Chapter 1. I Go To Styles
The intense interest aroused in the public
by what was known at the time as "The
Styles Case" has now somewhat
subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the
world-wide notoriety which attended it, I
have been asked, both by my friend
Poirot and the family themselves, to write
an account of the whole story. This, we
trust,
will
effectually
silence
the
sensational rumours which still persist.
I will therefore briefly set down the
circumstances which led to my being
connected with the affair.
I had been invalided home from the
Front; and, after spending some months
in a rather depressing Convalescent
Home, was given a month's sick leave.
Having no near relations or friends, I was
trying to make up my mind what to do,
when I ran across John Cavendish. I had
seen very little of him for some years.
Indeed, I had never known him
particularly well. He was a good fifteen
years my senior, for one thing, though he
hardly looked his forty-five years. As a
boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles,
his mother's place in Essex.
We had a good yarn about old times, and
it ended in his inviting me down to Styles
to spend my leave there.
"The matter will be delighted to see you
again after all those years," he added.
"Your mother keeps well?"
I asked.
"Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she
has married again?"
I am afraid I showed my surprise rather
plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had married
John's father when he was a widower
with two sons, had been a handsome
woman of middle-age as I remembered
her. She certainly could not be a day less
than seventy now. I recalled her as an
energetic,
autocratic
personality,
somewhat inclined to charitable and
social notoriety, with a fondness for
opening bazaars and playing the Lady
Bountiful. She was a most generous
woman, and possessed a considerable
fortune of her own.
Their country-place, Styles Court, had
been purchased by
Mr. Cavendish early in their married life.
He had been completely under his wife's
ascendancy, so much so that, on dying,
he left the place to her for her lifetime, as
well as the larger part of his income; an
arrangement that was distinctly unfair to
his two sons. Their step-mother, however,
had always been most generous to them;
indeed, they were so young at the time of
their father's remarriage that they always
thought of her as their own mother.