Three Act Tragedy

by Agatha Christie

Mr. Satterthwaite confessed that it did not.

  “The only other thing—” he said and then stopped.

  “Yes? Go on, man. Anything may help.”

  “It struck me as a little odd the way that Sir Bartholomew chaffed his butler—you know what the housemaid told us. It seems somehow uncharacteristic.”

  “It was uncharacteristic,” said Sir Charles with emphasis. “I knew Tollie well—better than you did—and I can tell you that he wasn’t a facetious sort of man. He’d never have spoken like that unless—well, unless for some reason he wasn’t quite normal at the time. You’re right, Satterthwaite, that is a point. Now where does it get us?”

  “Well,” began Mr. Satterthwaite; but it was clear that Sir Charles’s question had been merely a rhetorical one. He was anxious, not to hear Mr. Satterthwaite’s views, but to air his own.

  “You remember when that incident occurred, Satterthwaite? Just after Ellis had brought him a telephone message. I think it’s a fair deduction to assume that it was that telephone message which was the cause of Tollie’s sudden unusual hilarity. You may remember I asked the housemaid woman what that message had been.”

  Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.

  “It was to say that a woman named Mrs. de Rushbridger had arrived at the Sanatorium,” he said, to show that he, too, had paid attention to the point. “It doesn’t sound particularly thrilling.”

  “It doesn’t sound so, certainly. But, if our reasoning is correct, there must be some significance in that message.”

  “Ye-es,” said Mr. Satterthwaite doubtfully.

  “Indubitably,” said Sir Charles. “We’ve got to find out what that significance was. It just crosses my mind that it may have been a code message of some kind—a harmless sounding natural thing, but which really meant something entirely different. If Tollie had been making inquiries into Babbington’s death, this may have had something to do with those inquiries. Say, even, that he employed a private detective to find out a certain fact. He may have told him in the event of this particular suspicion being justified to ring up and use that particular phrase which would convey no hint of the truth to anyone taking it. That would explain his jubilation, it might explain his asking Ellis if he was sure of the name—he himself knowing well there was no such person, really. In fact, the slight lack of balance a person shows when they have brought off what can be described as a long shot.”

  “You think there’s no such person as Mrs. de Rushbridger?”

  “Well, I think we ought to find out for certain.”

  “How?”

  “We might run along to the Sanatorium now and ask the Matron.”

  “She may think it rather odd.”

  Sir Charles laughed.

  “You leave it to me,” he said.

  They turned aside from the drive and walked in the direction of the Sanatorium.

  Mr. Satterthwaite said:

  “What about you, Cartwright? Does anything strike you at all? Arising out of our visit to the house, I mean.”

  Sir Charles answered slowly.

  “Yes, there is something—the devil of it is, I can’t remember what.”

  Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him in surprise. The other frowned.

  “How can I explain? There was something—something which at the moment struck me as wrong—as unlikely—only—I hadn’t the time to think about it then. I put it aside in my own mind.”

  “And now you can’t remember what it was?”

  “No—only that at some moment I said to myself, ‘That’s odd.’”

  “Was it when we were questioning the servants? Which servant?”

  “I tell you I can’t remember. And the more I think the less I shall remember…If I leave it alone, it may come back to me.”

  They came into view of the Sanatorium, a big white modern building, divided from the park by palings. There was a gate through which they passed, and they rang the front doorbell and asked for the Matron.

  The Matron, when she came, was a tall, middle-aged woman, with an intelligent face and a capable manner. Sir Charles she clearly knew by name as a friend of the late Sir Bartholomew Strange.

  Sir Charles explained that he had just come back from abroad, had been horrified to hear of his friend’s death and of the terrible suspicions entertained, and had been up to the house to learn as many details as he could. The Matron spoke in moving terms of the loss Sir Bartholomew would be to them, and of his fine career as a doctor. Sir Charles professed himself anxious to know what was going to happen to the Sanatorium. The Matron explained that Sir Bartholomew had had two partners, both capable doctors, one was in residence at the Sanatorium.

  “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 motorcycle 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.”

  Six

  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 dropped the pen on the floor.”

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

  “I daresay 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 floorboard. 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 anymore,” 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 o
f 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.”