Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“He’s been yachting. You know that he gave up his house at Loomouth?”

“Ah, no, I did not know it. I am surprised.”

“I don’t know that I am. I don’t think Cartwright is really the kind of man who likes to live permanently out of the world.”

“Ah, no, I agree with you there. I was surprised for another reason. It seemed to me that Sir Charles had a particular reason for staying in Loomouth—a very charming reason, eh? Am I not right? The little demoiselle who calls herself, so amusingly, the egg?”

His eyes were twinkling gently.

“Oh, so you noticed that?”

“Assuredly I noticed. I have the heart very susceptible to lovers—you too, I think. And la jeunesse, it is always touching.”

He sighed.

“I think,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “that actually you have hit on Sir Charles’s reason for leaving Loomouth. He was running away.”

“From Mademoiselle Egg? But it is obvious that he adores her. Why, then, run?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “you don’t understand our Anglo-Saxon complexes.”

M. Poirot was following his own line of reasoning.

“Of course,” he said, “it is a good move to pursue. Run from a woman—immediately she follows. Doubtless Sir Charles, a man of much experience, knows that.”

Mr. Satterthwaite was rather amused.

“I don’t think it was quite that way,” he said. “Tell me, what are you doing out here? A holiday?”

“My time is all holidays nowadays. I have succeeded. I am rich. I retire. Now I travel about seeing the world.”

“Splendid,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“N’est-ce pas?”

“Mummy,” said the English child, “isn’t there anything to do?”

“Darling,” said her mother reproachfully, “isn’t it lovely to have come abroad and to be in the beautiful sunshine?”

“Yes, but there’s nothing to do.”

“Run about—amuse yourself. Go and look at the sea.”

“Maman,” said a French child, suddenly appearing. “Joue avec moi.”

A French mother looked up from her book.

“Amuse toi avec ta balle, Marcelle.”

Obediently the French child bounced her ball with a gloomy face.

“Je m’amuse,” said Hercule Poirot; and there was a very curious expression on his face.

Then, as if in answer to something he read in Mr. Satterthwaite’s face, he said:

“But yet, you have the quick perceptions. It is as you think—”

He was silent for a minute or two, then he said: