Free Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

remove a dear, insignificant old clergyman ... ”
    He shook his head, then his face brightened.
    “There’s the Wills woman. I forgot her again. What is there about her that continually makes you forget her? She’s the most damnably nondescript creature I’ve ever seen.”
    Mr. Satterthwaite smiled.
    “I rather fancy she might embody Burns’s famous line - ‘A chiel’s amang ye takin’ notes.’ I rather fancy that Miss Wills spend her time taking notes. There are sharp eyes behind that pair of glasses. I think you’ll find that anything worth noticing in this affair has been noticed by Miss Wills.”
    “Do you?” said Sir Charles doubtfully.
    “The next thing to do,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “is to have some lunch. After that, we’ll go out to the Abbey and see what we can discover on the spot.”
    “You seem to be taking very kindly to this, Satterthwaite,” said Sir Charles, with a twinkle of amusement.
    “The investigation of crime is not new to me,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “Once when my car broke down and I was staying at a lonely inn - ”
    He got no further.
    “I remember,” said Sir Charles, in his high, clear carrying actor’s voice, “when I was touring in 1921 ... ”
    Sir Charles won.

Three Act Tragedy
    9
    Nothing could have been more peaceful than the grounds and building of Melfort Abbey as the two men saw it that afternoon in the September sunshine. Portions of the Abbey were fifteenth century. It had been restored and a new wing added on to it. The new Sanatorium was out of sight of the house, with grounds of its own.
    Sir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite were received by Mrs. Leckie, the cook, a portly lady, decorously gowned in black, who was tearful and voluble. Sir Charles she already knew, and it was to him she addressed most of her conversation.
    “You’ll understand, I’m sure, sir, what it’s meant to me. The master’s death and all. Policemen all over the place, poking their noses here and there - would you believe it, even the dustbins they had to have their noses in, and questions! - They wouldn’t have done with asking questions. Oh, that I should have lived to see such a thing - the doctor, such a quiet gentleman as he always was, and made Sir Bartholomew, too, which a proud day it was to all of us, as Beatrice and I well remember, though she’s been here two years less than I have. And such questions as that police fellow (for gentleman I will not call him, having been accustomed to gentlemen and their ways and knowing what’s what) fellow, I say, whether or no he is a superintendent - ” Mrs. Leckie paused, took breath and extricated herself from the somewhat complicated conversational morass into which she had fallen. “Questions, that’s what I say, about all the maids in the house, and good girls they are, every one of them - not that I’d say that Doris gets up when she should do in the morning. I have to speak about it at least once a week, and Vickie, she’s inclined to be impertinent, but, there, with the young ones you can’t expect the training - their mothers don’t give it to them nowadays - but good girls they are, and no police superintendent shall make me say otherwise. ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘you needn’t think I’m going to say anything against my girls. They’re good girls, they are, and as to having anything to do with murder, why it’s right-down wicked to suggest such a thing.”
    Mrs. Leckie paused.
    “Mr. Ellis, now - that’s different. I don’t know anything about Mr. Ellis, and couldn’t answer for him in any way, he having been brought from London, and strange to the place, while Mr. Baker was on holiday.”
    “Baker?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.
    “Mr. Baker had been Sir Bartholomew’s butler for the last seven years, sir. He was in London most of the time, in Harley Street. You’ll remember him, sir?” She appealed to Sir Charles, who nodded. “Sir Bartholomew used to bring him up here when he had a party. But