Alfred Inglethorp and Evelyn Howard

Alfred Inglethorp and Evelyn Howard are cousins, lovers, and partners in the plot against Emily Inglethorp. Their relationship is the concealed architecture of the murder: Evelyn’s conspicuous hostility masks her attachment to Alfred, and their separate roles in the poisoning, false clues, and attempted framing of others turn a household’s rivalries into a coordinated scheme. The partnership is exposed when a letter intended for Evelyn identifies the two as conspirators and Poirot names Alfred as the murderer.

Identity and the Hidden Alliance

For much of the investigation, Evelyn presents herself as Alfred’s enemy. Her vehement opposition to him appears to make her an unlikely accomplice, and Poirot initially finds the reasons against her involvement persuasive. The decisive correction is that Alfred and Evelyn are cousins: she could not have carried out the crime alone, but kinship and resemblance made collaboration possible. Poirot concludes that the hatred she displayed concealed an opposite feeling and that the pair had been connected by passion before Alfred came to Styles.

The relationship also gives the plot a divided public face. Alfred is Emily’s husband, while Evelyn had been Emily’s close companion and protector. Evelyn speaks of having kept her self-respect by refusing gifts beyond her wages, and says she alone among those in the household had been free to care for Emily without being beholden to her generosity. The apparent moral distance between the two conspirators and the household therefore helps shield their private alliance: Evelyn’s loyalty to Emily seems genuine, while Alfred’s marriage makes him look like the obvious beneficiary and suspect.

A Plot Built Around Marriage and Inheritance

Poirot reconstructs a scheme that began before Alfred arrived at Styles. The pair intended that Alfred would marry the wealthy Emily, induce her to make a will in his favour, and then secure her fortune through a carefully planned crime. Their expected reward was a life together elsewhere, supported by the money taken from their victim. The murder plot thus depends on their relationship as well as on the marriage: Alfred’s place beside Emily supplies access and an apparent financial motive, while Evelyn can work in the household without attracting the same suspicion.

The legal position of the wills complicates that plan. Emily’s will from the previous August left her entire fortune to her stepson John Cavendish, who was expected to maintain Styles; her younger stepson Lawrence was already due a considerable sum under their father’s will. Poirot points out that Emily’s remarriage automatically revoked that earlier will. During the later trial, John’s counsel likewise argues that Alfred knew the rule because he had practiced at the Bar. A fresh will made after Emily’s quarrel with John was later found destroyed in her bedroom grate, and evidence indicated that it had favoured Alfred. The changing documents create both a prospective benefit and a trail that the conspirators attempt to manipulate.

Division of Roles and the Poisoning Plan

Poirot attributes the technical conception of the poisoning to Evelyn, whom he regards as the “master mind” in that part of the affair. She knew that adding a bromide to a mixture containing strychnine would cause the poison to precipitate. Emily sometimes took bromide powders at night, and Evelyn could put one or more into the large bottle of medicine when it arrived from Coot’s Cash Chemists. The delay before the tragedy was part of the design: nearly a fortnight would pass, allowing observers to forget who had handled the medicine. Evelyn would then engineer a quarrel and leave the house, so that time and absence would help deflect suspicion.

The plan did not proceed as intended. Emily did not take her medicine on the first night, making the arrangements involving a broken bell and Cynthia’s absence futile. Alfred, fearing his accomplice might be alarmed by the failure, wrote to Evelyn that the crime would happen that night instead of the previous one and referred to her idea about the bromides. He was interrupted, shut and locked his desk, and left the room. Emily returned earlier than he expected, found the letter, and understood that her husband and Evelyn had betrayed her, though the reference to bromides did not reveal the method. She wrote to her solicitor and decided to destroy the new will, but kept the incriminating letter.

That letter becomes the clearest documentary proof of the alliance. Poirot pieces together its fragments and reads Alfred’s message to “Dearest Evelyn,” which says that there is “a good time coming once the old woman is dead and out of the way” and calls the bromide idea “a stroke of genius.” The letter breaks off before its writer can finish. Its handwriting is recognized, and, when Alfred protests, Poirot publicly identifies him as the murderer. The evidence that Emily had found but could not fully interpret becomes the evidence that destroys the conspirators’ cover.

Disguise, False Clues, and the Collapse of the Cover Story

Evelyn’s role extended beyond the poisoning mechanism. Poirot explains that she, not Alfred, went to the village chemist’s shop in disguise as him. Her height, deep voice, and resemblance to her cousin in gait and bearing made the impersonation workable. The false appearance of Alfred buying strychnine was meant to implicate him while his real movements could be accounted for; the prosecution later repeats the accusation that the disguised purchaser was Alfred, while the defence presents his account of being summoned to Marston’s Spinney by an anonymous blackmailing note on July 16.

The defence also challenges the prosecution’s interpretation of the quarrel and the destroyed will. It argues that John Cavendish had not known that his voice might be mistaken for Alfred’s, and that he had assumed Emily had quarrelled twice. It further argues that Alfred understood the earlier will had been revoked by Emily’s remarriage and would call evidence about who destroyed the new one. These courtroom arguments show how the conspirators’ scheme becomes entangled with genuine family disputes and legal ambiguities, enabling suspicion to settle on people other than the actual partners.

Poirot says Evelyn arrived from Middlingham carrying compromising items and planted the strychnine and glasses in John’s room, while placing a beard in the attic. The objects were intended to be found later and to support a case against someone else. The evidence against Lawrence, by contrast, arose accidentally; Poirot considers that an unwelcome complication for the schemers rather than part of their design. The contrast reveals the difference between a manufactured trail, whose components Evelyn positioned, and suspicious circumstances that emerged without their control.

Exposure and Significance

The apparent strength of the case against Alfred is itself a clue. Poirot observes that the evidence had become too conclusive: a criminal had drawn the net so closely that one cut could free Inglethorp. His suspicion of a manufactured case gains force as he recognizes that Evelyn had overheard more of a supposedly private conversation than she admitted. Her testimony also confirms that the quarrel took place earlier in the afternoon, around four o’clock, rather than at the time initially assumed. What looks like a collection of independent accusations is instead shaped by a participant with access to the household and knowledge of its movements.

The partnership’s public performance also explains why its emotional signs mislead. Evelyn’s grief for Emily and her stated history of protecting her do not prove innocence, just as her fierce denunciations of Alfred do not establish genuine enmity. Poirot interprets her excess of hatred as concealment, then connects that performance to her practical work in the scheme. The relation is therefore both the motive’s hidden centre and a mechanism of deception: the cousins’ intimacy enables cooperation, while Evelyn’s visible antagonism helps keep that intimacy out of view.

The two are finally exposed not by one isolated clue but by the convergence of the letter, the impersonation, the bromide method, and the staged evidence. Alfred’s letter names Evelyn and acknowledges her role in the poison plan; Poirot’s reconstruction assigns her the disguised purchase and the planting of incriminating objects. Their intended future together, financed by Emily’s fortune, ends with the discovery of their joint responsibility. The relation that had made the crime possible is also what allows its separate clues to resolve into a single conspiracy.