Three Act Tragedy
An actor's dinner party, a poisoned cocktail and a killer who played a butler.
Three Act Tragedy is a Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the US in October 1934 as Murder in Three Acts. Poirot is supported by Mr Satterthwaite, in the one book in which Satterthwaite collaborates with him. The novel was adapted for television in 1986 as Murder in Three Acts and in 2010 as Three Act Tragedy.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Agatha Christie
- Country
- United Kingdom; United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Hercule Poirot
- Genre
- Crime novel, Theatre-fiction
- Publisher
- Dodd
- Mead (US)
- Collins Crime Club (UK)
- Released
- October 1934 (Dodd, Mead) (US), January 1935 (Collins Crime Club) (UK)
- Format
- Print (hardback & paperback)
Lore & Background
The stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright hosts a dinner party in Cornwall, where the Reverend Babbington dies after sipping a cocktail. Later the psychiatrist Sir Bartholomew Strange dies of nicotine poisoning at his own party, and his temporary butler, Ellis, has disappeared. Babbington's body is exhumed and shows nicotine poisoning too. Cartwright, Satterthwaite and Egg Lytton Gore investigate, with Poirot as consultant, and a patient at Strange's sanatorium, Mrs De Rushbridger, is murdered before they can meet her.
Reader's Guide
Poirot denounces Cartwright as the killer. Cartwright wanted to marry Egg but already had a wife in a lunatic asylum whom he could not divorce, so he murdered Strange, his oldest friend and the only one who knew of the marriage, after persuading him to let him play his butler as a joke.
More in Cases & Stories
Elsewhere in Hercule Poirot
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