Three Act Tragedy (3 page)

“Y
es, but what do you think, Mr. Satterthwaite? Really
think?
”

Mr. Satterthwaite looked this way and that. There was no escape. Egg Lytton Gore had got him securely cornered on the fishing quay. Merciless, these modern young women—and terrifyingly alive.

“Sir Charles has put this idea into your head,” he said.

“No, he hasn't. It was there already. It's been there from the beginning. It was so frightfully sudden.”

“He was an old man, and his health wasn't very good—”

Egg cut the recital short.

“That's all tripe. He had neuritis and a touch of rheumatoid arthritis. That doesn't make you fall down in a fit. He never had fits. He was the sort of gentle creaking gate that would have lived to be ninety. What did you think of the inquest?”

“It all seemed quite—er—normal.”

“What did you think of Dr. MacDougal's evidence? Frightfully technical, and all that—close description of the organs—but
didn't it strike you that behind all that bombardment of words he was hedging? What he said amounted to this: that there was nothing to show death had not arisen from natural causes. He didn't say it was the result of natural causes.”

“Aren't you splitting hairs a little, my dear?”

“The point is that
he
did—he was puzzled, but he had nothing to go upon, so he had to take refuge in medical caution. What did Sir Bartholomew Strange think?”

Mr. Satterthwaite repeated some of the physician's dictums.

“Pooh-poohed it, did he?” said Egg thoughtfully. “Of course, he's a cautious man—I suppose a Harley Street big bug has to be.”

“There was nothing in the cocktail glass but gin and vermouth,” Mr. Satterthwaite reminded her.

“That seems to settle it. All the same, something that happened after the inquest made me wonder—”

“Something Sir Bartholomew said to you?”

Mr. Satterthwaite began to feel a pleasant curiosity.

“Not to me—to Oliver. Oliver Manders—he was at dinner that night, but perhaps you don't remember him.”

“Yes, I remember him very well. Is he a great friend of yours?”

“Used to be. Now we scrap most of the time. He's gone into his uncle's office in the city, and he's getting—well, a bit oily, if you know what I mean. Always talks of chucking it and being a journalist—he writes rather well. But I don't think it's any more than talk now. He wants to get rich. I think everybody is rather disgusting about money, don't you, Mr. Satterthwaite?”

Her youth came home to him then—the crude, arrogant childishness of her.

“My dear,” he said, “so many people are disgusting about so many things.”

“Most people are swine, of course,” agreed Egg cheerfully. “That's why I'm really cut up about old Mr. Babbington. Because you see, he really was rather a pet. He prepared me for confirmation and all that, and though of course a lot of that business is all bunkum, he really was rather sweet about it. You see, Mr. Satterthwaite, I really believe in Christianity—not like Mother does, with little books and early service, and things—but intelligently and as a matter of history. The Church is all clotted up with the Pauline tradition—in fact the Church is a mess—but Christianity itself is all right. That's why I can't be a communist like Oliver. In practice our beliefs would work out much the same, things in common and ownership by all, but the difference—well, I needn't go into that. But the Babbingtons really
were
Christians; they didn't poke and pry and condemn, and they were never unkind about people or things. They were pets—and there was Robin….”

“Robin?”

“Their son…He was out in India and got killed…I—I had rather a pash on Robin….”

Egg blinked. Her gaze went out to sea….

Then her attention returned to Mr. Satterthwaite and the present.

“So, you see, I feel rather strongly about this. Supposing it wasn't a natural death….”

“My dear child!”

“Well, it's damned odd! You must admit it's damned odd.”

“But surely you yourself have just practically admitted that the Babbingtons hadn't an enemy in the world.”

“That's what's so queer about it. I can't think of any conceivable motive….”

“Fantastic! There was nothing in the cocktail.”

“Perhaps someone jabbed him with a hypodermic.”

“Containing the arrow poison of the South American Indians,” suggested Mr. Satterthwaite, gently ridiculing.

Egg grinned.

“That's it. The good old untraceable stuff. Oh, well, you're all very superior about it. Someday, perhaps, you'll find out we are right.”

“We?”

“Sir Charles and I.” She flushed slightly.

Mr. Satterthwaite thought in the words and metre of his generation when
Quotations for All Occasions
was to be found in every bookcase.

He felt a little ashamed of himself for thinking in quotations—Tennyson, too, was very little thought of nowadays. Besides, though Sir Charles was bronzed, he was not scarred, and Egg Lytton Gore, though doubtless capable of a healthy passion, did not look at all likely to perish of love and drift about rivers on a barge. There was nothing of the lily maid of Astolat about her.

“Except,” thought Mr. Satterthwaite, “her youth….”

Girls were always attracted to middle-aged men with interesting pasts. Egg seemed to be no exception to this rule.

“Why hasn't he ever married?” she asked abruptly.

“Well…” Mr. Satterthwaite paused. His own answer, put bluntly, would have been, “Caution,” but he realized that such a word would be unacceptable to Egg Lytton Gore.

Sir Charles Cartwright had had plenty of affairs with women, actresses and others, but he had always managed to steer clear of matrimony. Egg was clearly seeking for a more romantic explanation.

“That girl who died of consumption—some actress, name began with an M—wasn't he supposed to be very fond of her?”

Mr. Satterthwaite remembered the lady in question. Rumour had coupled Charles Cartwright's name with hers, but only very slightly, and Mr. Satterthwaite did not for a moment believe that Sir Charles had remained unmarried in order to be faithful to her memory. He conveyed as much tactfully.

“I suppose he's had lots of affairs,” said Egg.

“Er—h'm—probably,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, feeling Victorian.

“I like men to have affairs,” said Egg. “It shows they're not queer or anything.”

Mr. Satterthwaite's Victorianism suffered a further pang. He was at a loss for a reply. Egg did not notice his discomfiture. She went on musingly.

“You know, Sir Charles is really cleverer than you'd think. He poses a lot, of course, dramatises himself; but behind all that he's got brains. He's far better sailing a boat than you'd ever think, to hear him talk. You'd think, to listen to him, that it was all pose, but
it isn't. It's the same about this business. You think it's all done for effect—that he wants to play the part of the great detective. All I say is: I think he'd play it rather well.”

“Possibly,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite.

The inflection of his voice showed his feelings clearly enough. Egg pounced on them and expressed them in words.

“But your view is that ‘Death of a Clergyman' isn't a thriller. It's merely ‘Regrettable Incident at a Dinner Party.' Purely a social catastrophe. What did M. Poirot think?
He
ought to know.”

“M. Poirot advised us to wait for the analysis of the cocktail; but in his opinion everything was quite all right.”

“Oh, well,” said Egg, “he's getting old. He's a back number.” Mr. Satterthwaite winced. Egg went on, unconscious of brutality: “Come home and have tea with Mother. She likes you. She said so.”

Delicately flattered, Mr. Satterthwaite accepted the invitation.

On arrival Egg volunteered to ring up Sir Charles and explain the nonappearance of his guest.

Mr. Satterthwaite sat down in the tiny sitting room with its faded chintzes and its well-polished pieces of old furniture. It was a Victorian room, what Mr. Satterthwaite called in his own mind a lady's room, and he approved of it.

His conversation with Lady Mary was agreeable, nothing brilliant, but pleasantly chatty. They spoke of Sir Charles. Did Mr. Satterthwaite know him well? Not intimately, Mr. Satterthwaite said. He had a financial interest in one of Sir Charles's plays some years ago. They had been friends ever since.

“He has great charm,” said Lady Mary, smiling. “I feel it as well
as Egg. I suppose you've discovered that Egg is suffering badly from hero-worship?”

Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if, as a mother, Lady Mary was not made slightly uneasy by that hero-worship. But it did not seem so.

“Egg sees so little of the world,” she said, sighing. “We are so badly off. One of my cousins presented her and took her to a few things in town, but since then she has hardly been away from here, except for an occasional visit. Young people, I feel, should see plenty of people and places—especially people. Otherwise—well, propinquity is sometimes a dangerous thing.”

Mr. Satterthwaite agreed, thinking of Sir Charles and the sailing, but that this was not what was in Lady Mary's mind, she showed a moment or two later.

“Sir Charles's coming has done a lot for Egg. It has widened her horizon. You see, there are very few young people down here—especially men. I've always been afraid that Egg might marry someone simply from being thrown with one person only and seeing no one else.”

Mr. Satterthwaite had a quick intuition.

“Are you thinking of young Oliver Manders?”

Lady Mary blushed in ingenuous surprise.

“Oh, Mr. Satterthwaite, I don't know how you knew! I
was
thinking of him. He and Egg were together a lot at one time, and I know I'm old-fashioned, but I don't like some of his ideas.”

“Youth must have its fling,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Lady Mary shook her head.

“I've been so afraid—it's quite suitable, of course, I know all
about him, and his uncle, who has recently taken him into his firm, is a very rich man; it's not that—it's silly of me—but—”

She shook her head, unable to express herself further.

Mr. Satterthwaite felt curiously intimate. He said quietly and plainly:

“All the same, Lady Mary, you wouldn't like your girl to marry a man twice her own age.”

Her answer surprised him.

“It might be safer so. If you do that, at least you know where you are. At that age a man's follies and sins are definitely behind him; they are not—still to come….”

Before Mr. Satterthwaite could say any more, Egg rejoined them.

“You've been a long time, darling,” said her mother.

“I was talking to Sir Charles, my sweet. He's all alone in his glory.” She turned reproachfully to Mr. Satterthwaite. “You didn't tell me the house party had flitted.”

“They went back yesterday—all but Sir Bartholomew Strange. He was staying till tomorrow, but he was recalled to London by an urgent telegram this morning. One of his patients was in a critical condition.”

“It's a pity,” said Egg. “Because I meant to study the house party. I might have got a clue.”

“A clue to what, darling?”

“Mr. Satterthwaite knows. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Oliver's still here. We'll rope him in. He's got brains when he likes.”

When Mr. Satterthwaite arrived back at Crow's Nest he found his host sitting on the terrace overlooking the sea.

“Hullo, Satterthwaite. Been having tea with the Lytton Gores?”

“Yes. You don't mind?”

“Of course not. Egg telephoned…Odd sort of girl, Egg….”

“Attractive,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“H'm, yes, I suppose she is.”

He got up and walked a few aimless steps.

“I wish to God,” he said suddenly and bitterly, “that I'd never come to this cursed place.”

M
r. Satterthwaite thought to himself: “He's got it badly.”

He felt a sudden pity for his host. At the age of fifty-two, Charles Cartwright, the gay debonair breaker of hearts, had fallen in love. And, as he himself realized, his case was doomed to disappointment. Youth turns to youth.

“Girls don't wear their hearts on their sleeves,” thought Mr. Satterthwaite. “Egg makes a great parade of her feeling for Sir Charles. She wouldn't if it really meant anything. Young Manders is the one.”

Mr. Satterthwaite was usually fairly shrewd in his assumptions.

Still, there was probably one factor that he did not take into account, because he was unaware of it himself. That was the enhanced value placed by age on youth. To Mr. Satterthwaite, an elderly man, the fact that Egg might prefer a middle-aged man to a young one was frankly incredible. Youth was to him so much the most magical of all gifts.

He felt strengthened in his beliefs when Egg rang up after
dinner and demanded permission to bring Oliver along and “have a consultation.”

Certainly a handsome lad, with his dark, heavy-lidded eyes and easy grace of movement. He had, it seemed, permitted himself to be brought—a tribute to Egg's energy; but his general attitude was lazily sceptical.

“Can't you talk her out of it, sir?” he said to Sir Charles. “It's this appallingly healthy bucolic life she leads that makes her so energetic. You know, Egg, you really are detestably hearty. And your tastes are childish—crime—sensation—and all that bunk.”

“You're a sceptic, Manders?”

“Well, sir, really. That dear old bleating fellow. It's fantastic to think of anything else but natural causes.”

“I expect you're right,” said Sir Charles.

Mr. Satterthwaite glanced at him. What part was Charles Cartwright playing tonight. Not the ex-Naval man—not the international detective. No, some new and unfamiliar rôle.

It came as a shock to Mr. Satterthwaite when he realized what that rôle was. Sir Charles was playing second fiddle. Second fiddle to Oliver Manders.

He sat back with his head in shadow watching those two, Egg and Oliver, as they disputed—Egg hotly, Oliver languidly.

Sir Charles looked older than usual—old and tired.

More than once Egg appealed to him—hotly and confidently—but his response was lacking.

It was eleven o'clock when they left. Sir Charles went out on the terrace with them and offered the loan of an electric torch to help them down the stony path.

But there was no need of a torch. It was a beautiful moonlit
night. They set off together, their voices growing fainter as they descended.

Moonlight or no moonlight, Mr. Satterthwaite was not going to risk a chill. He returned to the Ship room. Sir Charles stayed out on the terrace a little while longer.

When he came in he latched the window behind him, and striding to a side table poured himself out a whisky and soda.

“Satterthwaite,” he said, “I'm leaving here tomorrow for good.”

“What?” cried Mr. Satterthwaite, astonished.

A kind of melancholy pleasure at the effect he had produced showed for a minute on Charles Cartwright's face.

“It's the Only Thing To Do,” he said, obviously speaking in capital letters. “I shall sell this place. What it has meant to me no one will ever know.” His voice dropped, lingeringly…effectively.

After an evening of second fiddle, Sir Charles's egoism was taking its revenge. This was the great Renunciation Scene, so often played by him in sundry and divers dramas. Giving Up the Other Man's Wife, Renouncing the Girl he Loved.

There was a brave flippancy in his voice as he went on.

“Cut your losses—it's the only way…Youth to youth…They're made for each other, those two…I shall clear out….”

“Where to?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

The actor made a careless gesture.

“Anywhere. What does it matter?” He added with a slight change of voice, “Probably Monte Carlo.” And then, retrieving what his sensitive taste could not but feel to be a slight anticlimax, “In the heart of the desert or the heart of the crowd—what does it matter? The inmost core of man is solitary—alone. I have always been—a lonely soul….”

It was clearly an exit line.

He nodded to Mr. Satterthwaite and left the room.

Mr. Satterthwaite got up and prepared to follow his host to bed.

“But it won't be the heart of a desert,” he thought to himself with a slight chuckle.

On the following morning Sir Charles begged Mr. Satterthwaite to forgive him if he went up to town that day.

“Don't cut your visit short, my dear fellow. You were staying till tomorrow, and I know you're going on to the Harbertons at Tavistock. The car will take you there. What I feel is that, having come to my decision, I mustn't look back. No, I mustn't look back.”

Sir Charles squared his shoulders with manly resolution, wrung Mr. Satterthwaite's hand with fervour and delivered him over to the capable Miss Milray.

Miss Milray seemed prepared to deal with the situation as she had dealt with any other. She expressed no surprise or emotion at Sir Charles's overnight decision. Nor could Mr. Satterthwaite draw her out on the point. Neither sudden deaths nor sudden changes of plan could excite Miss Milray. She accepted whatever happened as a fact and proceeded to cope with it in an efficient way. She telephoned to the house agents, despatched wires abroad, and wrote busily on her typewriter. Mr. Satterthwaite escaped from the depressing spectacle of so much efficiency by strolling down to the quay. He was walking aimlessly along when he was seized by the arm from behind, and turned to confront a white-faced girl.

“What's all this?” demanded Egg fiercely.

“All what?” parried Mr. Satterthwaite.

“It's all over the place that Sir Charles is going away—that he's going to sell Crow's Nest.”

“Quite true.”

“He is going away?”

“He's gone.”

“Oh!” Egg relinquished his arm. She looked suddenly like a very small child who has been cruelly hurt.

Mr. Satterthwaite did not know what to say.

“Where has he gone?”

“Abroad. To the South of France.”

“Oh!”

Still he did not know what to say. For clearly there was more than hero-worship here….

Pitying her, he was turning over various consolatory words in his mind when she spoke again—and startled him.

“Which of those damned bitches is it?” asked Egg fiercely.

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her, his mouth fallen open in surprise. Egg took him by the arm again and shook him violently.

“You must know,” she cried. “Which of them? The grey-haired one or the other?”

“My dear, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You do. You must. Of course it's some woman. He liked me—I know he liked me. One of those women the other night must have seen it, too, and determined to get him away from me. I hate women. Lousy cats. Did you see her clothes—that one with the green hair? They made me gnash my teeth with envy. A woman who has clothes like that has a pull—you can't deny it. She's quite old and ugly as sin, really, but what does it matter. She makes everyone else look like a dowdy curate's wife. Is it her? Or is it the
other one with the grey hair? She's amusing—you can see that. She's got masses of S.A. And he called her Angie. It can't be the one like a wilted cabbage. Is it the smart one or is it Angie?”

“My dear, you've got the most extraordinary ideas into your head. He—er—Charles Cartwright isn't the least interested in either of those women.”

“I don't believe you. They're interested in him, anyway….”

“No, no, no, you're making a mistake. This is all imagination.”

“Bitches,” said Egg. “That's what they are!”

“You mustn't use that word, my dear.”

“I can think of a lot worse things to say than that.”

“Possibly, possibly, but pray don't do so. I can assure you that you are labouring under a misapprehension.”

“Then why has he gone away—like this?”

Mr. Satterthwaite cleared his throat.

“I fancy he—er—thought it best.”

Egg stared at him piercingly.

“Do you mean—because of
me?
”

“Well—something of the kind, perhaps.”

“And so he's legged it. I suppose I did show my hand a bit plainly…Men do hate being chased, don't they? Mums is right, after all…You've no idea how sweet she is when she talks about men. Always in the third person—so Victorian and polite. ‘A man hates being run after; a girl should always let the man make the running.' Don't you think it's a sweet expression—make the running? Sounds the opposite of what it means. Actually that's just what Charles has done—made the running. He's running away from me. He's afraid. And the devil of it is, I can't go after him. If I did I suppose he'd take a boat to the wilds of Africa or somewhere.”

“Hermione,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “are you serious about Sir Charles?”

The girl flung him an impatient glance.

“Of course I am.”

“What about Oliver Manders?”

Egg dismissed Oliver Manders with an impatient whisk of the head. She was following out a train of thought of her own.

“Do you think I might write to him? Nothing alarming. Just chatty girlish stuff…you know, put him at his ease, so that he'd get over his scare?”

She frowned.

“What a fool I've been. Mums would have managed it much better. They knew how to do the trick, those Victorians. All blushing retreat. I've been all wrong about it. I actually thought he needed encouraging. He seemed—well, he seemed to need a bit of help. Tell me,” she turned abruptly on Mr. Satterthwaite, “did he see me do my kissing act with Oliver last night?”

“Not that I know of. When—?”

“All in the moonlight. As we were going down the path. I thought he was still looking from the terrace. I thought perhaps if he saw me and Oliver—well, I thought it might wake him up a bit. Because he did like me. I could swear he liked me.”

“Wasn't that a little hard on Oliver?”

Egg shook her head decisively.

“Not in the least. Oliver thinks it's an honour for any girl to be kissed by him. It was damned bad for his conceit, of course; but one can't think of everything. I wanted to ginger up Charles. He's been different lately—more standoffish.”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “I don't think you re
alize quite why Sir Charles went away so suddenly. He thought that you cared for Oliver. He went away to save himself further pain.”

Egg whisked round. She caught hold of Mr. Satterthwaite by the shoulders and peered into his face.

“Is that true? Is that really true? The mutt! The boob! Oh—!”

She released Mr. Satterthwaite suddenly and moved along beside him with a skipping motion.

“Then he'll come back,” she said. “He'll come back. If he doesn't—”

“Well, if he doesn't?”

Egg laughed.

“I'll get him back somehow. You see if I don't.”

It seemed as though allowing for difference of language Egg and the lily maid of Astolat had much in common, but Mr. Satterthwaite felt that Egg's methods would be more practical than those of Elaine, and that dying of a broken heart would form no part of them.