The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.

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.

We had a good yarn about old times, and it ended in his inviting me down to Styles to spend my leave there.

“You see,” he said sadly, “ you have no instincts.”

“It was intelligence you were requiring just now,” I pointed out.

“The two often go together,” said Poirot enigmatically.

“There,” said Poirot, looking after her, “goes a very valuable ally. That woman, Hastings, has got brains as well as a heart.”

I did not reply.

“Instinct is a marvellous thing,” mused Poirot. “It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

All the things that one had read a hundred times - things that happen to other people, not to oneself.

“Because, so long as the evidence against him was vague and intangible, it was very hard to disprove. But, in his anxiety, the criminal has drawn the net so closely that one cut will set Inglethorp free.”

“Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined - sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured - so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.”

Never trust a man,