Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie [9]
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 an downership 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