Elise Schlumberger

In Cartes sur table, the French Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, for the Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie TV series, Elise Schlumberger is the parallel of Anne Meredith from the original story.

Like Anne, Elise works as a lady's companion and had a habit of stealing. One of her previous employers was one Madame Morel who had died in what was thought to be an accident in which she mistook a bottle of hat dye for cough syrup. Massud Shaïtana however believed she was a murderer and Elise was therefore one of the four murder suspects he invited to dinner in order to "display" his collection of "dark souls" for commissaire Laurence.

Unique to this adaptation, Elise was personally known to Shaïtana as she had taken care of a friend of his. During the time of the dinner, Elise had actually been staying at Shaïtana's house. In fact he supplied the impoverished Elise with a dress for the dinner and also lent her some expensive jewellery.

After Shaïtana died, Elise wanted to move out of the house and Alice Avril invited her to stay with her. In the sense Alice played the parallel of Rhoda Dawes. Like in the original story, Paul Coupet, the Major Despard parallel, starts out being interested in Elise, but then after meeting Alice, his feelings begin to shift. What was of greater concern to Elise though is that during casual conversation she had mentioned Madame Morel to Alice. Alice had in fact been asked by Laurence to elicit information from Elise and she had already succeeded to a large extent.

In an earlier interview with Laurence, Elise had given him a list of her past employers but pointedly failed to mention Madame Morel. Alice later took this list. When Elise found this list in Alice's pocket, she knew that Alice would sooner or later become suspicious. In fact by this time, Alice had already surmised that Elise had probably been caught steal by Madame Morel and so she had to poison her employer. Elise faked sleeping problems and got some sleeping pills which she put into Alice's wine. Fortunately, Laurence turned up in time to save her.

Laurence knew Elise had stolen some of Shaïtana's jewels and that she would probably sell the jewels for money to facilitate her escape. Accordingly, Laurence and Alice laid an ambush for Elise outside a jeweller. However, Elise tried to escape by running across the road and was hit by a car and killed.

Like in the original story, Hélène Nevers tried to protect Elise by confessing to the killing of Shaïtana. And like Poirot, Laurence rejects the confession because the profile Nevers was one who planned an killing in detail. She could not improvise one the way it had been done with Shaïtana. By analysing the bridge scores, Laurence was convinced that Elise didn't kill Shaïtana. The killing could only have been done during the grand slam. However, Elise probably discovered that Shaïtana had been stabbed. A few games after the grand slam, Laurence noticed that Elise began to play very badly. Likewise, Laurence thought Elise didn't shoot Ferdinand Jouve--that was too cold-blooded a scheme.

The character of Elise Schlumberger is portrayed by Aurélia Poirier.