Self-portrait of the Artist: Cards on the Table | 1936

" 'Ask Dr. Roberts if he'll be so good as to step this way.' 

'I should have kept him to the end,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'In a book I mean,' she added apologetically.
'Real life's a bit different,' said Battle. 

'I know,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Badly constructed.' "

- Cards on the Table, p. 25

The Sum of It:

This book establishes an interesting premise for the crime around which it centers; a creepy dude who enjoys dressing up like Mephistopheles and freaking people out bumps into Poirot at a museum and mentions that he's got a collection the detective might be interested in — a collection of murderers who got away with their crimes. When Poirot is invited to attend a dinner party at creepy dude's house (Mr. Shaitana) along with a police superintendent, a secret service man, [one of our favorite recurring characters] mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, and four randoms, Poirot gets a feeling Shaitana has gathered the randoms as his collection. His feelings are confirmed when Shaitana gives a sort of strange speech at dinner about women and poisoning and other crimes. 

Shaitana insists that everyone but him sit down to play bridge, four in one room and four in another, and assigns all the "sleuths" to play together while the other four played in the room with him. When the evening waxes, they discover that their host, who seemed to be sleeping in his chair by the fire, was instead #MURDERED with a little jeweled dagger, stolen from a nearby table top. 

All the sleuths, including the writer Ariadne Oliver, put their heads together to solve this crime. They interview all the bridge players who were in the room with Shaitana when he died, that night and then individually later. They were engrossed in the game, no one saw a thing, not a clue to be found. Poirot realizes the only clues they have are psychological, so he proceeds to investigate, in true Poirot manner, stuff like the bridge score cards and everyone's memories of what the room looked like. Based on what Poirot knew about the four, he knew that each of them had something to hide, something Shaitana presumably knew by including them in his collection. So who could be guilty? 

The YOA Treatment: 

Though Agatha regularly contrasts Poirot's focus on psychology and use of his "little grey cells" with the more prosaic methods of traditional police officers, this book offers an opportunity for Poirot himself to contrast with a few different types of sleuths. Though sometimes such contrast serves to make Poirot a bit surly and judgy, he seems to enjoy this little crime solvers club, and works closely with the police superintendent especially. 

One of the most enjoyable things about this clever mystery is the presence of Ariadne Oliver, who first joined the Christie canon in Parker Pyne Investigates, and in this tale provides another fun foil to our beloved Hercule. 

In 1956, Agatha told a magazine, "I never take my stories from real life, but the character of Ariadne Oliver does have a strong dash of myself." Little hints of Agatha herself are sprinkled throughout the character and comments of Mrs. Oliver, including her love for driving, lack of talent at bridge, exasperation at readers who are sticklers for accuracy about things like what type of flowers bloom when, penchant for apples, distaste for dictating her books to a secretary, and her frustrations with her most famous detective, Sven, whose Finnish homeland Mrs. Oliver knew actually nothing about (akin to a certain Belgian we know Agatha was often annoyed by). Mrs. Oliver is even given credit for having written a mystery with a name familiar to Agatha fans, The Body in the Library, a title Agatha actually gave to one of her own books about six years later.

At one point in Cards on the Table, Mrs. Oliver is talking to another character about being a mystery writer, and they have the following exchange: 

"...It must be wonderful to just sit down and write off a whole book."

"It doesn't happen exactly like that," said Mrs. Oliver. "One actually has to think, you know. And thinking is always a bore. And you have to plan things. And the one gets stuck every now and then and you feel you'll never get out of the mess — but you do! Writing's not particularly enjoyable. It's hard work like everything else."

"It doesn't seem like work," said Rhoda.

"Not to you," said Mrs. Oliver, "because you don't have to do it! It feels very like work to me. Some days I can only keep going by repeating over and over to myself the amount of money I might get for my next serial rights. That spurs you on, you know."

This conversation is quite reminiscent of Agatha's own attitude towards writing once she became a "professional," as she described it in her autobiography, following her heartbreaking separation from #HORRIDARCHIE during the time she was trying to write The Mystery of the Blue Train (her own least favorite book): 

"I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you are writing, and aren't writing particularly well. I have always hated The Mystery of the Blue Train, but I got it written, and sent off to the publishers. It sold just as well as my last book had done. So I had to content myself with that — though I cannot say I have ever been proud of it." 

Later in her autobiography, a more cheery but still practical professional Agatha echoed these statements by Mrs. Oliver further, writing of the days following the publication of The Seven Dials Mystery:

"The nice part about writing in those days was that I related it directly to money...This stimulated my output enormously. I said to myself, 'I should like to take the conservatory down and fit it up as a loggia in which we could sit. How much will that be?' I got my estimate, I went to my typewriter, I sat, thought, planned, and within a week a story was formed in  my mind. In due course I wrote it, and then I had my loggia."

Perhaps we have home decorating needs to thank most for how prolific dear Agatha became over the course of her career! Regardless, Cards on the Table gives us a delightful glimpse at perhaps her own view of herself as a writer and sleuth, all wrapped in a typically twisty-turny mystery which ONCE AGAIN made me gasp with surprise at the resolution — outwitted by the Dame again. 

- E.