Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“You’ll understand, I’m sure, sir, what it’s meant to me. The master’s death and all. Policemen all over the place, poking their noses here and there—would you believe it, even the dustbins they had to have their noses in, and questions!—they wouldn’t have done with asking questions. Oh, that I should have lived to see such a thing—the doctor, such a quiet gentleman as he always was, and made Sir Bartholomew, too, which a proud day it was to all of us, as Beatrice and I well remember, though she’s been here two years less than I have. And such questions as that police fellow (for gentleman I will not call him, having been accustomed to gentlemen and their ways and knowing what’s what), fellow, I say, whether or not he is a superintendent—” Mrs. Leckie paused, took breath and extricated herself from the somewhat complicated conversational morass into which she had fallen. “Questions, that’s what I say, about all the maids in the house, and good girls they are, every one of them—not that I’d say that Doris gets up when she should do in the morning. I have to speak about it at least once a week, and Vickie, she’s inclined to be imper

tinent, but, there, with the young ones you can’t expect the training—their mothers don’t give it to them nowadays—but good girls they are, and no police superintendent shall make me say otherwise. ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘you needn’t think I’m going to say anything against my girls. They’re good girls, they are, and as to having anything to do with murder, why it’s right down wicked to suggest such a thing.’”

Mrs. Leckie paused.

“Mr. Ellis, now—that’s different. I don’t know anything about Mr. Ellis, and couldn’t answer for him in any way, he having been brought from London, and strange to the place, while Mr. Baker was on holiday.”

“Baker?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Mr. Baker had been Sir Bartholomew’s butler for the last seven years, sir. He was in London most of the time, in Harley Street. You’ll remember him, sir?” She appealed to Sir Charles, who nodded. “Sir Bartholomew used to bring him up here when he had a party. But he hadn’t been so well in his health, so Sir Bartholomew said, and he gave him a couple of months’ holiday, paid for him, too, in a place near the sea down near Brighton—a real kind gentleman the doctor was—and he took Mr. Ellis on temporary for the time being, and so, as I said to that superintendent, I can’t say anything about Mr. Ellis, though, from all he said himself, he seems to have been with the best families, and he certainly had a gentlemanly way with him.”

“You didn’t find anything—unusual about him?” asked Sir Charles hopefully.

“Well, it’s odd your saying that, sir, because, if you know what I mean, I did and I didn’t.”

Sir Charles looked encouraging, and Mrs. Leckie went on:

“I couldn’t exactly say what it was, sir, but there was something—”

There always is—after the event—thought Mr. Satterthwaite to himself grimly. However much Mrs. Leckie had despised the police, she was not proof against suggestion. If Ellis turned out to be the criminal, well, Mrs. Leckie would have noticed something.

“For one thing, he was standoffish. Oh, quite polite, quite the gentleman—as I said, he’d been used to good houses. But he kept himself to himself, spent a lot of time in his own room; and he was—well, I don’t know how to describe it, I’m sure—he was, well, there was something—”

“You didn’t suspect he wasn’t—not really a butler?” suggested Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Oh, he’d been in service, right enough, sir. The things he knew—and about well-known people in society, too.”

“Such as?” suggested Sir Charles gently.

But Mrs. Leckie became vague, and noncommittal. She was not going to retail servants’ hall gossip. Such a thing would have offended her sense of fitness.

To put her at her ease, Mr. Satterthwaite said:

“Perhaps you can describe his appearance.”

Mrs. Leckie brightened.

“Yes, indeed, sir. He was a very respectable-looking man—side-whiskers and grey hair, stooped a little, and he was growing stout—it worried him, that did. He had a rather shaky hand, too, but not from the cause you might imagine. He was a most abstemious man—not like many I’ve known. His eyes were a bit weak, I think, sir, the light hurt them—especially a bright light, used to make them water something cruel. Out with us he wore glasses, but not when he was on duty.”

“No special distinguishing marks?” asked Sir Charles. “No scars? Or broken fingers? Or birthmarks?”

“Oh, no, sir, nothing of that kind.”

“How superior detective stories are to life,” sighed Sir Charles. “In fiction there is always some distinguishing characteristic.”

“He had a tooth missing,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“I believe so, sir; I never noticed it myself.”

“What was his manner on the night of the tragedy?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite in a slightly bookish manner.

“Well, really, sir, I couldn’t say. I was busy, you see, in my kitchen. I hadn’t time for noticing things.”

“No, no, quite so.”

“When the news came out that the master was dead we were struck all of a heap. I cried and couldn’t stop, and so did Beatrice. The young ones, of course, were excited like, though very upset. Mr. Ellis naturally wasn’t so upset as we were, he being new, but he behaved very considerate, and insisted on Beatrice and me taking a little glass of port to counteract the shock. And to think that all the time it was he—the villain—”

Words failed Mrs. Leckie, her eyes shone with indignation.