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

His instructions were to listen to the other gardeners’ conversations and sound them as to their “red” tendencies, and to pretend to be a bit of a “red” himself. He had been interviewed and instructed in his task by a woman who had told him that she was known as Q.H.56, and that he had been recommended to her as a strong anti-communist. She had interviewed him in a dim light and he did not think he would know her again. She was a red-haired lady with a lot of makeup on.

Poirot groaned. The Phillips Oppenheim touch seemed to be reappearing.

He was tempted to consult Mr. Barnes on the subject.

According to Mr. Barnes these things happened.

The last post brought him something which disturbed him more still.

A cheap envelope in an unformed handwriting, postmarked Hertfordshire.

Poirot opened it and read:

Dear Sir,—

Hoping as you will forgive me for troubling you, but I am

very worried and do not know what to do. I do not want to be mixed up with the police in any way. I know that perhaps I ought to have told something I know before, but as they said the master had shot himself it was all right I thought and I wouldn’t have liked to get Miss Nevill’s young man into trouble and never thought really for one moment as he had done it but now I see he has been took up for shooting at a gentleman in the country and so perhaps he isn’t quite all there and I ought to say but I thought I would write to you, you being a friend of the mistress and asking me so particular the other day if there was anything and of course I wish now I had told you then. But I do hope it won’t mean getting mixed up with the police because I shouldn’t like that and my mother wouldn’t like it either. She has always been most particular.

Yours respectfully

Agnes Fletcher.

Poirot murmured:

“I always knew it was something to do with some man. I guessed the wrong man, that is all.”

FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, MAIDS IN THE KITCHEN

I

The interview with Agnes Fletcher took place in Hertford, in a somewhat derelict teashop, for Agnes had been anxious not to tell her story under Miss Morley’s critical eye.

The first quarter of an hour was taken up listening to exactly how particular Agnes’ mother had always been. Also how Agnes’ father, though a proprietor of licensed premises, had never once had any friction with the police, closing time being strictly observed to the second, and indeed Agnes’ father and mother were universally respected and looked up to in Little Darlingham, Gloucestershire, and none of Mrs. Fletcher’s family of six (two having died in infancy) had ever occasioned their parents the least anxiety. And if Agnes, now, were to get mixed up with the police in any way, Mum and Dad would probably die of it, because as she’d been saying, they’d always held their heads high, and never had no trouble of any kind with the police.

After this had been repeated, da capo, and with various embellishments, several times, Agnes drew a little nearer to the subject of the interview.

“I wouldn’t like to say anything to Miss Morley, sir, because it might be, you see, that she’d say as how I ought to have said something before, but me and cook, we talked it over and we didn’t see as it was any business of ours, because we’d read quite clear and plain in the paper as how the master had made a mistake in the drug he was giving and that he’d shot himself and the pistol was in his hands and everything, so it did seem quite clear, didn’t it, sir?”

“When did you begin to feel differently?” Poirot hoped to get a little nearer the promised revelation by an encouraging but not too direct question.

Agnes replied promptly.

“Seeing it in the paper about that Frank Carter—Miss Nevill’s young man as was. When I read as he’d shot at that gentleman where he was gardener, well, I thought, it looks as if he might be queer in the head, because I do know there’s people it takes like that, think they’re being persecuted, or something, and that they’re ringed round by enemies, and in the end it’s dangerous to keep them at home and they have to be took away to the asylum. And I thought that maybe that Frank Carter was like that, because I did remember that he used to go on about Mr. Morley and say as Mr. Morley was against him and trying to separate him from Miss Nevill, but of course she wouldn’t hear a word against him, and quite right too we thought—Emma and me, because you couldn’t deny as Mr. Carter was very nice-looking and quite the gentleman. But, of course, neither of us thought he’d really done anything to Mr. Morley. We just thought it was a bit queer if you know what I mean.”

Poirot said patiently:

“What was queer?”

“It was that morning, sir, the morning Mr. Morley shot himself. I’d been wondering if I dared run down and get the post. The postman had come but that Alfred hadn’t brought up the letters, which he wouldn’t do, not unless there was some for Miss Morley or Mr. Morley, but if it was just for Emma and me he wouldn’t bother to bring them up till lunch time.

“So I went out on the landing and I looked down over the stairs. Miss Morley didn’t like us going down to the hall, not during the master’s business hours, but I thought maybe as I’d see Alfred taking in a patient to the master and I’d call down to him as he came back.”

Agnes gasped, took a deep breath and went on: “And it was then I saw him—that Frank Carter, I mean. Halfway up the stairs he was—our stairs, I mean, above the master’s floor. And he was standing there waiting and looking down—and I’ve come to feel more and more as though there was something queer about it. He seemed to be listening very intent, if you know what I mean?”

“What time was this?”

“It must have been getting on for half past twelve, sir. And just as I was thinking: There now, it’s Frank Carter, and Miss Nevill’s away for the day and won’t he be disappointed, and I was wondering if I ought to run down and tell him because it looked as though that lump of an Alfred had forgot, otherwise I thought he wouldn’t have been waiting for her. And just as I was hesitating, Mr. Carter, he seemed to make up his mind, and he slipped down the stairs very quick and went along the passage towards the master’s surgery, and I thought to myself, the master won’t like that, and I wondered if there was going to be a row, but just then Emma called me, said whatever was I up to? and I went up again and then, afterwards, I heard the master had shot himself and, of course, it was so awful it just drove everything out of my head. But later, when that Police Inspector had gone I said to Emma, I said, I didn’t say anything about Mr. Carter having been up with the master this morning, and she said was he? and I told her, and she said well, perhaps I ought to tell, but anyway I said I’d better wait a bit, and she agreed, because neither of us didn’t want to get Frank Carter into trouble if we could help. And then, when it came to the inquest and it come out that the master had made that mistake in a drug and really had got the wind up and shot himself, quite natural-like—well, then, of course, there was no call to say anything. But reading that piece in the paper two days ago—Oh! it did give me a turn! And I said to myself, ‘If he’s one of those loonies that thinks they’re persecuted and goes round shooting people, well, then maybe he did shoot the master after all!’”