And then she caught her breath sharply as she caught sight of the words on a newspaper placard a few feet away:
Cornish exhumation case result.
Hastily, she held out a penny and snatched a paper. As she did so she collided with another woman doing the same thing. As Egg apologized she recognized Sir Charles’ secretary, the efficient Miss Milray.
Standing side by side, they both sought the stop-press news. Yes, there it was.
Result of cornish exhumation.
The words danced before Egg's eyes. Analysis of the organs... Nicotine...
“So he was murdered,” said Egg.
“Oh, dear,” said Miss Milray. “This is terrible - terrible.”
Her rugged countenance was distorted with emotion. Egg looked at her in surprise. She had always regarded Miss Milray as something less than human.
“It upsets me,” said Miss Milray, in explanation. “You see, I've known him all my life.”
“Mr. Babbington?”
“Yes. You see, my mother lives at Gilling, where he used to be vicar. Naturally, it's upsetting.”
“Oh, of course.”
“The fact of the matter is,” said Sir Charles’ secretary, “I don't know what to do.”
She flushed a little before Egg's look of astonishment.
“I'd like to write to Mrs. Babbington,” she said quickly. “Only it doesn't seem quite - well, quite - I don't know what I had better do about it.”
Somehow, to Egg, the explanation was not quite satisfying.
Agatha Christie
Three Act Tragedy aka Murder in Three Acts (1934)
Dedicated to my friends
Geoffrey and Violet ShipstonChapter 20
Angela Sutcliffe
“Now, are you a friend, or are you a sleuth? I simply must know.”
Miss Sutcliffe flashed a pair of mocking eyes as she spoke. She was sitting in a straight-backed chair, her gray hair becomingly arranged, her legs were crossed, and Mr. Satterthwaite admired the perfection of her beautifully shod feet and her slender ankles. Miss Sutcliffe was a very fascinating woman, mainly owing to the fact that she seldom took anything seriously.
“Is that quite fair?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.
“My dear man, of course it's fair. Have you come here for the sake of my beautiful eyes, as the French say so charmingly, or have you, you nasty man, come just to pump me about murders?”
“Can you doubt that your first alternative is the correct one?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite, with a little bow.
“I can and I do,” said the actress with energy. “You are one of those people who look so mild and really wallow in blood.”
“No, no.”
“Yes, yes. The only thing I can't make up my mind about is whether it is an insult or a compliment to be considered a potential murderess. On the whole, I think it's a compliment.”
She cocked her head a little on one side and smiled that slow bewitching smile that never failed.
Mr. Satterthwaite thought to himself: “Adorable creature.”
Aloud he said: “I will admit, dear lady, that the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange has interested me considerably. I have, as you perhaps know, dabbled in such things before.”
He paused modestly, perhaps hoping that Miss Sutcliffe would show some knowledge of his activities. However, she merely asked:
“Tell me one thing. Is there anything in what that girl said?”
“Which girl and what did she say?”
“The Lytton Gore girl. The one who is so fascinated by Charles... What a wretch Charles is; he will do it!... She thinks that that nice old man down in Cornwall was murdered too.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, it certainly happened just the same way. She's an intelligent girl, you know... Tell me; is Charles serious?”
“I expect your views on the subject are likely to be much more valuable than mine,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.
“What a tiresomely discreet man you are!” cried Miss Sutcliffe. “Now, I -” she sighed - “am appallingly indiscreet.”
She fluttered an eyelash at him.
“I know Charles pretty well. I know men pretty well. He seems to me to display all the signs of settling down. There's an air of virtue about him. He'll be handing round the plate and founding a family in record time - that's my view. How dull men are when they decide to settle down! They lose all their charm.”
“I've often wondered why Sir Charles has never married,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.
“My dear, he never showed any signs of wanting to marry. He wasn't what they call a marrying man. But he was a very attractive man.” She sighed. A slight twinkle showed in her eves as she looked at Mr. Satterthwaite.
“He and I were once - well, why deny what everybody knows? It was very pleasant while it lasted, and we're still the best of friends. I suppose that's the reason the Lytton Gore child looks at me so fiercely. She suspects I still have a tendresse for Charles. Have I? Perhaps I have. But at any rate I haven't yet written my memoirs, describing all my affairs in detail, as most of my friends seem to have done. If I did, you know, the girl wouldn't like it. She'd be shocked. Modern girls are easily shocked. Her mother wouldn't be shocked at all. You can't really shock a sweet mid-Victorian. They say so little, but always think the worst.”
Mr. Satterthwaite contented himself with saying:
“I think you are right in suspecting that Egg Lytton Gore mistrusts you.”
Miss Sutcliffe frowned.
“I'm not at all sure that I'm not a little jealous of her... We women are such cats, aren't we? Scratch, scratch, miauw, miauw, purr, purr.”
She laughed.
“Why didn't Charles come and catechize me on this business? Too much nice feeling, to be sure. The man must think me guilty.”
She stood up and stretched out a hand.
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
She broke off:
“No, I'm no Lady Macbeth. Comedy's my line.”
“There seems also a certain lack of motive,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.
“True. I liked Bartholomew Strange. We were friends. I had no reason for wishing him out of the way. Because we were friends, I'd rather like to take an active part in hunting down his murderer. Tell me if I can help in any way.”
“I suppose. Miss Sutcliffe, you didn't see or hear anything that might have a bearing on the crime.”
“Nothing that I haven't already told the police. The house party had only just arrived, you know. His death occurred on that first evening.”
“The butler?”
“I hardly noticed him.”
“Any peculiar behavior on the part of the guests?”
“No. Of course, that boy - what's his name? - Manders - turned up rather unexpectedly.”
“Did Sir Bartholomew Strange seem surprised?”
“Yes, I think he was. He said to me, just before we went in to dinner, that it was an odd business - ‘a new method of gate crashing,’ he called it. ‘Only,’ he said, ‘it's my wall he's crashed, not my gate.'”
“Sir Bartholomew was in good spirits?”
“Very good spirits!”
“What about this secret passage you mentioned to the police?”
“I believe it led out of the library. Sir Bartholomew promised to show it to me, but of course the poor man died.”
“How did the subject come up?”
“We were discussing a recent purchase of his - an old walnut bureau. I asked if it had a secret drawer in it. I told him I adored secret drawers. It's a passion of mine. And he said, no, there wasn't a secret drawer that he knew of, but he had got a secret passage in the house.”
“Sir Bartholomew didn't mention a patient of his - a Mrs. de Rushbridger?”
“No.”
“Do you know a place called Gilling in Kent?”
“Gilling? Gilling? No, I don't think I do. Why?”
“Well, you knew Mr. Babbington before, didn't you?”
“Who is Mr. Babbington?”
“The man who died, or who was killed, at Crow's Nest.”
“Oh, the clergyman. I'd forgotten his name. No, I'd never seen him before in my life. Who told you I knew him?”
“Someone who ought to know,” said Mr. Satterthwaite boldly.
Miss Sutcliffe seemed amused.
“Dear old man, did they think I'd had an affair with him? I must clear the poor man's memory. I'd never seen him before in my life.”
And with that statement Mr. Satterthwaite was forced to rest content.
Agatha Christie
Three Act Tragedy aka Murder in Three Acts (1934)
Dedicated to my friends
Geoffrey and Violet ShipstonChapter 21
Muriel Wills
Five Upper Cathcart Road, Tooting, seemed an incongruous home for a satiric playwright. The room into which Sir Charles was shown had walls of a rather drab oatmeal color with a frieze of laburnum round the top. The curtains were of rose-colored velvet; there were a lot of photographs and china dogs; the telephone was coyly hidden by a lady with ruffled skirts; there were a great many little tables and some suspicious-looking brasswork from Birmingham via the Far East.
Miss Wills entered the room so noiselessly that Sir Charles, who was at the moment examining a ridiculously elongated pierrot doll lying across the sofa, did not hear her. Her thin voice, saying, “How d'you do. Sir Charles. This is really a great pleasure,” made him jump around.
Miss Willis was dressed with a rather smothered suit which hung disconsolately on her angular form. Her stockings were slightly wrinkled and she had on very high-heeled, patent-leather slippers. Sir Charles shook hands, accepted a cigarette, and sat down on the sofa by the pierrot doll. Miss Wills sat opposite him. The light from the window caught her pince-nez and made them give off little flashes.
“Fancy you finding me out here,” said Miss Wills. “My mother will be ever so excited. She just adores the theater - especially anything romantic. That play where you were a prince at a university - she's often talked of it. She goes to matinees, you know, and eats chocolates - she's one of that kind. And she does love it.”
“How delightful,” said Sir Charles. “You don't know how charming it is to be remembered. The public memory is short.”
He sighed.
“She'll be thrilled at meeting you,” said Miss Wills. “Miss Sutcliffe came the other day and mother was thrilled at meeting her.”
“Angela was here?”
“Yes. She's putting on a play of mine, you know. Little Dog Laughed.”
“Of course,” said Sir Charles. “I've read about it. The title is really intriguing.”
“I'm so glad you think so. Miss Sutcliffe likes it too. It's a kind of modern version of the nursery rime - a lot of froth and nonsense - hey-diddle-diddle and the dish-and-the-spoon scandal. Of course, it all revolves round Miss Sutcliffe's part - everyone dances to her fiddling - that's the idea.”
Sir Charles said:
“Not bad. The world nowadays is rather like a mad nursery rime. ‘The little dog laughed to see such sport,’ eh?” And he thought suddenly: “Of course, this woman's the little dog. She looks on and laughs.”
The light shifted from Miss Wills’ pince-nez and he saw her pale-blue eyes regarding him intelligently through them.
“This woman,” thought Sir Charles, “has a fiendish sense of humor.”
Aloud he said:
“I wonder if you can guess what errand has brought me here.”
“Well,” said Miss Wills archly, “I don't suppose it was only to see poor little me.”
Sir Charles registered for a moment the difference between the spoken and the written word. On paper Miss Wills was witty and cynical, in speech she was arch.
“It was really Satterthwaite put the idea into my head,” said Sir Charles. “He fancies himself as being a good judge of character.”
“He's very clever about people,” said Miss Wills. “It's rather his hobby, I should say.”
“And he is strongly of the opinion that if there were anything worth noticing that night at Melfort Abbey, you would have noticed it.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yes.”
“I was very interested, I must admit,” said Miss Wills slowly. “You see, I'd never seen a murder at close hand before. A writer's got to face everything as material, hasn't she?”
“I believe that's a well-known axiom.”
“So naturally,” said Miss Wills, “I tried to notice everything I could.”
This was obviously Miss Wills’ version of Beatrice's “poking and prying.”
“About the guests?”
“About the guests.”
“And what, exactly, did you notice?”
The pince-nez shifted.
“I didn't really find out anything; if I had, I'd have told the police, of course,” she added virtuously.
“But you noticed things.”
“I always do notice things. I can't help it. I'm funny that way.” She giggled.
“And you noticed - what?”
“Oh, nothing - that is, nothing that you'd call anything. Just little odds and ends about people's characters. I find people so very interesting. So typical, if you know what I mean.”
“Typical of what?”
“Of themselves. Oh, I can't explain. I'm ever so silly at saying things.”
She giggled again.
“Your pen is deadlier than your tongue,” said Sir Charles, smiling.
“I don't think it's very nice of you to say deadlier. Sir Charles.”
“My dear Miss Wills, admit that with a pen in your hand you're quite merciless.”
“I think you're horrid. Sir Charles. It's you who are merciless to me.”
“I must get out of this bog of badinage,” said Sir Charles to himself. He said aloud: “So you didn't find out anything concrete, Miss Wills?”
“No, not exactly. At least, there was one thing. Something I noticed and ought to have told the police about, only I forgot.”
“What was that?”
“The butler. He had a kind of strawberry mark on his left wrist. I noticed it when he was handing me vegetables. I suppose that's the sort of thing might come in useful.”
“I should say very useful indeed. The police are trying hard to track down that man Ellis. Really, Miss Wills, you are a very remarkable woman. Not one of the servants or guests mentioned such a mark.”
“Most people don't use their eyes much, do they?” said Miss Wills.
“Where, exactly, was the mark? And what size was it?”
“If you'll just stretch out your own wrist -” Sir Charles extended his arm.
“Thank you. It was here.” Miss Wills placed an unerring finger on the spot. “It was about the size, roughly, of a sixpence, and rather the shape of Australia.”
“Thank you; that's very clear,” said Sir Charles, removing his hands and pulling down his cuffs again.
“You think I ought to write to the police and tell them?”
“Certainly I do. It might be most valuable in tracing the man. Dash it all,” went on Sir Charles, with feeling, “in detective stories there's always some identifying mark on the villain. I thought it was a bit hard that real life should prove so lamentably behind hand.”
“It's usually a scar in stories,” said Miss Wills thoughtfully.
