Three Act Tragedy Read online

  “For one thing, he was standoffish. Oh, quite polite, quite the gentleman—as I said, he’d been used to good houses. But he kept himself to himself, spent a lot of time in his own room; and he was—well, I don’t know how to describe it, I’m sure—he was, well, there was something—”

  “You didn’t suspect he wasn’t—not really a butler?” suggested Mr. Satterthwaite.

  “Oh, he’d been in service, right enough, sir. The things he knew—and about well-known people in society, too.”

  “Such as?” suggested Sir Charles gently.

  But Mrs. Leckie became vague, and noncommittal. She was not going to retail servants’ hall gossip. Such a thing would have offended her sense of fitness.

  To put her at her ease, Mr. Satterthwaite said:

  “Perhaps you can describe his appearance.”

  Mrs. Leckie brightened.

  “Yes, indeed, sir. He was a very respectable-looking man—side-whiskers and grey hair, stooped a little, and he was growing stout—it worried him, that did. He had a rather shaky hand, too, but not from the cause you might imagine. He was a most abstemious man—not like many I’ve known. His eyes were a bit weak, I think, sir, the light hurt them—especially a bright light, used to make them water something cruel. Out with us he wore glasses, but not when he was on duty.”

  “No special distinguishing marks?” asked Sir Charles. “No scars? Or broken fingers? Or birthmarks?”

  “Oh, no, sir, nothing of that kind.”

  “How superior detective stories are to life,” sighed Sir Charles. “In fiction there is always some distinguishing characteristic.”

  “He had a tooth missing,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

  “I believe so, sir; I never noticed it myself.”

  “What was his manner on the night of the tragedy?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite in a slightly bookish manner.

  “Well, really, sir, I couldn’t say. I was busy, you see, in my kitchen. I hadn’t time for noticing things.”

  “No, no, quite so.”

  “When the news came out that the master was dead we were struck all of a heap. I cried and couldn’t stop, and so did Beatrice. The young ones, of course, were excited like, though very upset. Mr. Ellis naturally wasn’t so upset as we were, he being new, but he behaved very considerate, and insisted on Beatrice and me taking a little glass of port to counteract the shock. And to think that all the time it was he—the villain—”

  Words failed Mrs. Leckie, her eyes shone with indignation.

  “He disappeared that night, I understand?”

  “Yes, sir, went to his room like the rest of us, and in the morning he wasn’t there. That’s what set the police on him, of course.”

  “Yes, yes, very foolish of him. Have you any idea how he left the house?”

  “Not the slightest. It seems the police were watching the house all night, and they never saw him go—but, there, that’s what the police are, human like anyone else, in spite of the airs they give themselves, coming into a gentleman’s house and nosing round.”

  “I hear there’s some question of a secret passage,” Sir Charles said.

  Mrs. Leckie sniffed.

  “That’s what the police say.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “I’ve heard mention of it,” Mrs. Leckie agreed cautiously.

  “Do you know where it starts from?”

  “No, I don’t, sir. Secret passages are all very well, but they’re not things to be encouraged in the servants’ hall. It gives the girls ideas. They might think of slipping out that way. My girls go out by the back door and in by the back door, and then we know where we are.”

  “Splendid, Mrs. Leckie. I think you’re very wise.”

  Mrs. Leckie bridled in the sun of Sir Charles’s approval.

  “I wonder,” he went on, “if we might just ask a few questions of the other servants?”

  “Of course, sir; but they can’t tell you anything more than I can.”

  “Oh, I know. I didn’t mean so much about Ellis as about Sir Bartholomew himself—his manner that night, and so on. You see, he was a friend of mine.”

  “I know, sir. I quite understand. There’s Beatrice, and there’s Alice. She waited at table, of course.”

  “Yes, I’d like to see Alice.”

  Mrs. Leckie, however, had a belief in seniority. Beatrice Church, the upper-housemaid, was the first to appear.

  She was a tall thin woman, with a pinched mouth, who looked aggressively respectable.

  After a few unimportant questions, Sir Charles led the talk to the behaviour of the house party on the fatal evening. Had they all been terribly upset? What had they said or done?

  A little animation entered into Beatrice’s manner. She had the usual ghoulish relish for tragedy.

  “Miss Sutcliffe, she quite broke down. A very warmhearted lady, she’s stayed here before. I suggested bringing her a little drop of brandy, or a nice cup of tea, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She took some aspirin, though. Said she was sure she couldn’t sleep. But she was sleeping like a little child the next morning when I brought her her early tea.”

  “And Mrs. Dacres?”

  “I don’t think anything would upset that lady much.”

  From Beatrice’s tone, she had not liked Cynthia Dacres.

  “Just anxious to get away, she was. Said her business would suffer. She’s a big dressmaker in London, so Mr. Ellis told us.”

  A big dressmaker, to Beatrice, meant “trade,” and trade she looked down upon.

  “And her husband?”

  Beatrice sniffed.

  “Steadied his nerves with brandy, he did. Or unsteadied them, some would say.”

  “What about Lady Mary Lytton Gore?”

  “A very nice lady,” said Beatrice, her tone softening. “My great aunt was in service with her father at the Castle. A pretty young girl she was, so I’ve always heard. Poor she may be, but you can see she’s someone—and so considerate, never giving trouble and always speaking so pleasant. Her daughter’s a nice young lady, too. They didn’t know Sir Bartholomew well, of course, but they were very distressed.”

  “Miss Wills?”

  Some of Beatrice’s rigidity returned.

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir, what Miss Wills thought about it.”

  “Or what you thought about her?” asked Sir Charles. “Come now, Beatrice, be human.”

  An unexpected smile dinted Beatrice’s wooden cheeks. There was something appealingly schoolboyish in Sir Charles’s manner. She was not proof against the charm that nightly audiences had felt so strongly.

  “Really, sir, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Just what you thought and felt about Miss Wills.”

  “Nothing, sir, nothing at all. She wasn’t, of course—”

  Beatrice hesitated.

  “Go on, Beatrice.”

  “Well, she wasn’t quite the ‘class’ of the others, sir. She couldn’t help it, I know,” went on Beatrice kindly. “But she did things a real lady wouldn’t have done. She pried, if you know what I mean, sir, poked and pried about.”

  Sir Charles tried hard to get this statement amplified, but Beatrice remained vague. Miss Wills had poked and pried, but asked to produce a special instance of the poking, Beatrice seemed unable to do so. She merely repeated that Miss Wills pried into things that were no business of hers.

  They gave it up at last, and Mr. Satterthwaite said:

  “Young Mr. Manders arrived unexpectedly, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir, he had an accident with his car—just by the lodge gates, it was. He said it was a bit of luck its happening just here. The house was full, of course, but Miss Lyndon had a bed made up for him in the little study.”

  “Was everyone very surprised to see him?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, naturally, sir.”

  Asked her opinion of Ellis, Beatrice was noncommittal. She’d seen very little of him. Going off the way he did looked bad, though why
he should want to harm the master she couldn’t imagine. Nobody could.

  “What was he like, the doctor, I mean? Did he seem to be looking forward to the house party? Had he anything on his mind?”

  “He seemed particularly cheerful, sir. Smiled to himself, he did, as though he had some joke on. I even heard him make a joke with Mr. Ellis, a thing he’d never done with Mr. Baker. He was usually a bit brusque with the servants, kind always, but not speaking to them much.”

  “What did he say?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite eagerly.

  “Well, I forget exactly now, sir. Mr. Ellis had come up with a telephone message, and Sir Bartholomew asked him if he was sure he’d got the names right, and Mr. Ellis said quite sure—speaking respectful, of course. And the doctor he laughed and said, ‘You’re a good fellow, Ellis, a first-class butler. Eh, Beatrice, what do you think?’ And I was so surprised, sir, at the master speaking like that—quite unlike his usual self—that I didn’t know what to say.”

  “And Ellis?”

  “He looked kind of disapproving, sir, as though it was the kind of thing he hadn’t been used to. Stiff like.”

  “What was the telephone message?” asked Sir Charles.

  “The message, sir? Oh, it was from the Sanatorium—about a patient who had arrived there and had stood the journey well.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  “It was a queer name, sir.” Beatrice hesitated. “Mrs. de Rushbridger—something like that.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Sir Charles soothingly. “Not an easy name to get right on the telephone. Well, thank you very much, Beatrice. Perhaps we could see Alice now.”

  When Beatrice had left the room Sir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite compared notes by an interchange of glances.

  “Miss Wills poked and pried, Captain Dacres got drunk, Mrs. Dacres displayed no emotion. Anything there? Precious little.”

  “Very little indeed,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite.

  “Let’s pin our hopes on Alice.”

  Alice was a demure, dark-eyed young woman of thirty. She was only too pleased to talk.

  She herself didn’t believe Mr. Ellis had anything to do with it. He was too much the gentleman. The police had suggested he was just a common crook. Alice was sure he was nothing of the sort.

  “You’re quite certain he was an ordinary honest-to-God butler?” asked Sir Charles.

  “Not ordinary, sir. He wasn’t like any butler I’ve ever worked with before. He arranged the work different.”

  “But you don’t think he poisoned your master.”

  “Oh, sir, I don’t see how he could have done. I was waiting at table with him, and he couldn’t have put anything in the master’s food without my seeing him.”

  “And the drink?”

  “He went round with the wine, sir. Sherry first, with the soup, and then hock and claret. But what could he have done, sir? If there’d been anything in the wine he’d have poisoned everybody—or all those who took it. It’s not as though the master had anything that nobody else had. The same thing with the port. All the gentlemen had port, and some of the ladies.”

  “The wine glasses were taken out on a tray?”

  “Yes, sir, I held the tray and Mr. Ellis put the glasses on it, and I carried the tray out to the pantry, and there they were, sir, when the police came to examine them. The port glasses were still on the table. And the police didn’t find anything.”

  “You’re quite sure that the doctor didn’t have anything to eat or drink at dinner that nobody else had?”

  “Not that I saw, sir. In fact, I’m sure he didn’t.”

  “Nothing that one of the guests gave him—”

  “Oh, no, sir.”

  “Do you know anything about a secret passage, Alice?”

  “One of the gardeners told me something about it. Comes out in the wood where there’s some old walls and things tumbled down. But I’ve never seen any opening to it in the house.”

  “Ellis never said anything about it?”

  “Oh, no, sir, he wouldn’t know anything about it, I’m sure.”

  “Who do you really think killed your master, Alice?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I can’t believe anyone did…I feel it must have been some kind of accident.”

  “H’m. Thank you, Alice.”

  “If it wasn’t for the death of Babbington,” said Sir Charles as the girl left the room, “we could make her the criminal. She’s a good-looking girl…And she waited at table…No, it won’t do. Babbington was murdered; and anyway Tollie never noticed good-looking girls. He wasn’t made that way.”

  “But he was fifty-five,” said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s the age a man loses his head badly about a girl—even if he hasn’t done so before.”

  “Dash it all, Satterthwaite, I’m—er—getting on for fifty-five.”

  “I know,” said Satterthwaite.

  And before his gentle twinkling gaze Sir Charles’s eyes fell.

  Unmistakably he blushed….

  Five

  IN THE BUTLER’S ROOM

  “How about an examination of Ellis’s room?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite, having enjoyed the spectacle of Sir Charles’s blush to the full.

  The actor seized at the diversion.

  “Excellent, excellent. Just what I was about to suggest myself.”

  “Of course the police have already searched it thoroughly.”

  “The police—”

  Aristide Duval waved the police away scornfully. Anxious to forget his momentary discomfiture, he flung himself with renewed vigour into his part.

  “The police are blockheads,” he said sweepingly. “What have they looked for in Ellis’s room? Evidences of his guilt. We shall look for evidences of his innocence—an entirely different thing.”

  “You’re completely convinced of Ellis’s innocence?”

  “If we’re right about Babbington, he must be innocent.”

  “Yes, besides—”

  Mr. Satterthwaite did not finish his sentence. He had been about to say that if Ellis was a professional criminal who had been detected by Sir Bartholomew and had murdered him in consequence the whole affair would become unbearably dull. Just in time he remembered that Sir Bartholomew had been a friend of Sir Charles Cartwright’s and was duly appalled by the callousness of the sentiments he had nearly revealed.

  At first sight Ellis’s room did not seem to offer much promise of discovery. The clothes in the drawers and hanging in the cupboard were all neatly arranged. They were well cut, and bore different tailors’ marks. Clearly castoffs given him in different situations. The underclothing was on the same scale. The boots were neatly polished and arranged on trees.

  Mr. Satterthwaite picked up a boot and murmured, “Nines, just so, nines.” But, since there were no footprints in the case, that didn’t seem to lead anywhere.

  It seemed clear from its absence that Ellis had departed in his butler’s kit, and Mr. Satterthwaite pointed out to Sir Charles that that seemed rather a remarkable fact.

  “Any man in his senses would have changed into an ordinary suit.”

  “Yes, it’s odd that…Looks almost, though that’s absurd, as if he hadn’t gone at all…Nonsense, of course.”

  They continued their search. No letters, no papers, except a cutting from a newspaper regarding a cure for corns, and a paragraph relating to the approaching marriage of a duke’s daughter.

  There was a small blotting book and a penny bottle of ink on a side table—no pen. Sir Charles held up the blotting book to the mirror, but without result. One page of it was very much used—a meaningless jumble, and the ink looked to both men old.

  “Either he hasn’t written any letters since he was here, or he hasn’t blotted them,” deduced Mr. Satterthwaite. “This is an old blotter. Ah, yes—” With some gratification he pointed to a barely decipherable “L. Baker” amidst the jumble.

  “I should say Ellis ha
dn’t used this at all.”

  “That’s rather odd, isn’t it?” said Sir Charles slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, a man usually writes letters….”

  “Not if he’s a criminal.”

  “No, perhaps you’re right…There must have been something fishy about him to make him bolt as he did…All we say is that he didn’t murder Tollie.”

  They hunted round the floor, raising the carpet, looking under the bed. There was nothing anywhere, except a splash of ink beside the fireplace. The room was disappointingly bare.

  They left it in a somewhat disconcerted fashion. Their zeal as detectives was momentarily damped.

  Possibly the thought passed through their minds that things were arranged better in books.

  They had a few words with the other members of the staff, scared-looking juniors in awe of Mrs. Leckie and Beatrice Church, but they elicited nothing further.

  Finally they took their leave.

  “Well, Satterthwaite,” said Sir Charles as they strolled across the park (Mr. Satterthwaite’s car had been instructed to pick them up at the lodge) “anything strike you—anything at all?”

  Mr. Satterthwaite thought. He was not to be hurried into an answer—especially as he felt something ought to have struck him. To confess that the whole expedition had been a waste of time was an unwelcome idea. He passed over in his mind the evidence of one servant after another—the information was extraordinarily meagre.

  As Sir Charles had summed it up just now, Miss Wills had poked and pried, Miss Sutcliffe had been very upset, Mrs. Dacres had not been upset at all, and Captain Dacres had got drunk. Very little there, unless Freddie Dacres’s indulgence showed the deadening of a guilty conscience. But Freddie Dacres, Mr. Satterthwaite knew, quite frequently got drunk.

  “Well?” repeated Sir Charles impatiently.

  “Nothing,” confessed Mr. Satterthwaite reluctantly. “Except—well, I think we are entitled to assume from the clipping we found that Ellis suffered from corns.”

  Sir Charles gave a wry smile.

  “That seems quite a reasonable deduction. Does it—er—get us anywhere?”