CHAPTER 1
Who is there who has not felt a sudden star­tled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?
"I have done this before . . ."
Why do those words always move one so profoundly?
That was the question I asked myself as I sat in the train watching the flat Essex land­scape outside.
How long ago was it that I had taken this selfsame journey? Had felt (ridiculously) that the best of life was over for me! Wounded in that war that for me would al­ways be the war-the war that was wiped out now by a second and a more desperate war.
It had seemed in 1916 to young Arthur Hastings that he was already old and mature. How little had I realized that, for me, life was only then beginning.
I had been journeying, though I did not know it, to meet the man whose influence
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over me was to shape and mould my life. Actually I had been going to stay with my old friend John Cavendish, whose mother, recently remarried, had a country house named "Styles." A pleasant renewing of old acquaintanceships, that was all I had thought it, not foreseeing that I was shortly to plunge into all the dark embroilments of a mysteri­ous murder.
It was at Styles that I had met again that strange little man, Hercule Poirot, whom I had first come across in Belgium.
How well I remembered my amazement when I had seen the limping figure with the large moustache coming up the village street.
Hercule Poirot! Since those days he had been my dearest friend; his influence had moulded my life. In company with him, in the hunting down of yet another murderer, I had met my wife, the truest and sweetest companion any man could have had.
She lay now in Argentine soil, dying as she would have wished, with no long-drawn-out suffering or feebleness of old age. But she had left a very lonely and unhappy man behind her.
Ah! If I could go back-live life all over again. If this could have been that day in 1916 when I first travelled to Styles . . .
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What changes had taken place since then! 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
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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, en famille. It will be most agreeable. Therefore, mon cher Has­tings, depechez 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 tres bon marche.
"The Franklins and your charming Judith have been here for some days. It is all ar-
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ranged, so make no histories. A bientot. 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