Three Act Tragedy (8 page)

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.”

M
r. 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 solu
tion 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 of 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.

Here the writer had clearly been dissatisfied, and had broken off to start afresh.

Still dissatisfied, the man had tried again.

In the next one the use of the third person had been abandoned.

The last one was even more unreserved.

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.”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “We are getting on. You remember you said that what we wanted to find in this room was a proof of Ellis's innocence. Well, we've found it. These letters show that he was innocent—of the murder, I mean. He was a thorough-paced scoundrel in other ways. But he didn't murder Sir Bartholomew Strange. Somebody else did that. Someone who murdered Babbington also. I think even the police will have to come round to our view now.”

“You're going to tell them about this?”

Sir Charles's voice expressed dissatisfaction.

“I don't see that we can do otherwise. Why?”

“Well—” Sir Charles sat down on the bed. His brow furrowed itself in thought. “How can I put it best? At the moment we know something that nobody else does. The police are looking for Ellis. They think he's the murderer. Everyone knows that they think he's the murderer. So the real criminal must be feeling pretty good. He (or she) will be not exactly off his or her guard, but feeling—well, comfortable. Isn't it a pity to upset that state of things? Isn't that just our chance? I mean our chance of finding a connection between Babbington and one of these people. They don't know that anyone has connected this death with Babbington's death. They'll be unsuspicious. It's a chance in a hundred.”

“I see what you mean,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “And I agree with you. It is a chance. But, all the same, I don't think we can take it. It is our duty as citizens to report this discovery of ours to the police at once. We have no right to withhold it from them.”

Sir Charles looked at him quizzically.

“You're the pattern of a good citizen, Satterthwaite. I've no doubt the orthodox thing must be done—but I'm not nearly such a good citizen as you are. I should have no scruples in keeping this find to myself for a day or two—only a day or two—eh? No? Well, I give in. Let us be pillars of law and order.”

“You see,” explained Mr. Satterthwaite, “Johnson is a friend of mine, and he was very decent about it all—let us into all the police were doing—gave us full information, and all that.”

“Oh, you're right,” sighed Sir Charles. “Quite right. Only, after all, no one but me thought of looking under that gas stove. The idea never occurred to one of those thickheaded policemen…But have it your own way. I say, Satterthwaite, where do you think Ellis is now?”

“I presume,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “that he got what he wanted. He was paid to disappear, and he did disappear—most effectually.”

“Yes,” said Sir Charles. “I suppose that is the explanation.”

He gave a slight shiver.

“I don't like this room, Satterthwaite. Come out of it.”

S
ir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite arrived back in London the following evening.

The interview with Colonel Johnson had had to be very tactfully conducted. Superintendent Crossfield had not been too pleased that mere “gentlemen” should have found what he and his assistants had missed. He was at some pains to save his face.

“Very creditable, indeed, sir. I confess I never thought of looking under the gas fire. As a matter of fact, it beats me what set you looking there.”

The two men had not gone into a detailed account of how theorizing from an inkblot had led to the discovery. “Just nosing around,” was how Sir Charles had put it.

“Still, look you did,” continued the Superintendent, “and were justified. Not that what you've found is much surprise to me. You see, it stands to reason that if Ellis wasn't the murderer, he must have disappeared for some reason or other, and it's been in the back
of my mind all along that blackmail might have been his line of business.”

One thing did arise from their discovery. Colonel Johnson was going to communicate with the Loomouth police. The death of Stephen Babbington ought certainly to be investigated.

“And if they find he died from nicotine poisoning, even Crossfield will admit the two deaths are connected,” said Sir Charles when they were speeding towards London.

He was still a little disgruntled at having had to hand over his discovery to the police.

Mr. Satterthwaite had soothed him by pointing out that the information was not to be made public or given to the press.

“The guilty person will have no misgivings. The search for Ellis will still be continued.”

Sir Charles admitted that that was true.

On arrival in London, he explained to Mr. Satterthwaite, he proposed to get in touch with Egg Lytton Gore. Her letter had been written from an address in Belgrave Square. He hoped that she might still be there.

Mr. Satterthwaite gravely approved this course. He himself was anxious to see Egg. It was arranged that Sir Charles should ring her up as soon as they reached London.

Egg proved to be still in town. She and her mother were staying with relatives and were not returning to Loomouth for about a week. Egg was easily prevailed upon to come out and dine with the two men.

“She can't come here very well, I suppose,” said Sir Charles, looking round his luxurious flat. “Her mother mightn't like it, eh? Of course we could have Miss Milray, too—but I'd rather not. To
tell the truth, Miss Milray cramps my style a bit. She's so efficient that she gives me an inferiority complex.”

Mr. Satterthwaite suggested his house. In the end it was arranged to dine at the Berkeley. Afterwards, if Egg liked, they could adjourn elsewhere.

Mr. Satterthwaite noticed at once that the girl was looking thinner. Her eyes seemed larger and more feverish, her chin more decided. She was pale and had circles under her eyes. But her charm was as great as ever, her childish eagerness just as intense.

She said to Sir Charles, “I knew you'd come….”

Her tone implied: “Now that you've come everything will be all right….”

Mr. Satterthwaite thought to himself: “But she wasn't sure he'd come—she wasn't sure at all. She's been on tenterhooks. She's been fretting herself to death.” And he thought: “Doesn't the man realize? Actors are usually vain enough…Doesn't he know the girl's head over ears in love with him?”

It was, he thought, an odd situation. That Sir Charles was overwhelmingly in love with the girl, he had no doubt whatever. She was equally in love with him. And the link between them—the link to which each of them clung frenziedly—was a crime—a double crime of a revolting nature.

During dinner little was said. Sir Charles talked about his experiences abroad. Egg talked about Loomouth. Mr. Satterthwaite encouraged them both whenever the conversation seemed likely to flag. When dinner was over they went to Mr. Satterthwaite's house.

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 onto a chair and said:

“At last. Now tell me all about it.”

She listened with vivid interest whilst 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 on 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 the 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.”

“Revenge,” said Egg.

“Homicidal mania,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “The
crime passionel
would hardly apply in this case. But there's fear.”

Charles Cartwright nodded. He was scribbling on a piece of paper.

“That about covers the ground,” he said. “First,
Gain.
Does anyone gain by Babbington's death? Has he any money—or expectation of money?”

“I should think it very unlikely,” said Egg.

“So should I, but we'd better approach Mrs. Babbington on the point.”

“Then there's revenge. Did Babbington do any injury to anyone—perhaps in his young days? Did he marry the girl that some other man wanted? We'll have to look into that, too.”

“Then homicidal mania. Were both Babbington and Tollie killed by a lunatic? I don't think that theory will hold water. Even a lunatic has some kind of reasonableness in his crimes. I mean a lunatic might think himself divinely appointed to kill doctors, or to kill clergymen, but not to kill both. I think we can wash out the theory of homicidal mania. There remains
fear.

“Now, frankly, that seems to me far the most likely solution. Babbington knew something about somebody—or he recognized somebody. He was killed to prevent him telling what that something was.”

“I can't see what someone like Mr. Babbington could know that was damaging about anybody who was there that night.”

“Perhaps,” said Sir Charles, “it was something that he didn't know that he knew.”

He went on, trying to make his meaning clear.

“It's difficult to say just what I mean. Suppose, for instance (this is only an instance) that Babbington saw a certain person in a certain place at a certain time. As far as he knows, there's no reason why that person shouldn't be there. But suppose also that that person had concocted a very clever alibi for some reason showing that at that particular time he was somewhere else a hundred miles away. Well, at any minute old Babbington, in the most innocent way in the world, might give the show away.”

“
I
see,” said Egg. “Say there's a murder committed in London, and Babbington sees the man who did it at Paddington Station, but
the man has proved that he didn't do it by having an alibi showing that he was at Leeds at the time. Then Babbington might give the whole show away.”

“That's what I mean exactly. Of course that's only an instance. It might be anything. Someone he saw that evening whom he'd known under a different name—”

“It might be something to do with a marriage,” said Egg. “Clergymen do lots of marriages. Somebody who'd committed bigamy.”