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

“Ah, pardon—but let us first look at it the other way round. It was the real Miss Sainsbury Seale. She does not tell lies. So the story must be true.”

“I suppose you can look at it that way—but it seems very unlikely—”

“Of course it is unlikely! But taking that second hypothesis as fact—the story is true. Therefore Miss Sainsbury Seale did know your wife. She knew her well. Therefore—your wife must have been the type of person Miss Sainsbury Seale would have known well. Someone in her own station of life. An Anglo-Indian—a missionary—or, to go back farther still—an actress—Therefore—not Rebecca Arnholt!

“Now, M. Blunt, do you see what I meant when I talked of a private and a public life? You are the great banker. But you are also a man who married a rich wife. And before you married her you were only a junior partner in the firm—not very long down from Oxford.

“You comprehend—I began to look at the case the right way up. Expense no object? Naturally not—to you. Reckless of human life—that, too, since for a long time you have been virtually a dictator and to a dictator his own life becomes unduly important and those of others unimportant.”

Alistair Blunt said:

“What are you suggesting, M. Poirot?”

Poirot said quietly:

“I am suggesting, M. Blunt, that when you married Rebecca Arnholt, you were married already. That, dazzled by the vista, not so much of wealth, as of power, you suppressed that fact and deliberately committed bigamy. That your real wife acquiesced in the situation.”

“And who was this real wife?”

“Mrs. Albert Chapman was the name she went under at King Leopold Mansions—a handy spot, not five minutes’ walk from your house on the Chelsea Embankment. You borrowed the name of a real secret agent, realizing that it would give support to her hints of a husband engaged in intelligence work. Your scheme succeeded perfectly. No suspicion was ever aroused. Nevertheless, the fact remained, you had never been legally married to Rebecca Arnholt and you were guilty of bigamy. You never dreamt of danger after so many years. It came out of the blue—in the form of a tiresome woman who remembered you after nearly twenty years, as her friend’s husband. Chance brought her back to this country, chance let her meet you in Queen Charlotte Street—it was chance that your niece was with you and heard what she said to you. Otherwise I might never have guessed.”

“I told you about that myself, my dear Poirot.”

“No, it was your niece who insisted on telling me and you could not very well protest too violently in case it might arouse suspicions. And after that meeting, one more evil chance (from your point of view) occurred. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale met Amberiotis, went to lunch with him and babbled to him of this meeting with a friend’s husband—‘after all these years!’—‘Looked older, of course, but had hardly changed!’ That, I admit, is pure guesswork on my part but I believe it is what happened. I do not think that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale realized for a moment that the Mr. Blunt her friend had married was the shadowy figure behind the finance of the world. The name, after all, is not an uncommon one. But Amberiotis, remember, in addition to his espionage activities, was a blackmailer. Blackmailers have an uncanny nose for a secret. Amberiotis wondered. Easy to find out just who the Mr. Blunt was. And then, I have no doubt, he wrote to you or telephoned … Oh, yes—a gold mine for Amberiotis.”

Poirot paused. He went on:

“There is only one effectual method of dealing with a really efficient and experienced blackmailer. Silence him.

“It was not a case, as I had had erroneously suggested to me, of ‘Blunt must go.’ It was, on the contrary, ‘Amberiotis must go.’ But the answer was the same! The easiest way to get at a man is when he is off his guard, and when is a man more off his guard than in the dentist’s chair?”

Poirot paused again. A faint smile came to his lips. He said:

“The truth about the case was mentioned very early. The page boy, Alfred, was reading a crime story called Death at Eleven Forty-Five. We should have taken that as an omen. For, of course, that is just about the time when Morley was killed. You shot him just as you were leaving. Then you pressed his buzzer, turned on the taps of the wash basin and left the room. You timed it so that you came down the stairs just as Alfred was taking the false Mabelle Sainsbury Seale to the lift. You actually opened the front door, perhaps you passed out, but as the lift doors shut and the lift went up you slipped inside again and went up the stairs.

“I know, from my own visits, just what Alfred did when he took up a patient. He knocked on the door, opened it, and stood back to let the patient pass in. Inside the water was running—inference, Morley was washing his hands as usual. But Alfred couldn’t actually see him.

“As soon as Alfred had gone down again in the lift, you slipped along into the surgery. Together you and your accomplice lifted the body and carried it into the adjoining office. Then a quick hunt through the files, and the charts of Mrs. Chapman and Miss Sainsbury S

eale were cleverly falsified. You put on a white linen coat, perhaps your wife applied a trace of makeup. But nothing much was needed. It was Amberiotis’ first visit to Morley. He had never met you. And your photograph seldom appears in the papers. Besides, why should he have suspicions? A blackmailer does not fear his dentist. Miss Sainsbury Seale goes down and Alfred shows her out. The buzzer goes and Amberiotis is taken up. He finds the dentist washing his hands behind the door in approved fashion. He is conducted to the chair. He indicates the painful tooth. You talk the accustomed patter. You explain it will be best to freeze the gum. The procaine and adrenalin are there. You inject a big enough dose to kill. And incidentally he will not feel any lack of skill in your dentistry!

“Completely unsuspicious, Amberiotis leaves. You bring out Morley’s body and arrange it on the floor, dragging it slightly on the carpet now that you have to manage it single-handed. You wipe the pistol and put it in his hand—wipe the door handle so that your prints shall not be the last. The instruments you used have all been passed into the sterilizer. You leave the room, go down the stairs and slip out of the front door at a suitable moment. That is your only moment of danger.

“It should all have passed off so well! Two people who threatened your safety—both dead. A third person also dead—but that, from your point of view, was unavoidable. And all so easily explained. Morley’s suicide explained by the mistake he had made over Amberiotis. The two deaths cancel out. One of these regrettable accidents.

“But alas for you, I am on the scene. I have doubts. I make objections. All is not going as easily as you hoped. So there must be a second line of defences. There must be, if necessary, a scapegoat. You have already informed yourself minutely, of Morley’s household. There is this man, Frank Carter, he will do. So your accomplice arranges that he shall be engaged in a mysterious fashion as gardener. If, later, he tells such a ridiculous story no one will believe it. In due course, the body in the fur chest will come to light. At first it will be thought to be that of Miss Sainsbury Seale, then the dental evidence will be taken. Big sensation! It may seem a needless complication, but it was necessary. You do not want the police force of England to be looking for a missing Mrs. Albert Chapman. No, let Mrs. Chapman be dead—and let it be Mabelle Sainsbury Seale for whom the police look. Since they can never find her. Besides, through your influence, you can arrange to have the case dropped.

“You did do that, but since it was necessary that you should know just what I was doing, you sent for me and urged me to find the missing woman for you. And you continued, steadily, to ‘force a card’ upon me. Your accomplice rang me up with a melodramatic warning—the same idea—espionage—the public aspect. She is a clever actress, this wife of yours, but to disguise one’s voice the natural tendency is to imitate another voice. Your wife imitated the intonation of Mrs. Olivera. That puzzled me, I may say, a good deal.

“Then I was taken down to Exsham—the final performance was staged. How easy to arrange a loaded pistol amongst laurels so that a man, clipping them, shall unwittingly cause it to go off. The pistol falls at his feet. Startled, he picks it up. What more do you want? He is caught red-handed—with a ridiculous story and with a pistol which is a twin to the one with which Morley was shot.

“And all a snare for the feet of Hercule Poirot.”

Alistair Blunt stirred a little in his chair. His face was grave and a little sad. He said:

“Don’t misunderstand me, M. Poirot. How much do you guess? And how much do you actually know?”

Poirot said: