Mrs Valerie Warren had been Oscar O’Neill’s receptionist for more than 20 years. She had started soon after the death of her husband, and had not remarried. She did have a regular bridge partner, Alan, but Oscar wasn’t sure if their relationship was more than that, and didn’t want to pry.
Oscar used to play bridge himself when he was younger, but had played very little since leaving university. So when Alan was taken ill, some years previously, Oscar agreed to be Valerie’s partner at her local bridge club for the night. He was rather nervous about this, as he hadn’t played for a long time, and he knew that bridge clubs could be rather cliquey.
Generally, however, the evening went well in that they didn’t come last. The people were friendlier than he was expecting, especially the organisers John and Pat Richards.
There was one time when he was caught out by his lack of knowledge of bridge etiquette when they were playing against a young couple, Josh and Amy Chapman. He reached over to play a card from dummy, but changed his mind and played another card. His hand had just brushed the first card, and Amy insisted he had to play the first card. ‘A touched card is a played card,’ she told him. Oscar was particularly pleased when the Chapmans finished in last place that night.
Over the years, Valerie kept Oscar up to date with events at the bridge club. Most of this concerned couples who’d argued because one of them had played the wrong card, or made the wrong bid. She did mention the rise of the Chapmans, who had become the number one partnership in Britain, but had fallen out with the Richards.
This transformation began when they adopted a new complicated bidding system. But they also became brilliant at playing the hands. As Valerie told Oscar, ‘It was as if they could see my cards with X-rays.’
One day, Valerie came into the practice looking ashen-faced. ‘Two couples at the bridge club have died, and the police are saying their deaths are suspicious,’ she explained. The dead couples were the Richards, and the Browns, whom Oscar hadn’t met. The four had been playing bridge at the Richards’ house, and the sandwiches they’d been eating were contaminated with botulinum toxin. It seems this had been transferred from the pack of cards they had been using.
Valerie told Oscar that she’d seen John Richards a few days earlier, and he’d told her that he was convinced that the Chapmans had been cheating, and that he’d soon be able to prove it.
Oscar contacted DI Luke Stott to pass on this information. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Oscar told him, ‘they could be using infra-red contact lenses. A guy was arrested a while ago for using infra-red contact lenses and marked cards to cheat at poker. Maybe that could explain the Chapman’s uncanny ability to read the cards.’
‘I’ll certainly look into that,’ Stott replied.
The police did search the Chapman’s house. They didn’t find any contact lenses, but they did find botulinum powder. Pat Richards kept a daily diary, and a couple of days before she’d died, she had written about a pack of cards that she’d received from the Chapmans as a ‘peace offering’.
It turned out that the Chapmans had been cheating, but not by using contact lenses. They’d simply been coughing at appropriate moments. John Richards was going through videos of some tournaments to prove it, so the Chapmans had to stop him. The Browns were unlucky to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The problem for the police was that Josh and Amy were accusing each other, so they were both accused of murder.
DI Stott called round to the practice to thank Oscar and Valerie for their help. ‘We thought it was bound to be revenge for some kind of affair,’ he told them. ‘I understand that’s very common in bridge clubs.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Valerie. But Oscar thought he saw a rather guilty blush appear on her face.
