Three Act Tragedy

Mr. Satterthwaite’s house was on Chelsea Embankment. It was a large house, and contained many beautiful works of art. There were pictures, sculpture, Chinese porcelain, prehistoric pottery, ivories, miniatures and much genuine Chippendale and Hepplewhite furniture. It had an atmosphere about it of mellowness and understanding.

Egg Lytton Gore saw nothing, noticed nothing. She flung off her evening coat on to a chair and said:

“At last. Now tell me all about it.”

She listened with vivid interest white Sir Charles narrated their adventures in Yorkshire, drawing in her breath sharply when he described the discovery of the blackmailing letters.

“What happened after that we can only conjecture,” finished Sir Charles. “Presumably Ellis was paid to hold his tongue and his escape was facilitated.”

But Egg shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Don’t you see? Ellis is dead.”

Both men were startled, but Egg reiterated her assertion.

“Of course he’s dead. That’s why he’s disappeared so successfully that no one can find a trace of him. He knew too much, and so he was killed. Ellis is the third murder.”

Although neither of the two men had considered the possibility before, they were forced to admit that it did not entirely ring false.

“But look here, my dear girl,” argued Sir Charles, “it’s all very well to say Ellis is dead. Where’s the body? There’s twelve stone or so of solid butler to be accounted for.”

“I don’t know where the body is,” said Egg. “There must be lots of places.”

“Hardly,” murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. “Hardly… ”

“Lots,” reiterated Egg. “Let me see…” She paused for a moment. “Attics, there are masses of attics that no one ever goes into. He’s probably in a trunk in the attic.”

“Rather unlikely,” said Sir Charles. “But possible, of course. It might evade discovery – for – er – a time.”

It was not Egg’s way to avoid unpleasantness. She dealt immediately with the point in Sir Charles’s mind.

“Smell goes up, not down. You’d notice a decaying body in the cellar much sooner than in the attic. And, anyway, for a long time people would think it was a dead rat.”

“If your theory were correct, it would point definitely to a man as the murderer. A woman couldn’t drag a body round the house. In fact, it would be a pretty good feat for a man.”

“Well, there are other possibilities. There’s a secret passage there, you know. Miss Sutcliffe told me so, and Sir. Bartholomew told me he would show it to me. The murderer might have given Ellis the money and shown him the way to get out of the house gone down the passage with him and killed him there. A woman could do that. She could stab him, or something, from behind. Then she’d just leave the body there and go back, and no one would ever know.”

Sir Charles shook his head doubtfully, but he no longer disputed Egg’s theory.

Mr. Satterthwaite felt sure that the same suspicion had come to him for a moment in Ellis’s room when they had found the letters. He remembered Sir Charles’s little shiver. The idea that Ellis might be dead had come to him then…

Mr. Satterthwaite thought: “If Ellis is dead, then we’re dealing with a very dangerous person… Yes, a very dangerous person… ” And suddenly he felt a cold chill of fear down his spine…

A person who had killed three times wouldn’t hesitate to kill again…

They were in danger, all three of them Sir Charles, and Egg, and he…

If they found out too much…

He was recalled by the sound of Sir Charles’s voice.

“There’s one thing I didn’t understand in your letter, Egg. You spoke of Oliver Manders being in danger of the police suspecting him. I can’t see that they attach the least suspicion to him.”

It seemed to Mr. Satterthwaite that Egg was very slightly discomposed. He even fancied that she blushed.

“Aha,” said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself. “Let’s see how you get out of this, young lady.”

“It was silly of me,” said Egg. “I got confused. I thought that Oliver arriving as he did, with what might have been a trumped-up excuse well, I thought the police were sure to suspect him.”

Sir Charles accepted the explanation easily enough.

“Yes,” he said. “I see.”

Mr. Satterthwaite spoke.

“Was it a trumped-up excuse?” he said.

Egg turned to him.

“What do you mean?”

“It was an odd sort of accident,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “I thought if it was a trumped-up excuse you might know.”

Egg shook her head.

“I don’t know. I never thought about it. But why should Oliver pretend to have an accident if he didn’t?”

“He might have had reasons,” said Sir Charles. “Quite natural ones.”

He was smiling at her. Egg blushed crimson.

“Oh, no,” she said. “No.”

Sir Charles sighed. It occurred to Mr. Satterthwaite that his friend had interpreted that blush quite wrongly, Sir Charles seemed a sadder and older man when he spoke again.

“Well,” he said, “if our young friend is in no danger, where do I come in?”

Egg came forward quickly and caught him by the coat sleeve.

“You’re not going away again. You’re not going to give up? You’re going to find out the truth – the truth. I don’t believe anybody but you could find out the truth. You can. You will.”

She was tremendously in earnest. The waves of her vitality seemed to surge and eddy in the old-world air of the room.

“You believe in me?” said Sir Charles. He was moved.

“Yes, yes, yes. We’re going to get at the truth. You and I together.”

“And Satterthwaite.”

“Of course, and Mr. Satterthwaite,” said Egg without interest.

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled covertly. Whether Egg wanted to include him or not, he had no intention of being left out. He was fond of mysteries, and he liked observing human nature, and he had a soft spot for lovers. All three tastes seemed likely to be gratified in this affair.

Sir Charles sat down. His voice changed. He was in command, directing a production.

“First of all we’ve got to clarify the situation. Do we, or do we not, believe that the same person killed Babbington and Bartholomew Strange?”

“Yes,” said Egg.

“Yes,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Do we believe that the second murder sprang directly from the first? I mean, do we believe that Bartholomew Strange was killed in order to prevent his revealing the facts of the first murder, or his suspicion about it?”

“Yes,” said Egg and Mr. Satterthwaite again, but in unison this time.

“Then it is the first murder we must investigate, not the second.”

Egg nodded.

“In my mind, until we discover the motive for the first murder, we can hardly hope to discover the murderer. The motive presents extraordinary difficulty. Babbington was a harmless, pleasant, gentle old man without, one would say, an enemy in the world. Yet he was killed and there must have been some reason for killing. We’ve got to find that reason.”

He paused and then said in his ordinary everyday voice:

“Let’s get down to it. What reasons are there for killing people? First, I suppose, gain.”