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

“Not nice,” said Japp. “But what can you expect? She’s been dead well over a month.”

The room they went into was a small lumber and box room. In the middle of it was a big metal chest of the kind used for storing furs. The lid was open.

Poirot stepped forward and looked inside.

He saw the foot first, with the shabby shoe on it and the ornate buckle. His first sight of Miss Sainsbury Seale had been, he remembered, a shoe buckle.

His gaze travelled up, over the green wool coat and skirt till it reached the head.

He made an inarticulate noise.

“I know,” said Japp. “It’s pretty horrible.”

The face had been battered out of all recognizable shape. Add to that the natural process of decomposition, and it was no wonder that both men looked a shade pea green as they turned away.

“Oh well,” said Japp. “It’s all in a day’s work—our day’s work. No doubt about it, ours is a lousy job sometimes. There’s a spot of brandy in the other room. You’d better have some.”

The living room was smartly furnished in an up-to-date style—a good deal of chromium and some large square-looking easy chairs upholstered in a pale fawn geometric fabric.

Poirot found the decanter and helped himself to some brandy. As he finished drinking, he said:

“It was not pretty, that! Now tell me, my friend, all about it.”

Japp said:

“This flat belongs to a Mrs. Albert Chapman. Mrs. Chapman is, I gather, a well-upholstered smart blonde of forty-odd. Pays her bills, fond of an occasional game of bridge with her neighbours but keeps herself to herself more or less. No children. Mr. Chapman is a commercial traveller.

“Sainsbury Seale came here on the evening of our interview with her. About seven fifteen. So she probably came straight here from the Glengowrie Court. She’d been here once before, so the porter says. You see, all perfectly clear and aboveboard—nice friendly call. The porter took Miss Sainsbury Seale up in the lift to this flat. The last he saw of her was standing on the mat pressing the bell.”

Poirot commented:

“He has taken his time to remember this!”

“He’s had gastric trouble, it seems, been away in hospital while another man took on temporarily for him. It wasn’t until about a week ago that he happened to notice in an old paper the description of a ‘wanted woman’ and he said to his wife, ‘Sounds quite like that old cup of tea who came to see Mrs. Chapman on the second floor. She had on a green wool dress and buckles on her shoes.’ And after about another hour he registered again—‘Believe she had a name, too, something like that. Blimey, it was—Mi

ss Something or other Seale!’

“After that,” continued Japp, “it took him about four days to overcome his natural distrust of getting mixed up with the police and come along with his information.

“We didn’t really think it would lead to anything. You’ve no idea how many of these false alarms we’ve had. However, I sent Sergeant Beddoes along—he’s a bright young fellow. A bit too much of this high-class education but he can’t help that. It’s fashionable now.

“Well, Beddoes got a hunch at once that we were on to something at last. For one thing this Mrs. Chapman hadn’t been seen about for over a month. She’d gone away without leaving any address. That was a bit odd. In fact everything he could learn about Mr. and Mrs. Chapman seemed odd.

“He found out the porter hadn’t seen Miss Sainsbury Seale leave again. That in itself wasn’t unusual. She might easily have come down the stairs and gone out without his seeing her. But then the porter told him that Mrs. Chapman had gone away rather suddenly. There was just a big printed notice outside the door the next morning:

NO MILK. TELL NELLIE I AM CALLED AWAY.

“Nellie was the daily maid who did for her. Mrs. Chapman had gone away suddenly once or twice before, so the girl didn’t think it odd, but what was odd was the fact that she hadn’t rung for the porter to take her luggage down or get her a taxi.

“Anyway, Beddoes decided to get into the flat. We got a search warrant and a pass key from the manager. Found nothing of interest except in the bathroom. There had been some hasty clearing up done there. There was a trace of blood on the linoleum—in the corners where it had been missed when the floor was washed over. After that, it was just a question of finding the body. Mrs. Chapman couldn’t have left with any luggage with her or the porter would have known. Therefore the body must still be in the flat. We soon spotted that fur chest—airtight, you know—just the place. Keys were in the dressing table drawer.

“We opened it up—and there was the missing lady! Mistletoe Bough up-to-date.”

Poirot asked:

“What about Mrs. Chapman?”

“What indeed? Who is Sylvia (her name’s Sylvia, by the way), what is she? One thing is certain. Sylvia, or Sylvia’s friends, murdered the lady and put her in the box.”