Three Act Tragedy

“You’ll understand, I’m sure, sir, what it’s meant to me. The master’s death and all. Policemen all over the place, poking their noses here and there – would you believe it, even the dustbins they had to have their noses in, and questions! – They wouldn’t have done with asking questions. Oh, that I should have lived to see such a thing – the doctor, such a quiet gentleman as he always was, and made Sir Bartholomew, too, which a proud day it was to all of us, as Beatrice and I well remember, though she’s been here two years less than I have. And such questions as that police fellow (for gentleman I will not call him, having been accustomed to gentlemen and their ways and knowing what’s what) fellow, I say, whether or no he is a superintendent – ” Mrs. Leckie paused, took breath and extricated herself from the somewhat complicated conversational morass into which she had fallen. “Questions, that’s what I say, about all the maids in the house, and good girls they are, every one of them – not that I’d say that Doris gets up when she should do in the morning. I have to speak about it at least once a week, and Vickie, she’s inclined to be impertinent, but, there, with the young ones you can’t expect the training – their mothers don’t give it to them nowadays – but good girls they are, and no police superintendent shall make me say otherwise. ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘you needn’t think I’m going to say anything against my girls. They’re good girls, they are, and as to having anything to do with murder, why it’s right-down wicked to suggest such a thing.”

Mrs. Leckie paused.

“Mr. Ellis, now – that’s different. I don’t know anything about Mr. Ellis, and couldn’t answer for him in any way, he having been brought from London, and strange to the place, while Mr. Baker was on holiday.”

“Baker?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Mr. Baker had been Sir Bartholomew’s butler for the last seven years, sir. He was in London most of the time, in Harley Street. You’ll remember him, sir?” She appealed to Sir Charles, who nodded. “Sir Bartholomew used to bring him up here when he had a party. But he hadn’t been so well in his health, so Sir Bartholomew said, and he gave him a couple of months’ holiday, paid for him, too, in a place near the sea down near Brighton – a real kind gentleman the doctor was – and he took Mr. Ellis on temporary for the time being, and so, as I said to that superintendent, I can’t say anything about Mr. Ellis, though, from all he said himself, he seems to have been with the best families, and he certainly had a gentlemanly way with him.”

“You didn’t find anything – unusual about him?” asked Sir Charles hopefully.

“Well, it’s odd your saying that, sir, because, if you know what I mean, I did and I didn’t.”

Sir Charles looked encouraging, and Mrs. Leckie went on:

“I couldn’t exactly say what it was, sir, but there was something – ”

There always is – after the event – thought Mr. Satterthwaite to himself grimly. However much Mrs. Leckie had despised the police, she was not proof against suggestion. If Ellis turned out to be the criminal, well, Mrs. Leckie would have noticed something.

“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 non-committal. 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 birth marks?”

“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 warm-hearted 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 bought her her early tea.”

“And Mrs. Dacres?”