Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot 11)

“You see?” said Sir Charles, resuming his own personality and speaking with modest elation. “If the fellow heard the police or what he thought was the police coming and had to hide what he was writing—well, where could he hide it? Not in a drawer or under the mattress—if the police searched the room, that would be found at once. He hadn’t time to take up a floorboard. No, behind the gas fire was the only chance.”

“The next thing to do,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “is to see whether there is anything hidden behind the gas fire.”

“Exactly. Of course, it may have been a false alarm, and he may have got the things out again later. But we’ll hope for the best.”

Removing his coat and turning up his shirt sleeves, Sir Charles lay down on the floor and applied his eye to the crack under the gas fire.

“There’s something under there,” he reported. “Something white. How can we get it out? We want something like a woman’s hatpins.”

“Women don’t have hatpins anymore,” said Mr. Satterthwaite sadly. “Perhaps a penknife.”

But a penknife proved unavailing.

In the end Mr. Satterthwaite went out and borrowed a knitting needle from Beatrice. Though extremely curious to know what he wanted it for, her sense of decorum was too great to permit her to ask.

The knitting needle did the trick. Sir Charles extracted half a dozen sheets of crumpled writing paper, hastily crushed to

gether and pushed in.

With growing excitement he and Mr. Satterthwaite smoothed them out. They were clearly several different drafts of a letter—written in a small, neat clerkly handwriting.

This is to say (began the first) that the writer of this does not wish to cause unpleasantness, and may possibly have been mistaken in what he thought he saw tonight, but—

Here the writer had clearly been dissatisfied, and had broken off to start afresh.

John Ellis, butler, presents his compliments, and would be glad of a short interview touching the tragedy tonight before going to the police with certain information in his possession—

Still dissatisfied, the man had tried again.

John Ellis, butler, has certain facts concerning the death of the doctor in his possession. He has not yet given these facts to the police—

In the next one the use of the third person had been abandoned.

I am badly in need of money. A thousand pounds would make all the difference to me. There are certain things I could tell the police, but do not want to make trouble—

The last one was even more unreserved.

I know how the doctor died. I haven’t said anything to the police—yet. If you will meet me—

This letter broke off in a different way—after the “me” the pen had tailed off in a scrawl, and the last five words were all blurred and blotchy. Clearly it was when writing this that Ellis had heard something that alarmed him. He had crumpled up the papers and dashed to conceal them.

Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath.

“I congratulate you, Cartwright,” he said. “Your instinct about that ink stain was right. Good work. Now let’s see exactly where we stand.”

He paused a minute.

“Ellis, as we thought, is a scoundrel. He wasn’t the murderer, but he knew who the murderer was, and he was preparing to blackmail him or her—”

“Him or her,” interrupted Sir Charles. “Annoying we don’t know which. Why couldn’t the fellow begin one of his effusions Sir or Madam, then we’d know where we are. Ellis seems to have been an artistic sort of fellow. He was taking a lot of trouble over his blackmailing letter. If only he’d given us one clue—as to whom that letter was addressed.”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “We are getting on. You remember you said that what we wanted to find in this room was a proof of Ellis’s innocence. Well, we’ve found it. These letters show that he was innocent—of the murder, I mean. He was a thorough-paced scoundrel in other ways. But he didn’t murder Sir Bartholomew Strange. Somebody else did that. Someone who murdered Babbington also. I think even the police will have to come round to our view now.”

“You’re going to tell them about this?”

Sir Charles’s voice expressed dissatisfaction.

“I don’t see that we can do otherwise. Why?”