think it is very unfair to keep back facts from me.”
“I am not keeping back facts. Every fact that I know is in your possession. You can draw your own deductions from them. This time it is a question of ideas.”
I even missed this utterly simple education (and I hate the heat and I'm really not fond of fires . . . I should have picked up on it)
“The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade. Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy something, and could think of no other way."
in the end, the inscrutable Hercule Poirot decides that romance must be the final arbiter of morality, which is kind of cute (considering an old lady got poisoned) and he reasons thus
“Yes, my friend. But I eventually decided in favour of ‘a woman’s happiness’. Nothing but the great danger through which they have passed could have brought these two proud souls back together again."
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