Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

Margaret Babbington was very lonely….

Not that she allowed herself much time for thinking. She was still active in the parish—the new vicar was unmarried, and she spent a good deal of time working in the tiny plot of ground in front of the cottage. She was a woman whose flowers were part of her life.

She was working there one afternoon when she heard the latch of the gate click, and looked up to see Sir Charles Cartwright and Egg Lytton Gore.

Margaret was not surprised to see Egg. She knew that the girl and her mother were due to return shortly. But she was surprised to see Sir Charles. Rumour had insisted that he had left the neighbourhood for good. There had been paragraphs copied from other papers about his doings in the South of France. There had been a board “TO BE SOLD” stuck up in the garden of Crow’s Nest. No one had expected Sir Charles to return. Yet return he had.

Mrs. Babbington shook the untidy hair back from her hot forehead and looked ruefully at her earth-stained hands.

“I’m not fit to shake hands,” she said. “I ought to garden in gloves, I know. I do start in them sometimes; but I always tear them off sooner or later. One can feel things so much better with bare hands.”

She led the way into the house. The tiny sitting room had been made cosy with chintz. There were photographs and bowls of chrysanthemums.

“It’s a great surprise seeing you, Sir Charles. I thought you had given up Crow’s Nest for good.”

“I thought I had,” said the actor frankly. “But sometimes, Mrs. Babbington, our destiny is too strong for us.”

Mrs. Babbington did not reply. She turned towards Egg, but the girl forestalled the words on her lips.

“Look here, Mrs. Babbington. This isn’t just a call. Sir Charles and I have got something very serious to say. Only—I—I should hate to upset you.”

Mrs. Babbington looked from the girl to Sir Charles. Her face had gone rather grey and pinched.

“First of all,” said Sir Charles, “I would like to ask you if you have had any communication from the Home Office?”

Mrs. Babbington bowed her head.

“I see—well, perhaps that makes what we are about to say easier.”

“Is that what you have come about—this exhumation order?”

“Yes. Is it—I’m afraid it must be—very distressing to you.”

She softened to the sympathy in his voice.

“Perhaps I do not mind as much as you think. To some people the idea of exhumation is very dreadful—not to me. It is not the dead clay that matters. My dear husband is elsewhere—at peace—where no one can trouble his rest. No, it is not that. It is the idea that is a shock to me—the idea, a terrible one, that Stephen did not die a natural death. It seems so impossible—utterly impossible.”

“I’m afraid it must seem so to you. It did to me—to us—at first.”

“What do you mean by at first, Sir Charles?”

“Because the suspicion crossed my mind on the evening of your husband’s death, Mrs. Babbington. Like you, however, it seemed to me so impossible that I put it aside.”

“I thought so, too,” said Egg.

“You too,” Mrs. Babbington looked at her wonderingly. “You thought someone could have killed—Stephen?”

The incredulity in her voice was so great that neither of her visitors knew quite how to proceed. At last Sir Charles took up the tale.

“As you know, Mrs. Babbington, I went abroad. When I was in the South of France I read in the paper of my friend Bartholomew Strange’s death in almost exactly similar circumstances. I also got a letter from Miss Lytton Gore.”

Egg nodded.

“I was there, you know, staying with him at the time. Mrs. Babbington, it was exactly the same—exactly. He drank some port and his face changed, and—and—well, it was just the same. He died two or three minutes later.”

Mrs. Babbington shook her head slowly.

“I can’t understand it. Stephen! Sir Bartholomew—a kind and clever doctor! Who could want to harm either of them? It must be a mistake.”