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

“If she had been a close friend of Mrs. Blunt’s probably you would have known?”

“Oh yes. I don’t believe she knew anyone like that. Mabelle’s friends were all very ordinary people—like us.”

“That, Madame, I cannot allow,” said Poirot gallantly.

Mrs. Adams went on talking of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale as one talks of a friend who has

recently died. She recalled all Mabelle’s good works, her kindnesses, her indefatigable work for the mission, her zeal, her earnestness.

Hercule Poirot listened. As Japp had said, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a real person. She had lived in Calcutta and taught elocution and worked amongst the native population. She had been respectable, well-meaning, a little fussy and stupid perhaps, but also what is termed a woman with a heart of gold.

And Mrs. Adams’ voice ran on: “She was so much in earnest over everything, M. Poirot. And she found people so apathetic—so hard to rouse. It was very difficult to get subscriptions out of people—worse every year, with the income tax rising and the cost of living and everything. She said to me once: ‘When one knows what money can do—the wonderful good you can accomplish with it—well, really sometimes, Alice, I feel I would commit a crime to get it.’ That shows, doesn’t it, M. Poirot, how strongly she felt?”

“She said that, did she?” said Poirot thoughtfully.

He asked, casually, when Miss Sainsbury Seale had enunciated this particular statement, and learned that it had been about three months ago.

He left the house and walked away lost in thought.

He was considering the character of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale.

A nice woman—an earnest and kindly woman—a respectable, decent type of woman. It was amongst that type of person that Mr. Barnes had suggested a potential criminal could be found.

She had travelled back on the same boat from India as Mr. Amberiotis. There seemed reason to believe that she had lunched with him at the Savoy.

She had accosted and claimed acquaintance with Alistair Blunt and laid claim to an intimacy with his wife.

She had twice visited King Leopold Mansions where, later, a dead body had been found dressed in her clothes and with her handbag conveniently identifying it.

A little too convenient, that!

She had left the Glengowrie Court Hotel suddenly after an interview with the police.

Could the theory that Hercule Poirot believed to be true account for and explain all those facts?

He thought it could.

III

These meditations had occupied Hercule Poirot on his homeward way until reaching Regent’s Park. He decided to traverse a part of the Park before taking a taxi on. By experience, he knew to a nicety the moment when his smart patent leather shoes began to press painfully on his feet.

It was a lovely summer’s day and Poirot looked indulgently on courting nursemaids and their swains, laughing and giggling while their chubby charges profited by nurse’s inattention.

Dogs barked and romped.

Little boys sailed boats.

And under nearly every tree was a couple sitting close together….

“Ah! Jeunesse, Jeunesse,” murmured Hercule Poirot, pleasurably affected by the sight.

They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air.

Their figures, however, he considered lamentably deficient. Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer?

He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women … One woman, in particular—what a sumptuous creature—Bird of Paradise—a Venus …

What woman was there amongst these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff? A genuine Russian aristocrat, an aristocrat to her fingertips! And also, he remembered, a most accomplished thief … One of those natural geniuses …