Curtain: Poirot’s last case – Agatha Christie
What gaps among the familiar faces. Styles itself had been sold by the Cavendishes. John Cavendish was dead, though his wife Mary (that fascinating, enigmatical creature) was still alive, living in Devonshire. Lawrence was living with his wife and children in South Africa. Changes – changes everywhere. But one thing, strangely enough, was the same. I was going to Styles to meet Hercule Poirot.
How stupefied I had been to receive his letter, with its heading Styles Court, Styles, Essex.
I had not seen my old friend for nearly a year. The last time I had seen him I had been shocked and saddened. He was now a very old man, and almost crippled with arthritis. He had gone to Egypt in the hopes of improving his health, but had returned, so his letter told me, rather worse than better. Nevertheless, he wrote cheerfully…
“And does it not intrigue you, my friend, to see the address from which I write? It recalls old memories, does it not? Yes, I am here, at Styles. Figure to yourself, it is now what they call a guest house. Run by one of your so British old colonels – very
‘old school tie’ and ‘Poona.’ It is his wife, bien entendu, who makes it pay. She is a good manager, that one, but the tongue like vinegar, and the poor Colonel, he suffers much from it. If it were me, I would take a hatchet to her!
“I saw their advertisement in the paper, and the fancy took me to go once again to the place which first was my home in this country. At my age one enjoys reliving the past.
“Then, figure to yourself, I find here a gentleman, a baronet who is a friend of the employer of your daughter. (That phrase, it sounds a little like the French exercise, does it not?)
“Immediately I conceive a plan. He wishes to induce the Franklins to come here for the summer. I in my turn will persuade you, and we shall be all together, enfamille. It will be most agreeable. Therefore, mon cher Hastings, dpchez vous, arrive with the utmost celerity. I have commanded for you a room with bath (it is modernized now, you comprehend, the dear old ‘Styles’) and disputed the price with Mrs. Colonel Luttrell until I have made an arrangement trs bon march.
“The Franklins and your charming Judith have been here for some days. It is all arranged, so make no histories. A bientt. Yours always, Hercule Poirot.” The prospect was alluring, and I fell in with my old friend’s wishes without demur. I had no ties and no settled home. Of my children, one boy was in the Navy, the other married and running the ranch in the Argentine. My daughter Grace was married to a soldier and was at present in India. My remaining child, Judith, was the one whom secretly I had always loved best, although I had never for one moment understood her. A queer, dark, secretive child, with a passion for keeping her own counsel, which had sometimes affronted and distressed me. My wife had been more understanding. It was, she assured me, no lack of trust or confidence on Judith’s part, but a kind of fierce compulsion. But she, like myself, was sometimes worried about the child. Judith’s feelings, she said, were too intense, too concentrated, and her instinctive reserve deprived her of any safety valve. She had queer fits of brooding silence and a fierce, almost bitter power of partisanship. Her brains were the best of the family and we gladly fell in with her wish for a university education. She had taken her B.Sc. about a year ago, and had then taken the post of secretary to a doctor who was engaged in research work connected with tropical disease. His wife was somewhat of an invalid. I had occasionally had qualms as to whether Judith’s absorption in her work and devotion to her employer were not signs that she might be losing her heart, but the businesslike footing of their relationship assured me.
Judith was, I believed, fond of me, but she was very undemonstrative by nature, and she was often scornful and impatient of what she called my sentimental and outworn ideas. I was, frankly, a little nervous of my daughter!
At this point my meditations were interrupted by the train drawing up at the station of Styles St. Mary. That at least had not changed. Time had passed it by. It was still perched up in the midst of fields, with apparently no reason for existence. As my taxi passed through the village, though, I realized the passage of years. Styles St. Mary was altered out of all recognition. Petrol stations, a cinema, two more inns and rows of council houses.
Presently we turned in at the gate of the Styles. Here we seemed to recede again from modern times. The park was much as I remembered it, but the drive was badly kept and much overgrown with weeds – growing up over the gravel. We turned a corner and came in view of the house. It was unaltered from the outside and badly needed a coat of paint.
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