Cards on the Table

Plot summary

Mr Shaitana hosts an unusual dinner party, with four sleuths and four people he suspects have murder in their past as the guests. In a veiled statement of accusation, Shaitana lists the ways various people might commit murder based on their occupation. After the meal, he settles the latter four at one bridge table in the main room, and leads the four sleuths to a table in another room. He settles in a chair near the fireplace in the main room. When the sleuths end their game, two of them, Poirot and Colonel Race, in saying good night to their host, find the man dead in his chair, a fine weapon from his own collection in his chest. The two call Superintendent Battle to take over the situation.

Only Poirot knew Shaitana’s plan for the dinner party, he tells Battle, Race and Mrs Ariadne Oliver, the celebrated mystery author. The other four guests wait in a separate room while the police do their work, and remove the body. Battle questions each one by one. Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer, young Anne Meredith, and explorer Major Despard each deny the murder. Poirot rescues the score sheets kept for the four rubbers of the game, which he uses both to mark the passage of time and the character of each player as the evening passed.

The investigation proceeds openly on the connection of each of the four to Shaitana, and quietly in finding if there is a death that could have been murder in their past, seeking motives and psychology for Shaitana's murder. Each sleuth uncovers a death: Battle finds that one client of Dr Roberts and her husband died separately, he of anthrax, she of a blood infection while in Egypt; Colonel Race learns that the botanist Luxmore while being guided through the Amazon by Despard died of fever, with rumours he was shot; Mrs Oliver learns that a woman who employed Anne as a companion died of accidental poisoning; while Poirot learns at the end that Mrs Lorrimer poisoned her husband. Colonel Race then leaves the country for his work in the Secret Service. During the investigation, tensions rise among the four guests. Anne is skittish and afraid, even with offers of support from Mrs Oliver and Mrs Lorrimer, an older woman who wants the young woman to be free of accusation. Despard engages a solicitor for himself and for Anne. Dr Roberts lives as before.

Mrs Lorrimer tells Poirot that she killed her husband years ago, that she has a fatal health condition, and then not believably confesses to Shaitana’s murder, to save Anne. As Poirot leaves, Anne comes to visit Mrs Lorrimer. The next morning, Mrs Lorrimer is found dead by Dr Roberts, who makes a dramatic entrance to her home, saying he received a note from Mrs Lorrimer admitting to the murder as part of a suicide note she mailed to the other three guests. He says she is dead of a sleeping drug overdose. Poirot joins Battle at the scene, where Poirot sees the mark of a hypodermic needle in Mrs Lorrimer. The same morning, Anne takes her flatmate Rhoda out in a punt in the nearby river, as they await a visit from Despard. Realising another death is possible, Poirot and Battle race to Anne’s cottage, arriving just after Major Despard. Anne intentionally tips Rhoda out of the punt, but Rhoda pulls her into the water as well, neither able to swim. Despard first saves Rhoda then he and Battle bring in Anne. Rhoda survives, but Anne dies.

Gathered at Poirot’s apartment, the survivors of the dinner party plus Rhoda hear the final resolution. Poirot accuses Dr Roberts of murder; he denies it. Poirot introduces a window washer who saw Dr Roberts injecting Mrs Lorrimer. The police found her cause of death to be injected anaesthesia. Roberts killed Shaitana as well. Roberts waited until he was “dummy” in the bridge game and the play of the game held the attention of the other three, as he wandered from the table to get a drink. Further, the doctor had killed Mr Craddock, husband of his patient, by infecting his shaving brush with anthrax during a house call. Then he injected Mrs Craddock during her required anti-typhoid injections prior to her trip to Egypt with the germ that led to her death by a blood infection. Roberts protests then confesses as Superintendent Battle makes clear the strength of the police cases against him. Later explaining the psychology, Poirot reveals that the window washer was an actor, used to elicit that confession.

Poirot learned from Mrs Luxmore, and then from Despard, how the botanist had died. He did have fever but died from an accidental shooting. The Major is exonerated. The police investigation identified the woman Anne killed, out of anger at being found out for petty thievery. Anne meant to kill her flatmate; instead, Despard courts Rhoda.

The Four Detectives

The Four Suspects

Other characters

The Victim

Foreword by the author

The novel 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 Captain Hastings found it very dull. The author then wonders with whom will her readers agree.

Title

Superintendent Battle is in charge of the investigation by the police. He agrees to work with the three other sleuths, unusual for the police, sharing all facts equally. He says in Chapter 19, "Cards on the table, that's the motto for this business." There is a theme of playing cards in the plot, as the potential murderers played a card game, contract bridge, as the murder was committed, and the manner of playing bridge (level of skill, risk taking) is part of Poirot's way to study the psychology of each individual.

Literary significance and reception

The Times Literary Supplement (14 November 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."

In The New York Times Book Review (28 February 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.".

In The Observer's issue of 15 November 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".

The Scotsman (19 November 1936) wrote: "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.

E.R. Punshon of The Guardian reviewed the novel in the 20 November 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."

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."

Charles Osborne: "Cards on the Table is one of Agatha Christie's finest and most original pieces of crime fiction: even though the murderer is, as the author has promised, one of the four bridge players, the ending is positively brilliant and a complete surprise."

1981 Stage Adaptation

The book was adapted as a stage play in 1981, although without Poirot. It opened at London's Vaudeville Theatre on 9 December 1981 with Gordon Jackson as Superintendent Battle and a cast that included Derek Waring, Belinda Carroll, Mary Tamm and Patricia Driscoll. 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.

Television

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 adaptation, written by Nick Dear, differed radically from the source material, introducing the following changes:

Radio

Cards on the Table was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4, featuring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot, Donald Sinden as Colonel Johnny Race and Stephanie Cole as Ariadne Oliver.

Publication history

The book was first serialised in the US in The Saturday Evening Post in six instalments from 2 May (Volume 208, Number 44) to 6 June 1936 (Volume 208, Number 49) with illustrations by Orison MacPherson.