Three-Act Tragedy Read online

  A look of irresolution appeared on the actor’s face.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’re a thundering good chap, Charles, but you do let your imagination run away with you. Come now: do you seriously believe anyone, anyone at all, would want to murder that perfectly harmless old man?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Sir Charles. ‘No, as you say, it’s ridiculous. Sorry, Tollie, but it wasn’t really a mere “stunt” on my part. I did genuinely have a “hunch” that something was wrong.’

  Mr Satterthwaite gave a little cough.

  ‘May I make a suggestion? Mr Babbington was taken ill a very few moments after entering the room and just after drinking his cocktail. Now, I did happen to notice he made a wry face when drinking. I imagined because he was unused to the taste. But supposing that Sir Bartholomew’s tentative suggestion is correct—that Mr Babbington may for some reason have wished to commit suicide. That does strike me as just possible, whereas the suggestion of murder seems quite ridiculous.

  ‘I feel that it is possible, though not probable, that Mr Babbington introduced something into that glass unseen by us.

  ‘Now I see that nothing has yet been touched in this room. The cocktail glasses are exactly where they were. This is Mr Babbington’s. I know, because I was sitting here talking to him. I suggest that Sir Bartholomew should get the glass analysed—that can be done quite quietly and without causing any “talk”.’

  Sir Bartholomew rose and picked up the glass.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll humour you so far, Charles, and I’ll bet you ten pounds to one that there’s nothing in it but honest-to-God gin and vermouth.’

  ‘Done,’ said Sir Charles.

  Then he added with a rueful smile:

  ‘You know, Tollie, you are partly responsible for my flights of fancy.’

  ‘I?’

  ‘Yes, with your talk of crime this morning. You said this man, Hercule Poirot, was a kind of stormy petrel, that where he went crimes followed. No sooner does he arrive than we have a suspiciously sudden death. Of course my thoughts fly to murder at once.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles Cartwright. ‘I’d thought of that. What do you think, Tollie? Could we ask him what he thinks of it all? Is it etiquette, I mean?’

  ‘A nice point,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘I know medical etiquette, but I’m hanged if I know anything about the etiquette of detection.’

  ‘You can’t ask a professional singer to sing,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Can one ask a professional detective to detect? Yes, a very nice point.’

  ‘Just an opinion,’ said Sir Charles.

  There was a gentle tap on the door, and Hercule Poirot’s face appeared, peering in with an apologetic expression.

  ‘Come in, man,’ cried Sir Charles, springing up. ‘We were just talking of you.’

  ‘I thought perhaps I might be intruding.’

  ‘Not at all. Have a drink.’

  ‘I thank you, no. I seldom drink the whisky. A glass of sirop, now—’

  But sirop was not included in Sir Charles’s conception of drinkable fluids. Having settled his guest in a chair, the actor went straight to the point.

  ‘I’m not going to beat about the bush,’ he said. ‘We were just talking of you, M. Poirot, and—and—of what happened tonight. Look here, do you think there’s anything wrong about it?’

  Poirot’s eyebrows rose. He said:

  ‘Wrong? How do you mean that—wrong?’

  Bartholomew Strange said, ‘My friend has got an idea into his head that old Babbington was murdered.’

  ‘And you do not think so—eh?’

  ‘We’d like to know what you think.’

  Poirot said thoughtfully:

  ‘He was taken ill, of course, very suddenly—very suddenly indeed.’

  ‘Just so.’

  Mr Satterthwaite explained the theory of suicide and his own suggestion of having a cocktail glass analysed.

  Poirot nodded approval.

  ‘That, at any rate, can do no harm. As a judge of human nature, it seems to me unlikely in the extreme that anyone could wish to do away with a charming and harmless old gentleman. Still less does the solution of suicide appeal to me. However, the cocktail glass will tell us one way or another.’

  ‘And the result of the analysis, you think, will be—what?’

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Me? I can only guess. You ask me to guess what will be the result of the analysis?’

  ‘Yes—?’

  ‘Then I guess that they will find only the remains of a very excellent dry Martini.’ (He bowed to Sir Charles.) ‘To poison a man in a cocktail, one of many handed round on a tray—well, it would be a technique very—very—difficult. And if that charming old clergyman wanted to commit suicide, I do not think he would do it at a party. That would show a very decided lack of consideration for others, and Mr Babbington struck me as a very considerate person.’ He paused. ‘That, since you ask me, is my opinion.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Sir Charles gave a deep sigh. He opened one of the windows and looked out.

  ‘Wind’s gone round a point,’ he said.

  The sailor had come back and the Secret Service detective had disappeared.

  But to the observant Mr Satterthwaite it seemed as though Sir Charles hankered slightly after the part he was not, after all, to play.

  Chapter 4

  A Modern Elaine

  ‘Yes, but what do you think, Mr Satterthwaite? Really think?’

  Mr Satterthwaite looked this way and that. There was no escape. Egg Lytton Gore had got him securely cornered on the fishing quay. Merciless, these modern young women—and terrifyingly alive.

  ‘Sir Charles has put this idea into your head,’ he said.

  ‘No, he hasn’t. It was there already. It’s been there from the beginning. It was so frightfully sudden.’

  ‘He was an old man, and his health wasn’t very good—’

  Egg cut the recital short.

  ‘That’s all tripe. He had neuritis and a touch of rheumatoid arthritis. That doesn’t make you fall down in a fit. He never had fits. He was the sort of gentle creaking gate that would have lived to be ninety. What did you think of the inquest?’

  ‘It all seemed quite—er—normal.’

  ‘What did you think of Dr MacDougal’s evidence? Frightfully technical, and all that—close description of the organs—but didn’t it strike you that behind all that bombardment of words he was hedging? What he said amounted to this: that there was nothing to show death had not arisen from natural causes. He didn’t say it was the result of natural causes.’

  ‘Aren’t you splitting hairs a little, my dear?’

  ‘The point is that he did—he was puzzled, but he had nothing to go upon, so he had to take refuge in medical caution. What did Sir Bartholomew Strange think?’

  Mr Satterthwaite repeated some of the physician’s dictums.

  ‘Pooh-poohed it, did he?’ said Egg thoughtfully. ‘Of course, he’s a cautious man—I suppose a Harley Street big bug has to be.’

  ‘There was nothing in the cocktail glass but gin and vermouth,’ Mr Satterthwaite reminded her.

  ‘That seems to settle it. All the same, something that happened after the inquest made me wonder—’

  ‘Something Sir Bartholomew said to you?’

  Mr Satterthwaite began to feel a pleasant curiosity.

  ‘Not to me—to Oliver. Oliver Manders—he was at dinner that night, but perhaps you don’t remember him.’

  ‘Yes, I remember him very well. Is he a great friend of yours?’

  ‘Used to be. Now we scrap most of the time. He’s gone into his uncle’s office in the city, and he’s getting—well, a bit oily, if you know what I mean. Always talks of chucking it and being a journalist—he writes rather well. But I don’t think it’s any
more than talk now. He wants to get rich. I think everybody is rather disgusting about money, don’t you, Mr Satterthwaite?’

  Her youth came home to him then—the crude, arrogant childishness of her.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘so many people are disgusting about so many things.’

  ‘Most people are swine, of course,’ agreed Egg cheerfully. ‘That’s why I’m really cut up about old Mr Babbington. Because you see, he really was rather a pet. He prepared me for confirmation and all that, and though of course a lot of that business is all bunkum, he really was rather sweet about it. You see, Mr Satterthwaite, I really believe in Christianity—not like Mother does, with little books and early service, and things—but intelligently and as a matter of history. The Church is all clotted up with the Pauline tradition—in fact the Church is a mess—but Christianity itself is all right. That’s why I can’t be a communist like Oliver. In practice our beliefs would work out much the same, things in common an downership by all, but the difference—well, I needn’t go into that. But the Babbingtons really were Christians; they didn’t poke and pry and condemn, and they were never unkind about people or things. They were pets—and there was Robin…’

  ‘Robin?’

  ‘Their son…He was out in India and got killed…I—I had rather a pash on Robin…’

  Egg blinked. Her gaze went out to sea…

  Then her attention returned to Mr Satterthwaite and the present.

  ‘So, you see, I feel rather strongly about this. Supposing it wasn’t a natural death…’

  ‘My dear child!’

  ‘Well, it’s damned odd! You must admit it’s damned odd.’

  ‘But surely you yourself have just practically admitted that the Babbingtons hadn’t an enemy in the world.’

  ‘That’s what’s so queer about it. I can’t think of any conceivable motive…’

  ‘Fantastic! There was nothing in the cocktail.’

  ‘Perhaps someone jabbed him with a hypodermic.’

  ‘Containing the arrow poison of the South American Indians,’ suggested Mr Satterthwaite, gently ridiculing.

  Egg grinned.

  ‘That’s it. The good old untraceable stuff. Oh, well, you’re all very superior about it. Some day, perhaps, you’ll find out we are right.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sir Charles and I.’ She flushed slightly.

  Mr Satterthwaite thought in the words and metre of his generation when Quotations for All Occasions was to be found in every bookcase.

  ‘Of more than twice her years,

  Seam’d with an ancient swordcut on the cheek,

  And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes

  And loved him, with that love which was her doom.’

  He felt a little ashamed of himself for thinking in quotations—Tennyson, too, was very little thought of nowadays. Besides, though Sir Charles was bronzed, he was not scarred, and Egg Lytton Gore, though doubtless capable of a healthy passion, did not look at all likely to perish of love and drift about rivers on a barge. There was nothing of the lily maid of Astolat about her.

  ‘Except,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite, ‘her youth…’

  Girls were always attracted to middle-aged men with interesting pasts. Egg seemed to be no exception to this rule.

  ‘Why hasn’t he ever married?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘Well…’ Mr Satterthwaite paused. His own answer, put bluntly, would have been, ‘Caution,’ but he realized that such a word would be unacceptable to Egg Lytton Gore.

  Sir Charles Cartwright had had plenty of affairs with women, actresses and others, but he had always managed to steer clear of matrimony. Egg was clearly seeking for a more romantic explanation.

  ‘That girl who died of consumption—some actress, name began with an M—wasn’t he supposed to be very fond of her?’

  Mr Satterthwaite remembered the lady in question. Rumour had coupled Charles Cartwright’s name with hers, but only very slightly, and Mr Satterthwaite did not for a moment believe that Sir Charles had remained unmarried in order to be faithful to her memory. He conveyed as much tactfully.

  ‘I suppose he’s had lots of affairs,’ said Egg.

  ‘Er—h’m—probably,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, feeling Victorian.

  ‘I like men to have affairs,’ said Egg. ‘It shows they’re not queer or anything.’

  Mr Satterthwaite’s Victorianism suffered a further pang. He was at a loss for a reply. Egg did not notice his discomfiture. She went on musingly.

  ‘You know, Sir Charles is really cleverer than you’d think. He poses a lot, of course, dramatises himself; but behind all that he’s got brains. He’s far better sailing a boat than you’d ever think, to hear him talk. You’d think, to listen to him, that it was all pose, but it isn’t. It’s the same about this business. You think it’s all done for effect—that he wants to play the part of the great detective. All I say is: I think he’d play it rather well.’

  ‘Possibly,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite.

  The inflection of his voice showed his feelings clearly enough. Egg pounced on them and expressed them in words.

  ‘But your view is that “Death of a Clergyman” isn’t a thriller. It’s merely “Regrettable Incident at a Dinner Party”. Purely a social catastrophe. What did M. Poirot think? He ought to know.’

  ‘M. Poirot advised us to wait for the analysis of the cocktail; but in his opinion everything was quite all right.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Egg, ‘he’s getting old. He’s a back number.’ Mr Satterthwaite winced. Egg went on, unconscious of brutality: ‘Come home and have tea with Mother. She likes you. She said so.’

  Delicately flattered, Mr Satterthwaite accepted the invitation.

  On arrival Egg volunteered to ring up Sir Charles and explain the non-appearance of his guest.

  Mr Satterthwaite sat down in the tiny sitting-room with its faded chintzes and its well-polished pieces of old furniture. It was a Victorian room, what Mr Satterthwaite called in his own mind a lady’s room, and he approved of it.

  His conversation with Lady Mary was agreeable, nothing brilliant, but pleasantly chatty. They spoke of Sir Charles. Did Mr Satterthwaite know him well? Not intimately, Mr Satterthwaite said. He had a financial interest in one of Sir Charles’s plays some years ago. They had been friends ever since.

  ‘He has great charm,’ said Lady Mary, smiling. ‘I feel it as well as Egg. I suppose you’ve discovered that Egg is suffering badly from hero worship?’

  Mr Satterthwaite wondered if, as a mother, Lady Mary was not made slightly uneasy by that hero worship. But it did not seem so.

  ‘Egg sees so little of the world,’ she said, sighing. ‘We are so badly off. One of my cousins presented her and took her to a few things in town, but since then she has hardly been away from here, except for an occasional visit. Young people, I feel, should see plenty of people and places—especially people. Otherwise—well, propinquity is sometimes a dangerous thing.’

  Mr Satterthwaite agreed, thinking of Sir Charles and the sailing, but that this was not what was in Lady Mary’s mind, she showed a moment or two later.

  ‘Sir Charles’s coming has done a lot for Egg. It has widened her horizon. You see, there are very few young people down here—especially men. I’ve always been afraid that Egg might marry someone simply from being thrown with one person only and seeing no one else.’

  Mr Satterthwaite had a quick intuition.

  ‘Are you thinking of young Oliver Manders?’

  Lady Mary blushed in ingenuous surprise.

  ‘Oh, Mr Satterthwaite, I don’t know how you knew! I was thinking of him. He and Egg were together a lot at one time, and I know I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t like some of his ideas.’

  ‘Youth must have its fling,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  Lady Mary shook her head.

  ‘I’ve been so afraid—it’s quite suitable, of course, I know all about him, and his uncle, who has recently taken him into his firm, is
a very rich man; it’s not that—it’s silly of me—but—’