Three Act Tragedy: “Mr. Satterthwaite sat on the terrace of ‘Crow’s Nest’ and watched his host, Sir Charles Cartwright, climbing up the path from the sea.”

Also Published As: Murder in Three Acts

Detective:  Hercule Poirot

Amateur Detectives: Mr. Satterwaite, Sir Charles Cartwright, Hermoine “Egg” Lytton

Published: 1934

Length: 224 pages

Setting:  Cornwall, Monte Carlo,

This inventive mystery is put together, as the title indicates, in three acts.  While it is billed as an Hercule Poirot mystery, our famous detective does not actually enter to do any detecting until about halfway through the book.  Until then, Mr. Satterwaite (from The Mysterious Mr. Quin), Sir Charles Cartwright, a famous actor and Hermoine “Egg” Lytton act as the amateur detectives who happen to be present at the first murder and then their intuitive powers are tickled by the second.  Egg is in love with the much older Charles and he thinks he is love with her also, however, Oliver Manders, a young man known by Egg, complicates the possible romance.

Cornwall Cottage
~ courtesy of Fritz the Cat on Pixabay

In the first act, the setting is Loomouth, Cornwall at the home of Sir Charles Cartwright.  Sir Charles is a famous actor now in retirement at Loomouth and that night he is holding a house party.  In attendance is Mr. Satterwaite, Sir Bartholomew Strange, a doctor well-known for his psychiatric hospital, Egg, Lady Mary Lytton Gore who is Egg’s mother, Captain and Cynthia Dacres, Muriel Wills a playwright, Oliver Manders, the Reverend and Mrs. Babbington and Hercule Poirot.  When kind, unassuming Rev. Babbington chokes and drops dead of nicotine poisoning, everyone is puzzled as none was found in his glass.  Somehow it must have been an accident.

Monte Carlo
~ Source Wikimedia Commons

But the second act begins in Monte Carlo where Satterwaite and Charles learn of the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange of nicotine poisoning and communicate the information to Poirot, who is also there.  Satterwaite and Charles return to England as they suspect a crime has been committed since the details corresponded too closely to the first murder.  Egg was at the scene of the second murder, another dinner party, and has begged Charles to help.  She is smitten with the much older ex-actor but although he is in love with her, he suspects Oliver Manders is attracted to her and the sentiments may be returned.  But what about this double murder?  Why did Sir Bartholomew Strange dismiss his regular butler only to replace him with a man named Ellis who disappeared and later, whose “butlerness” was questioned?  And how did the poison get into their glasses when their receiving of them appeared random, and no poison was discover in the glasses after the deaths?

Poirot returns to assist these amateur, and inadvertent sleuths, and together they investigate suspects, dig for clues and use the power of deduction to find a rather crafty and wily killer.

Yorkshire village
~ source No Longer Here at Pixabay

Has Christie discovered some sort of addictive formula for her mysteries?  How does she, time and time again, come up with stories and plots that completely draw you in and make you part of, not only the story but the deductive process??  Three Act Tragedy was absolutely one of my favourites in my chronological Christie read, perhaps only following The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Unfinished Portrait, The Murder At The Vicarage and that stellar short story called The Call of Wings which is found in The Hound of Death short story compilation. Christie is truly the Queen of Mystery!

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