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A character in The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Emily Inglethorp

The rich, generous, managing old woman who owns Styles and has just married a man half her age.

What they want

To run her house, her family and her marriage, and to be thanked for it.

The book

The Mysterious Affair at StylesAgatha Christie, 1920

Agatha Christie's first novel, written on a bet in a wartime dispensary, and the first appearance of Hercule Poirot.

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At a glance

In the book
The victim; owner of Styles Court
Age
Seventy
Where she appears
Chapters 1 to 3

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Mrs Inglethorp is seventy, energetic, charitable and used to being obeyed. Styles Court and its money came to her from her first husband, and John and Lawrence Cavendish live there on her allowance. Her marriage to Alfred Inglethorp, twenty years younger and her former secretary's cousin, has divided the house. She has housed a party of Belgian refugees in the village and runs bazaars for the war effort.

She is alive for three chapters and quarrels in two of them. On her last day she is heard raising her voice behind a closed door, makes a new will, and takes her coffee to her room.

How Emily Inglethorp Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The energyBazaars, committees, refugees; Hastings finds her as brisk as a woman half her age.
  • The moneyHers for life from her first husband, and the source of every quarrel in the house.
  • The marriageTo Alfred, whom the household calls a fortune hunter to her face and behind her back.
  • The quarrelOverheard through her door on the afternoon of the 17th, with a man's voice answering.
  • The willMade that afternoon in the presence of two gardeners, and burned that night.
  • The nightCries from behind a bolted door; the men break it down and she dies in convulsions.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Mrs Inglethorp had found a letter from her husband to Evelyn Howard and hidden it in her room. She died of strychnine that had settled in her own tonic, a day later than her murderers intended. The quarrel overheard was with John, not Alfred.

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