Page "Cards on the Table" Paragraph 7

Battle is put on the trail of the death of a Mrs. Craddock, whom Dr. Roberts once attended.

Her husband died of anthrax poisoning from an infected shaving brush ( and readers at the time of the novel's publication in the 1930s might well have remembered anthrax deaths from infected shaving brushes during and in the years after World War I ); Mrs. Craddock herself had died not long afterward, of a tropical infection, in Egypt.

Race seeks out information on Despard, and discovers a case in which a botanist named Luxmore and his wife travelled with him to South America ; Luxmore officially died of a fever, but it is rumoured that he was shot.

Mrs. Oliver visits Anne Meredith and her housemate, Rhoda Dawes.

Rhoda later visits Oliver and explains Anne's bad manners: Anne, after her father's death and before old friend Rhoda came to her rescue, worked as a live-in companion ; one employer, a Mrs. Benson, had taken hat paint — poison — from a medicine bottle and died.

Fellow suspect Despard takes an interest in Anne's welfare, recommending that she retain an attorney.