Mrs. Lorrimer was a supporting antagonist in Agatha Christie's 1936 Hercule Poirot novel, Cards on the Table, and the novel's second victim.
She was one of the four suspects of Mr. Shitana's murder, alongside Dr. Geoffrey Roberts, Anne Meredith and Major John Despard, all of them being suspected to be murderers. In her case, Mrs. Lorrimer was suspected to be involved in the murder of her first husband.
She was portrayed by Leslie Manville in Agatha Christie's Poirot.
Biography[]
Mrs. Lorrimer was amongst the guests of wealthy collector Mr. Shitana, who became obssessed over gathering evidence of murder suspects as his new hobby of collections. During Mr. Shitana's murder, she was playing cards with Dr. Roberts, Meredith and Major Despard, all being the murder suspects Shitana proclaimed. In her past, Mrs. Lorrimer was suspected of poisoning her first husband.
During the investigation, Lorrimer were amongst the people who comforted Meredith alongside Ariadne Oliver and Major Despard. Sometime later, Poirot visited Mrs. Lorrimer, who confessed to him that she did kill her husband and that she has a terminal condition. She then confessed that she murdered Shitana, but Poirot refused to believe this, suspecting she was trying to protect Meredith.
The next morning, Lorrimer was found dead by Dr. Roberts. Apparently, she committed suicide, leaving a note admitting to the murder. However, Poirot's denouement revealed that Dr. Roberts was in fact responsible for her death as well as Shitana's murder. Dr. Roberts injected Lorrimer with a lethal shot of anaesthesia in order to create a scapegoat, but Poirot managed to discover the mark of a hypodermic needle, which led to the conclusion.
To make Dr. Roberts to confess, Poirot hired an actor to pose as a witness, whilst Battle gained enough evidence to accuse Dr. Roberts of murdering his patients and Shitana.
Eventually, amongst the four suspects, it was revealed that only Major Despard was actually innocent of any kind of murder including Shitana's murder, as the deaths of botanist Luxmore and his wife (which Despard was once thought to be responsible for) were actually caused by a shooting accident.
Trivia[]
- In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Mrs. Lorrimer has no fatal heart condition when she confesses to Poirot her crime of murdering her husband; her second husband, whom she desired to be with and thus was the motive for her murder, died a year after her crime from a heart attack. Furthermore, her motivation for protecting Anne Meredith is strengthened in the adaptation, in that she is her daughter, who ran away after witnessing her murdering her first husband and Meredith's father.
