Three-Act Tragedy Read online

  ‘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 non-committal. 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…

  Chapter 5

  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 cast-offs 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 hadn’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?’

  Mr Satterthwaite confessed that it did not.

  ‘The only other thing—’ he said and then stopped.

  ‘Yes? Go on, man. Anything may help.’

  ‘It struck me as a little odd the way that Sir Bartholomew chaffed his butler—you know what the housemaid told us. It seems somehow uncharacteristic.’

  ‘It was uncharacteristic,’ said Sir Charles with emphasis. ‘I knew Tollie well—better than you did—and I can tell you that he wasn’t a facetious sort of man. He’d never have spoken like that unless—well, unless for some reason he wasn’t quite normal at the time. You’re right, Satterthwaite, that is a point. Now where does it get us?’

  ‘Well,’ began Mr Satterthwaite; but it was clear that Sir Charles’s question had been merely a rhetorical one. He was anxious, not to hear Mr Satterthwaite’s views, but to air his own.

  ‘You remember when that incident occurred, Satterthwaite? Just after Ellis had brought him a telephone message. I think it’s a fair deduction to assume that it was that telephone message which was the cause of Tollie’s sudden unusual hilarity. You may remember I asked the housemaid woman what that message had been.’

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded.

  ‘It was to say that a woman named Mrs de Rushbridger had arrived at the Sanatorium,’ he said, to show that he, too, had paid attention to the point. ‘It doesn’t sound particularly thrilling.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound so, certainly. But, if our reasoning is correct, there must be some significance in that message.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Mr Satterthwaite doubtfully.

  ‘Indubitably,’ said Sir Charles. ‘We’ve got to find out what that significance was. It just crosses my mind that it may have been a code message of some kind—a harmless sounding natural thing, but which really meant something entirely different. If Tollie had been making inquiries into Babbington’s death, this may have had something to do with those inquiries. Say, even, that he employed a private detective to find out a certain fact. He may have told him in the event of this particular suspicion being justified to ring up and use that particular phrase which would convey no hint of the truth to anyone taking it. That would explain his jubilation, it might explain his asking Ellis if he was sure of the name—he himself knowing well there was no such person, really. In fact, the slight lack of balance a person shows when they have brought off what can be described as a long shot.’

  ‘You think there’s no such person as Mrs de Rushbridger?’

  ‘Well, I think we ought to find out for certain.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We might run along to the Sanatorium now and ask the Matron.’

  ‘She may think it rather odd.’

  Sir Charles laughed.

  ‘You leave it to me,’ he said.

  They turned aside from the drive and walked in the direction of the Sanatorium.

  Mr Satterthwaite said:

  ‘What about you, Cartwright? Does anything strike you at all? Arising out of our visit to the house, I mean.’

  Sir Charles answered slowly.

  ‘Yes, there is something—the devil of it is, I can’t remember what.’

  Mr Satterthwaite stared at him in surprise. The other frowned.

  ‘How can I explain? There was something—something which at the moment struck me as wrong—as unlikely—only—I hadn’t the time to think about it then. I put it aside in my own mind.’

  ‘And now you can’t remember what it was?’

  ‘No—only that at some moment I said to myself, “That’s odd.”’

  ‘Was it when we were questioning the servants? Which servant?’

  ‘I tell you I can’t remember. And the more I think the less I shall remember…If I leave it alone, it may come back to me.’

  They came into view of the Sanatorium, a big white modern building, divided from the park by palings. There was a gate through which they passed, and they rang the front-door bell and asked for the Matron.

  The Matron, when she came, was a tall, middle-aged woman, with an intelligent face and a capable manne
r. Sir Charles she clearly knew by name as a friend of the late Sir Bartholomew Strange.

  Sir Charles explained that he had just come back from abroad, had been horrified to hear of his friend’s death and of the terrible suspicions entertained, and had been up to the house to learn as many details as he could. The Matron spoke in moving terms of the loss Sir Bartholomew would be to them, and of his fine career as a doctor. Sir Charles professed himself anxious to know what was going to happen to the Sanatorium. The Matron explained that Sir Bartholomew had had two partners, both capable doctors, one was in residence at the Sanatorium.