Three Act Tragedy

been recognised? Mr. Satterthwaite just possibly; but when we come to Sir Charles Cartwright we come to a very different matter. Sir Charles is an actor accustomed to playing a part. But what part could he have played?

“And then I came to the consideration of the butler Ellis.

“A very mysterious person, Ellis. A person who appears from nowhere a fortnight before the crime and vanishes afterwards with complete success. Why was Ellis so successful? Because Ellis did not really exist. Ellis, again, was a thing of pasteboard and paint and stagecraft – Ellis was not real.

“But was it possible? After all, the servants at Melfort Abbey knew Sir Charles Cartwright, and Sir Bartholomew Strange was an intimate friend of his. The servants I got over easily enough. The impersonation of the butler risked nothing – if the servants recognised him – why, no harm would be done – the whole thing could be passed off as a joke. If, on the other hand, a fortnight passed without any suspicion being aroused, well, the thing was safe as houses. And I recalled what I had been told of the servants’ remarks about the butler. He was ‘quite the gentleman,’ and had been ‘in good houses,’ and knew several interesting scandals. That was easy enough. But a very significant statement was made by the parlourmaid Alice. She said, ‘He arranged the work different from any butler I ever knew before.’ When that remark was repeated to me, it became a confirmation of my theory.

“But Sir Bartholomew Strange was another matter. It is hardly to be supposed that his friend could take him in. he must have known of the impersonation. Had we any evidence of that? Yes. The acute Mr. Satterthwaite pounced on one point quite early in the proceedings – the facetious remark of Sir Bartholomew (totally uncharacteristic of his manner to servants) – ‘You’re a first-class butler, aren’t you Ellis?’ A perfectly understandable remark if the butler were Sir Charles Cartwright and Sir Bartholomew was in on the joke.

“Because that is undoubtedly how Sir Bartholomew saw the matter. The impersonation of Ellis was a joke, possibly even a wager, its culmination was designed to be the successful spoofing of the house party – hence Sir Bartholomew’s remark about a surprise and his cheerful humour. Note, too, that there was still time to draw back. If any of the house party had spotted Charles Cartwright that first evening at the dinner table, nothing irrevocable had yet occurred. The whole thing could have been passed off as a joke. But nobody noticed the stooping middle- aged butler, with his belladonna-darkened eyes, and his whiskers, and the painted birthmark on his wrist. A very subtle identifying touch that – which completely failed, owing to the lack of observation of most human beings! The birthmark was intended to bulk largely in the description of Ellis – and in all that fortnight no one noticed it! The only person who did was the sharp-eyed Miss Wills, to whom we shall come presently.

“What happened next? Sir Bartholomew died. His time the death was not put down to natural causes. The police came. They questioned Ellis and the others. Later that night ‘Ellis’ left by the secret passage, resumed his own personality, and two days later was strolling about the gardens at Monte Carlo ready to be shocked and surprised by the news of his friend’s death.

“This, mind you, was all theory. I had no actual proof, but everything that arose supported that theory. My house of cards was well and truly built. The blackmailing letters discovered in Ellis’s room? But it was Sir Charles himself who discovered them!

“And what of the supposed letter from Sir Bartholomew Strange asking young Manders to arrange an accident? Well, what could be easier than for Sir Charles to write that letter in Sir Bartholomew’s name? If Manders had not destroyed that letter himself, Sir Charles in the role of Ellis can easily do so when he valets the young gentleman. In the same way the newspaper cutting is easily introduced by Ellis into Oliver Manders’s wallet.

“And now we come to the third victim – Mrs. de Rushbridger. When do we first hear of Mrs. de Rushbridger? Immediately after that very awkward chaffing reference to Ellis being the perfect butler – that extremely uncharacteristic utterance of Sir Bartholomew Strange. At all costs attention must be drawn away from Sir Bartholomew’s manner to his butler. Sir Charles quickly asks what was the message the butler had brought. It is about this woman – this patient of the doctor’s. And immediately Sir Charles throws all his personality into directing attention to this unknown woman and away from the butler. He goes to the Sanatorium and questions the Matron. He runs Mrs. de Rushbridger for all he is worth as a red herring.

“We must now examine the part played by Miss Wills in the drama. Miss Wills has a curious personality. She is one of those people who are quite unable to impress themselves on their surroundings. She is neither good- looking nor witty nor clever, nor even particularly sympathetic. She is nondescript. But she is extremely observant and extremely intelligent. She takes her revenge on the world with her pen. She had the great art of being able to reproduce character on paper. I do not know if there was anything about the butler that struck Miss Wills as unusual, but I do think that she was the only person at the table who noticed him at all. On the morning after the murder her insatiable curiosity led her to poke and pry, as the housemaid put it. She went into Dacres’s room, she went through the baize door into the servants’ quarters, led, I think, by the mongoose instinct for finding out.

“She was the only person who occasioned Sir Charles any uneasiness. That is why he was anxious to be the one to tackle her. He was fairly reassured by his interview and distinctly gratified that she had noticed the birthmark. But after that came catastrophe. I don’t think that until that minute Miss Wills had connected Ellis the butler with Sir Charles Cartwright. I think she had only been vaguely struck by some resemblance to someone in Ellis. But she was an observer. When dishes were handed to her she had automatically noted – not the face – but the hands that held the dishes.

“It did not occur to her that Ellis was Sir Charles. But when Sir Charles was talking to her it did suddenly occur to her that Sir Charles was Ellis! And so she asked him to pretend to hand her a dish of vegetables. But it was not whether the birthmark was on the right or the left wrist that interested her.

She wanted a pretext to study his hands – hands held in the same position as those of Ellis the butler.

“And so she leaped to the truth. But she was a peculiar woman. She enjoyed knowledge for its own sake. Besides, she was by no means sure that Sir Charles had murdered his friend. He had masqueraded as a butler, yes – but that did not necessarily make him a murderer. Many an innocent man has kept silence because speech would place him in an awkward position.

“So Miss Wills kept her knowledge to herself – and enjoyed it. But Sir Charles was worried. He did not like that expression of satisfied malice on her face that he saw as he left the room. She knew something. What? Did it affect him? He could not be sure. But he felt that it was something connected with Ellis the butler. First Mr. Satterthwaite – now Miss Wills. Attention must be drawn away from that vital point. It must be focused definitely elsewhere. And he thought of a plan – simple, audacious and, as he fancied, definitely mystifying.

“On the day of my Sherry Party I imagine Sir Charles rose very early, went to Yorkshire and, disguised in shabby clothes, gave the telegram to a small boy to send off. Then he returned to town in time to act the part I had indicated in my little drama. He did one more thing. He posted a box of chocolates to a woman he had never seen and of whom he knew nothing…

“You know what happened that evening. From Sir Charles’s uneasiness I was fairly sure that Miss Wills had certain suspicions. When Sir Charles did his ‘death scene’ I watched Miss Wills’s face. I saw the look of astonishment that showed on it. I knew then that Miss Wills definitely suspected Sir Charles of being the murderer. When he appeared to die poisoned like the other two she thought her deductions must be wrong.

“But if Miss Wills suspected Sir Charles, then Miss Wills was in serious danger. A man who has killed twice will kill again. I uttered a very solemn warning. Later that night I communicated with Miss Wills by telephone, and on my advice she left home suddenly the next day. Since then she had been living here in this hotel. That I was wise is proved by the fact that Sir Charles went out to Tooting on the following evening after he had returned from Gilling. He was too late. The bird had flown.

“In the meantime, from his point of view, the plan had worked well. Mrs. de Rushbridger had something of importance to tell us. Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed before she could speak. How dramatic! How like the detective stories, the plays, the films! Again the cardboard and the tinsel and the painted cloth.

“But I, Hercule Poirot, was not deceived. Mr. Satterthwaite said to me she was killed in order that she should not speak. I agreed. He went on to say she was killed before she could tell us what she knew. I said, ‘Or what she did NOT know.’ I think he was puzzled. But he should have seen then the truth. Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed because she could, in actual fact, have told us nothing at all. Because she had no connection with the crime. If she were to be Sir Charles’s successful red