Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a man usually writes letters….”

“Not if he’s a criminal.”

“No, perhaps you’re right…There must have been something fishy about him to make him bolt as he did…All we say is that he didn’t murder Tollie.”

They hunted round the floor, raising the carpet, looking under the bed. There was nothing anywhere, except a splash of ink beside the fireplace. The room was disappointingly bare.

They left it in a somewhat disconcerted fashion. Their zeal as detectives was momentarily damped.

Possibly the thought passed through their minds that things were arranged better in books.

They had a few words with the other members of the staff, scared-looking juniors in awe of Mrs. Leckie and Beatrice Church, but they elicited nothing further.

Finally they took their leave.

“Well, Satterthwaite,” said Sir Charles as they strolled across the park (Mr. Satterthwaite’s car had been instructed to pick them up at the lodge) “anything strike you—anything at all?”

Mr. Satterthwaite thought. He was not to be hurried into an answer—especially as he felt something ought to have struck him. To confess that the whole expedition had been a waste of time was an unwelcome idea. He passed over in his mind the evidence of one servant after another—the information was extraordinarily meagre.

As Sir Charles had summed it up just now, Miss Wills had poked and pried, Miss Sutcliffe had been very upset, Mrs. Dacres had not been upset at all, and Captain Dacres had got drunk. Very little there, unless Freddie Dacres’s indulgence showed the deadening of a guilty conscience. But Freddie Dacres, Mr. Satterthwaite knew, quite frequently got drunk.

“Well?” repeated Sir Charles impatiently.

“Nothing,” confessed Mr. Satterthwaite reluctantly. “Except—well, I think we are entitled to assume from the clipping we found that Ellis suffered from corns.”

Sir Charles gave a wry smile.

“That seems quite a reasonable deduction. Does it—er—get us anywhere?”

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.”