Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table.
The card game is played (and often used as a plot device) in several stories by Agatha Christie. It is often used so that one character is the dummy (The partner of the declarer. Dummy's cards are placed face up on the table and played by the declarer. Dummy has few rights and may not participate in choices concerning the play of the hand.). This means that the character can leave the table while the other three players remains seated for the rest of the hand.
Stories where Bridge is featured[]
- Problem at Sea - Poirot and others play bridge on the ship
- The King of Clubs
- Cards on the Table - Poirot deduces the murderer by reconstructing a game
- The Incredible Theft
- The Body in the Library
- Four and Twenty Blackbirds - George Lorrimer was playing bridge at the time of the murder. This was his alibi.
- Spider's Web - To create an alibi for several people, Clarissa Hailsham-Brown sets up a false bridge game.
- The Seven Dials Mystery - several characters play bridge at Chimneys, such as Sir Oswald and Lady Coote.
- Death on the Nile - Simon Doyle played bridge with his wife and Mr Pennington, before being shot in the leg by Jacqueline de Bellefort.
- A Christmas Tragedy - Gladys Sanders plays bridge with their friends, the Mortimers, on the day she was murdered.