Mr Shaitana

In the novel Cards on the Table, Mr Shaitana was a wealthy, but mysterious man, known to be a collector of rare objects. He had a fascination with crime, primarily focused on murders and the people who committed them. He invited four suspected murderers and four crime solvers to his home to play bridge. He ended up being murdered.

In Urdu, his name means 'the naughty one' (The translation is noted to allude to the devil, being a cognate of Satan).

Mr Shaitana "deliberately attempted a Mephistophelian effect" with his appearance. He was tall and thin, with a long, melancholy face. His eyebrows were "heavily accented and jet black". He had a moustache with stiff waxed ends. Poirot considered Mr Shaitana's moustache a very fine one, and perhaps the only one in London that could rival his own, although it was not as luxuriant.

Mr Shaitana lived richly and beautifully in a super flat in Park Lane. He was known for giving wonderful parties, although some of them were macabre, and some were "definitely 'queer'".

Nearly everybody was a little afraid of Mr Shaitana, perhaps because he knew a little too much about everybody, or because his sense of humour was curious. People nearly always felt that it was better not to risk offending him.

According to Major Despard, Mr Shaitana was a kind of spiritual blackmailer, who enjoyed seeing people quail and flinch. He would hint that he knew everything, and people would start telling him things that he had not known before. That would tickle his sense of humour, and he would strut around in his Mephistophelian attitude. This was a particularly effective pose with women.

At the beginning of the novel, Mr Shaitana met Poirot at the Exhibition of Snuff-Boxes at Wessex House. He wanted Poirot to come to dinner to view his unique collection--a group of people he believed to be murderers who had gotten away with their crimes.

During Mr Shaitana's dinner party, he alluded to poison being a woman's weapon, as well as doctors having opportunities in that line. He then said that if he were to commit a crime, he would make it very simple, and disguise it as an accident, such as a shooting accident, or domestic accident.

After dinner, the guests played bridge, while Mr Shaitana sat in a chair by the fire. He was later found dead, having been stabbed in the chest.

Agatha Christie's Poirot
In the film adaptation of Cards on the Table in Series 10 of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot drama series, Shaitana is portrayed by Alexander Siddig. Here he has a hobby of photography and he has taken photographs of many of the people he met. In this adaptation, Shaitana is portrayed as a rather complex character. He is a drug taker and told Poirot that he is tired of life. Poirot surmises that he set up the dinner, expecting to be murdered and so he drugged himself to sleep so as to feel nothing when the time comes. Poirot thinks he allowed himself to be killed as a game and as a puzzle he sets for the police to prove that he is cleverer than them. At one point in the episode, Poirot says to his portrait, "So, we play." At the end, Poirot tells the portrait: "We have played, and I have won."

Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie
In Cartes sur table, the French adaptation for the series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, the parallel character has the very similar name of Massud Shaïtana