third act - discovery

chapter 1 mrs babbington

13

mrs. babbington had moved into a small fisherman’s cottage not far from the harbour. she was expecting a sister home from japan in about six months. until her sister arrived she was making no plans for the future. the cottage chanced to be vacant, and she took it for six months. she felt too bewildered by her sudden loss to move away from loomouth. stephen babbington had held the living of st. petroch, loomouth, for seventeen years. they had been, on the whole, seventeen happy and peaceful years, in spite of the sorrow occasioned by the death of her son robin. of her remaining children, edward was in ceylon, lloyd was in south africa, and stephen was third officer on the angolia. they wrote frequently and affectionately, but they could offer neither a home nor companionship to their mother.

margaret babbington was very lonely ...

not that she allowed herself much time for thinking. she was still active in the parish - the new vicar was unmarried, and she spent a good deal of time working in the tiny plot of ground in front of the cottage. she was a woman whose flowers were part of her life. she was working there one afternoon when she heard the latch of the gate click, and looked up to see sir charles cartwright and egg lytton gore.

margaret was not surprised to see egg. she knew that the girl and her mother were due to return shortly. but she was surprised to see sir charles. rumour had insisted that he had left the neighbourhood for good. there had been paragraphs copied from other papers about his doings in the south of france. there had been a board “to be sold” stuck up in the garden of crow's nest. no one had expected sir charles to return. yet return he had. mrs. babbington shook the untidy hair back from her hot forehead and looked ruefully at her earth-stained hands.

“i’m not fit to shake hands,” she said. “i ought to garden in gloves, i know. i do start in them sometimes; but i always tear them off sooner or later. one can feel tings so much better with bare hands.”

she led the way into the house. the tiny sitting-room had been made cosy with chintz. there were photographs and bowls of chrysanthemums.

“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 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 alert. i am amusing, for the sake of saving time, what the result of the autopsy on your husband’s body will be. i am talking 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 - expect 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, somehow smiled a little tearfully. he was getting on, you know, and rather afraid of innovations, but everybody liked him. you couldn’t dislike stephen, sir charles.”

“i suppose, mrs. babbington, that your husband didn’t leave very much money?”

“no. next to nothing. stephen was not good at saving. he gave away far too much. i used to scold him about it.”

“i suppose he had no expectations from anyone? he wasn’t the heir to any property?”

“oh, no. stephen hadn’t many relations. he has a sister who is married to a clergyman in northumberland, but they are very badly off, and all his uncles and aunts are dead.”

“then it does not seem as though there were anyone who could benefit by mr. babbington’s death?”

“no, indeed.”

“let us come back to the question of enemies for a minute. your husband had no enemies, you say; but he may have had as a young man.”

mrs. babbington looked sceptical.

“i should think it very unlikely. stephen hadn’t a quarrelsome nature. he always got on well with people.”

“i don’t want to sound melodramatic,” sir charles coughed a little nervously. “but - er - when he got engaged to you, for instance, there wasn’t any disappointed suitor in the offing?”

a momentary twinkle came into mrs. babbington’s eyes.

“stephen was my father’s curate. he was the first young man i saw when i came home from school. i fell in love with him and he with me. we were engaged for four years, and then he got a living down in kent, and we were able to get married. ours was a very simple love story, sir charles - and a very happy one.”

sir charles bowed his head. mrs. babbington’s simple dignity was very charming.

egg took up the r?le of questioner.

“mrs. babbington, do you think your husband had met any of the guests at sir charles’s that night before?”

mrs. babbington looked slightly puzzled.

“well, there were you and your mother, my dear, and young oliver manders.”

“yes, but any of the others?”

“we had both seen angela sutcliffe in a play in london five years ago. both stephen and i were very excited that we were actually going to meet her.”

“you had never actually met her before?”

“no. we’ve never met any actresses - or actors, for the matter of that - until sir charles came to live here. and that,” added mrs. babbington, “was a great excitement. i don’t think sir charles knows what a wonderful thing it was to us. quite a breath of romance in our lives.”

“you hadn’t met captain and mrs. dacres?”

“was he the little man, and the woman with the wonderful clothes?”

“yes.”

“no. nor the other woman - the one who wrote plays. poor thing, she looked rather out of it, i thought.”

“you’re sure you’d never seen any of them before?”

“i’m quite sure i hadn’t - and so i’m fairly sure stephen hadn’t, either. you see, we do everything together.”

“and mr. babbington didn’t say anything to you - anything at all,”

persisted egg, “about the people you were going to meet, or about them, when he saw them?”

“nothing beforehand - except that he was looking forward to an interesting evening. and when we got there - well, there wasn’t much time - ” her face twisted suddenly.

sir charles broke in quickly.

“you must forgive us badgering you like this. but, you see, we feel that there must be something, if only we could get at it. there must be some reason for an apparently brutal and meaningless murder.”

“i see that,” said mrs. babbington. “if it was murder, there must be some reason ... but i don’t know - i can’t imagine - what that reason could be.”

there was silence for a minute or two, then sir charles said:

“can you give me a slight biographical sketch of your husband’s career?”

mrs. babbington had a good memory for dates. sir charles’s final notes ran thus:

“stephen babbington, born islington, devon, 1868. educated st. paul’s school and oxford. ordained deacon and received a title to the parish of hoxton, 1891. priested 1892. was curate eslington, surrey, to rev. vernon lorrimer, 1894-1899. married margaret lorrimer, 1899, and presented to the living of gilling, kent. transferred to living of st. petroch, loomouth, 1916.”

“that gives us something to go upon,” said sir charles. “our best chance seems to me the time during which mr. babbington was vicar of st. mary’s, gilling. his earlier history seems rather far back to concern any of the people who were at my house that evening.”

mrs. babbington shuddered.

“do you really think - that one of them - ?”

“i don’t know what to think,” said sir charles. “bartholomew saw something or guessed something, and bartholomew strange died same way, and five - ”

“seven,” said egg.

“ - of these people were also present. one of them must be guilty.”

“but why?” cried mrs. babbington. “why? what motive could there be for anyone killing stephen?”

“that,” said sir charles, “is what we are going to find out.”