| Cards on the Table | |
|---|---|
 Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition |
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
| Publication date | November 2 1936 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | Murder in Mesopotamia |
| Followed by | Murder in the Mews |
Cards on the Table is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 2 1936[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year[2][3] . The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)[4] and the US edition at $2.00[3].
The book features the recurring characters of Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle and the bumbling crime writer Ariadne Oliver, making her first appearance in a Christie novel (she previously had a role in the Parker Pyne short story The Case of the Discontented Soldier).
Contents |
Plot summary
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At an exhibition of snuff boxes, Hercule Poirot meets Mr. Shaitana, a mysterious foreign man who is consistently described as devil-like in appearance and manner. Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better "collection" that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have gotten away with murder. He arranges a dinner party to show off this collection; Poirot is apprehensive.
Upon arrival at Shaitana's house on the appointed day, Poirot is joined by three other guests: mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, Scotland Yard's Superintendent Battle, and Colonel Race of His Majesty's Secret Service. Soon, the other four guests join them: Dr. Roberts, a hearty, florid man; Mrs. Lorrimer, a perfectly poised gentlewoman of late middle age; Major John Despard, a dashing Army man and world traveler, recently returned from Africa; and Anne Meredith, a shy, quiet, very pretty young woman. Having brought them all to dinner, Shaitana skillfully manipulates the topic of conversation to possible motives for murder. He lists four particular examples: the idea of poison as a woman's weapon, a crime of passion, the "accidental" murder, and a doctor's seemingly limitless opportunities to dispose of patients. These comments cause an unsettling air to fall over the dinner party; Mrs. Oliver comments that a "black angel" is passing.
Shaitana invites his eight guests to play bridge in the adjoining rooms; he, as the odd man out, does not play. Roberts, Meredith, Lorrimer, and Despard play in the first room, while Poirot, Oliver, Race, and Battle play in the next; Shaitana settles himself in a chair in the first room and thinks of how wonderfully his party is going. Hours later, Poirot and the others prepare to leave, and go to thank Shaitana. The other four are still in the middle of their game, but Battle notices that Shaitana has stopped moving, and that his body is slack. Shaitana has been murdered, stabbed in the chest with a jeweled stiletto. Battle interrupts the card game to announce this; the four players quickly say that no one else has entered the room all evening, meaning that one of them must be the murderer.
Once the preliminary police work has been done, Poirot reveals Shaitana's strange mention of a "collection" to the other three with whom he played bridge. They quickly realize that they are four "sleuths" meant to be pitted against the four in the next room whom Shaitana suspected of murder. The four agree to work together to solve the crime, and interview the four suspects. Roberts is upset but still hearty; Mrs. Lorrimer remains unshaken; Despard is smooth and does not pretend to be upset; Anne Meredith is the most ill at ease. Poirot takes interest in the way each member plays bridge, which he discerns through asking each suspect to grade the play of the others, ultimately determining that Lorrimer is the most skilled player, while Despard is talented but plain; Meredith plays too carefully, while Roberts bluffs and overbids often. As there seems to be no conventional way to prove which of them has committed Shaitana's murder, Poirot suggests that the group of sleuths delve into the past and uncover the murders that the dead man thought he knew about. He also asks each of the four "murderers" what they remember about Shaitana's ornately furnished front room, and about each rubber of the bridge game, seeking clues in their answers to the personality and character of each suspect.
Battle is put on the trail of the death of a Mrs. Craddock, whom Dr. Roberts once attended. Her husband died of anthrax poisoning from an infected shaving brush (and readers at the time of the novel's publication in the 1930s might well have remembered anthrax deaths from infected shaving brushes during and in the years after World War I); Mrs. Craddock herself had died not long afterward, of a tropical infection, in Egypt. Race seeks out information on Despard, and discovers a case in which a botanist named Luxmore and his wife traveled with him to South America; Luxmore officially died of a fever, but it is rumored that he was shot. Mrs. Oliver visits Anne Meredith and her housemate, Rhoda Dawes. Anne is one of those stock characters of the Christie mysteries, the well-bred but penniless orphan; she lives with her old friend Rhoda in Rhoda's house and is dependent on Rhoda's generosity. Mrs. Oliver tells the two that it falls to the women to solve the crime; she lists possible motives, including blackmail, to which Anne reacts badly. Rhoda later visits Oliver and explains Anne's bad manners: Anne, after her father's death and before old friend Rhoda came to her rescue, worked as a live-in companion (in an era in which a "companion" was a paid personal attendant of a wealthy woman); one employer, a Mrs. Benson, had taken hat paint—poison—from a medicine bottle and died. It was Anne who had broken the bottle of hat paint and placed the remainder in an emptied medicine bottle, at Mrs. Benson's suggestion, the story went. Though all in the remote village agreed that Anne was blameless and the death accidental, any mention of a murder abashes her. Fellow suspect Despard takes an interest in Anne's welfare, recommending that she retain an attorney.
In the meantime, the four sleuths gather and compare notes. Battle discovers that Roberts may have had an illicit relationship with Mrs. Craddock, while Poirot visits with Mrs. Luxmore. The latter is a melodramatic woman who claims to have had an unconsummated but passionate affair of the heart with Despard; yes, he did shoot her jealous husband, but it was in self-defense, she maintains, while histrionically making it clear that she lies to protect her love. Despard refutes all that. Mrs. Luxmore, he says, had persuaded herself that she was in love with him, but he took no interest in her, and killed Luxmore by accident while attempting to stop the man, who was delirious with fever, from wandering into the river and drowning. If Mrs. Luxmore hadn't thrown herself at Despard's gun, her husband would only have been wounded in the leg. Meanwhile, Poirot sets a trap for Anne Meredith. He knows that she is a poor girl with a hunger for expensive things. When she pays him a call at his request, he shows her to a table on which many packets of the finest silk stockings are piled up, apparently carelessly, and asks her to do him a favor by selecting those that would be best for him to give at Christmas. (Such stockings would truly have been made of silk; nylons hadn't yet been invented.) Poirot deliberately understates the number of packets in the pile, then wanders off to another room, leaving Anne alone with the stockings. After Anne makes her gift suggestions and leaves, Poirot discovers that two pairs of the stockings are missing, confirming his suspicion that Anne is a thief, and seemingly giving weight to his suspicion that she stole from Mrs. Benson and killed her when she feared she had been discovered.
At this point, Mrs. Lorrimer contacts Poirot with surprising news. She confesses to Shaitana's murder, and explains that she took the stiletto impulsively after he mentioned poison as a woman's weapon. Shaitana was right about her, she says; twenty years earlier, she had, she confesses, killed her husband. Poirot objects that Lorrimer's explanation of Shaitana's killing does not match her unflappable personality; she might well commit a premeditated murder, but never an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment one. Lorrimer breaks down—a trifle too easily for one presented to the reader as a model of self-possession—and admits that she saw Anne Meredith standing over Shaitana with her hand on his chest. Lorrimer thus believes that Meredith is Shaitana's killer, and decided to lie to save the younger woman. Lorrimer can do this because she has learned that she is terminally ill. She begs Poirot to let her take the blame for the crime: she will die soon anyway, and Anne will be free to live her young life.
Poirot is confused by this confession, and fears that there may be more trouble to come. His guess proves correct when Mrs. Lorrimer is found dead the next morning, having apparently committed suicide. Roberts arrived before she was quite dead and attended to her, but she could not be saved. Poirot and Battle race to Anne Meredith's cottage, fearing that she might strike again. Despard, who has been visiting Anne and Rhoda, both of whom fancy him, is a few steps behind Poirot and Battle. At Anne's suggestion, Anne and Rhoda are on a boat in a nearby river. Anne knows that Rhoda visited Mrs. Oliver, but does not know that Rhoda revealed the story of the Benson death to her; Anne believes that Rhoda is the only person likely to cross paths with the London police who can connect her to that death. Poirot and Battle see Anne suddenly push her friend into the water. Alas for Anne, when she knocks Rhoda into the water, she also falls in herself. Ah, but Despard has arrived; he must choose between the foundering young women; his choice will reveal which he loves. He rescues Rhoda; Anne drowns.
Poirot gathers Oliver, Battle, Despard, Rhoda, and Roberts at his home, where he makes a surprising announcement: the true murderer of both Shaitana and Mrs. Lorrimer is not Anne, but Dr. Roberts. Poirot brings in a window cleaner who happened to be working outside Mrs. Lorrimer's flat earlier that morning. He testifies that he saw Roberts inject Lorrimer with a syringe; a syringe, Poirot reveals, full of a lethal anesthetic. Battle chimes in that they can bolster any prosecution with the true story of the deaths of the Craddocks, who died of infections, true, but infections deliberately inflicted on each of them by Roberts. Roberts confesses.
Poirot proudly explains his reasoning to the gathered group. He points out that in the third rubber of bridge on the night of Shaitana's murder, a grand slam occurred. This intense play would keep the others focused on the game—Roberts was dummy at that point—while Roberts used the opportunity to stab Shaitana. It is also revealed that the "window cleaner" was actually an actor in Poirot's employ, though Poirot brags that he did "witness" Roberts kill Mrs. Lorrimer in his mind's eye. Despard ends the novel on a cheerful note: he suggests that one of the gathered party murder Poirot, and then watch his ghost come back to solve the crime.
Characters in "Cards on the Table"
The Four Detectives
- Superintendent Battle, a solid officer from Scotland Yard
- Colonel Race, a debonair Secret Service agent
- Ariadne Oliver, writer of popular detective fiction, untidy and somewhat ridiculous
- Hercule Poirot, the famed private detective
The Four Suspects
- Dr Roberts, a successful physician
- Mrs Lorrimer, a well-to-do, expert bridge player
- Major Despard, a dashing explorer
- Anne Meredith, a pretty, impecunious young woman
Other characters
- Rhoda Dawes, Anne's wealthy friend and housemate
- Mrs Luxmore, whose husband died in suspicious circumstances
- Miss Burgess, loyal secretary of Dr Roberts
- Elsie Batt, former parlourmaid of a Mrs. Craddock, a patient of Dr Roberts
- Sergeant O' Connor, extremely handsome and tall, used to get the goods out of Elsie
The Victim
- Mr Shaitana, a collector of all rare things, including murderers; very rich and mysterious
The novel also contains a foreword by the author, in which the Author warns the reader that the novel has only four suspects and the deduction must be purely psychological. Further, it is also mentioned (in jest of course) that this was one of the favourite cases of Hercule Poirot, while his friend Capt. Hastings found it very dull. The author then wonders with whom will her readers agree.
Literary significance and reception
The Times Literary Supplement of November 14, 1936 stated favourably in its review by Caldwell Harpur that, "Poirot scores again, scores in two senses, for this appears to be the authoress's twentieth novel. One of the minor characters in it is an authoress of thirty-two detective novels; she describes in several amusing pages the difficulties of her craft. Certainly Mrs. Christie ought to know them, but she continues to surmount them so well that another score of novels may be hoped for."[5]
In The New York Times Book Review for February 28, 1937, Isaac Anderson concluded, "The story is ingenious, but there are one or two loose ends left dangling when his explanation is finished. Cards on the Table is not quite up to Agatha Christie's best work."[6].
In The Observer's issue of November 15, 1936, in a review section entitled "Supreme de Poirot", "Torquemada" (Edward Powys Mathers) said, "I was not the only one who thought that Poirot or his creator had gone a little off the rails in Murder in Mesopotamia, which means that others beside myself will rejoice at Mrs. Christie's brilliant come-back in Cards on the Table. This author, unlike many who have achieved fame and success for qualities quite other than literary ones, has studied to improve in every branch of writing in each of her detective stories. The result is that, in her latest book, we note qualities of humour, composition and subtlety which we would have thought beyond the reach of the writer of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Of course, the gift of bamboozlement, with which Agatha Christie was born, remains, and has never been seen to better advantage than in this close, diverting and largely analytical problem. Cards on the Table is perhaps the most perfect of the little grey cells"[7].
The Scotsman of November 19, 1936 said, "There was a time when M. Hercule Poirot thought of going into retirement in order to devote himself to the cultivation of marrows. Fortunately, the threat was never carried out; and in Mrs Christie's latest novel the little Belgian detective is in very good form indeed. The plot is simple but brilliant." The review concluded by saying, "Mrs Oliver, the novelist, is one of Mrs Christie's most amusing creations[8].
E.R. Punshon of The Guardian reviewed the novel in the November 20, 1936 issue when he began, "Even in a tale of crime and mystery humour is often of high value." He went on to say that, "In this respect…Agatha Christie shows herself once again…a model of detective tales. There are delightful passages when Poirot anxiously compares other moustaches with his own and awards his own the palm, when his lips are forced to utter the unaccustomed words 'I was in error', when Mrs. Oliver, famous authoress, discourses upon art and craft of fiction. But all that never obscures the main theme as Poirot gradually unravels the puzzle of which four bridge-players had murdered their host." He concluded, "Largely by a careful study of the score, Poirot is able to reach the truth, and Mrs. Christie sees to it that he does so by way of springing upon the reader one shattering surprise after another."[9]
Robert Barnard: "On the very top rung. Special opportunities for bridge enthusiasts, but others can play. Superb tight construction and excellent clueing. Will be read as long as hard-faced ladies gather for cards."[10]
References or Allusions
References to other works
- In chapter 2, Anne Meredith, when introduced to Poirot, already knows of him from his having solved The A.B.C. Murders.
- In chapter 23, Poirot offers to show one of the characters a knife given to him by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. In describing this knife, he reveals the solution to Murder on the Orient Express: a most unusual example of Christie's occasional references to Poirot's former cases acting as a spoiler.[11]
- Anne Meredith knows Ariadne Oliver from her book The Body In the Library, which was the title of a book later written by Agatha Christie and published in 1942.
References in other works
- In The A.B.C. Murders Poirot mentions to Hastings his vision of an ideal case. It is in fact the plot of this novel.
- Major Despard and Rhoda, now his wife, reappear in The Pale Horse (1961), the only time suspects were re-used by Christie.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
1981 Stage Adaptation
The book was adapted as a stage play in 1981, although without Poirot. This followed Christie's trend of adapting Poirot novels as plays, but without Poirot as a detective, as she did not feel that any actor could portray him successfully.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
ITV adapted the story into a television programme in the series Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Zoë Wanamaker as Ariadne Oliver, which aired in the US on A&E Network in December 2005 and, in the UK, on ITV1 in March 2006. The portrayal strayed from the source material in the following respects:
- Superintendent Battle (in the novel) is replaced by Superintendent Wheeler, and Colonel Race by Colonel Hughes.
- The basic premise of the novel has been totally changed. The novel, as indicated by the author herself, is about four "sleuths" and four "suspects." It is also indicated fairly clearly in the novel that all the four suspects had committed murder or manslaughter at least once before. However, the ITV adaptation changes this basic premise completely.
- One of the sleuths, Superintendent Wheeler himself, has a shady past in the adaptation.
- Mrs. Lorrimer is shown to be the mother of Anne Meredith. Mrs. Lorrimer doesn't get murdered by Dr Roberts.
- Rhoda Dawes causes a rowing accident in which Anne Meredith falls into the water. In the novel, it is the other way around. Major Despard takes a fancy to Anne Meredith in the adaptation, whereas in the novel, he falls in love with Rhoda, while Anne dies of drowning.
- The motivations for the crimes committed are no longer about money but about sexuality, including homosexuality and lesbianism, subjects that would have been taboo in detective fiction in the 1930s.
Publication history
- 1936, Collins Crime Club (London), November 2, 1936, Hardcover, 288 pp
- 1937, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1937, Hardcover, 262 pp
- 1949, Dell Books (New York), Paperback, (Dell number 293 [mapback]), 190 pp
- 1951, Pan Books, Paperback, (Pan number 176), 186 pp
- 1957, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 192 pp
- 1968, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 253 pp
- 1968, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 253 pp
- 1969, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 343 pp, ISBN 0-85-456695-3
- 2007, Poirot Facsimile Edition (Facsimile of 1936 UK First Edition), HarperCollins, March 5, 2007, Hardback, ISBN 0-00-723445-7
The book was first serialised in the US in The Saturday Evening Post in six instalments from May 2 (Volume 208, Number 44) to June 6, 1936 (Volume 208, Number 49) with illustrations by Orison MacPherson.
References
- ^ The Observer November 1, 1936 (Page 6)
- ^ John Cooper and B.A. Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide: Second Edition (Pages 82 and 86) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8
- ^ a b American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ^ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ^ The Times Literary Supplement November 14, 1936 (Page 927)
- ^ The New York Times Book Review February 28, 1937 (Page 23)
- ^ The Observer November 15, 1936 (Page 8)
- ^ The Scotsman November 19, 1936 (Page 15)
- ^ The Guardian November 20, 1936 (Page 7)
- ^ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (Pages 189-190). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743
- ^ Page 188 (at the end of Chapter 23) of the 1940s mapback edition: "A knife, mademoiselle, with which twelve people once stabbed a man. It was given me as a souvenir by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits."
External links
- Cards on the Table at the official Agatha Christie website
- Cards on the Table (2005) at the Internet Movie Database
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