Three-Act Tragedy Read online

  ‘Bartholomew was very proud of this place, I know,’ said Sir Charles.

  ‘Yes, his treatments were a great success.’

  ‘Mostly nerve cases, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That reminds me—fellow I met out at Monte had some kind of relation coming here. I forget her name now—odd sort of name—Rushbridger—Rusbrigger—something like that.’

  ‘Mrs de Rushbridger, you mean?’

  ‘That’s it. Is she here now?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I’m afraid she won’t be able to see you—not for some time yet. She’s having a very strict rest cure.’ The Matron smiled just a trifle archly. ‘No letters, no exciting visitors…’

  ‘I say, she’s not very bad, is she?’

  ‘Rather a bad nervous breakdown—lapses of memory, and severe nervous exhaustion. Oh, we shall get her right in time.’

  The Matron smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Let me see, haven’t I heard Tollie—Sir Bartholomew—speak of her? She was a friend of his as well as a patient, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Sir Charles. At least the doctor never said so. She has recently arrived from the West Indies—really, it was very funny, I must tell you. Rather a difficult name for a servant to remember—the parlourmaid here is rather stupid. She came and said to me, “Mrs West India has come,” and of course I suppose Rushbridger does sound rather like West India—but it was rather a coincidence her having just come from the West Indies.’

  ‘Rather—rather—most amusing. Her husband over, too?’

  ‘He’s still out there.’

  ‘Ah, quite—quite. I must be mixing her up with someone else. It was a case the doctor was specially interested in?’

  ‘Cases of amnesia are fairly common, but they’re always interesting to a medical man—the variations, you know. Two cases are seldom alike.’

  ‘Seems all very odd to me. Well, thank you, Matron, I’m glad to have had a little chat with you. I know how much Tollie thought of you. He often spoke about you,’ finished Sir Charles mendaciously.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad to hear that.’ The Matron flushed and bridled. ‘Such a splendid man—such a loss to us all. We were absolutely shocked—well, stunned would describe it better. Murder! Who ever would murder Dr Strange, I said. It’s incredible. That awful butler. I hope the police catch him. And no motive or anything.’

  Sir Charles shook his head sadly and they took their departure, going round by the road to the spot where the car awaited them.

  In revenge for his enforced quiescence during the interview with the Matron, Mr Satterthwaite displayed a lively interest in the scene of Oliver Manders’ accident, plying the lodge keeper, a slow-witted man of middle age, with questions.

  Yes, that was the place, where the wall was broken away. On a motor cycle the young gentleman was. No, he didn’t see it happen. He heard it, though, and come out to see. The young gentleman was standing there—just where the other gentleman was standing now. He didn’t seem to be hurt. Just looking rueful-like at his bike—and a proper mess that was. Just asked what the name of the place might be, and when he heard it was Sir Bartholomew Strange’s he said, ‘That’s a piece of luck,’ and went on up to the house. A very calm young gentleman he seemed to be—tired like. How he come to have such an accident, the lodge keeper couldn’t see, but he supposed them things went wrong sometimes.

  ‘It was an odd accident,’ said Mr Satterthwaite thoughtfully.

  He looked at the wide straight road. No bends, no dangerous crossroads, nothing to cause a motor cyclist to swerve suddenly into a ten-foot wall. Yes, an odd accident.

  ‘What’s in your mind, Satterthwaite?’ asked Sir Charles curiously.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘nothing.’

  ‘It’s odd, certainly,’ said Sir Charles, and he, too, stared at the scene of the accident in a puzzled manner.

  They got into the car and drove off.

  Mr Satterthwaite was busy with his thoughts. Mrs de Rushbridger—Cartwright’s theory wouldn’t work—it wasn’t a code message—there was such a person. But could there be something about the woman herself? Was she perhaps a witness of some kind, or was it just because she was an interesting case that Bartholomew Strange had displayed this unusual elation? Was she, perhaps, an attractive woman? To fall in love at the age of fifty-five did (Mr Satterthwaite had observed it many a time) change a man’s character completely. It might, perhaps, make him facetious, where before he had been aloof—

  His thoughts were interrupted. Sir Charles leant forward.

  ‘Satterthwaite,’ he said, ‘do you mind if we turn back?’

  ‘Without waiting for a reply, he took up the speaking tube and gave the order. The car slowed down, stopped, and the chauffeur began to reverse into a convenient lane. A minute or two later they were bowling along the road in the opposite direction.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘I’ve remembered,’ said Sir Charles, ‘what struck me as odd. It was the ink-stain on the floor in the butler’s room.’

  Chapter 6

  Concerning An Ink-Stain

  Mr Satterthwaite stared at his friend in surprise.

  ‘The ink-stain?’ What do you mean, Cartwright?’

  ‘You remember it?’

  ‘I remember there was an ink-stain, yes.’

  ‘You remember its position?’

  ‘Well—not exactly.’

  ‘It was close to the skirting board near the fireplace.’

  ‘Yes, so it was. I remember now.’

  ‘How do you think that stain was caused, Satterthwaite?’

  ‘It wasn’t a big stain,’ he said at last. ‘It couldn’t have been an upset ink-bottle. I should say in all probability that the man dropped his fountain pen there—there was no pen in the room, you remember.’ (He shall see I notice things just as much as he does, thought Mr Satterthwaite.) ‘So it seems clear the man must have had a fountain pen if he ever wrote at all—and there’s no evidence that he ever did.’

  ‘Yes, there is, Satterthwaite. There’s the ink-stain.’

  ‘He mayn’t have been writing,’ snapped Satterthwaite. ‘He may have just droped the pen on the floor.’

  ‘But there wouldn’t have been a stain unless the top had been off the pen.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But I can’t see what’s odd about it.’

  ‘Perhaps there isn’t anything odd,’ said Sir Charles. ‘I can’t tell till I get back and see for myself.’

  They were turning in at the lodge gates. A few minutes later they had arrived at the house and Sir Charles was allaying the curiosity caused by his return by inventing a pencil left behind in the butler’s room.

  ‘And now,’ said Sir Charles, shutting the door of Ellis’s room behind them, having with some skill shaken off the helpful Mrs Leckie, ‘let’s see if I’m making an infernal fool of myself, or whether there’s anything in my idea.’

  In Mr Satterthwaite’s opinion the former alternative was by far the more probable, but he was much too polite to say so. He sat down on the bed and watched the other.

  ‘Here’s our stain,’ said Sir Charles, indicating the mark with his foot. ‘Right up against the skirting board at the opposite side of the room to the writing-table. Under what circumstances would a man drop a pen just there?’

  ‘You can drop a pen anywhere,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘You can hurl it across the room, of course,’ agreed Sir Charles. ‘But one doesn’t usually treat one’s pen like that. I don’t know, though. Fountain pens are damned annoying things. Dry up and refuse to write just when you want them to. Perhaps that’s the solution of the matter. Ellis lost his temper, said, “Damn the thing,” and hurled it across the room.’

  ‘I think there are plenty of explanations,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘He may have simply laid the pen on the mantelpiece and it rolled off.’

  Sir Charles experimented
with a pencil. He allowed it to roll off the corner of the mantelpiece. The pencil struck the ground at least a foot from the mark and rolled inwards towards the gas fire.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘What’s your explanation?’

  ‘I’m trying to find one.’

  From his seat on the bed Mr Satterthwaite now witnessed a thoroughly amusing performance.

  Sir Charles tried dropping the pencil from his hand as he walked in the direction of the fireplace. He tried sitting on the edge of the bed and writing there and then dropping the pencil. To get the pencil to fall on the right spot it was necessary to stand or sit jammed up against the wall in a most unconvincing attitude.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Sir Charles aloud. He stood considering the wall, the stain and the prim little gas fire.

  ‘If he were burning papers, now,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But one doesn’t burn papers in a gas fire—’

  Suddenly he drew in his breath.

  A minute later Mr Satterthwaite was realizing Sir Charles’s profession to the full.

  Charles Cartwright had become Ellis the butler. He sat writing at the writing-table. He looked furtive, every now and then he raised his eyes, shooting them shiftily from side to side. Suddenly he seemed to hear something—Mr Satterthwaite could even guess what that something was—footsteps along the passage. The man had a guilty conscience. He attached a certain meaning to those footsteps. He sprang up, the paper on which he had been writing in one hand, his pen in the other. He darted across the room to the fireplace, his head half turned, still alert—listening—afraid. He tried to shove the papers under the gas fire—in order to use both hands he cast down the pen impatiently. Sir Charles’s pencil, the ‘pen’ of the drama, fell accurately on the ink-stain…

  ‘Bravo,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, applauding generously.

  So good had the performance been that he was left with the impression that so and only so could Ellis have acted.

  ‘You see?’ said Sir Charles, resuming his own personality and speaking with modest elation. ‘If the fellow heard the police or what he thought was the police coming and had to hide what he was writing—well, where could he hide it? Not in a drawer or under the mattress—if the police searched the room, that would be found at once. He hadn’t time to take up a floor board. No, behind the gas fire was the only chance.’

  ‘The next thing to do,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘is to see whether there is anything hidden behind the gas fire.’

  ‘Exactly. Of course, it may have been a false alarm, and he may have got the things out again later. But we’ll hope for the best.’

  ‘Removing his coat and turning up his shirt sleeves, Sir Charles lay down on the floor and applied his eye to the crack under the gas fire.

  ‘There’s something under there,’ he reported. ‘Something white. How can we get it out? We want something like a woman’s hatpins.’

  ‘Women don’t have hatpins any more,’ said Mr Satterthwaite sadly. ‘Perhaps a penknife.’

  But a penknife proved unavailing.

  In the end Mr Satterthwaite went out and borrowed a knitting needle from Beatrice. Though extremely curious to know what he wanted it for, her sense of decorum was too great to permit her to ask.

  The knitting needle did the trick. Sir Charles extracted half a dozen sheets of crumpled writing-paper, hastily crushed together and pushed in.

  With growing excitement he and Mr Satterthwaite smoothed them out. They were clearly several different drafts of a letter—written in a small, neat clerkly handwriting.

  This is to say (began the first) that the writer of this does not wish to cause unpleasantness, and may possibly have been mistaken in what he thought he saw tonight, but—

  Here the writer had clearly been dissatisfied, and had broken off to start afresh.

  John Ellis, butler, presents his compliments, and would be glad of a short interview touching the tragedy tonight before going to the police with certain information in his possession—

  Still dissatisfied, the man had tried again.

  John Ellis, butler, has certain facts concerning the death of the doctor in his possession. He has not yet given these facts to the police—

  In the next one the use of the third person had been abandoned.

  I am badly in need of money. A thousand pounds would make all the difference to me. There are certain things I could tell the police, but do not want to make trouble—

  The last one was even more unreserved.

  I know how the doctor died. I haven’t said anything to the police—yet. If you will meet me—

  This letter broke off in a different way—after the ‘me’ the pen had tailed off in a scrawl, and the last five words were all blurred and blotchy. Clearly it was when writing this that Ellis had heard something that alarmed him. He had crumpled up the papers and dashed to conceal them.

  Mr Satterthwaite drew a deep breath.

  ‘I congratulate you, Cartwright,’ he said. ‘Your instinct about that ink-stain was right. Good work. Now let’s see exactly where we stand.’

  He paused a minute.

  ‘Ellis, as we thought, is a scoundrel. He wasn’t the murderer, but he knew who the murderer was, and he was preparing to blackmail him or her—’

  ‘Him or her,’ interrupted Sir Charles. ‘Annoying we don’t know which. Why couldn’t the fellow begin one of his effusions Sir or Madam, then we’d know where we are. Ellis seems to have been an artistic sort of fellow. He was taking a lot of trouble over his blackmailing letter. If only he’d given us one clue—as to whom that letter was addressed.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘We are getting on. You remember you said that what we wanted to find in this room was a proof of Ellis’s innocence. Well, we’ve found it. These letters show that he was innocent—of the murder, I mean. He was a thorough-paced scoundrel in other ways. But he didn’t murder Sir Bartholomew Strange. Somebody else did that. Someone who murdered Babbington also. I think even the police will have to come round to our view now.’

  ‘You’re going to tell them about this?’

  Sir Charles’s voice expressed dissatisfaction.

  ‘I don’t see that we can do otherwise. Why?’

  ‘Well—’ Sir Charles sat down on the bed. His brow furrowed itself in thought. ‘How can I put it best? At the moment we know something that nobody else does. The police are looking for Ellis. They think he’s the murderer. Everyone knows that they think he’s the murderer. So the real criminal must be feeling pretty good. He (or she) will be not exactly off his or her guard, but feeling—well, comfortable. Isn’t it a pity to upset that state of things? Isn’t that just our chance? I mean our chance of finding a connection between Babbington and one of these people. They don’t know that anyone has connected this death with Babbington’s death. They’ll be unsuspicious. It’s a chance in a hundred.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘And I agree with you. It is a chance. But, all the same, I don’t think we can take it. It is our duty as citizens to report this discovery of ours to the police at once. We have no right to withhold it from them.’

  Sir Charles looked at him quizzically.

  ‘You’re the pattern of a good citizen, Satterthwaite. I’ve no doubt the orthodox thing must be done—but I’m not nearly such a good citizen as you are. I should have no scruples in keeping this find to myself for a day or two—only a day or two—eh? No? Well, I give in. Let us be pillars of law and order.’

  ‘You see,’ explained Mr Satterthwaite, ‘Johnson is a friend of mine, and he was very decent about it all—let us into all the police were doing—gave us full information, and all that.’

  ‘Oh, you’re right,’ sighed Sir Charles. ‘Quite right. Only, after all, no one but me thought of looking under that gas stove. The idea never occurred to one of those thick-headed policemen…But have it your own way. I say, Satterthwaite, where do you think Ellis is now?’

  ‘I presume,’
said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘that he got what he wanted. He was paid to disappear, and he did disappear—most effectually.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir Charles. ‘I suppose that is the explanation.’