Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot 15)

“I think it’s awfully nice of you, Major Despard. Really frightfully nice.”

Anne said, “Thank you.”

She hesitated, and then said:

“Did you say Superintendent Battle was coming here?”

“Yes. You mustn’t be alarmed by that. It’s inevitable.”

“Oh, I know. As a matter of fact, I’ve been expecting him.”

Rhoda said impulsively:

“Poor darling—it’s nearly killing her, this business. It’s such a shame—so frightfully unfair.”

Despard said:

“I agree—it’s a pretty beastly business—dragging a young girl into an affair of this kind. If anyone wanted to stick a knife into Shaitana, they ought to have chosen some other place or time.”

Rhoda asked squarely:

“Who do you think did it? Dr. Roberts or that Mrs. Lorrimer?”

A very faint smile stirred Despard’s moustache.

“May have done it myself, for all you know.”

“Oh, no,” cried Rhoda. “Anne and I know you didn’t do it.”

He looked at them both with kindly eyes.

A nice pair of kids. Touchingly full of faith and trust. A timid little creature, the Meredith girl. Never mind, Myherne would see her through. The other was a fighter. He doubted if she would have crumpled up in the same way if she’d been in her friend’s place. Nice girls. He’d like to know more about them.

These thoughts passed through his mind. Aloud he said: “Never take anything for granted, Miss Dawes. I don’t set as much value on human life as most people do. All this hysterical fuss about road deaths, for instance. Man is always in danger—from traffic, from germs, from a hundred-and-one things. As well be killed one way as another. The moment you b

egin being careful of yourself—adopting as your motto ‘Safety First’—you might as well be dead, in my opinion.”

“Oh, I do agree with you,” cried Rhoda. “I think one ought to live frightfully dangerously—if one gets the chance that is. But life, on the whole, is terribly tame.”

“It has its moments.”

“Yes, for you. You go to out-of-the-way places and get mauled by tigers and shoot things and jiggers bury themselves in your toes and insects sting you, and everything’s terribly uncomfortable but frightfully thrilling.”

“Well, Miss Meredith has had her thrill, too. I don’t suppose it often happens that you’ve actually been in the room while a murder was committed—”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Anne.

He said quickly:

“I’m sorry.”

But Rhoda said with a sigh:

“Of course it was awful—but it was exciting, too! I don’t think Anne appreciates that side of it. You know, I think that Mrs. Oliver is thrilled to the core to have been there that night.”

“Mrs.—? Oh, your fat friend who writes the books about the unpronounceable Finn. Is she trying her hand at detection in real life?”

“She wants to.”