“If we are right about Babbington, he has to be innocent.”
“Yes, besides...”
Mr. Satterthwaite stopped. He had almost say that if Ellis had been guilty the whole affair would become so simple and dull.
At first, Ellis’ room didn't offer much room for discoveries. It was very orderly, with well-cut clothes and polished shoes all in place.
It became clear that Ellis had vanished using his butler uniform. Satterthwaite pointed out to Sir Charles that that seemed rather a remarkable fact.
“Any man in his senses would have changed into an ordinary suit.”
“Yes, it's odd, that. Looks almost - though that's absurd - as if he hadn't gone at all. Nonsense, of course.”
They continued their search. No letters, no papers, except a cutting from a newspaper regarding a cure for corns, and a paragraph relating to the approaching marriage of a duke's daughter.
There was a small blotting book and a penny bottle of ink on a side table; no pen. Sir Charles held up the blotting book to the mirror, but without result. One page of it was very much used - a meaningless jumble - and the ink looked, to both men, old.
“Either he hasn't written any letters since he was here or he hasn't blotted them,” deduced Mr. Satterthwaite. “This is an old blotter. Ah, yes.” With some gratification, he pointed to a barely decipherable “I. Baker” amidst the jumble.
“I should say that Ellis hadn't used this at all.”
“That's rather odd, isn't it?” said Sir Charles.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, a man usually writes letters.”
“Not if he's a criminal.”
“No, perhaps you're right. There must have been something fishy about him to make him bolt as he did. All we say is that he didn't murder Tollie.”
They hunted round the floor, raising the carpet, looking under the bed. There was nothing anywhere except a splash of ink beside the fireplace. The room was disappointingly bare.
They left it in a somewhat disconcerted fashion. Their zeal as detectives was momentarily damped.
Possibly the thought passed through their minds that things were arranged better in books.
They had a few words with the other members of the staff, scared-looking juniors in awe of Mrs. Leckie and Beatrice Church, but they elicited nothing further.
Finally they took their leave.
“Well, Satterthwaite,” said Sir Charles, as they strolled across the park - Mr. Satterthwaite's car had been instructed to pick them up at the lodge - “anything strike you - anything at all?”
Mr. Satterthwaite thought. He was not to be hurried into an answer - especially as he felt something ought to have struck him. To confess that the whole expedition had been a waste of time was an unwelcome idea. He passed over in his mind the evidence of one servant after another; the information was extraordinarily meager.
As Sir Charles had summed it up just now. Miss Wills had poked and pried. Miss Sutcliffe had been very upset. Mrs. Dacres had not been upset at all, and Captain Dacres had got drunk. Very little there, unless Freddie Dacres’ indulgence showed the deadening of a guilty conscience. But Freddie Dacres, Mr. Satterthwaite knew, quite frequently got drunk.
“Well?” repeated Sir Charles impatiently.
“Nothing,” confessed Mr. Satterthwaite reluctantly, “except - well, I think we are entitled to assume, from the clipping we found, that Ellis suffered from corns.”
Sir Charles gave a wry smile.
“That seems quite a reasonable deduction. Does it - er - get us anywhere?”
Mr. Satterthwaite confessed that it did not.
“The only other thing,” he said, and then stopped.
“Yes? Go on, man. Anything may help.”
“It struck me as a little odd the way that Sir Bartholomew chaffed his butler - you know, what the household told us. It seems, somehow, uncharacteristic.”
“It was uncharacteristic,” said Sir Charles with emphasis. “I knew Tollie well - better than you did - and I can tell you that he wasn't a facetious sort of man. He'd never have spoken like that unless - well, unless, for some reason, he wasn't quite normal at the time. You're right, Satterthwaite; that is a point. Now where does it get us?”
“Well -” began Mr. Satterthwaite, but it was clear that Sir Charles’ question had been merely a rhetorical one. He was anxious, not to hear Mr. Satterthwaite's views, but to air his own.
“You remember when that incident occurred, Satterthwaite? Just after Ellis had brought him a telephone message. I think it's a fair deduction to assume that it was that telephone message which was the cause of Tollie's sudden unusual hilarity. You may remember I asked the housemaid woman what that message had been.”
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.
“It was to say that a woman named Mrs. de Rushbridger had arrived at the sanatorium,” he said, to show that he, too, had paid attention to the point. “It doesn't sound particularly thrilling.”
“It doesn't sound so, certainly. But if our reasoning is correct, there must be some significance in that message.”
“Ye-es,” said Mr. Satterthwaite doubtfully.
“Indubitably,” said Sir Charles. “We've got to find out what that significance was. It just crosses my mind that it may have been a code message of some kind - a harmless sounding, natural thing, but which really meant something entirely different. If Tollie had been making inquiries into Babbington's death, this may have had something to do with those inquiries. Say, even, that he employed a private detective to find out a certain fact. He may have told him, in the event of this particular suspicion being justified, to ring up and use that particular phrase, which would convey no hint of the truth to anyone taking it. That would explain his jubilation, it might explain his asking Ellis if he was sure of the name; he himself knowing well there was no such person really. In fact, the slight lack of balance a person shows when he has brought off what can be described as a long shot.”
“You think there's no such person as Mrs. de Rushbridger?”
“Well, I think we ought to find out for certain.”
“How?”
“We might run along to the sanatorium now and ask the matron.”
“She may think it rather odd.”
Sir Charles laughed.
“You leave it to me,” he said.
They turned aside from the drive and walked in the direction of the sanatorium.
Mr. Satterthwaite said:
“What about you, Cartwright? Does anything strike you at all? Arising out of our visit to the house, I mean?”
Sir Charles answered slowly: “Yes, there is something. The devil of it is, I can't remember what.”
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him in surprise.
The other frowned.
“How can I explain? There was something - something which, at the moment, struck me as wrong, as unlikely - only, I hadn't the time to think about it then. I put it aside in my own mind.”
“And now you can't remember what it was?”
“No. Only that at some moment I said to myself ‘That's odd.'”
“Was it when we were questioning the servants? Which servant?”
“I tell you I can't remember. And the more I think the less I shall remember. If I leave it alone, it may come back to me.”
They came into view of the sanatorium, a big white modern building, divided from the park by palings. There was a gate through which they passed, and they rang the front doorbell and asked for the matron.
The matron, when she came, was a tall middle-aged woman, with an intelligent face and a capable manner. Sir Charles she clearly knew by name as a friend of the late Sir Bartholomew Strange.
Sir Charles explained that he had just come back from abroad, had been horrified to hear of his friend's death and of the terrible suspicions entertained, and had been up to the house to learn as many details as he could.
The matron spoke in moving terms of the loss Sir Bartholomew would be to them, and of his fine career as a doctor. Sir Charles professed himself anxious to know what was going to happen to the sanatorium. The matron explained that Sir Bartholomew had had two partners, both capable doctors; one was in residence at the sanatorium.
“Bartholomew was very proud of this place, I know,” said Sir Charles.
“Yes, his treatments were a great success.”
“Mostly nerve cases, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“That reminds me, fellow I met out at Monte had some kind of relation coming here. I forget her name now - odd sort of name - Rushbridger - Rushbridger - something like that.”
“Mrs. de Rushbridger, you mean?”
“That's it. Is she here now?”
“Oh, yes. But I'm afraid she won't be able to see you - not for some time yet. She's having a very strict rest cure.” The matron smiled just a trifle archly. “No letters, no exciting visitors.”
“I say, she's not very bad, is she?”
“Rather a bad nervous breakdown - lapses of memory and severe nervous exhaustion. Oh, we shall get her right in time.”
The matron smiled reassuringly.
“Let me see. Haven't I heard Tollie - Sir Bartholomew - speak of her? She was a friend of his as well as a patient, wasn't she?”
“I don't think so. Sir Charles. At least the doctor never said so. She has recently arrived from the West Indies. Really, it was very funny, I must tell you. Rather a difficult name for a servant to remember - the parlormaid here is rather stupid. She came and said to me: ‘Mrs. West India has come,’ and of course I suppose Rushbridger does sound rather like West India; but it was rather a coincidence, her having just come from the West Indies.”
“Rather, rather; most amusing. Her husband over too?”
“He's still out there.”
“Ah, quite, quite. I must be mixing her up with someone else. It was a case the doctor was specially interested in.”
“Cases of amnesia are fairly common, but they're always interesting to a medical man - the variations, you know. Two cases are seldom alike.”
“Seems all very odd to me... Well, thank you, matron. I'm glad to have had a little chat with you. I know how much Tollie thought of you. He often spoke about you,” finished Sir Charles mendaciously.
“Oh, I'm glad to hear that.” The matron flushed and bridled. “Such a splendid man; such a loss to us all. We were absolutely shocked - well, stunned would describe it better. Murder! ‘Whoever would murder Doctor Strange?’ I said. It's incredible. That awful butler. I hope the police catch him. And no motive or anything.”
Sir Charles shook his head sadly and they took their departure, going round by the road to the spot where the car awaited them. In revenge for his enforced quiescence during the interview with the matron, Mr. Satterthwaite displayed a lively interest in the scene of Oliver Manders’ accident, plying the lodge keeper, a slow-witted man of middle age, with questions.
Yes, that was the place, where the wall was broken away. On a motorcycle the young gentleman was. No, he didn't see it happen. He heard it, though, and come out to see. The young gentleman was standing there - just where the other gentleman was standing now. He didn't seem to be hurt. Just looking rueful like at his bike - and a proper mess that was. Just asked what the name of the place might be, and when he heard it was Sir Bartholomew Strangers, he said, “That's a piece of luck,” and went on up to the house. A very calm young gentleman he seemed to be - tired like. How he come to have such an accident the lodge keeper couldn't see, but he supposed them things went wrong sometimes.
“It was an odd accident,” said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully.
He looked at the wide straight road. No bends, no dangerous crossroads, nothing to cause a motorcyclist to swerve suddenly into a ten-foot wall. Yes, an odd accident.
“What's in your mind, Satterthwaite?” asked Sir Charles curiously.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “Nothing.”
“It's odd, certainly,” said Sir Charles, and he, too, stared at the scene of the accident in a puzzled manner.
They got into the car and drove off.
Mr. Satterthwaite was busy with his thoughts. Mrs. de Rushbridger...
Cartwright's theory wouldn't work, it wasn't a code message. There was such a person. But could there be something about the woman herself? Was she, perhaps, a witness of some kind? Or was it just because she was an interesting case that Bartholomew Strange had displayed this unusual elation? Was she, perhaps, an attractive woman? To fall in love at the age of fifty-five did - Mr. Satterthwaite had observed it many a time - change a man's character completely. It might, perhaps, make him facetious where, before, he had been aloof.
His thoughts were interrupted. Sir Charles leaned forward.
“Satterthwaite,” he said, “do you mind if we turn back?”
Without waiting for a reply, he took up the speaking tube and gave the order. The car slowed down, stopped, and the chauffeur began to reverse into a convenient lane. A minute or two later they were bowling along the road in the opposite direction.
“What is it?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.
“I've just remembered,” said Sir Charles, “what it was that struck me as odd. It was the ink stain on the floor in the butler's room.”
Agatha Christie
Three Act Tragedy aka Murder in Three Acts (1934)
Dedicated to my friends
Geoffrey and Violet ShipstonChapter 11
About an Ink Stain
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at his friend in surprise.
“The ink stain? What do you mean, Cartwright?”
“You remember it?”
“I remember there was an ink stain, yes.”
“You remember its position?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“It was close to the skirting board near the fireplace.”
“Yes, so it was. I remember now.”
“How do you think that stain was caused, Satterthwaite?”
Mr. Satterthwaite reflected a minute or two.
“It wasn't a big stain,” he said at last. “It couldn't have been an upset ink bottle. I should say, in all probability, that the man dropped his fountain pen there. There was no pen in the room, you remember.”
("He shall see that I notice things just as much as he does,” thought Mr. Satterthwaite.)
“So it seems clear that the man must have had a fountain pen if he ever wrote at all, and there's no evidence that he ever did.”
“Yes, there is, Satterthwaite. There's the ink stain.”
“He mayn't have been writing,” snapped Mr. Satterthwaite. “He may have just dropped the pen on the floor.”
“But there wouldn't have been a stain unless the top had been off the pen.”
“I dare say you're right,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “But I can't see what's odd about it.”
“Perhaps there isn't anything odd,” said Sir Charles. “I can't tell till I get back and see for myself.”
They were turning in at the lodge gates. A few minutes later they had arrived at the house, and Sir Charles was allaying the curiosity caused by his return by inventing a pencil left behind in the butler's room.
