“It is nothing –nothing. A tragedy in three acts –and now the curtain has fallen” (248).
In 1935, Dame Agatha Christie’s second husband Max Mallowan began a new Middle Eastern excavation at Chagar Bazar in Syria, along with his compatriots Robin “Mac” Macartney and Richard Barnett (a “mine of esoteric learning”) as well as about 145 workmen. Details of the dig were later offered in Mallowan’s memoirs and also Agatha Christie’s autobiography Come, Tell Me How You Live. Christie spent a great deal of time on the dig while also writing her books and developing photographs in the rudimentary dark room constructed at the dig site for her. As Charles Osborne writes: “Small wonder that, although she enjoyed her Middle East experience every year, toward the end of each season Agatha would begin to daydream of Devon, of red rocks and blue sea, of her daughter, her dog, bowls of Devonshire cream, apples, and bathing” (124). In the stretch from late 1934 through early 1936, Christie published three crime novels: Three Act Tragedy (also known as by its American title “Murder in Three Acts” as published in the United States the year prior in 1934), as well as the novels Death in the Clouds (also known as “Death in the Air”), and The ABC Murders. Notably, Captain Hastings is absent in the former two novels but appears in the latter.
Three Act Tragedy concerns the sudden death of two seemingly unrelated individuals at dinner parties, and although Hercule Poirot is absent for most of the story, he finally makes a triumphant appearance in the last third section of the novel to solve the mystery. Three Act Tragedy is laid out like a theatrical program, complete with a playbill – the first three chapters are “First Act: Suspicion,” the next seven are “Second Act: Certainty,” and the final fifteen are “Third Act: Discovery.” Christie even includes a cast and credits list at the start of the novel: Directed by Sir Charles Cartwright; Assistant Directors: Mr. Satterthwaite, Miss Hermione Lytton Gore; Clothing by Ambrosine Ltd; and Illumination by Hercule Poirot.
Sir Charles Cartwright is a “well-built, sunburnt man of middle age.” He is a famous actor who has retired to Cornwall by the sea where he owns a lavish retrofitted bungalow called the “Crow’s Nest” which overlooks the harbor at Loomouth (a fictional town). He is known to be a “a gay debonair breaker of hearts,” unmarried but a man who has had plenty of affairs with actresses and the like. Additionally, he always seems to be playing a role. At present, he is playing the role of ex-Naval man while hosting a party at his home alongside his friend Mr. Satterthwaite, “a dried-up little pipkin of a man” and “a patron of art and the drama, a determined but pleasant snob… Withal a man of considerable intelligence and a very shrewd observer of people and things.” (Satterthwaite makes his only appearance in a novel, though he has appeared in Christie’s Harley Quin stories).
At the party, a local clergyman named Mr. Babbington suddenly teeters over and collapses dead. The shock leaves the partygoers bewildered. Was it a natural death? Babbington was an old man in ill health after all (he was suffering from neuritis and rheumatoid arthritis). Did he commit suicide? This seems an unlikely act, especially at a party. Or was he poisoned? Could this have been the result of foul play? It seems impossible, Babbington was well-liked with no earthly enemies. And an inspection of his martini glass reveals only vermouth and gin, no presence of poison.
Distraught over Babbington’s death, but even more so over the apparently unrequited affection of another party attendee Miss Hermione Lytton Gore who goes by the odd nickname “Egg,” Sir Charles decides to leave his home in Cornwall and relocate to Monte Carlo in the south of France. Some time later, Satterthwaite and Sir Charles regroup together along the French Riviera when Sir Charles spots an unusual two-day old report in the Daily Mail about the death of another person who attended his party in Cornwall: a celebrated doctor named Sir Bartholomew Strange. Sir Bartholomew was apparently entertaining a party of guests at his home Melfort Abbey in Yorkshire when he suddenly had a seizure after drinking a glass of port. Now, Sir Charles and Satterthwaite strongly suspect foul play is afoot. This is followed by an urgent letter from Egg, begging Sir Charles to return to England to help with this. Amazingly, she was in attendance at the party, along with most of the other attendees at Sir Charles’s earlier party. Two unrelated men dying at similar parties with nearly identical attendees –what could be going on here? Sir Charles and Satterthwaite hop aboard the Blue Train and head back home in a nice nod to a prior Poirot novel.
Our chief cast of characters include the following:
- Miss Hermione Lytton Gore (or “Egg”) — she is vivacious and lively, a beautiful young woman, the daughter of Lady Mary, and claims to be a Christian, or at least spiritual. She has developed a kind of “hero-worship” for the famous actor Sir Charles. She also has deep affection for another man, a slightly suspicious figure named Oliver Manders, but her mother wants her to quickly settle down with Sir Charles. She lives with her mother in Loomouth, and her mother later explains the nickname “Egg” came when she was a baby girl, she would try to stand up and walk, only to topple over like a helpless little egg.
- Lady Mary Lytton Gore – the mother of Egg, she is a widow who had three children, her husband Ronald caught pneumonia and died, leaving her penniless. He is described as a bad man. Lady Mary urgently wants her daughter to marry Sir Charles for financial security reasons. She doesn’t trust Oliver Manders and his apparent atheism. She later makes a minor appearance in the Poirot novel Five Little Pigs.
- Mr. Satterthwaite — one of our chief narrators in the novel (rather unsuccessfully filling the shoes of Hastings), he is always an onlooker and fancies himself someone who understands women, “He was, he felt, always in the stalls watching the play, never on the stage taking part in the drama.”
- Reverend Stephen Babbington – a local parson and rector of Loomouth, his son Robin was killed in India but he and his wife have several other adult children. He suddenly falls over dead at Sir Charles’s party.
- Mrs. Margaret Babbington – the wife of Reverend Babbington. She is lonely, has a sister in Japan, and her other adult children: Edward in Ceylon and Lloyd in South Africa, Stephen was third officer on the ship The Angola. She notably uses nicotine spray on her roses.
- Sir Bartholomew Strange (or “Tollie”) – a distinguished Harley Street physician, a well-known specialist in nervous disorders, he received a Knighthood in the Birthday Honours list. After the sudden death of Babbington, he is urgently recalled to London to tend to a patient in critical condition. He later dies under similarly murky circumstances at this home at Melfourt Abbey during a dinner party with many of the same attendees as the party where Babbington was died.
- Angela “Angie” Sutcliffe – once a celebrated actress, who is now greying. She had an affair with Sir Charles years ago, and suspects Egg is jealous of her, but now Angie and Sir Charles are the best of friends.
- Captain Freddie Dacres – a “little red, foxy man with a short moustache and slightly shifty eyes” who has faced some sort of unexplained recent scandal at the horse races. He says he saw Muriel Wills come out of his room the morning after Sir Bartholomew’s death, but his wife doubts him.
- Mrs. Cynthia Dacres – wife of Captain Dacres and the proprietress of Ambrosine Ltd, the successful dress-making establishment (which we later learn is apparently struggling and debt-ridden). Her relationship with her husband is questionably loving.
- Miss Muriel Wills (better known as the playwright Anthony Astor) – a successful playwright with blue eyes and pince-nez glasses. Captain Dacres claims to have seen Miss Wills come out of his room on the morning after the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange.
- Oliver Manders – a handsome twenty-five-year-old journalist who seems suspicious and foreign until he is revealed to be a “slippery Shylock” –here Christie’s casual British antisemitism reappears. In the past, Manders has questioned the authority of the church (he has argued with Reverend Babbington) and he is secretly in love with Egg. He had a vehicle accident outside Melfort Abbey on the night of Sir Bartholomew Strange’s house party, and attended the party as a last-minute guest. He later finds a newspaper clipping about nicotine poisoning in his pocket, but he claims to have no idea how it got there.
- Miss Violet Milray – “a tall and exceedingly ugly woman,” she has worked for Sir Charles for six years, first as a secretary in London and then as a glorified housekeeper in his retirement, says she has an invalid mother and she raises the superstitious concern of thirteen attendees at Sir Charles’s dinner party so she invites herself to join.
- Mrs. Margaret de Rushbridger – a mysterious woman who suffers from nervous lapses, she lives at Dr. Strange’s sanatorium and wrestles with amnesia, she recently arrived from the West Indies. Despite the staff claiming she is unable to speak to investigators, she later sends a telegram to Poirot stating she has urgent information for him. But upon arrival back at the sanitarium, she is found dead after receiving a box of liqueur chocolates laced with nicotine poison.
- Ellis – a mysterious replacement butler for Sir Bartholomew Strange who suddenly vanishes after the death of his master, he is widely suspected of being the culprit but no one can seem to find him. Miss Wills claims he has an unusual birthmark shaped like Australia on his hand (though she mixes up whether it is his right or left hand). What happened to Ellis? Perhaps he was also murdered or maybe he escaped from the house via a secret passage. While inspecting his conspicuously empty room, Sir Charles and Satterthwaite discover a small pile of letters that indicate perhaps blackmail was involved.
Of course, despite Sir Charles and Satterthwaite leading most of the investigation in this mystery (later flanked by Egg), they are soon joined by a “most conceited little devil” and “a celebrated little beggar” with outrageously large moustache, the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Satterthwaite has met him in the past). And actually in Three Act Tragedy, Poirot reveals a somewhat more tender side of himself –he seems sad and bored in retirement (perhaps Christie should not have written him to be retired so early in the series) and Poirot reveals a bit about his background: he was raised poor before entering the police force where he made a name for himself; then came the war and he fled as a refugee to England where a kind lady gave him hospitality but she was later killed. Poirot then tracked down the murderer which set about his career as a private inquiry agent in England. I don’t recall having received such detail into our favorite egg-headed detective’s past in prior novels. In another uniquely revealing moment, Poirot confesses that his broken English is spoken merely as a ploy to invite ridicule, an ironic distraction to put his interlocutors at ease, and hopefully seem less threatening. I thought this was a clever, a nice use of those grey cells.
At any rate, since there are two parties and several members of the aristocracy introduced, there are numerous minor characters featured in this novel – Temple (a parlourmaid), Martha Leckie (a cook), Beatrice Church (an upper housemaid), Doris Coker (an under housemaid), Victoria Ball (a between-maid), Alice West (a parloumaid), Violet Bassington (a kitchenmaid), Gladys Lyndon (a secretary), Baker (a former butler struggling with ill health), and many others like chief of police Colonel Johnson who is an old acquaintance of Satterthwaite. And admittedly, much of the middle section of Three Act Tragedy really drags as the characters go about interviewing them all individually. However, a major twist comes when a toxicology report shows Sir Bartholomew Strange died of nicotine poisoning and the exhumed body of Reverend Babbington gives the same analysis. Who would have been trying to poison both of these men with nicotine? And why? The big reveal packs a punch as Poirot takes control of the investigation and contrives a fake “Sherry Party” with all the same attendees and Sir Charles fakes his own death in the same manner as Babbington and Strange, a critical moment that points to the true killer…
“‘How superior detective stories are to life,’ sighed Sir Charles. ‘In fiction there is always some distinguishing characteristic’” (81).
Solution (Spoilers Ahead)
CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS
In the end, Poirot builds one of his famous house of cards and gathers everyone together to declare the murderer has been hiding in plain sight the whole time –it is none other than Sir Charles! As it turns out, Sir Charles is in love with Egg, desperately wanting to marry her, but he cannot because is already married to a woman in an insane asylum: Gladys Mary Mugg. And “Sir Charles Cartwright” is merely a stage name; sir Charles’s birth name is Mugg (a name which he found unsuitable for the stage, a secret he reveals to Egg in a tender moment). Unfortunately, Poirot simply tells us he discovered this fact, we do not actually watch him do it. Notably, British law prohibits divorce from someone while they are in a prison or an asylum, so Sir Charles has remained trapped in his marriage. And the only man who knew about the marriage? Sir Bartholomew Strange. Hence, why Sir Charles needed to dispose of Dr. Strange so he could be free to marry his beloved Egg.
But at his earlier party in Cornwall, Sir Charles decided to have a mere “dress rehearsal” to see if he could actually pull it off, switching the poison glass in his coat with no one watching (an act which Poirot successfully recreates at his “Sherry Party”) –“The murder of Stephen Babbington was neither more nor less than a dress rehearsal” (245). He technically could have killed nearly anyone else at the party who picked up the nicotine-poisoned drink, he didn’t really care one way or the other. This makes the death of Reverend Babbington little more than a random casualty in a much larger plan. After the party, Sir Charles decided he wanted to give a performance again, almost as a practical joke, so he convinced Dr. Strange to let him assume the role of a butler named Ellis –thus Ellis was an entirely fabricated character of Sir Charles’s own making, hence why no one can seem to find him after the murder. And it was actually Sir Charles (playing the role of Ellis) who secretly poisoned Dr. Strange at his own party. He then left behind false evidence –the letters from Ellis which suggest there was a blackmail scheme—to throw people off his trail. And to top it all off, Sir Charles then sent a fake telegram from his wife, Mrs. de Rushbridger, and then killed her as a distraction with the poisoned chocolates (perhaps an example of Christie making a nod to another Golden Age detective novel, The Poisoned Chocolates Case in 1929 by Anthony Berkeley). Sir Charles murdered all three characters using a pure alkaloid extraction from the rose spray solution, which Poirot confirmed when he found Sir Charles’s distilling equipment at his Cornwall residence (Miss Milray was trying to destroy it). As it turns out Miss Milray was trying to protect her master because she is in love with him. Also, Miss Wills had grown suspicious of Sir Charles, figuring out her own pieces of the puzzle, leading Poirot to hide her away in order to protect her life.
“A man who dramatises himself is sometimes misjudged… One does not take his sincerities seriously” (6).
In the standard edition, the novel ends with an embittered Sir Charles walking away “…he will only choose his exit. The slow one before the eyes of the world, or the quick one off stage” (247). However, in the American version (which is apparently no longer in publication) an alternative ending saw Sir Charles motivated not by a desire to end his marriage, but simply that he was insane after decades on the stage and, fearing his friend Dr. Strange was going to put him away in an asylum, he decided to murder him. This version of the ending is somewhat rare and hard to find today.
At any rate, in the end a sobbing Egg is led away to be cared for by Oliver Manders, and the novel closes with an amusing back and forth between Satterthwaite and Poirot in which Satterthwaite realizes that anyone at Sir Charles’s party could have drunk the poisoned cocktail, even himself, to which Poirot responds that there is “an even more terrible possibility that you have not considered… It might have been ME.”
These delightful little moments make Three Act Tragedy a charming read. Its running motif of the unfolding investigation being likened to a theatrical performance, and the “dress rehearsal” murder plot contained therein, are brilliant. However, for two-thirds of the novel we hardly see Poirot at all (he doesn’t re-enter the story until midway through the final act) at the same time we are mired in a string of somewhat uninteresting interviews conducted by Sir Charles, Satterthwaite, and Egg. And although the final twist is a shock, one wonders why Sir Charles would go to such great lengths just to be with his precious Egg? If he is willing to murder so many of his own friends, why not simply find a subtle way to kill his wife so she is out of the picture? Perhaps he could have sent her some poisoned chocolates? There are other happy little contrivances, as well, such as the fact that the ailing, elderly Reverend Babbington happens to be the partygoer who drinks the poison, thus making it highly plausible that he died of natural causes. However, if one of the younger attendees suddenly died, wouldn’t this likely force an investigation and risk Sir Charles’s whole plan? Regardless, Three Act Tragedy shows a genius bit of misdirection and it gives Christie another opportunity to display her knowledge of poisons and toxins from her years working as a World War I nurse. Three Act Tragedy is a terrific middle-tier Christie novel, even if not every aspect of the mystery stands up to scrutiny.
Christie, Agatha. Three Act Tragedy. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, first published as “Murder in Three Acts” in the United States in 1934, and released in the UK the following year (Harper Paperback, republished in 2011). “Dedicated to My Friends, Geoffrey and Violet Shipston.”