Free Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

commendable promptitude.
    Superintendent Battle asked her politely to be seated and then sat studying her for a moment, before he decided which way to tackle her. He had sensed immediately her hostility and he was uncertain whether to provoke her into unguarded speech by increasing that hostility or whether to try a softer method of approach.
    â€œI suppose you know what all this is about, Miss Burgess?” he said at last.
    â€œDr. Roberts told me,” said Miss Burgess shortly.
    â€œThe whole thing’s rather delicate,” said Superintendent Battle.
    â€œIs it?” said Miss Burgess.
    â€œWell, it’s rather a nasty business. Four people are under suspicion and one of them must have done it. What I want to know is whether you’ve ever seen this Mr. Shaitana?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œEver heard Dr. Roberts speak of him?”
    â€œNever—no, I am wrong. About a week ago Dr. Roberts told me to enter up a dinner appointment in his engagement book. Mr. Shaitana, 8:15, on the 18th.”
    â€œAnd that is the first you ever heard of this Mr. Shaitana?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNever seen his name in the papers? He was often in the fashionable news.”
    â€œI’ve got better things to do than reading the fashionable news.”
    â€œI expect you have. Oh, I expect you have,” said the superintendent mildly.
    â€œWell,” he went on. “There it is. All four of these people will only admit to knowing Mr. Shaitana slightly. But one of them knew him well enough to kill him. It’s my job to find out which of them it was.”
    There was an unhelpful pause. Miss Burgess seemed quite uninterested in the performance of Superintendent Battle’s job. It was her job to obey her employer’s orders and sit here listening to what Superintendent Battle chose to say and answer any direct questions he might choose to put to her.
    â€œYou know, Miss Burgess,” the superintendent found it uphill work but he persevered, “I doubt if you appreciate half the difficulties of our job. People say things, for instance. Well, we mayn’t believe a word of it, but we’ve got to take notice of it all the same. It’s particularly noticeable in a case of this kind. I don’t want to say anything against your sex but there’s no doubt that a woman, when she’s rattled, is apt to lash out with her tongue a bit. She makes unfounded accusations, hints this, that and the other, and rakes up all sorts of old scandals that have probably nothing whatever to do with the case.”
    â€œDo you mean,” demanded Miss Burgess, “that one of these other people has been saying things against the doctor?”
    â€œNot exactly said anything,” said Battle cautiously. “But all the same, I’m bound to take notice. Suspicious circumstances about thedeath of a patient. Probably all a lot of nonsense. I’m ashamed to bother the doctor with it.”
    â€œI suppose someone’s got hold of that story about Mrs. Graves,” said Miss Burgess wrathfully. “The way people talk about things they know nothing whatever about is disgraceful. Lots of old ladies get like that—they think everybody is poisoning them—their relations and their servants and even their doctors. Mrs. Graves had had three doctors before she came to Dr. Roberts and then when she got the same fancies about him he was quite willing for her to have Dr. Lee instead. It’s the only thing to do in these cases, he said. And after Dr. Lee she had Dr. Steele, and then Dr. Farmer—until she died, poor old thing.”
    â€œYou’d be surprised the way the smallest thing starts a story,” said Battle. “Whenever a doctor benefits by the death of a patient somebody has something ill-natured to say. And yet why shouldn’t a grateful patient leave a little something, or even a big something to her medical attendant.”
    â€œIt’s the