Cards on the Table (SB) Read online

  Despard dropped down by Rhoda.

  “Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely.

  She said slowly:

  “You saved me. You saved me … ” She held out her hands to him, and as he took them she burst suddenly into tears.

  He said, “Rhoda….”

  Their hands clung together….

  He had a sudden vision—of African scrub, and Rhoda, laughing and adventurous, by his side….

  Thirty

  MURDER

  “Do you mean to say,” said Rhoda incredulously, “that Anne meant to push me in? I know it felt like it. And she knew I can’t swim. But—but was it deliberate?”

  “It was quite deliberate,” said Poirot.

  They were driving through the outskirts of London.

  “But—but—why?”

  Poirot did not reply for a minute or two. He thought he knew one of the motives that had led Anne to act as she had done, and that motive was sitting next to Rhoda at the minute.

  Superintendent Battle coughed.

  “You’ll have to prepare yourself, Miss Dawes, for a bit of a shock. This Mrs. Benson your friend lived with, her death wasn’t quite the accident that it appeared—at least, so we’ve reason to suppose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We believe,” said Poirot, “that Anne Meredith changed two bottles.”

  “Oh, no—no, how horrible! It’s impossible. Anne? Why should she?”

  “She had her reasons,” said Superintendent Battle. “But the point is, Miss Dawes, that, as far as Miss Meredith knew, you were the only person who could give us a clue to that incident. You didn’t tell her, I suppose, that you’d mentioned it to Mrs. Oliver?”

  Rhoda said slowly:

  “No. I thought she’d be annoyed with me.”

  “She would. Very annoyed,” said Battle grimly. “But she thought that the only danger could come from you, and that’s why she decided to—er—eliminate you.”

  “Eliminate? Me? Oh, how beastly! It can’t be all true.”

  “Well, she’s dead now,” said Superintendent Battle, “so we might as well leave it at that; but she wasn’t a nice friend for you to have, Miss Dawes—and that’s a fact.”

  The car drew up in front of a door.

  “We’ll go in to M. Poirot’s,” said Superintendent Battle, “and have a bit of a talk about it all.”

  In Poirot’s sitting room they were welcomed by Mrs. Oliver, who was entertaining Dr. Roberts. They were drinking sherry. Mrs. Oliver was wearing one of her new horsy hats and a velvet dress with a bow on the chest on which reposed a large piece of apple core.

  “Come in. Come in,” said Mrs. Oliver hospitably and quite as though it were her house and not Poirot’s.

  “As soon as I got your telephone call I rang up Dr. Roberts, and we came round here. And all his patients are dying, but he doesn’t care. They’re probably getting better, really. We want to hear all about everything.”

  “Yes, indeed, I’m thoroughly fogged,” said Roberts.

  “Eh bien,” said Poirot. “The case is ended. The murderer of Mr. Shaitana is found at last.”

  “So Mrs. Oliver told me. That pretty little thing, Anne Meredith. I can hardly believe it. A most unbelievable murderess.”

  “She was a murderess all right,” said Battle. “Three murders to her credit—and not her fault that she didn’t get away with a fourth one.”

  “Incredible!” murmured Roberts.

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Least likely person. It seems to work out in real life just the same as in books.”

  “It’s been an amazing day,” said Roberts. “First Mrs. Lorrimer’s letter. I suppose that was a forgery, eh?”

  “Precisely. A forgery written in triplicate.”

  “She wrote one to herself, too?”

  “Naturally. The forgery was quite skilful—it would not deceive an expert, of course—but, then, it was highly unlikely that an expert would have been called in. All the evidence pointed to Mrs. Lorrimer’s having committed suicide.”

  “You will excuse my curiosity, M. Poirot, but what made you suspect that she had not committed suicide?”

  “A little conversation that I had with a maidservant at Cheyne Lane.”

  “She told you of Anne Meredith’s visit the former evening?”

  “That among other things. And then, you see, I had already come to a conclusion in my own mind as to the identity of the guilty person—that is, the person who killed Mr. Shaitana. That person was not Mrs. Lorrimer.”

  “What made you suspect Miss Meredith?”

  Poirot raised his hand.

  “A little minute. Let me approach this matter in my own way. Let me, that is to say, eliminate. The murderer of Mr. Shaitana was not Mrs. Lorrimer, nor was it Major Despard, and, curiously enough, it was not Anne Meredith….”

  He leaned forward. His voice purred, soft and catlike.

  “You see, Dr. Roberts, you were the person who killed Mr. Shaitana; and you also killed Mrs. Lorrimer….”

  II

  There was at least three minutes’ silence. Then Roberts laughed a rather menacing laugh.

  “Are you quite mad, M. Poirot? I certainly did not murder Mr. Shaitana, and I could not possibly have murdered Mrs. Lorrimer. My dear Battle”—he turned to the Scotland Yard man—“are you standing for this?”

  “I think you’d better listen to what M. Poirot has to say,” said Battle quietly.

  Poirot said:

  “It is true that though I have known for some time that you—and only you—could have killed Shaitana, it would not be an easy matter to prove it. But Mrs. Lorrimer’s case is quite different.” He leaned forward. “It is not a case of my knowing. It is much simpler than that—for we have an eyewitness who saw you do it.”

  Roberts grew very quiet. His eyes glittered. He said sharply:

  “You are talking rubbish!”

  “Oh, no, I am not. It was early in the morning. You bluffed your way into Mrs. Lorrimer’s room, where she was still heavily asleep under the influence of the drug she had taken the night before. You bluff again—pretend to see at a glance that she is dead! You pack the parlourmaid off for brandy—hot water—all the rest of it. You are left alone in the room. The maid has only had the barest peep. And then what happens?

  “You may not be aware of the fact, Dr. Roberts, but certain firms of window cleaners specialize in early morning work. A window cleaner with his ladder arrived at the same time as you did. He placed his ladder against the side of the house and began his work. The first window he tackled was that of Mrs. Lorrimer’s room. When, however, he saw what was going on, he quickly retired to another window, but he had seen something first. He shall tell us his own story.”

  Poirot stepped lightly across the floor, turned a door handle, called:

  “Come in, Stephens,” and returned.

  A big awkward-looking man with red hair entered. In his hand he held a uniformed hat bearing the legend “Chelsea Window Cleaners’ Association” which he twirled awkwardly.

  Poirot said:

  “Is there anybody you recognize in this room?”

  The man looked round, then gave a bashful nod of the head towards Dr. Roberts.

  “Him,” he said.

  “Tell us when you saw him last and what he was doing.”

  “This morning it was. Eight o’clock job at a lady’s house in Cheyne Lane. I started on the windows there. Lady was in bed. Looked ill she did. She was just turning her head round on the pillow. This gent I took to be a doctor. He shoved her sleeve up and jabbed something into her arm about here—” He gestured. “She just dropped back on the pillow again. I thought I’d better hop it to another window, so I did. Hope I didn’t do wrong in any way?”

  “You did admirably, my friend,” said Poirot.

  He said quietly:

  “Eh bien, Dr. Roberts?”

  “A—a simple restorative—” stammered Roberts. “A last hope of bringing
her round. It’s monstrous—”

  Poirot interrupted him.

  “A simple restorative?—N-methyl—cyclo—hexenyl—methyl—malonyl urea,” said Poirot. He rolled out the syllables unctuously. “Known more simply as Evipan. Used as an anaesthetic for short operations. Injected intravenously in large doses it produces instant unconsciousness. It is dangerous to use it after veronal or any barbiturates have been given. I noticed the bruised place on her arm where something had obviously been injected into a vein. A hint to the police surgeon and the drug was easily discovered by no less a person than Sir Charles Imphery, the Home Office Analyst.”

  “That about cooks your goose, I think,” said Superinten dent Battle. “No need to prove the Shaitana business, though, of course, if necessary we can bring a further charge as to the murder of Mr. Charles Craddock—and possibly his wife also.”

  The mention of those two names finished Roberts.

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “I throw in my hand,” he said. “You’ve got me! I suppose that sly devil Shaitana put you wise before you came that evening. And I thought I’d settled his hash so nicely.”

  “It isn’t Shaitana you’ve got to thank,” said Battle. “The honours lie with M. Poirot here.”

  He went to the door and two men entered.

  Superintendent Battle’s voice became official as he made the formal arrest.

  As the door closed behind the accused man Mrs. Oliver said happily, if not quite truthfully:

  “I always said he did it!”

  Thirty-one

  CARDS ON THE TABLE

  It was Poirot’s moment, every face was turned to his in eager anticipation.

  “You are very kind,” he said, smiling. “You know, I think, that I enjoy my little lecture. I am a prosy old fellow.

  “This case, to my mind, has been one of the most interesting cases I have ever come across. There was nothing, you see, to go upon. There were four people, one of whom must have committed the crime but which of the four? Was there anything to tell one? In the material sense—no. There were no tangible clues—no fingerprints—no incriminating papers or documents. There were only—the people themselves.

  “And one tangible clue—the bridge scores.

  “You may remember that from the beginning I showed a particular interest in those scores. They told me something about the various people who had kept them and they did more. They gave me one valuable hint. I noticed at once, in the third rubber, the figure of 1500 above the line. That figure could only represent one thing—a call of grand slam. Now if a person were to make up their minds to commit a crime under these somewhat unusual circumstances (that is, during a rubber game of bridge) that person was clearly running two serious risks. The first was that the victim might cry out and the second was that even if the victim did not cry out someone of the other three might chance to look up at the psychological moment and actually witness the deed.

  “Now as to the first risk, nothing could be done about it. It was a matter of gambler’s luck. But something could be done about the second. It stands to reason that during an interesting or an exciting hand the attention of the three players would be wholly on the game, whereas during a dull hand they were more likely to be looking about them. Now a bid of grand slam is always exciting. It is very often (as in this case it was) doubled. Every one of the three players is playing with close attention—the declarer to get his contract, the adversaries to discard correctly and to get him down. It was, then, a distinct possibility that the murder was committed during this particular hand and I determined to find out, if I could, exactly how the bidding had gone. I soon discovered that dummy during this particular hand had been Dr. Roberts. I bore that in mind and approached the matter from my second angle—psychological probability. Of the four suspects Mrs. Lorrimer struck me as by far the most likely to plan and carry out a successful murder—but I could not see her as committing any crime that had to be improvised on the spur of the moment. On the other hand her manner that first evening puzzled me. It suggested either that she had committed the murder herself or that she knew who had committed it. Miss Meredith, Major Despard and Dr. Roberts were all psychological possibilities, though, as I have already mentioned, each of them would have committed the crime from an entirely different angle.

  “I next made a second test. I got everyone in turn to tell me just what they remembered of the room. From that I got some very valuable information. First of all, by far the most likely person to have noticed the dagger was Dr. Roberts. He was a natural observer of trifles of all kinds—what is called an observant man. Of the bridge hands, however, he remembered practically nothing at all. I did not expect him to remember much, but his complete forgetfulness looked as though he had had something else on his mind all the evening. Again, you see, Dr. Roberts was indicated.

  “Mrs. Lorrimer I found to have a marvellous card memory, and I could well imagine that with anyone of her powers of concentration a murder could easily be committed close at hand and she would never notice anything. She gave me a valuable piece of information. The grand slam was bid by Dr. Roberts (quite unjustifiably)—and he bid it in her suit, not his own, so that she necessarily played the hand.

  “The third test, the test on which Superintendent Battle and I built a good deal, was the discovery of the earlier murders so as to establish a similarity of method. Well, the credit for those discoveries belongs to Superintendent Battle, to Mrs. Oliver and to Colonel Race. Discussing the matter with my friend Battle, he confessed himself disappointed because there were no points of similarity between any of the three earlier crimes and that of the murder of Mr. Shaitana. But actually that was not true. The two murders attributed to Dr. Roberts, when examined closely, and from the psychological point of view and not the material one, proved to be almost exactly the same. They, too, had been what I might describe as public murders. A shaving brush boldly infected in the victim’s own dressing room while the doctor officially washes his hands after a visit. The murder of Mrs. Craddock under cover of a typhoid inoculation. Again done quite openly—in the sight of the world, as you might say. And the reaction of the man is the same. Pushed into a corner, he seizes a chance and acts at once—sheer bold audacious bluff—exactly like his play at bridge. As at bridge, so in the murder of Shaitana, he took a long chance and played his cards well. The blow was perfectly struck and at exactly the right moment.

  “Now just at the moment that I had decided quite definitely that Dr. Roberts was the man, Mrs. Lorrimer asked me to come and see her—and quite convincingly accused herself of the crime! I nearly believed her! For a minute or two I did believe her—and then my little grey cells reasserted their mastery. It could not be—so it was not!

  “But what she told me was more difficult still.

  “She assured me that she had actually seen Anne Meredith commit the crime.

  “It was not till the following morning—when I stood by a dead woman’s bed—that I saw how I could still be right and Mrs. Lorrimer still have spoken the truth.

  “Anne Meredith went over to the fireplace—and saw that Mr. Shaitana was dead! She stooped over him—perhaps stretched out her hand to the gleaming head of the jewelled pin.

  “Her lips part to call out, but she does not call out. She remembers Shaitana’s talk at dinner. Perhaps he had left some record. She, Anne Meredith, has a motive for desiring his death. Everyone will say that she has killed him. She dare not call out. Trembling with fear and apprehension she goes back to her seat.

  “So Mrs. Lorrimer is right, since she, as she thought, saw the crime committed—but I am right too, for actually she did not see it.

  “If Roberts had held his hand at this point, I doubt if we could have ever brought his crimes home to him. We might have done so—by a mixture of bluff and various ingenious devices. I would at any rate have tried.

  “But he lost his nerve and once again overbid his hand. And this time the cards lay wrong for him and he came down he
avily.

  “No doubt he was uneasy. He knew that Battle was nosing about. He foresaw the present situation going on indefinitely, the police still searching—and perhaps, by some miracle—coming on traces of his former crimes. He hit upon the brilliant idea of making Mrs. Lorrimer the scapegoat for the party. His practised eye guessed, no doubt, that she was ill, and that her life could not be very much prolonged. How natural in those circumstances for her to choose a quick way out, and before taking it, confess to the crime! So he manages to get a sample of her handwriting—forges three identical letters and arrives at the house hotfoot in the morning with his story of the letter he has just received. His parlourmaid quite correctly is instructed to ring up the police. All he needs is a start. And he gets it. By the time the police surgeon arrives it is all over. Dr. Roberts is ready with his story of artificial respiration that has failed. It is all perfectly plausible—perfectly straightforward.

  “In all this he has no idea of throwing suspicion on Anne Meredith. He does not even know of her visit the night before. It is suicide and security only that he is aiming at.

  “It is in fact an awkward moment for him when I ask if he is acquainted with Mrs. Lorrimer’s handwriting. If the forgery has been detected he must save himself by saying that he has never seen her handwriting. His mind works quickly, but not quickly enough.

  “From Wallingford I telephone to Mrs. Oliver. She plays her part by lulling his suspicions and bringing him here. And then when he is congratulating himself that all is well, though not exactly the way he has planned, the blow falls. Hercule Poirot springs! And so—the gambler will gather in no more tricks. He has thrown his cards upon the table. C’est fini.”

  There was silence. Rhoda broke it with a sigh.

  “What amazing luck that window cleaner happened to be there,” she said.

  “Luck? Luck? That was not luck, mademoiselle. That was the grey cells of Hercule Poirot. And that reminds me—”

  He went to the door.