Agatha Christie - Three Act Tragedy

“I wanted to see your wife. Is she in?”

“She’s round in Bruton Street – at her dressmaking place.”

“I know. I was there today. I thought perhaps she’d be back by now, and that she wouldn’t mind, perhaps, if I came here – only, of course, I suppose I’m being a frightful bother – ”

Egg paused appealingly.

Freddie Dacres said to himself:

“Nice looking filly. Damned pretty girl, in fact.”

Aloud he said:

“Cynthia won’t be back till well after six. I’ve just come back from Newbury. Had a rotten day and left early. Come round to the Seventy-Two Club and have a cocktail?”

Egg accepted, though she had a shrewd suspicion that Dacres had already had quite as much alcohol as was good for him.

Sitting in the underground dimness of the Seventy-Two Club, and sipping a Martini, Egg said: “This is great fun. I’ve never been here before.”

Freddie Dacres smiled indulgently. He liked a young and pretty girl. Not perhaps as much as he liked some other things – but well enough.

“Upsettin’ sort of time, wasn’t it?” he said. “Up in Yorkshire, I mean. Something rather amusin’ about a doctor being poisoned – you see what I mean – wrong way about. A doctor’s a chap who poisons other people.”

He laughed uproariously at his own remark and ordered another pink gin.

“That’s rather clever of you,” said Egg. “I never thought of it that way before.”

“Only a joke, of course,” said Freddie Dacres.

“It’s odd, isn’t it,” said Egg, “that when we meet it’s always at a death.”

“Bit odd,” admitted Captain Dacres. “You mean the old clergyman chap at what’s him name’s – the actor fellow’s place?”

“Yes. It was very queer the way he died so suddenly.”

“Damn’ disturbin’,” said Dacres. “Makes you feel a bit gruey, fellows popping off all over the place. You know, you think ‘my turn next,’ and it gives you the shivers.”

“You knew Mr. Babbington before, didn’t you, at Gilling?”

“Don’t know the place. No, I never set eyes on the old chap before. Funny thing is he popped off just the same way as old Strange did. Bit odd, that. Can’t have been bumped off, too, I suppose?”

“Well, what do you think?”

Dacres shook his head.

“Can’t have been,” he said decisively. “Nobody murders parsons. Doctors are different.”

“Yes,” said Egg. “I suppose doctors are different.”

“Course they are. Stands to reason. Doctors are interfering devils.” He slurred the words a little. He leant forward. “Won’t let well alone. Understand?”

“No,” said Egg.

“They monkey about with fellows’ lives. They’ve got a damned sight too much power. Oughtn’t to be allowed.”

“I don’t quite see what you mean.”

“M’ dear girl, I’m telling you. Get a fellow shut up – that’s what I mean – put him in hell. God, they’re cruel. Shut him up and keep the stuff from him – and however much you beg and pray they won’t give it you. Don’t care a damn what torture you’re in. That’s doctors for you. I’m telling you – and I know .”

His face twitched painfully. His little pinpoint pupils stared past her.

“It’s hell, I tell you – hell. And they call it curing you! Pretend they’re doing a decent action. Swine!”

“Did Sir Bartholomew Strange -?” began Egg cautiously.

He took the words out of her mouth.

“Sir Bartholomew Strange. Sir Bartholomew Humbug. I’d like to know what goes on in that precious Sanatorium of his. Nerve cases. That’s what they say. You’re in there and you can’t get out. And they say you’ve gone of your own free will. Free will! Just because they get hold of you when you’ve got the horrors.”

He was shaking now. His mouth drooped suddenly.

“I’m all to pieces,” he said apologetically. “All to pieces.” He called to the waiter, pressed Egg to have another drink, and when she refused, ordered one himself.

“That’s better,” he said as he drained the glass. “Got my nerve back now. Nasty business losing your nerve. Mustn’t make Cynthia angry. She told me not to talk.” He nodded his head once or twice. “Wouldn’t do to tell the police all this,” he said. “They might think I’d bumped old Strange off. Eh? You realise, don’t you, that someone must have done it? One of us must have killed him. That’s a funny thought. Which of us? That’s the question.”

“Perhaps you know which,” said Egg.

“What d’you say that for? Why should I know?”

He looked at her angrily and suspiciously.

“I don’t know anything about it, I tell you. I wasn’t going to take that damnable ‘cure’ of his. No matter what Cynthia said – I wasn’t going to take it. He was up to something – they were both up to something. But they couldn’t fool me.”

He drew himself up.

“I’m a strong man, Miss Lytton Gore.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Egg. “Tell me, do you know anything of a Mrs. de Rushbridger who is at the Sanatorium?”

“Rushbridger? Rushbridger? Old Strange said something about her. Now what was it? Can’t remember anything.”

He sighed, shook his head.

“Memory’s going, that’s what it is. And I’ve got enemies – a lot of enemies. They may be spying on me now.”

He looked round uneasily. Then he leant across the table to Egg.

“What was that woman doing in my room that day?”

“What woman?”

“Rabbit-faced woman. Writes plays. It was the morning after – after he died. I’d just come up from breakfast. She came out of my room and went through the baize door at the end of the passage – went through into the servants’ quarter. Odd, eh? Why did she go into my room? What did she think she’d find there? What did she want to go nosing about for, anyway? What’s it got to do with her? He leaned forward confidentially. Or do you think it’s true what Cynthia says?”

“What does Mrs. Dacres say?”

“Says I imagined it. Says I was ‘seeing things.’” He laughed uncertainly. “I do see things now and again. Pink mice – snakes – all that sort of thing. But seein’ a woman’s different… I did see her. She’s a queer fish, that woman. Nasty sort of eye she’s got. Goes through you.”

He leaned back on the soft couch. He seemed to be dropping asleep.

Egg got up.

“I must be going. Thank you very much, Captain Dacres.”

“Don’t thank me. Delighted. Absolutely delighted… ”

His voice tailed off.

“I’d better go before he passes out altogether,” thought Egg.

She emerged from the smoky atmosphere of the Seventy-Two Club into the cool evening air.

Beatrice, the housemaid, had said that Miss Wills poked and pried. Now came this story from Freddie Dacres. What had Miss Wills been looking for? What had she found? Was it possible that Miss Wills knew something?

Was there anything in this rather muddled story about Sir Bartholomew Strange? Had Freddie Dacres secretly feared and hated him?

It seemed possible.

But in all this no hint of any guilty knowledge in the Babbington case.

“How odd it would be,” said Egg to herself, “if he wasn’t murdered after all.”

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 apologised she recognised Sir Charles’s secretary, the efficient Miss Milray.

Standing side by side, they both sought the stop-press news. Yes, there it was.