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

“And he was lying there—dead. It’s true! I swear it’s true! Lying just as they said at the inquest. I couldn’t believe it at first. I stooped over him. But he was dead all right. His hand was stone cold and I saw the bullet hole in his head with a hard black crust of blood round it….”

At the memory of it, sweat broke out on his forehead again.

“I saw then I was in a jam. They’d go and say I’d done it. I hadn’t touched anything except his hand and the door handle. I wiped that with my handkerchief, both sides, as I went out, and I stole downstairs as quickly as I could. There was nobody in the hall and I let myself out and legged it away as fast as I could. No wonder I felt queer.”

He paused. His scared eyes went to Poirot.

“That’s the truth. I swear that’s the truth … He was dead already. You’ve got to believe me!”

Poirot got up. He said—and his voice was tired and sad—“I believe you.”

He moved towards the door.

Frank Carter cried out:

“They’ll hang me—they’ll hang me for a cert if they know I was in there.”

Poirot said:

“By telling the truth you have saved yourself from being hanged.”

“I don’t see it. They’ll say—”

Poirot interrupted him.

“Your story has confirmed what I knew to be the truth. You can leave it now to me.”

He went out.

He was not at all happy.

IV

He reached Mr. Barnes’ House at Ealing at 6:45. He remembered that Mr. Barnes had called that a good time of day.

Mr. Barnes was at work in his garden.

He said by way of greeting:

“We need rain, M. Poirot—need it badly.”

He looked thoughtfully at his guest. He said:

“You don’t look very well, M. Poirot?”

“Sometimes,” said Hercule Poirot, “I do not like the things I have to do.”

Mr. Barnes nodded his head sympathetically.

He said:

“I know.”

Hercule Poirot looked vaguely round at the neat arrangement of the small beds. He murmured:

“It is well-planned, this garden. Everything is to scale. It is small but exact.”

Mr. Barnes said: