Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot 15)

“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.”