Orient Cafe

The Orient Cafe is a modest establishment on the town’s main street whose grand name contrasts with its unremarkable interior. During the novel’s final confrontation there, Frankie Derwent identifies Moira Nicholson as the suspected poisoner; a shot fired at Frankie makes the cafe the setting for the conspiracy’s sudden exposure and public alarm.

Setting and Arrival

Moira insists that she must speak before they enter the house and urges the others to go somewhere in town. They choose the Orient Cafe, about halfway down the main street, during a slack moment at half-past six. Bobby Jones orders three coffees, and the three sit at a small corner table. The ordinary surroundings make the cafe a temporary refuge for a conversation Moira says cannot wait.

Exposure and Confrontation

Frankie’s attention turns to the coffee after she makes Bobby spill his cup while diverting the group toward the door to look for Roger Bassington-ffrench. She empties the vinegar from a bottle into a slop bowl, pours coffee into it as a sample for Dr George Arbuthnot to analyse, and accuses Moira of putting something in their cups. Frankie connects the suspected poisoning to Moira’s earlier distraction and challenges her shifting identity as Mrs Nicholson or Templeton.

The accusation is followed by violence. Bobby strikes Moira’s pistol upward just as she fires at Frankie; the bullet passes over Frankie’s head and embeds itself in the cafe wall. A waitress, who had not hurried before, rushes out into the street screaming for help. The cafe thus changes from a discreet meeting place into the scene of a failed shooting and a public disturbance, as the danger concealed within the group becomes impossible to keep private.

Narrative Significance

The scene concentrates the novel’s recurring movement from apparent accident or ordinary circumstance to deliberate threat. Coffee, ordered as a commonplace refreshment, becomes a suspected vehicle for poisoning; a corner-table conversation gives way to a pistol shot. The cafe’s unassuming setting sharpens that reversal, while the waitress’s alarm carries the confrontation beyond the conspirators and into the street.