Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie [39]
‘It’s a great surprise seeing you, Sir Charles. I thought you had given up Crow’s Nest for good.’
‘I thought I had,’ said the actor frankly. ‘But sometimes, Mrs Babbington, our destiny is too strong for us.’
Mrs Babbington did not reply. She turned towards Egg, but the girl forestalled the words on her lips.
‘Look here, Mrs Babbington. This isn’t just a call. Sir Charles and I have got something very serious to say. Only—I—I should hate to upset you.’
Mrs Babbington looked from the girl to Sir Charles. Her face had gone rather grey and pinched.
‘First of all,’ said Sir Charles, ‘I would like to ask you if you have had any communication from the Home Office?’
Mrs Babbington bowed her head.
‘I see—well, perhaps that makes what we are about to say easier.’
‘Is that what you have come about—this exhumation order?’
‘Yes. Is it—I’m afraid it must be—very distressing to you.’
She softened to the sympathy in his voice.
‘Perhaps I do not mind as much as you think. To some people the idea of exhumation is very dreadful—not to me. It is not the dead clay that matters. My dear husband is elsewhere—at peace—where no one can trouble his rest. No, it is not that. It is the idea that is a shock to me—the idea, a terrible one, that Stephen did not die a natural death. It seems so impossible—utterly impossible.’
‘I’m afraid it must seem so to you. It did to me—to us—at first.’
‘What do you mean by at first, Sir Charles?’
‘Because the suspicion crossed my mind on the evening of your husband’s death, Mrs Babbington. Like you, however, it seemed to me so impossible that I put it aside.’
‘I thought so, too,’ said Egg.
‘You too,’ Mrs Babbington looked at her wonderingly. ‘You thought someone could have killed—Stephen?’
The incredulity in her voice was so great that neither of her visitors knew quite how to proceed. At last Sir Charles took up the tale.
‘As you know, Mrs Babbington, I went abroad. When I was in the South of France I read in the paper of my friend Bartholomew Strange’s death in almost exactly similar circumstances. I also got a letter from Miss Lytton Gore.’
Egg nodded.
‘I was there, you know, staying with him at the time. Mrs Babbington, it was exactly the same—exactly. He drank some port and his face changed, and—and—well, it was just the same. He died two or three minutes later.’
Mrs Babbington shook her head slowly.
‘I can’t understand it. Stephen! Sir Bartholomew—a kind and clever doctor! Who could want to harm either of them? It must be a mistake.’
‘Sir Bartholomew was proved to have been poisoned, remember,’ said Sir Charles.
‘Then it must have been the work of a lunatic.’
Sir Charles went on:
‘Mrs Babbington, I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to find out the truth. And I feel there is no time to lose. Once the news of the exhumation gets about our criminal will be on the alert. I am assuming, for the sake of saving time, what the result of the autopsy on your husband’s body will be. I am taking it that he, too, died of nicotine poisoning. To begin with, did you or he know anything about the use of pure nicotine?’
‘I always use a solution of nicotine for spraying roses. I didn’t know it was supposed to be poisonous.’
‘I should imagine (I was reading up the subject last night) that in both cases the pure alkaloid must have been used. Cases of poisoning by nicotine are most unusual.’
Mrs Babbington shook her head.
‘I really don’t know anything about nicotine poisoning—except that I suppose inveterate smokers might suffer from it.’
‘Did your husband smoke?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now tell me, Mrs Babbington, you have expressed the utmost surprise that anyone should want to do away with your husband. Does that mean that as far as you know he had no enemies?’
‘I am sure Stephen had no enemies. Everyone was fond of him. People tried to hustle him sometimes,’ she smiled a little tearfully. ‘He was getting on, you know, and rather afraid of innovations, but everybody liked him. You couldn’t dislike Stephen,