Poirot says this to Hastings as they cross the lawn toward Styles Court shortly after Emily Inglethorp's death. So beautiful, so beautiful, and yet, the poor family, plunged in sorrow, prostrated with grief.
This is the first moment in the novel where Poirot introduces his concept of clues as "links in a chain," a metaphor to which he frequently returns in the course of trying to solve the mystery.
Here, Poirot outlines his method to Hastings, who, ironically, before he realized he would be working alongside Poirot, claimed to Mary Cavendish to have far surpassed Poirot's simple methods of deduction. And that little curious fact, that possibly paltry little detail that will not tally, we put it here! Hercule Poirot, p. This next little fact-no! Ah, that is curious! There is something missing-a link in the chain that is not there. Does the next fit in with that? A merveille! Good! We can proceed. One fact leads to another-so we continue. Another irony is the fact that Evelyn Howard will turn out to have been at the center of the scheme to murder Emily Inglethorp, and she manages to evade suspicion for the duration of the novel. Her comment is especially humorous and metafictional in the context of a detective novel-as if Christie were speaking through Howard to set her debut novel apart from the "lot of nonsense" being written.
Evelyn Howard chimes in with her personal gripes about detective novels. 9ĭuring Hastings' first tea at Styles, Mary gets him to admit that he dreams of being a private detective.
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