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

He paused and then quietly, circumspectly, he mentioned three names. An unusually able Chancellor of the Exchequer, a progressive and farsighted manufacturer, and a hopeful young politician who had captured the public fancy. The first had died on the operating table, the second had succumbed to an obscure disease which had been recognized too late, the third had been run down by a car and killed.

“It’s very easy,” said Mr. Barnes. “The anesthetist muffed the giving of the anesthetic—well, that does happen. In the second case the symptoms were puzzling. The doctor was just a well-meaning G.P., couldn’t be expected to recognize them. In the third case, anxious mother was driving car in a hurry to get to her sick child. Sob stuff—the jury acquitted her of blame!”

He paused:

“All quite natural. And soon forgotten. But I’ll just tell you where those three people are now. The anesthetist is set up on his own with a first-class research laboratory—no expense spared. That G.P. has retired from practice. He’s got a yacht, and a nice little place on the Broads. The mother is giving all her children a first-class education, ponies to ride in the holidays, nice house in the country with a big garden and paddocks.”

He nodded his head slowly.

“In every profession and walk of life there is someone who is vulnerable to temptation. The trouble in our case is that Morley wasn’t!”

“You think it was like that?” said Hercule Poirot.

Mr. Barnes said:

“I do. It’s not easy to get at one of these big men, you know. They’re fairly well protected. The car stunt is risky and doesn’t always succeed. But a man is defenceless enough in a dentist’s chair.”

He took off his pince-nez, polished them and put them on again. He said:

“That’s my theory! Morley wouldn’t do the job. He knew too much, though, so they had to put him out.”

“They?” asked Poirot.

“When I say they—I mean the organization that’s behind all this. Only one person actually did the job, of course.”

“Which person?”

“Well, I could make a guess,” said Mr. Barnes, “but it’s only a guess and I might be wrong.”

Poirot said quietly: “Reilly?”

“Of course! He’s the obvious person. I think that probably they never asked Morley to do the job himself. What he was to do, was to turn Blunt over to his partner at the last minute. Sudden illness, something of that sort. Reilly would have done the actual business—and there would have been another regrettable accident—death of a famous banker—unhappy young dentist in court in such a state of dither and misery that he would have been let down light. He’d have given up dentistry afterwards—and settled down somewhere on a nice income of several thousands a year.”

Mr. Barnes looked across at Poirot.

“Don’t think I’m romancing,” he said. “These things happen.”

“Yes, yes, I know they happen.”

Mr. Barnes went on, tapping a book with a lurid jacket that lay on a table close at hand: “I read a lot of these spy yarns. Fantastic, some of them. But curiously enough they’re not any more fantastic than the real thing. There are beautiful adventuresses, and dark sinister men with foreign accents, and gangs and international associations and super crooks! I’d blush to see some of the things I know set down in print—nobody would believe them for a minute!”

Poirot said:

“In your theory, where does Amberiotis come in?”

“I’m not quite sure. I think he was meant to take the rap. He’s played a double game more than once and I daresay he was framed. That’s only an idea, mind.”

Hercule Poirot said quietly:

“Granting that your ideas are correct—what will happen next?”

Mr. Barnes rubbed his nose.

“They’ll try to get him again,” he said. “Oh, yes. They’ll have another try. Time’s short. Blunt has got people looking after him, I daresay. They’ll have to be extra careful. It won’t be a man hiding in a bush with a pistol. Nothing so crude as that. You tell ’em to look out for the respectable people—the relations, the old servants, the chemist’s assistant who makes up a medicine, the wine merchant who sells him his port. Getting Alistair Blunt out of the way is worth a great many millions, and it’s wonderful what people will do for—say a nice little income of four thousand a year!”

“As much as that?”

“Possibly more …”