Krishna
Agatha Christie is one of the authors whose books we regularly review. Some examples follow later in this review, in case you want to look up some of our earlier reviews of this author’s other books. We reviewed Poirot’s earlier case, Murder On The Links, earlier.
Monsieur Poirot meets Mr Shaitana, an old acquaintance, in a London charity exhibition. He was rich and known to give glorious parties. He claims that he collects unusual crime artifacts – the murderers themselves who had gotten away with it after committing murders!
Poirot goes to the party after warning Mr Shaitana that it is a dangerous crowd he is compiling and surprised to be introduced to some guests. Mrs Oiver, a successful writer of crime books, is there.
Surprisingly, he meets Superintendent Battle there too. You may remember that Superintendent Battle is also a central figure in Some of Agatha Christie’s novels, making you wonder if those were spun off from this one. (Examples of those books are : The Secrets of the Chimney and The Seven Dials Mystery. And there is Colonel Race too! (The Man In The Brown Suit for reference).
There are other guests. Dr Roberts arrives. More arrive later: Mrs Lorrimer and Major Daspard. Miss Meredith arrives there last.
Shaitana lets them all play bridge (two pairs of four) and sits on a chair in the same room as one team. When Colonel Race, Battle, and Poirot go to bid him goodnight they find him dead, sitting in the same chair! (Right under the noses of the bridge players so to speak!)
The detectives interview the card players in the same room. They talk to Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer. They claim not to have seen the pin (that could have enabled the murder to be committed by a woman) that was lying on the table all along.
Now they go investigating separately. Dr Roberts is first interrogated by Battle and then by Poirot. Poirot simply asks him about bridge and also about the objects in the room which Dr Roberts seems to recall with astonishing clarity.
Meanwhile Major Despard pays a visit to Miss Meredith and asks her to hire a lawyer. Poirot goes and looks up Mrs Lorimer and finds that she remembers every move in bridge but not the objects in the room on that night.
Poirot in the meanwhile goes to confront Mrs Luxmore and learns that her husband died in Africa, not of fever as widely publicized but shot by Despard.
Mrs Luxmore admits that she was attracted to Despard and her husband was several years older. But they were proper. Despard was introduced to her husband and got along well. But the husband accused Despard of having an illicit relationship with his wife and in the argument, in self defense, Despard killed Mr Luxmore. To avoid scandal and pain to the wife, even though Despard wanted to confess and take the blame, Mrs Luxmore convinced him to say that he died of the fever he was having and they quietly buried him out there in the Amazons.
Anyway, Poirot is resourceful. He goes to see Mrs Oliver who confesses that she is the murderess and the next morning is found dead. In fact she has written three letters confessing her crime and sent it to various people including the police and the three other suspects. Hercule Poirot still has his suspicions. He learns that Miss Meredith visited Mrs Lorrimer the day before.
In the meanwhile, Rhoda and Meredith go on a boat ride Despard is out to meet them but the boat capsizes and they both fall into the water. Despard saves Rhoda and when he goes for Anne she is gone.
When everyone is convinced that Anne was the murderess of Shaitana Hercule Poirot describes how he came to the right conclusion with everyone in the room and unveils the real murderer. He who murdered not only Shaitana but also Mrs Oliver.
Brilliant, as is all good novels of Christie.
8/10
— Krishna