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

“I?”

“Yes.”

“My dear fellow—I never had the least idea of Carter’s guilt. As far as I knew, he’d left the house long before Morley was killed. I suppose now they’ve found he didn’t leave when he said he did?”

Poirot said:

“Carter was in the house at twenty-six minutes past twelve. He actually saw the murderer.”

“Then Carter didn’t—”

“Carter saw the murderer, I tell you!”

Mr. Barnes said:

“Did he recognize him?”

Slowly Hercule Poirot shook his head.

SEVENTEEN, EIGHTEEN, MAIDS IN WAITING

I

On the following day Hercule Poirot spent some hours with a theatrical agent of his acquaintance. In the afternoon he went to Oxford. On the day after that he drove down to the country—it was late when he returned.

He had telephoned before he left to make an appointment with Mr. Alistair Blunt for that same evening.

It was half past nine when he reached the Gothic House.

Alistair Blunt was alone in his library when Poirot was shown in.

He looked an eager question at his visitor as he shook hands.

He said:

“Well?”

Slowly, Hercule Poirot nodded his head.

Blunt looked at him in almost incredulous appreciation.

“Have you found her?”

“Yes. Yes, I have found her.”

He sat down. And he sighed.

Alistair Blunt said:

“You are tired?”

“Yes. I am tired. And it is not pretty—what I have to tell you.”

Blunt said:

“Is she dead?”

“That depends,” said Hercule Poirot slowly, “on how you like to look at it.”