Three Act Tragedy Read Free

for crime—it comes to them.”
    â€œIn that case,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “perhaps it is as well that Miss Milray is joining us, and that we are not sitting down thirteen to dinner.”
    â€œWell,” said Sir Charles handsomely, “you can have your murder, Tollie, if you’re so keen on it. I make only one stipulation—that I shan’t be the corpse.”
    And, laughing, the three men went into the house.

Two
I NCIDENT B EFORE D INNER
    T he principal interest of Mr. Satterthwaite’s life was people.
    He was on the whole more interested in women than men. For a manly man, Mr. Satterthwaite knew far too much about women. There was a womanish strain in his character which lent him insight into the feminine mind. Women all his life had confided in him, but they had never taken him seriously. Sometimes he felt a little bitter about this. He was, he felt, always in the stalls watching the play, never on the stage taking part in the drama. But in truth the rôle of onlooker suited him very well.
    This evening, sitting in the large room giving onto the terrace, cleverly decorated by a modern firm to resemble a ship’s cabin de luxe, he was principally interested in the exact shade of hair dye attained by Cynthia Dacres. It was an entirely new tone—straight from Paris, he suspected—a curious and rather pleasing effect of greenish bronze. What Mrs. Dacres really looked like it was impossible to tell. She was a tall woman with a figure perfectly disciplined to the demands of the moment. Her neck and arms were herusual shade of summer tan for the country—whether naturally or artificially produced it was impossible to tell. The greenish bronze hair was set in a clever and novel style that only London’s best hairdresser could achieve. Her plucked eyebrows, darkened lashes, exquisitively made-up face, and mouth lipsticked to a curve that its naturally straight line did not possess, seemed all adjuncts to the perfection of her evening gown of a deep and unusual blue, cut very simply it seemed (though this was ludicrously far from the case) and of an unusual material—dull, but with hidden lights in it.
    â€œThat’s a clever woman,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, eyeing her with approval. “I wonder what she’s really like.”
    But this time he meant in mind, not in body.
    Her words came drawlingly, in the mode of the moment.
    â€œMy dear, it wasn’t possible. I mean, things either are possible or they’re not. This wasn’t. It was simply penetrating.”
    That was the new word just now—everything was “penetrating.”
    Sir Charles was vigorously shaking cocktails and talking to Angela Sutcliffe, a tall, grey-haired woman with a mischievous mouth and fine eyes.
    Dacres was talking to Bartholomew Strange.
    â€œEveryone knows what’s wrong with old Ladisbourne. The whole stable knows.”
    He spoke in a high clipped voice—a little red, foxy man with a short moustache and slightly shifty eyes.
    Beside Mr. Satterthwaite sat Miss Wills, whose play, One-Way Traffic, had been acclaimed as one of the most witty and daring seen in London for some years. Miss Wills was tall and thin, with areceding chin and very badly waved fair hair. She wore pince-nez, and was dressed in exceedingly limp green chiffon. Her voice was high and undistinguished.
    â€œI went to the South of France,” she said. “But, really, I didn’t enjoy it very much. Not friendly at all. But of course it’s useful to me in my work—to see all the goings-on, you know.”
    Mr. Satterthwaite thought: “Poor soul. Cut off by success from her spiritual home—a boardinghouse in Bournemouth. That’s where she’d like to be.” He marvelled at the difference between written works and their authors. That cultivated “man-of-the-world” tone that Anthony Astor imparted to his plays—what faintest spark of it