Left as a widow very badly off with a child of three, she had come to Loomouth and taken a small cottage where she had lived with one devoted maid ever since. She was a tall thin woman, looking older than her fifty-five years. Her expression was sweet and rather timid. She adored her daughter, but was a little alarmed by her.
Hermione Lytton Gore, usually known for some obscure reason as Egg, bore little resemblance to her mother. She was of a more energetic type. She was not, Mr Satterthwaite decided, beautiful, but she was undeniably attractive. And the cause of that attraction, he thought, lay in her abounding vitality. She seemed twice as alive as anyone in that room. She had dark hair, and grey eyes and was of medium height. It was something in the way the hair curled crisply in her neck, in the straight glance of the grey eyes, in the curve of the cheek, in the infectious laugh that gave one that impression of riotous youth and vitality.
She stood talking to Oliver Manders, who had just arrived.
‘I can’t think why sailing bores you so much. You used to like it.’
‘Egg—my dear. One grows up.’
He drawled the words, raising his eyebrows.
A handsome young fellow, twenty-five at a guess. Something, perhaps, a little sleek about his good looks. Something else—something—was it foreign? Something unEnglish about him.
Somebody else was watching Oliver Manders. A little man with an egg-shaped head and very foreign-looking moustaches. Mr Satterthwaite had recalled himself to M. Hercule Poirot’s memory. The little man had been very affable. Mr Satterthwaite suspected him of deliberately exaggerating his foreign mannerisms. His small twinkly eyes seemed to say, ‘You expect me to be the buffoon? To play the comedy for you? Bien—it shall be as you wish!’
But there was no twinkle now in Hercule Poirot’s eyes. He looked grave and a little sad.
The Rev. Stephen Babbington, rector of Loomouth, came and joined Lady Mary and Mr Satterthwaite. He was a man of sixty odd, with kind faded eyes and a disarming diffident manner. He said to Mr Satterthwaite:
‘We are very lucky to have Sir Charles living among us. He has been most kind—most generous. A very pleasant neighbour to have. Lady Mary agrees, I am sure.’
Lady Mary smiled.
‘I like him very much. His success hasn’t spoilt him. In many ways he is,’ her smile deepened, ‘a child still.’
The parlourmaid approached with the tray of cocktails as Mr Satterthwaite reflected how unendingly maternal women were. Being of the Victorian generation, he approved that trait.
‘You can have a cocktail, Mums,’ said Egg, flashing up to them, glass in hand. ‘Just one.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ said Lady Mary meekly.
‘I think,’ said Mr Babbington, ‘that my wife would allow me to have one.’
And he laughed a little gentle clerical laugh.
Mr Satterthwaite glanced over at Mrs Babbington, who was talking earnestly to Sir Charles on the subject of manure.
‘She’s got fine eyes,’ he thought.
Mrs Babbington was a big untidy woman. She looked full of energy and likely to be free from petty mindedness. As Charles Cartwright had said—a nice woman.
‘Tell me,’ Lady Mary leaned forward. ‘Who is the young woman you were talking to when we came in—the one in green?’
‘That’s the playwright—Anthony Astor.’
‘What? That—that anaemic-looking young woman? Oh!’ She caught herself up. ‘How dreadful of me. But it was a surprise. She doesn’t look—I mean she looks exactly like an inefficient nursery governess.’
It was such an apt description of Miss Wills’ appearance that Mr Satterthwaite laughed. Mr Babbington was peering across the room with amiable short-sighted eyes. He took a sip of his cocktail and choked a little. He was unused to cocktails, thought Mr Satterthwaite amusedly—probably they represented modernity to his mind—but he didn’t like them. Mr Babbington took another determined mouthful with a slightly wry face and said:
‘Is it the lady over there? Oh dear—’
His hand went to his throat.
Egg Lytton Gore’s voice rang out:
‘Oliver—you slippery Shylock—’
‘Of course,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite, ‘that’s it—not foreign—Jew!’
What a handsome pair they made. Both so young and good-looking … and quarrelling, too—always a healthy sign …
He was distracted by a sound at his side. Mr Babbington had risen to his feet and was swaying to and fro. His face was convulsed.
It was Egg’s clear voice that drew the attention of the room, though Lady Mary had risen and stretched out an anxious hand.
‘Look,’ said Egg’s voice. ‘Mr Babbington is ill.’
Sir Bartholomew Strange came forward hurriedly, supporting the stricken man and half lifting him to a couch at one side of the room. The others crowded round, anxious to help, but impotent …
Two minutes later Strange straightened himself and shook his head. He spoke bluntly, aware that it was no use to beat about the bush.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He’s dead …’
CHAPTER 3
Sir Charles Wonders
‘Come in here a minute, Satterthwaite, will you?’
Sir Charles poked his head out of the door.
An hour and a half had passed. To confusion had succeeded peace. Lady Mary had led the weeping Mrs Babbington out of the room and had finally gone home with her to the vicarage. Miss Milray had been efficient with the telephone. The local doctor had arrived and taken charge. A simplified dinner had been served, and by mutual consent the house-party had retired to their rooms after it. Mr Satterthwaite had been making his own retreat when Sir Charles had called to him from the door of the Ship-room where the death had taken place.
Mr Satterthwaite passed in, repressing a slight shiver as he did so. He was old enough not to like the sight of death … For soon, perhaps, he himself … But why think of that?
‘I’m good for another twenty years,’ said Mr Satterthwaite robustly to himself.
The only other occupant of the Ship-room was Bartholomew Strange. He nodded approval at the sight of Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Good man,’ he said. ‘We can do with Satterthwaite. He knows life.’
A little surprised, Mr Satterthwaite sat down in an armchair near the doctor. Sir Charles was pacing up and down. He had forgotten the semi-clenching of his hands and looked definitely less naval.
‘Charles doesn’t like it,’ said Sir Bartholomew. ‘Poor old Babbington’s death, I mean.’
Mr Satterthwaite thought the sentiment ill expressed. Surely nobody could be expected to ‘like’ what had occurred. He realized that Strange had quite another meaning from the bald one the words conveyed.
‘It was very distressing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, cautiously feeling his way. ‘Very distressing indeed,’ he added with a reminiscent shiver.
‘H’m, yes, it was rather painful,’ said the physician, the professional accent creeping for a moment into his voice.
Cartwright paused in his pacing.
‘Ever see anyone die quite like that before, Tollie?’
‘No,’ said Sir Bartholomew thoughtfully. ‘I can’t say that I have.
‘But,’ he added in a moment or two, ‘I haven’t really seen as many deaths as you might suppose. A nerve specialist doesn’t kill off many of his patients. He keeps ’em alive and makes his income out of them. MacDougal has seen far more deceases than I have, I don’t doubt.’
Dr MacDougal was the principal doctor in Loomouth, whom Miss Milray had summoned.
‘MacDougal didn’t see this man die. He was dead when he arrived. There was only what we could tell him, what you could tell him. He said it was some kind of seizure, said Babbington was elderly, and his health was none too good. That doesn’t satisfy me.’
‘Probably didn’t satisfy him,’ grunted the other. ‘But a doctor has to say something. Seizure is a good word—means nothing at all, but satisfies the lay mind. And, after all, Babbington was elderly, and his health had been giving him trouble lately; his wife told us so. There may have been some unsuspected weakness somewhere.’
‘Was that a typical fit or seizure, or whatever you call it?’
‘Typical of what?’
‘Of any known disease?’
‘If you’d ever studied medicine,’ said Sir Bartholomew, ‘you’d know that there is hardly any such thing as a typical case.’
‘What, precisely, are you suggesting, Sir Charles?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.
Cartwright did not answer. He made a vague gesture with his hand. Strange gave a slight chuckle.
‘Charles doesn’t know himself,’ he said. ‘It’s just his mind turning naturally to the dramatic possibilities.’
Sir Charles made a reproachful gesture. His face was absorbed—thoughtful. He shook his head slightly in an abstracted manner.
An elusive resemblance teased Mr Satterthwaite—then he got it. Aristide Duval, the head of the Secret Service, unravelling the tangled plot of Underground Wires. In another minute he was sure. Sir Charles was limping unconsciously as he walked. Aristide Duval had been known as The Man With a Limp.
Sir Bartholomew continued to apply ruthless common sense to Sir Charles’s unformulated suspicions.
‘Yes, what do you suspect, Charles? Suicide? Murder? Who wants to murder a harmless old clergyman? It’s fantastic. Suicide? Well, I suppose that is a point. One might perhaps imagine a reason for Babbington wanting to make away with himself—’
‘What reason?’
Sir Bartholomew shook his head gently.
‘How can we tell the secrets of the human mind? Just one suggestion—suppose that Babbington had been told he suffered from an incurable disease—such as cancer. Something of that kind might supply a motive. He might wish to spare his wife the pain of watching his own long-drawn-out suffering. That’s only a suggestion, of course. There’s nothing on earth to make us think that Babbington did want to put an end to himself.’
‘I wasn’t thinking so much of suicide,’ began Sir Charles.
Bartholomew Strange again gave his low chuckle.
‘Exactly. You’re not out for probability. You want sensation—new and untraceable poison in the cocktails.’
Sir Charles made an expressive grimace.
‘I’m not so sure I do want that. Damn it all, Tollie, remember I mixed those cocktails.’
‘Sudden attack of homicidal mania, eh? I suppose the symptoms are delayed in our case, but we’ll all be dead before morning.’
‘Damn it all, you joke, but—’ Sir Charles broke off irritably.
‘I’m not really joking,’ said the physician.
His voice had altered. It was grave, and not unsympathetic.
‘I’m not joking about poor old Babbington’s death. I’m casting fun at your suggestions, Charles, because—well—because I don’t want you, thoughtlessly, to do harm.’
‘Harm?’ demanded Sir Charles.
‘Perhaps you understand what I’m driving at, Mr Satterthwaite?’
‘I think, perhaps, I can guess,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Don’t you see, Charles,’ went on Sir Bartholomew, ‘that those idle suspicions of yours might be definitely harmful? These things get about. A vague suggestion of foul play, totally unfounded, might cause serious trouble and pain to Mrs Babbington. I’ve known things of that kind happen once or twice. A sudden death—a few idle tongues wagging—rumours flying all round the place—rumours that go on growing—and that no one can stop. Damn it all, Charles, don’t you see how cruel and unnecessary it would be? You’re merely indulging your vivid imagination in a gallop over a wholly speculative course.’
A look of irresolution appeared on the actor’s face.
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ he admitted.
‘You’re a thundering good chap, Charles, but you do let your imagination run away with you. Come now: do you seriously believe anyone, anyone at all, would want to murder that perfectly harmless old man?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Sir Charles. ‘No, as you say, it’s ridiculous. Sorry, Tollie, but it wasn’t really a mere “stunt” on my part. I did genuinely have a “hunch” that something was wrong.’
Mr Satterthwaite gave a little cough.
‘May I make a suggestion? Mr Babbington was taken ill a very few moments after entering the room and just after drinking his cocktail. Now, I did happen to notice he made a wry face when drinking. I imagined because he was unused to the taste. But supposing that Sir Bartholomew’s tentative suggestion is correct—that Mr Babbington may for some reason have wished to commit suicide. That does strike me as just possible, whereas the suggestion of murder seems quite ridiculous.
‘I feel that it is possible, though not probable, that Mr Babbington introduced something into that glass unseen by us.
‘Now I see that nothing has yet been touched in this room. The cocktail glasses are exactly where they were. This is Mr Babbington’s. I know, because I was sitting here talking to him. I suggest that Sir Bartholomew should get the glass analysed—that can be done quite quietly and without causing any “talk”.’
Sir Bartholomew rose and picked up the glass.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll humour you so far, Charles, and I’ll bet you ten pounds to one that there’s nothing in it but honest-to-God gin and vermouth.’
‘Done,’ said Sir Charles.
Then he added with a rueful smile:
‘You know, Tollie, you are partly responsible for my flights of fancy.’
‘I?’
‘Yes, with your talk of crime this morning. You said this man, Hercule Poirot, was a kind of stormy petrel, that where he went crimes followed. No sooner does he arrive than we have a suspiciously sudden death. Of course my thoughts fly to murder at once.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped.
‘Yes,’ said Charles Cartwright. ‘I’d thought of that. What do you think, Tollie? Could we ask him what he thinks of it all? Is it etiquette, I mean?’
‘A nice point,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite.
‘I know medical etiquette, but I’m hanged if I know anything about the etiquette of detection.’
‘You can’t ask a professional singer to sing,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Can one ask a professional detective to detect? Yes, a very nice point.’
‘Just an opinion,’ said Sir Charles.
There was a gentle tap on the door, and Hercule Poirot’s face appeared, peering in with an apologetic expression.
‘Come in, man,’ cried Sir Charles, springing up. ‘We were just talking of you.’
‘I thought perhaps I might be intruding.’
‘Not at all. Have a drink.’
‘I thank you, no. I seldom drink the whisky. A glass of sirop, now—’
But sirop was not included in Sir Charles’s conception of drinkable fluids. Having settled his guest in a chair, the actor went straight to the point.
‘I’m not going to beat about the bush,’ he said. ‘We were just talking of you, M. Poirot, and—and—of what happened tonight. Look here, do you think there’s anything wrong about it?’
Poirot’s eyebrows rose. He said:
‘Wrong? How do you mean that—wrong?’
Bartholomew Strange said, ‘My friend has got an idea into his head that old Babbington was murdered.’
‘And you do not think so—eh?’
‘We’d like to know what you think.’
Poirot said thoughtfully:
‘He was taken ill, of course, very suddenly—very suddenly indeed.’
‘Just so.’
Mr Satterthwaite explained the theory of suicide and his own suggestion of having a cocktail glass analysed.
Poirot nodded approval.
‘That, at any rate, can do no harm. As a judge of human nature, it seems to me unlikely in the extreme that anyone could wish to do away with a charming and harmless old gentleman. Still less does the solution of suicide appeal to me. However, the cocktail glass will tell us one way or another.’
‘And the result of the analysis, you think, will be—what?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘Me? I can only guess. You ask me to guess what will be the result of the analysis?’
‘Yes—?’
‘Then I guess that they will find only the remains of a very excellent dry Martini.’ (He bowed to Sir Charles.) ‘To poison a man in a cocktail, one of many handed round on a tray—well, it would be a technique very—very—difficult. And if that charming old clergyman wanted to commit suicide, I do not think he would do it at a party. That would show a very decided lack of consideration for others, and Mr Babbington struck me as a very considerate person.’ He paused. ‘That, since you ask me, is my opinion.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then Sir Charles gave a deep sigh. He opened one of the windows and looked out.
‘Wind’s gone round a point,’ he said.
The sailor had come back and the Secret Service detective had disappeared.
But to the observant Mr Satterthwaite it seemed as though Sir Charles hankered slightly after the part he was not, after all, to play.
CHAPTER 4
A Modern Elaine
‘Yes, 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. Some day, 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.
‘Of more than twice her years,
Seam’d with an ancient swordcut on the cheek,
And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes
And loved him, with that love which was her doom.’
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.’
