His position makes him a prime suspect after Alfred is initially cleared. He lives with her at Styles Court until her death, when he is poised to inherit the estate. John's finances are tight, and since his mother remarried, she has not been as willing to provide for him. He was a lawyer, but abandoned his practice to settle into life as a country squire. He is the first and primary suspect in Emily's murder.

He is twenty years her junior, and everyone in Styles Court suspects him of being a gold-digger. Alfred InglethorpĪlfred is Emily's new husband. She is murdered by strychnine poisoning, and her murder is the subject of the novel. She is known to be very generous, but her generosity also notoriously comes with strings attached. Technically, she is John and Lawrence's step-mother, but she raised them from a very young age and they've always considered her their mother. She is a socialite and is heavily involved in fundraising for the war effort. Emily InglethorpĮmily Inglethorp is the matriarch of the Cavendish family. He trusts Poirot's judgment implicitly and is very grateful to have him helping out on the case.

Japp works for the Scotland Yard and is, at least in an official capacity, the lead detective on the Styles case. Hastings is infatuated with Mary Cavendish, his friend John's wife. Hastings fancies himself an amateur sleuth, but he is extremely insecure about his investigatory prowess and desperate for the approval of Hercule Poirot. He ends up at Styles Court after a brief stint in a convalescent home, recovering from injuries he sustained during WWI, which is still ongoing during the events of the novel. Arthur HastingsĬaptain Arthur Hastings is the narrator of the novel. He is obsessively neat and is always rearranging rooms and fixing people's outfits when they are askew. Poirot is somewhat of a trickster and tends to keep everyone in the dark about his investigations while they are still ongoing. He has had an illustrious career and is known far and wide and trusted by Scotland Yard (the city of London's police), as is evident from Detective-Inspector Japp's reception of him. Poirot is a retired detective and a Belgian refugee in Essex, UK during WWI.

Poirot the mysterious affair at styles