Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“I’m afraid you won’t find Sir Charles. He’s gone to the Babylon Theatre with Miss Lytton Gore.”

“It is not Sir Charles I seek. It is my stick that I think I have left behind one day.”

“Oh, I see. Well, if you’ll ring, Temple will find it for you. I’m sorry I can’t stop. I’m on my way to catch a train. I’m going down to Kent—to my mother.”

“I comprehend. Do not let me delay you, mademoiselle.”

He stood aside and Miss Milray passed rapidly down the stairs. She was carrying a small attaché case.

But when she had gone Poirot seemed to forget the purpose for which he had come.

Instead of going on up to the landing, he turned and made his way downstairs again. He arrived at the front door just in time to see Miss Milray getting into a taxi. Another taxi was coming slowly along the kerb. Poirot raised a hand and it came to rest. He got in and directed the driver to follow the other taxi.

No surprise showed on his face when the first taxi went north and finally drew up at Paddington Station, though Paddington is an odd station from which to proceed to Kent. Poirot went to the first-class booking window and demanded a return ticket to Loomouth. The train was due to depart in five minutes. Pulling up his overcoat well about his ears, for the day was cold, Poirot ensconced himself in the corner of a first-class carriage.

They arrived at Loomouth about five o’clock. It was already growing dark. Standing back a little, Poirot heard Miss Milray being greeted by the friendly porter at the little station.

“Well, now, miss, we didn’t expect you. Is Sir Charles coming down?”

Miss Milray replied:

“I’ve come down here unexpectedly. I shall be going back tomorrow morning. I’ve just come to fetch some things. No, I don’t want a cab, thank you. I’ll walk up by the cliff path.”

The dusk had deepened. Miss Milray walked briskly up the steep zigzag path. A good way behind came Hercule Poirot. He trod softly like a cat. Miss Milray, on arrival at Crow’s Nest, produced a key from her bag and passed through the side door, leaving it ajar. She reappeared a minute or two later. She had a rusty door key and an electric torch in her hand. Poirot drew back a little behind a convenient bush.

Miss Milray passed round behind the house and up a scrambling overgrown path. Hercule Poirot followed. Up and up went Miss Milray until she came suddenly to an old stone tower such as is found often on that coast. This one was of humble and dilapidated appearance. There was, however, a curtain over the dirty window, and Miss Milray inserted her key in the big wooden door.

The key turned with a protesting creak. The door swung with a groan on its hinges. Miss Milray and her torch passed inside.

With an increase of pace Poirot caught up. He passed, in his turn, noiselessly through the door. The light of Miss Milray’s torch gleamed fitfully on glass retorts, a bunsen burner—various apparatus.

Miss Milray had picked up a crowbar. She had raised it and was holding it over the glass apparatus when a hand caught her by the arm. She gasped and turned.

The green, catlike eyes of Poirot looked into hers.

“You cannot do that, mademoiselle,” he said. “For what you seek to destroy is evidence.”

Fifteen

CURTAIN

Hercule Poirot sat in a big armchair. The wall lights had been turned out. Only a rose-shaded lamp shed its glow on the figure in the armchair. There seemed something symbolic about it—he alone in the light—and the other three, Sir Charles, Mr. Satterthwaite and Egg Lytton Gore—Poirot’s audience—sitting in the outer darkness.

Hercule Poirot’s voice was dreamy. He seemed to be addressing himself to space rather than to his listeners.

“To reconstruct the crime—that is the aim of the detective. To reconstruct a crime you must place one fact upon another just as you place one card on another in building a house of cards. And if the facts will not fit—if the card will not balance—well—you must start your house again, or else it will fall….

“As I said the other day, there are three different types of mind: There is the dramatic mind—the producer’s mind, which sees the effect of reality that can be produced by mechanical appliances—there is also the mind that reacts easily to dramatic appearances—and there is the young romantic mind—and finally, my friends, there is the prosaic mind—the mind that sees not blue sea and mimosa trees, but the painted backcloth of stage scenery.

“So I come, mes amis, to the murder of Stephen Babbington in August last. On that evening Sir Charles Cartwright advanced the theory that Stephen Babbington had been murdered. I did not agree with that theory. I could not believe (a) that such a man as Stephen Babbington was likely to have been murdered, and (b) that it was possible to administer poison to a particular person under the circumstances that had obtained that evening.

“Now here I admit that Sir Charles was right and I was wrong. I was wrong because I was looking at the crime from an entirely false angle. It is only twenty-four hours ago that I suddenly perceived the proper angle of vision—and let me say that from that angle of vision the murder of Stephen Babbington is both reasonable and possible.

“But I will pass from that point for the moment and take you step by step along the path I myself have trodden. The death of Stephen Babbington I may call the first act of our drama. The curtain fell on that act when we all departed from Crow’s Nest.

“What I might call the second act of the drama began in Monte Carlo when Mr. Satterthwaite showed me the newspaper account of Sir Bartholomew’s death. It was at once clear that I had been wrong and Sir Charles had been right. Both Stephen Babbington and Sir Bartholomew Strange had been murdered and the two murders formed part of one and the same crime. Later a third murder completed the series—the murder of Mrs. de Rushbridger. What we need, therefore, is a reasonable commonsense theory which will link those three deaths together—in other words those three crimes were committed by one and the same person, and were to the advantage and benefit of that particular person.

“Now I may say at once that the principal thing that worried me was the fact that the murder of Sir Bartholomew Strange came after that of Stephen Babbington. Looking at those three murders without distinction of time and place the probabilities pointed to the murder of Sir Bartholomew Strange being what one might call the central or principal crime, and the other two murders as secondary in character—that is, arising from the connection of those two people with Sir Bartholomew Strange. However, as I remarked before—one cannot have one’s crime as one would like to have it. Stephen Babbington had been murdered first and Sir Bartholomew Strange sometime later. It seemed, therefore, as though the second crime must necessarily arise out of the first and that accordingly it was the first crime we must examine for the clue to the whole.