Poison as a Multivalent Substance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles Sarah T. N. Koki College

According to critics Alistair Rolls and Jesper Gulddal, the genre of detective fiction is “located in a field of binaries: structure versus innovation, stability versus mobility, the one final solution versus the many possibilities of the beginning” (7-8). Such a take, however, is somewhat dismissive of the nuances in Agatha Christie’s writing, which is particularly demonstrated through the nature of poison in Hercule Poirot’s first case The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Rather than confine Christie’s work to the limitations of binaries, Pierre Bayard contends that her fiction is not as much a series of clues to be solved than “an examination of the ambiguities of interpretation” (cited in Pamboukian, 73). Thus the configuration of strychnine, the poison deployed in Styles, as encompassing a plant-medicine-toxin identity is a prime example of Christie’s ambiguity, recalling Jacques Derrida’s interest in the mystery of the pharmakondue to it “always functioning on multiple levels, always both substance and antisubstance, poison and remedy” (cited in Pamboukian, 73). Poison, as Christie utilizes it, cannot be classified according to descriptions of extremes but demands to be appreciated in all its complexity. Similarly, Poirot’s...