Miss Meredith was left sipping her sherry by Poirot’s side.
“Our friend is very punctilious,” said Poirot with a smile.
The girl agreed.
“I know. People rather dispense with introductions nowadays. They just say ‘I expect you know everybody’ and leave it at that.”
“Whether you do or you don’t?”
“Whether you do or don’t. Sometimes it makes it awkward—but I think this is more awe-inspiring.”
She hesitated and then said:
“Is that Mrs. Oliver, the novelist?”
Mrs. Oliver’s bass voice rose powerfully at that minute, speaking to Dr. Roberts.
“You can’t get away from a woman’s instinct, doctor. Women know these things.”
Forgetting that she no longer had a brow she endeavoured to sweep her hair back from it but was foiled by the fringe.
“That is Mrs. Oliver,” said Poirot.
“The one who wrote The Body in the Library?”
“That identical one.”
Miss Meredith frowned a little.
“And that wooden-looking man—a superintendent did Mr. Shaitana say?”
“From Scotland Yard.”
“And you?”
“And me?”
“I know all about you, M. Poirot. It was you who really solved the A.B.C. crimes.”
“Madamoiselle, you cover me with confusion.”
Miss Meredith drew her brows together.
“Mr. Shaitana,” she began and then stopped. “Mr. Shaitana—”
Poirot said quietly:
“One might say he was ‘crime-minded.’ It seems so. Doubtless he wishes to hear us dispute ourselves. He is already egging on Mrs. Oliver and Dr. Roberts. They are now discussing untraceable poisons.”
Miss Meredith gave a little gasp as she said:
“What a queer man he is!”
“Dr. Roberts?”
“No, Mr. Shaitana.”
She shivered a little and said:
“There’s always something a little frightening about him, I think. You never know what would strike him as amusing. It might—it might be something cruel.”
“Such as foxhunting, eh?”
Miss Meredith threw him a reproachful glance.
“I meant—oh! something Oriental!”
“He has perhaps the tortuous mind,” admitted Poirot.
“Torturer’s?”
“No, no tortuous, I said.”
“I don’t think I like him frightfully,” confided Miss Meredith, her voice dropping.
“You will like his dinner, though,” Poirot assured her. “He has a marvellous cook.”
She looked at him doubtfully and then laughed.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “I believe you are quite human.”
“But certainly I am human!”
“You see,” said Miss Meredith, “all these celebrities are rather intimidating.”
“Mademoiselle, you should not be intimidated—you should be thrilled! You should have all ready your autograph book and your fountain pen.”
“Well, you see, I’m not really terribly interested in crime. I don’t think women are: it’s always men who read detective stories.”
Hercule Poirot sighed affectedly.
“Alas!” he murmured. “What would I not give at this minute to be even the most minor of film stars!”
The butler threw the door open.
“Dinner is served,” he murmured.
Poirot’s prognostication was amply justified. The dinner was delicious and its serving perfection. Subdued light, polished wood, the blue gleam of Irish glass. In the dimness, at the head of the table, Mr. Shaitana looked more than ever diabolical.
He apologized gracefully for the uneven number of the sexes.
Mrs. Lorrimer was on his right hand, Mrs. Oliver on his left. Miss Meredith was between Superintendent Battle and Major Despard. Poirot was between Mrs. Lorrimer and Dr. Roberts.
The latter murmured facetiously to him.
“You’re not going to be allowed to monopolize the only pretty girl all the evening. You French fellows, you don’t waste your time, do you?”
“I happen to be Belgian,” murmured Poirot.
“Same thing where the ladies are concerned, I expect, my boy,” said the doctor cheerfully.
Then, dropping the facetiousness, and adopting a professional tone, he began to talk to Colonel Race on his other side about the latest developments in the treatment of sleeping sickness.
Mrs. Lorrimer turned to Poirot and began to talk of the latest plays. Her judgements were sound and her criticisms apt. They drifted on to books and then to world politics. He found her a well-informed and thoroughly intelligent woman.
On the opposite side of the table Mrs. Oliver was asking Major Despard if he knew of any unheard-of-out-of-the-way poisons.
“Well, there’s curare.”
“My dear man, vieux jeu! That’s been done hundreds of times. I mean something new!”
Major Despard said drily:
“Primitive tribes are rather old-fashioned. They stick to the good old stuff their grandfathers and great-grandfathers used before them.”
“Very tiresome of them,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I should have thought they were always experimenting with pounding up herbs and things. Such a chance for explorers, I always think. They could come home and kill off all their rich old uncles with some new drug that no one’s ever heard of.”
“You should go to civilization, not to the wilds for that,” said Despard. “In the modern laboratory, for instance. Cultures of innocent-looking germs that will produce bona fide diseases.”
“That wouldn’t do for my public,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Besides one is so apt to get the names wrong—staphylococcus and streptococcus and all those things—so difficult for my secretary and anyway rather dull, don’t you think so? What do you think, Superintendent Battle?”
“In real life people don’t bother about being too subtle, Mrs. Oliver,” said the superintendent. “They usually stick to arsenic because it’s nice and handy to get hold of.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Oliver. “That’s simply because there are lots of crimes you people at Scotland Yard never find out. Now if you had a woman there—”
“As a matter of fact we have—”
“Yes, those dreadful policewomen in funny hats who bother people in parks! I mean a woman at the head of things. Women know about crime.”
“They’re usually very successful criminals,” said Superintendent Battle. “Keep their heads well. It’s amazing how they’ll brazen things out.”
Mr. Shaitana laughed gently.
“Poison is a woman’s weapon,” he said. “There must be many secret women poisoners—never found out.”
“Of course there are,” said Mrs. Oliver happily, helping herself lavishly to a mousse of foie gras.
“A doctor, too, has opportunities,” went on Mr. Shaitana thoughtfully.
“I protest,” cried Dr. Roberts. “When we poison our patients it’s entirely by accident.” He laughed heartily.
“But if I were to commit a crime,” went on Mr. Shaitana.
He stopped, and something in that pause compelled attention.
All faces were turned to him.
“I should make it very simple, I think. There’s always an accident—a shooting accident, for instance—or the domestic kind of accident.”
Then he shrugged his shoulders and picked up his wineglass.
“But who am I to pronounce—with so many experts present….”
He drank. The candlelight threw a red shade from the wine onto his face with its waxed moustache, its little imperial, its fantastic eyebrows….
There was a momentary silence.
Mrs. Oliver said:
“Is it twenty-to or twenty past? An angel passing … My feet aren’t crossed—it must be a black angel!”
Three
A GAME OF BRIDGE
When the compa
ny returned to the drawing room a bridge table had been set out. Coffee was handed round.
“Who plays bridge?” asked Mr. Shaitana. “Mrs. Lorrimer, I know. And Dr. Roberts. Do you play, Miss Meredith?”
“Yes. I’m not frightfully good, though.”
“Excellent. And Major Despard? Good. Supposing you four play here.”
“Thank goodness there’s to be bridge,” said Mrs. Lorrimer in an aside to Poirot. “I’m one of the worst bridge fiends that ever lived. It’s growing on me. I simply will not go out to dinner now if there’s no bridge afterwards! I just fall asleep. I’m ashamed of myself, but there it is.”
They cut for partners. Mrs. Lorrimer was partnered with Anne Meredith against Major Despard and Dr. Roberts.
“Women against men,” said Mrs. Lorrimer as she took her seat and began shuffling the cards in an expert manner. “The blue cards, don’t you think, partner? I’m a forcing two.”
“Mind you win,” said Mrs. Oliver, her feminist feelings rising. “Show the men they can’t have it all their own way.”
“They haven’t got a hope, the poor dears,” said Dr. Roberts cheerfully as he started shuffling the other pack. “Your deal, I think, Mrs. Lorrimer.”
Major Despard sat down rather slowly. He was looking at Anne Meredith as though he had just made the discovery that she was remarkably pretty.
“Cut, please,” said Mrs. Lorrimer impatiently. And with a start of apology he cut the pack she was presenting to him.
Mrs. Lorrimer began to deal with a practised hand.
“There is another bridge table in the other room,” said Mr. Shaitana.
He crossed to a second door and the other four followed him into a small comfortably furnished smoking room where a second bridge table was set ready.
“We must cut out,” said Colonel Race.
Mr. Shaitana shook his head.
“I do not play,” he said. “Bridge is not one of the games that amuse me.”
The others protested that they would much rather not play, but he overruled them firmly and in the end they sat down. Poirot and Mrs. Oliver against Battle and Race.
Mr. Shaitana watched them for a little while, smiled in a Mephistophelian manner as he observed on what hand Mrs. Oliver declared Two No Trumps, and then went noiselessly through into the other room.
There they were well down to it, their faces serious, the bids coming quickly. “One heart.” “Pass.” “Three clubs.” “Three spades.” “Four diamonds.” “Double.” “Four hearts.”
Mr. Shaitana stood watching a moment, smiling to himself.
Then he crossed the room and sat down in a big chair by the fireplace. A tray of drinks had been brought in and placed on an adjacent table. The firelight gleamed on the crystal stoppers.
Always an artist in lighting, Mr. Shaitana had simulated the appearance of a merely firelit room. A small shaded lamp at his elbow gave him light to read by if he so desired. Discreet floodlighting gave the room a subdued look. A slightly stronger light shone over the bridge table, from whence the monotonous ejaculations continued.
“One no trump”—clear and decisive—Mrs. Lorrimer.
“Three hearts”—an aggressive note in the voice—Dr. Roberts.
“No bid”—a quiet voice—Anne Meredith’s.
A slight pause always before Despard’s voice came. Not so much a slow thinker as a man who liked to be sure before he spoke.
“Four hearts.”
“Double.”
His face lit up by the flickering firelight, Mr. Shaitana smiled.
He smiled and he went on smiling. His eyelids flickered a little….
His party was amusing him.
II
“Five diamonds. Game and rubber,” said Colonel Race.
“Good for you, partner,” he said to Poirot. “I didn’t think you’d do it. Lucky they didn’t lead a spade.”
“Wouldn’t have made much difference, I expect,” said Superintendent Battle, a man of gentle magnanimity.
He had called spades. His partner, Mrs. Oliver, had had a spade, but “something had told her” to lead a club—with disastrous results.
Colonel Race looked at his watch.
“Ten past twelve. Time for another?”
“You’ll excuse me,” said Superintendent Battle. “But I’m by way of being an ‘early-to-bed’ man.”
“I, too,” said Hercule Poirot.
“We’d better add up,” said Race.
The result of the evening’s five rubbers was an overwhelming victory for the male sex. Mrs. Oliver had lost three pounds and seven shillings to the other three. The biggest winner was Colonel Race.
Mrs. Oliver, though a bad bridge player, was a sporting loser. She paid up cheerfully.
“Everything went wrong for me tonight,” she said. “It is like that sometimes. I held the most beautiful cards yesterday. A hundred and fifty honours three times running.”
She rose and gathered up her embroidered evening bag, just refraining in time from stroking her hair off her brow.
“I suppose our host is next door,” she said.
She went through the communicating door, the others behind her.
Mr. Shaitana was in his chair by the fire. The bridge players were absorbed in their game.
“Double five clubs,” Mrs. Lorrimer was saying in her cool, incisive voice.
“Five No Trumps.”
“Double five No Trumps.”
Mrs. Oliver came up to the bridge table. This was likely to be an exciting hand.
Superintendent Battle came with her.
Colonel Race went towards Mr. Shaitana, Poirot behind him.
“Got to be going, Shaitana,” said Race.
Mr. Shaitana did not answer. His head had fallen forward, and he seemed to be asleep. Race gave a momentary whimsical glance at Poirot and went a little nearer. Suddenly he uttered a muffled exclamation, bent forward. Poirot was beside him in a minute, he, too, looking where Colonel Race was pointing—something that might have been a particularly ornate shirt stud—but was not….
Poirot bent, raised one of Mr. Shaitana’s hands, then let it fall. He met Race’s inquiring glance and nodded. The latter raised his voice.
“Superintendent Battle, just a minute.”
The superintendent came over to them. Mrs. Oliver continued to watch the play of Five No Trumps doubled.
Superintendent Battle, despite his appearance of stolidity, was a very quick man. His eyebrows went up and he said in a low voice as he joined them:
“Something wrong?”
With a nod Colonel Race indicated the silent figure in the chair.
As Battle bent over it, Poirot looked thoughtfully at what he could see of Mr. Shaitana’s face. Rather a silly face it looked now, the mouth drooping open—the devilish expression lacking….
Hercule Poirot shook his head.
Superintendent Battle straightened himself. He had examined, without touching, the thing which looked like an extra stud in Mr. Shaitana’s shirt—and it was not an extra stud. He had raised the limp hand and let it fall.
Now he stood up, unemotional, capable, soldierly—prepared to take charge efficiently of the situation.
“Just a minute, please,” he said.
And the raised voice was his official voice, so different that all the heads at the bridge table turned to him, and Anne Meredith’s hand remained poised over an ace of spades in dummy.
“I’m sorry to tell you all,” he said, “that our host, Mr. Shaitana, is dead.”
Mrs. Lorrimer and Dr. Roberts rose to their feet. Despard stared and frowned. Anne Meredith gave a little gasp.
“Are you sure, man?”
Dr. Roberts, his professional instincts aroused, came briskly across the floor with a bounding medical “in-at-the-death” step.
Without seeming to, the bulk of Superintendent Battle impeded his progress.
“Just a minute, Dr. Roberts. Can you tell me first who’s been in and out of this r
oom this evening?”
Roberts stared at him.
“In and out? I don’t understand you. Nobody has.”
The superintendent transferred his gaze.
“Is that right, Mrs. Lorrimer?”
“Quite right.”
“Not the butler nor any of the servants?”
“No. The butler brought in that tray as we sat down to bridge. He has not been in since.”
Superintendent Battle looked at Despard.
Despard nodded in agreement.
Anne said rather breathlessly, “Yes—yes, that’s right.”
“What’s all this, man,” said Roberts impatiently. “Just let me examine him; maybe just a fainting fit.”
“It isn’t a fainting fit, and I’m sorry—but nobody’s going to touch him until the divisional surgeon comes. Mr. Shaitana’s been murdered, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Murdered?” A horrified incredulous sigh from Anne.
A stare—a very blank stare—from Despard.
A sharp incisive “Murdered?” from Mrs. Lorrimer.
A “Good God!” from Dr. Roberts.
Superintendent Battle nodded his head slowly. He looked rather like a Chinese porcelain mandarin. His expression was quite blank.
“Stabbed,” he said. “That’s the way of it. Stabbed.”
Then he shot out a question:
“Any of you leave the bridge table during the evening?”
He saw four expressions break up—waver. He saw fear—comprehension—indignation—dismay—horror; but he saw nothing definitely helpful.
“Well?”
There was a pause, and then Major Despard said quietly (he had risen now and was standing like a soldier on parade, his narrow, intelligent face turned to Battle):
“I think every one of us, at one time or another, moved from the bridge table—either to get drinks or to put wood on the fire. I did both. When I went to the fire Shaitana was asleep in the chair.”
“Asleep?”
“I thought so—yes.”
“He may have been,” said Battle. “Or he may have been dead then. We’ll go into that presently. I’ll ask you now to go into the room next door.” He turned to the quiet figure at his elbow: “Colonel Race, perhaps you’ll go with them?”
Race gave a quick nod of comprehension.
“Right, Superintendent.”
Cards on the Table (SB) Page 2