One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Hercule Poirot 23)

“Eleven thirty, Mr. Howard Raikes. Twelve o’clock, Mr. Barnes. That was all the patients this morning. Mr. Reilly isn’t so booked up as Mr. Morley, of course.”

“Can you tell us anyth

ing about any of these patients of Mr. Reilly’s?”

“Colonel Abercrombie has been a patient for a long time, and all Mrs. Heath’s children come to Mr. Reilly. I can’t tell you anything about Mr. Raikes or Mr. Barnes, though I fancy I have heard their names. I take all the telephone calls, you see—”

Japp said:

“We can ask Mr. Reilly ourselves. I should like to see him as soon as possible.”

Miss Nevill went out. Japp said to Poirot:

“All old patients of Mr. Morley’s except Amberiotis. I’m going to have an interesting talk with Mr. Amberiotis presently. He’s the last person, as it stands, to see Morley alive, and we’ve got to make quite sure that when he last saw him, Morley was alive.”

Poirot said slowly, shaking his head:

“You have still to prove motive.”

“I know. That’s what is going to be the teaser. But we may have something about Amberiotis at the Yard.” He added sharply: “You’re very thoughtful, Poirot!”

“I was wondering about something.”

“What was it?”

Poirot said with a faint smile:

“Why Chief Inspector Japp?”

“Eh?”

“I said, ‘Why Chief Inspector Japp?’ An officer of your eminence—is he usually called in to a case of suicide?”

“As a matter of fact, I happened to be nearby at the time. At Lavenham’s—in Wigmore Street. Rather an ingenious system of frauds they’ve had there. They telephoned me there to come on here.”

“But why did they telephone you?”

“Oh, that—that’s simple enough. Alistair Blunt. As soon as the Divisional Inspector heard he’d been here this morning, he got on to the Yard. Mr. Blunt is the kind of person we take care of in this country.”

“You mean that there are people who would like him—out of the way?”

“You bet there are. The Reds, to begin with—and our Black-shirted friends, too. It’s Blunt and his group who are standing solid behind the present Government. Good sound Conservative finance. That’s why, if there were the least chance that there was any funny stuff intended against him this morning, they wanted a thorough investigation.”

Poirot nodded.

“That is what I more or less guessed. And that is the feeling I have”—he waved his hands expressively—“that there was, perhaps—a hitch of some kind. The proper victim was—should have been—Alistair Blunt. Or is this only a beginning—the beginning of a campaign of some kind? I smell—I smell—” he sniffed the air, “—big money in this business!”

Japp said:

“You’re assuming a lot, you know.”

“I am suggesting that ce pauvre Morley was only a pawn in the game. Perhaps he knew something—perhaps he told Blunt something—or they feared he would tell Blunt something—”

He stopped as Gladys Nevill entered the room.

“Mr. Reilly is busy on an extraction case,” she said. “He will be free in about ten minutes if that will be all right?”

Japp said that it would. In the meantime, he said, he would have another talk to the boy Alfred.