Three Act Tragedy

by Agatha Christie

  “But then, my friends, I was visited by a curious sensation. It seemed clear and logical enough that the person who had committed the crimes must have been a person who had been present on both occasions; in other words a person on that list of seven—but I had the feeling that that obviousness was an arranged obviousness. It was what any sane and logical person would be expected to think. I felt that I was, in fact, looking not at reality but at an artfully painted bit of scenery. A really clever criminal would have realized that anyone whose name was on that list would necessarily be suspect, and therefore he or she would arrange for it not to be there.

  “In other words, the murderer of Stephen Babbington and Sir Bartholomew Strange was present on both occasions—but was not apparently so.

  “Who had been present on the first occasion and not on the second? Sir Charles Cartwright, Mr. Satterthwaite, Miss Milray and Mr. Babbington.

  “Could any of those four have been present on the second occasion in some capacity other than their own? Sir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite had been in the South of France, Miss Milray had been in London, Mrs. Babbington had been in Loomouth. Of the four, then, Miss Milray and Mrs. Babbington seemed indicated. But could Miss Milray have been present at Melfort Abbey unrecognized by any of the company? Miss Milray has very striking features not easily disguised and not easily forgotten. I decided that it was impossible that Miss Milray could have been at Melfort Abbey unrecognized. The same applied to Mrs. Babbington.

  “For the matter of that could Mr. Satterthwaite or Sir Charles Cartwright have been at Melfort Abbey and not been recognized? 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 recognized 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. This 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 rôle 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, not 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 has 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 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 party 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 has 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 herring—she could only be so dead. And so Mrs. de Rushbridger, a harmless stranger, was murdered….

  “Yet even in that seeming triumph Sir Charles made a colossal—a childish—error! The telegram was addressed to me, Hercule Poirot, at the Ritz Hotel. But Mrs. de Rushbridger had never heard of my connection with the case! No one up in that part of the world knew of it. It was an unbelievably childish error.

  “Eh bien, then I had reached a certain stage. I knew the identity of the murderer. But I did not know the motive for the original crime.

  “I reflected.

  “And once again, more clearly than ever, I saw the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange as the original and purposeful murder. What reason could Sir Charles Cartwright have for the murder of his friend? Could I imagine a motive? I thought I could.”

  There was a deep sigh. Sir Charles Cartwright rose slowly to his feet and strolled to the fireplace. He stood there, his hand on his hip, looking down at Poirot. His attitude (Mr. Satterthwaite could have told you) was that of Lord Eaglemount as he looks scornfully at the rascally solicitor who has succeeded in fastening an accusation of fraud upon him. He radiated nobility and disgust. He was the aristocrat looking down at the ignoble canaille.

  “You have an extraordinary imagination, M. Poirot,” he said. “It’s hardly worth while saying that there’s not one single word of truth in your story. How you have the damned impertinence to dish up such an absurd fandangle of lies I don’t know. But go on, I am interested. What was my motive for murdering a man whom I had known ever since boyhood?”

  Hercule Poirot, the little bourgeois, looked up at the aristocrat. He spoke quickly but firmly.

  “Sir Charles, we have a proverb that says, ‘Cherchez la femme.’ It was there that I found my motive. I had seen you with Mademoiselle Lytton Gore. It was clear that you loved her—loved her with that terrible absorbing passion that comes to a middle-aged man and which is usually inspired by an innocent young girl.

  “You loved her. She, I could see, had the hero-worship for you. You had only to speak and she would fall into your arms. But you did not speak. Why?

  “You pretended to your friend, Mr. Satterthwaite, that you were the dense lover who cannot recognize his mistress’s answering passion. You pretended to think that Miss Lytton Gore was in love with Oliver Manders. But I say, Sir Charles, that you are a man of the world. You are a man with a great experience of women. You cannot have been deceived. You knew perfectly well that Miss Lytton Gore cared for you. Why, then, did you not marry her? You wanted to do so.

  “It must be that there was some obstacle. What could that obstacle be? It could only be the fact that you already had a wife. But nobody ever spoke of you as a married man. You passed always as a bachelor. The marriage, then, had taken place when you were very young—before you became known as a rising young actor.

  “What had happened to your wife? If she were still alive, why did nobody know about her? If you were living apart there was the remedy of divorce. If your wife was a Catholic, or one who disapproved of divorce, she would still be known as living apart from you.

  “But there are two tragedies where the law gives no relief. The woman you married might be serving a life sentence in some prison, or she might be confined in a lunatic asylum. In neither case could you obtain a divorce, and if it had happened while you were still a boy nobody might know about it.

  “If nobody knew, you might marry Miss Lytton Gore without telling her the truth. But supposing one person knew—a friend who had known you all your life? Sir Bartholomew Strange was an honourable, upright physician. He might pity you deeply, he might sympathize with a liaison or an irregular life, but he would not stand by silent and see you enter into a bigamous marriage with an unsuspecting young girl.

  “Before you could marry Miss Lytton Gore, Sir Bartholomew Strange must be removed….”

  Sir Charles laughed.

  “And dear old Babbington? Did he know all about it, too?”

  “I fancied so at first. But I soon found that there was no evidence to support that theory. Besides, my original stumbling block remained. Even if it was you who put the nicotine into the cocktail glass, you could not have ensured its reaching one particular person.

  “That was my problem. And suddenly a chance word from Miss Lytton Gore showed me light.

  “The poison was not intended especially for Stephen Babbington. It was intended for any one of those present, with three exceptions. These exceptions were Miss Lytton Gore, to whom you were careful to hand an innocent glass, yourself, and Sir Bartholomew Strange, who, you knew, did not drink cocktails.”

  Mr. Satterthwaite cried out:

  “But that’s nonsense! What’s the point of it? There isn’t any.”

  Poirot turned towards him. Triumph came into his voice.

  “Oh, yes, there is. A queer point—a very queer point. The only time I have come across such a motive for murder. The murder of Stephen Babbington was neither more nor less than a dress rehearsal.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Sir Charles was an actor. He obeyed his actor’s instinct. He tried out his murder before committing it. No suspicion could possibly attach to him. Not one of those people’s deaths could benefit him in any way, and, moreover, as everyone has found, he could not have been proved to have poisoned any particular person. And, my friends, the dress rehearsal went well. Mr. Babbington dies, and foul play is n
ot even suspected. It is left to Sir Charles to urge that suspicion and he is highly gratified at our refusal to take it seriously. The substitution of the glass, too, that has gone without a hitch. In fact, he can be sure that, when the real performance comes, it will be ‘all right on the night.’

  “As you know, events took a slightly different turn. On the second occasion a doctor was present who immediately suspected poison. It was then to Sir Charles’s interests to stress the death of Babbington. Sir Bartholomew’s death must be presumed to be the outcome of the earlier death. Attention must be focused on the motive for Babbington’s murder, not on any motive that might exist for Sir Bartholomew’s removal.

  “But there was one thing that Sir Charles failed to realize—the efficient watchfulness of Miss Milray. Miss Milray knew that her employer dabbled in chemical experiments in the tower in the garden. Miss Milray paid bills for rose spraying solution, and realized that quite a lot of it had unaccountably disappeared. When she read that Mr. Babbington had died of nicotine poisoning, her clever brain leaped at once to the conclusion that Sir Charles had extracted the pure alkaloid from the rose solution.

  “And Miss Milray did not know what to do, for she had known Mr. Babbington as a little girl, and she was in love, deeply and devotedly as an ugly woman can be, with her fascinating employer.

  “In the end she decided to destroy Sir Charles’s apparatus. Sir Charles himself had been so cocksure of his success that he had never thought it necessary. She went down to Cornwall, and I followed.”

  Again Sir Charles laughed. More than ever he looked a fine gentleman disgusted by a rat.

  “Is some old chemical apparatus all your evidence?” he demanded contemptuously.

  “No,” said Poirot. “There is your passport showing the dates when you returned to and left England. And there is the fact that in the Harverton County Asylum there is a woman, Gladys Mary Mugg, the wife of Charles Mugg.”