Three Act Tragedy

and a very patient man. In all the years I’ve known him I’ve never known Tollie give utterance to a rash opinion or judgment.”

“Look at it this way: Babbington’s murdered – yes, murdered - I’m not going to hedge, or mince terms – murdered one evening in my house. Tollie ridicules me gently for my suspicions in the matter, but all the time he’s got suspicions of his own. He doesn’t talk about them – that’s not his way. But quietly, in his own mind, he’s building up a case. I don’t know what he had to build upon. It can’t, I think, be a case against any one particular person. He believed that one of those people was responsible for the crime, and he made a plan, a test of some kind to find out which person it was.”

“What about the other guests, the Edens and the Campbell’s?”

“Camouflage. It made the whole thing less obvious.”

“What do you think the plan was?”

Sir Charles shrugged his shoulders – an exaggerated foreign gesture. He was Aristide Duval, that master mind of the Secret Service. His left foot limped as he walked.

“How can we know? I am not a magician. I cannot guess. But there was a plan… It went wrong, because the murderer was just one degree cleverer than Tollie thought… He struck first… ”

“He?”

“Or she. Poison is as much a woman’s weapon as a man’s – more so.”

Mr. Satterthwaite was silent. Sir Charles said:

“Come now, don’t you agree? Or are you on the side of public opinion? ‘The butler’s the man. He done it.’”

“What’s your explanation of the butler?”

“I haven’t thought about him. In my view he doesn’t matter… I could suggest an explanation.”

“Such as?”

“Well, say that the police are right so far – Ellis is a professional criminal, working in, shall we say, with a gang of burglars. Ellis obtains this post with false credentials. Then Tollie is murdered. What is Ellis’s position? A man is killed, and in the house is a man whose finger-prints are at Scotland Yard, and who is known to the police. Naturally he gets the wind up and bolts.”

“By the secret passage?”

“Secret passage be damned. He dodged out of the house while one of the fat-headed constables who were watching the house was taking forty winks.”

“It certainly seems more probable.”

“Well, Satterthwaite, what’s your view?”

“Mine?” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “Oh, it’s the same as yours. It has been all along. The butler seems to me a very clumsy red herring. I believe that Sir. Bartholomew and poor old Babbington were killed by the same person.”

“One of the house-party?”

“One of the house-party.”

There was silence for a minute or two, and then Mr. Satterthwaite asked casually:

“Which of them do you think it was?”

“My God, Satterthwaite, how can I tell?”

“You can’t tell, of course,” said Mr. Satterthwaite mildly. “I just thought you might have some idea – you know, nothing scientific or reasoned. Just an ordinary guess.”

“Well, I haven’t… ” he thought for a minute and then burst out: “You know, Satterthwaite, the moment you begin to think it seems impossible that any of them did it.”

“I suppose your theory is right,” mused Mr. Satterthwaite. “As to the assembling of the suspects, I mean. We’ve got to take it into account that there were certain definite exclusions. Yourself and myself and Mrs. Babbington, for instance. Young Manders, too, he was out of it.”

“Manders?”

“Yes, his arrival on the scene was an accident. He wasn’t asked or expected. That lets him out of the circle of suspects.”

“The dramatist woman, too – Anthony Astor.”

“No, no, she was there. Miss Muriel Wills of Tooting.”

“So she was – I’d forgotten the woman’s name was Wills.”

He frowned. Mr. Satterthwaite was fairly good at reading people’s thoughts. He estimated with fair accuracy what was passing through the actor’s mind. When the other spoke, Mr. Satterthwaite mentally patted himself on that back.

“You know, Satterthwaite, you’re right. I don’t think it was definitely suspected people that he asked – because, after all, Lady Mary and Egg were there… No, he wanted to stage some reproduction of the first business, perhaps… He suspected someone, but he wanted other eyewitnesses there to confirm matters. Something of that kind… ”

“Something of the kind,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite. “One can only generalise at this stage. Very well, the Lytton Gores are out of it, you and I and Mrs. Babbington and Oliver Manders are out of it. Who is left? Angela Sutcliffe?”

“Angie? My dear fellow. She’s been a friend of Tollie’s for years.”

“Then it boils down to the Dacres… In fact, Cartwright, you suspect the Dacres. You might just as well have said so when I asked you.”

Sir Charles looked at him. Mr. Satterthwaite had a mildly triumphant air.

“I suppose,” said Cartwright slowly, “that I do. At least, I don’t suspect them… They just seem rather more possible than anyone else. I don’t know them very well, for one thing. But for the life of me, I can’t see why Freddie Dacres, who spends his life on the race course, or Cynthia, who spends her time designing fabulously expensive clothes for women, should have any desire to remove a dear, insignificant old clergyman… ”

He shook his head, then his face brightened.

“There’s the Wills woman. I forgot her again. What is there about her that continually makes you forget her? She’s the most damnably nondescript creature I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled.

“I rather fancy she might embody Burns’s famous line – ‘A chiel’s amang ye takin’ notes.’ I rather fancy that Miss Wills spend her time taking notes. There are sharp eyes behind that pair of glasses. I think you’ll find that anything worth noticing in this affair has been noticed by Miss Wills.”

“Do you?” said Sir Charles doubtfully.

“The next thing to do,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “is to have some lunch. After that, we’ll go out to the Abbey and see what we can discover on the spot.”

“You seem to be taking very kindly to this, Satterthwaite,” said Sir Charles, with a twinkle of amusement.

“The investigation of crime is not new to me,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “Once when my car broke down and I was staying at a lonely inn – ”

He got no further.

“I remember,” said Sir Charles, in his high, clear carrying actor’s voice, “when I was touring in 1921… ”

Sir Charles won.

9

Nothing could have been more peaceful than the grounds and building of Melfort Abbey as the two men saw it that afternoon in the September sunshine. Portions of the Abbey were fifteenth century. It had been restored and a new wing added on to it. The new Sanatorium was out of sight of the house, with grounds of its own.

Sir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite were received by Mrs. Leckie, the cook, a portly lady, decorously gowned in black, who was tearful and voluble. Sir Charles she already knew, and it was to him she addressed most of her conversation.