Mr. Shaitana quotes from Agatha Christie's Poirot

Mr. Shaitana

Is it off-season for the criminals or is our little gallery about to be robbed?

Hercule Poirot

Oh, alas, monsieur, non. Non. I am here purely in my private capacity. But I see that you yourself have lent a few pieces.

Mr. Shaitana

Oh, one picks up trifles here and there. I have a few interesting objects I could show you. I daresay I could even produce one or two things in your line, Poirot.

Hercule Poirot

Ah. So you have, then, your private Black Museum?

Mr. Shaitana

Oh, no, no, no. I don't collect the artifacts of crime. The murderer's hammer, the poisoner's cup. I collect only the finest objects of their kind.

Hercule Poirot

And what do you consider to be the finest objects, artistically speaking, in crime?

Mr. Shaitana

Why, the human beings who commit them, monsieur.

Good to see you, Shaitana. I'm not late, am I? An elderly patient called me out. She thought she had a tumor. I thought she was depressed.

Mr. Shaitana

And what did you prescribe?

Champagne and oysters at Wilton's. She'll be right as rain by tomorrow.

Ariadne Oliver

[sotto voce, to Poirot] Remind me never to go to him if I'm poorly.

Colonel Hughes

[after Poirot reveals Shaitana's killer] But why did Shaitana drug himself?

Hercule Poirot

He is tired of life. He has a madness in his soul. He is searching for a thrill that would be for him the ultimate. And in order to achieve this, he invites four people to his house whom he believe have killed, and then he goads them.

Mr. Shaitana

[flashback, the night of the murder] There's always an accident. A shooting accident, for example. Or a domestic accident. One of the little tragedies that never gets reported.

Hercule Poirot

And then he takes the sleeping draught so that when it happens he will feel no pain. And it does happen. And as an extra twist, he tries to throw the blame on one of us. He makes us to believe that the crime that is opportunistic is made to look as though it was planned most carefully. And we start ... Oh, pardon, even Hercule Poirot, he starts to believe it. When all the time the plan was to allow a crime that was opportunistic to happen.

Ariadne Oliver

As a plot, that is distinctly odd.

Hercule Poirot

The plots, madame, they are all the same. It is only the psychology that is different.