The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Donde el autor recuerda a la señora Cavendish, sus hijos, y la época en la infancia en que vacacionaban en el lugar. La señora había recibido una gran fortuna, aunque sabía compartir con los hijos de su marido, que se habían criado con ella.

¿Convalescent Home? … ¿Y eso qué es? Sinónimos serian: nursing home, care home, etc. En vocabulario buscamos squire.

El inglés es accesible y la novela vale la pena: del original inglés “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, de Agatha Christie.

 

I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near…

 

Tapa de la novela 

Generalidades

The Mysterious Affair at Styles es la primera novela de detectives de Agatha Christie, donde se introduce al detective Hercule Poirot. Fue escrita en 1.916.

Poirot es un refugiado belga de la Gran Guerra y se establece en Inglaterra.

La historia muestra varios de los elementos que se han convertido en íconos de la edad de oro de los detectives de ficción. Tiene lugar en una casa en el campo. Hay una docena de sospechosos, la mayoría de los cuales tienen que ocultar cosas.

Paragraphs         

The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided. 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.

I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very little of him for some years. Indeed, I had never known him particularly well. He was a good fifteen years my senior, for one thing, though he hardly looked his forty-five years. As a boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles, his mother's place in Essex.

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

"Mother will be delighted to see you again—after all those years," he added.

"Your mother keeps well?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she has married again?"

I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had married John's father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic, autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady Bountiful. She was a most generous woman, and possessed a considerable fortune of her own.

Their country-place, Styles Court, had been purchased by Mr. Cavendish early in their married life. He had been completely under his wife's ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income; an arrangement that was distinctly unfair to his two sons. Their step-mother, however, had always been most generous to them; indeed, they were so young at the time of their father's remarriage that they always thought of her as their own mother.

Lawrence, the younger, had been a delicate youth. He had qualified as a doctor but early abandoned the profession of medicine, and lived at home while pursuing literary ambitions; though his verses never had any marked success.

John practiced for some time as a lawyer, but had finally settled down to the more congenial life of a country squire. He had married two years ago, and had taken his wife to live at Styles, though I entertained a clever suspicion that he would have preferred his mother to increase his allowance, which would have enabled him to have a home of his own. Mrs. Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings… (Excerpts from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, in easier English)

Vocabulario

In former times, the squire of an English village was the man who owned most of the land in it. A country gentleman in England, esp the main landowner in a rural community.

Para saber

Convalescent Home: nursing home, skilled nursing facility (SNF), care home, rest home, o intermediate care: es un lugar de residencia para la gente que requiere tratamiento médico continuo y tienen dificultades significativas para desarrollar las actividades diarias.

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