Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“What does she say about it?”

Sir Charles had taken a letter from his pocket. He hesitated for a moment, then he handed it to Mr. Satterthwaite.

“You’d better read it for yourself.”

Mr. Satterthwaite opened out the sheet with lively curiosity.

“Dear Sir Charles,—I don’t know when this will get to you. I do hope soon. I’m so worried, I don’t know what to do. You’ll have seen, I expect, in the papers that Sir Bartholomew Strange is dead. Well, he died just the same way as Mr. Babbington. It can’t be a coincidence—it can’t—it can’t…I’m worried to death….

“Look here, can’t you come home and do something? It sounds a bit crude put like that, but you did have suspicions before, and nobody would listen to you, and now it’s your own friend who’s been killed; and perhaps if you don’t come back nobody will ever find out the truth, and I’m sure you could. I feel it in my bones….

“And there’s something else. I’m worried, definitely, about someone…He had absolutely nothing to do with it, I know that, but things might look a bit odd. Oh, I can’t explain in a letter. But won’t you come back? You could find out the truth. I know you could.

“Yours in haste,

“EGG.”

“Well?” demanded Sir Charles impatiently. “A bit incoherent of course; she wrote it in a hurry. But what about it?”

Mr. Satterthwaite folded the letter slowly to give himself a minute or two before replying.

He agreed that the letter was incoherent, but he did not think it had been written in a hurry. It was, in his view, a very careful production. It was designed to appeal to Sir Charles’s vanity, to his chivalry, and to his sporting instincts.

From what Mr. Satterthwaite knew of Sir Charles, that letter was a certain draw.

“Who do you think she means by ‘someone,’ and ‘he’?” he asked.

“Manders, I suppose.”

“Was he there, then?”

“Must have been. I don’t know why. Tollie never met him except on that one occasion at my house. Why he should ask him to stay, I can’t imagine.”

“Did he often have those big house parties?”

“Three or four times a year. Always one for the St. Leger.”

“Did he spend much time in Yorkshire?”

“Had a big sanatorium—nursing home, whatever you like to call it. He bought Melfort Abbey (it’s an old place), restored it and built a sanatorium in the grounds.”

“I see.”

Mr. Satterthwaite was silent for a minute or two. Then he said:

“I wonder who else there was in the house party?”

Sir Charles suggested that it might be in one of the other newspapers, and they went off to institute a newspaper hunt.

“Here we are,” said Sir Charles.

He read aloud:

“Sir Bartholomew Strange is having his usual house party for the St. Leger. Amongst the guests are Lord and Lady Eden, Lady Mary Lytton Gore, Sir Jocelyn and Lady Campbell, Captain and Mrs. Dacres, and Miss Angela Sutcliffe, the well-known actress.”

He and Mr. Satterthwaite looked at each other.

“The Dacres and Angela Sutcliffe,” said Sir Charles. “Nothing about Oliver Manders.”