The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Why was author Agatha Christie so preoccupied with poisons?

Well, in October 1912, 22-year-old Agatha Miller was introduced to Archibald "Archie" Christie, a Royal Artillery officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in April 1913. They quickly fell in love and got engaged three months after their first meeting.

Archie was sent to France to fight with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. They married on Dec. 24, 1914 when Archie was on home leave. Like many, Agatha involved herself in the war effort as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross. She worked first as a volunteer nurse then as an apothecary's assistant. 

Her war service ended when Archie was reassigned to London in September 1918 as a colonel in the Air Ministry. Agatha had her only child in 1919 ... and kept writing.

On the morning of July 18, the household at Styles Court wakes to the discovery that Emily Inglethorp, the elderly owner, has died. She had been poisoned with strychnine.

Published just two years after Archie's return, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie was first published in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom on Jan. 21, 1921.

Now I ask you, her first published novel used strychnine to kill someone. Did her husband's return from the battlefront inspire her? After all, she did disappear for 11 days in 1926 and possibly tried to frame Archie for her "death." They divorced in 1928. (She married Max Mallowan in September 1930 and that marriage lasted until her death in 1976.)

Agatha later updated her knowledge of poisons during World War II by working at the University College Hospital (UCH), London pharmacy. 

Agatha told journalist Marcelle Bernstein, "I don't like messy deaths ... I'm more interested in peaceful people who die in their own beds and no one knows why." Ironically, Agatha Christie died peacefully at her home at age 85  on Jan. 12, 1976 from natural causes.

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