Agatha Christie is widely—and justly—regarded as a master of plotting mysteries. She does not, perhaps, get as much credit as she deserves for her characters—she was, without question, a master of characters, too. But, be that as it may, as I re-read her first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles, it is the issue of plot which really occupies my attention. Specifically, that unlike her later novels, this one has several plot holes. (note: spoilers ahead.)

The biggest plot hole, that I simply can’t figure out how to explain, is why Alfred Inglethorp decided that he had to hide his letter in the spills before escaping through Cynthia’s room. That would make a certain amount of sense if he had no chance of escape and thought himself certain to be searched when he was found in the room, but he was not certain to be caught—as evidenced by the fact that not only was he not caught, it did not involve any luck that he was not caught. It would have made vastly more sense, and been far more natural, for him to simply take the letter and leave. Hurriedly ripping it up and hiding it amongst the spills took precious seconds, and I have no idea why he thought that time was worth it. On any rational (or even irrational) calculation, it made him more likely to be caught, not less.

Further, I also can’t imagine how he would have gotten enough warning of Poirot, Hastings, John Cavendish, and the lawyer coming to the room in order to decide to quickly rip up the letter and place it in the spills. Unless they were shouting and stamping their feet, they’d have had to have been fairly close to be audible, and it just doesn’t take much time to walk down a hallway.

I suspect that this reflects that Agatha Christie was in her late teens when she wrote this—a teenager has less life experience of what is plausible.

I also suspect that it may reflect her familiarity with detective fiction prior to her own influence on it. From what I can tell from the reasonably large amount of detective fiction I’ve read which was published between the start of Sherlock Holmes in 1888 and The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, strict plausibility was not a requirement of the genre¹. The common goal seems to have been something more like a logical connection between the evidence and the conclusion. Thus “he hid the letter in the spills” was evaluated on the basis of the evidence:

1. someone had been in the room and forced the despatch case
2. that person couldn’t have had much time
3. it would have been bad if he had been caught with the letter
4. spills are used to move fire around, so their use destroys them
5. no one ever looks at spills because they were already deemed useless
6. the spills were disturbed

Considered in that light, I have to admit that the conclusion that the murderer hid the incriminating letter among the spills is clever.

I still maintain that it’s a plot hole. But it is a very clever plot hole.

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1. Even after it became a requirement of the genre, it was an ideal that was rarely achieved. There are a few authors—not my favorite—who even seemed to think it a custom more honored in the breech than the observance. ↩︎