King of Clubs by Foxymoron

On Monday night I watched a Poirot episode which had what I thought was a catchy title, King of Clubs. Hercule visits a house where a murder suspect claims to have been playing bridge for the last hour, a perfect alibi. The cards are even laid out for a game, which was interrupted. He notices that the daughter's claim to have opened 1NT just before the body was discovered was unlikely as she had seven spades, and would have opened 3S. However, a card is missing and Hercule quickly establishes that it is the king of clubs. He notices that the pack is brand new and there is only one pack, with a nice box, and he quickly finds the missing card and solves the case. So where was the king of clubs, and how did Hercule know where to find it? Solution at the end, in case you want to try to work it out,

 

I thought the king of clubs was missing on this hand tonight when I led the jack of clubs, playing standard leads. Dummy played low, partner played the six, and declarer won with the queen and played the ace and another diamond. I won with the king and played a second club, and declarer won, but no king appeared. On the run of the diamonds, East discarded two spades and a heart, and now declarer emerged with ten tricks. Partner never made the king of clubs at all, but it was not on the floor as I suspected. There are situations where it is right to make declarer win the first trick in hand, for example if South had shown a club stop, and East had Kxx of clubs. But that does not apply here, and if my partner followed the beginner's proverb "Third hand plays high" we would have beaten the contract. We would have made four tricks more than we did, and scored about 95% more than we did. As Max Boyce would say, we were "lucky to get nil" for -180.

At least Steven Paull, the declarer who benefited, was far too nice to type in caps, "ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTYYYYYY" ...

I nearly forgot; Hercule found the king of clubs in the box as it had never been taken out. The new pack was arranged AS ... KC as normal and therefore they had only just started playing bridge and could not have played for one hour with only 51 cards!