Major Despard said dryly, "Primitive tribes are rather old fashioned. They stick to the good old stuff their grandfathers and great-grandfathers used before them."
"Very tiresome of them," said Mrs. Oliver. "I should have thought they were always experimenting with pounding up herbs and things.
Such a chance for explorers, I always think.
They could come home and kill off all their rich old uncles with some new drug that no one's ever heard of."
"You should go to civilization, not to the wilds for that," said Despard. "In the modern laboratory, for instance.
Cultures of innocent looking germs that will produce bona fide diseases."
"That wouldn't do for my public," said Mrs. Oliver. "Besides one is so apt to get the names wrong - staphylococcus and streptococcus and all those things - so difficult for my secretary and anyway rather dull, don't you think so?
What do you think, Superintendent Battle?"
"In real life people don't bother about being too subtle, Mrs. Oliver," said the superintendent. "They usually stick to arsenic because it's nice and handy to get hold of."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Oliver. "That's simply because there are lots of crimes you people at Scotland Yard never find out.
Now if you had a woman there -"
"As a matter of fact we have -"
"Yes, those dreadful policewomen in funny hats who bother people in parks!
I mean a woman at the head of things.
Women know about crime."
"They're usually very successful criminals," said Superintendent Battle. "Keep their heads well.
It's amazing how they'll brazen things out."
Mr. Shaitana laughed gently.
"Poison is a woman's weapon," he said.
"There must be many secret woman poisoners - never found out."
"Of course there are," said Mrs. Oliver happily, helping herself lavishly to a mousse of foie gras.
"A doctor, too, has opportunities," went on Mr. Shaitana thoughtfully.
"I protest," cried Doctor Roberts. "When we poison our patients it's entirely by accident."
He laughed heartily.
"But if I were to commit a crime," went on Mr. Shaitana.
He stopped, and something in that pause compelled attention. All faces were turned to him. "I should make it very simple, I think.
There's always accident - a shooting accident for instance - or the domestic kind of accident." Then he shrugged his shoulders and picked up his wineglass. "But who am I to pronounce - with so many experts present?"
He drank.
The candlelight threw a red shade from the wine onto his face with its waxed mustache, its little imperial, its fantastic eyebrows.
There was a momentary silence.
Mrs. Oliver said,
"Is it twenty to or twenty past?
An angel passing.
My feet are crossed - it must be a black angel!"
Chapter 3 A GAME OF BRIDGE
When the company returned to the drawing-room a bridge table had been set out.
Coffee was handed round.
"Who plays bridge?" asked Mr. Shaitana. "Mrs. Lorrimer, I know.
And Doctor Roberts.
Do you play, Miss Meredith?"
"Yes.
I'm not frightfully good, though."
"Excellent.
And Major Despard?
Good.
Supposing you four play here."
"Thank goodness there's to be bridge," said Mrs. Lorrimer in an aside to Poirot. "I'm one of the worst bridge fiends that ever lived.
It's growing on me.
I simply will not go out to dinner now if there's no bridge afterward!
I just fall asleep.