Agatha Christie - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

"I see," said Poirot, with a sigh. "I see…"

Japp said kindly, "I know what you feel, old boy. But you can't have a nice juicy murder every time! So long. All I can say by way of apology is the old phrase: 'Sorry you have been troubled'!"

He rang off.

Hercule Poirot sat at his handsome modern desk. He liked modern furniture. Its squareness and solidity were more agreeable to him than the soft contours of antique models.

In front of him was a square sheet of paper with neat headings and comments. Against some of them were query marks.

First came:

Amberiotis. Espionage. In England for that purpose? Was in India last year. During period of riots and unrest. Could be a communist agent.

There was a space and then the next heading:

Frank Carter? Morley thought him unsatisfactory. Was discharged from his employment recently. Why?

After that came a name with merely a question mark:

Howard Raikes?

Next came a sentence in quotes:

"But that's absurd!"???

Hercule Poirot's head was poised interrogatively. Outside the window a bird was carrying a twig to build its nest. Hercule Poirot looked rather like a bird as he sat there with his egg-shaped head cocked on one side.

He made another entry a little further down.

Mr. Barnes?

He paused and then wrote:

Morley's office? Mark on carpet. Possibilities.

He considered that last entry for some time.

Then he got up, called for his hat and stick and went out.

Three-quarters of an hour later Hercule Poirot came out of the underground station at Ealing Broadway and five minutes after that he had reached his destination – 88 Castlegardens Road.

It was a small, semidetached house, and the neatness of the front garden drew an admiring nod from Hercule Poirot.

"Admirably symmetrical," he murmured to himself. Mr. Barnes was at home and Poirot was shown into a small precise dining room and here presently Mr. Barnes came to him.

Mr. Barnes was a small man with twinkling eyes and a nearly bald head. He peeped over the top of his glasses at his visitor while in his left hand he twirled the card that Poirot had given the maid.

He said in a small, prim, almost falsetto voice:

"Well, well, M. Poirot? I am honored, I am sure."

"You must excuse my calling upon you in this informal manner," said Poirot punctiliously.

"Much the best way," said Mr. Barnes. "And the time is admirable, too. A quarter to seven – very sound time at this period of the year for catching anyone at home." He waved his hand. "Sit down, M. Poirot. I've no doubt we've got a good deal to talk about. Number 58 Queen Charlotte Street, I suppose?"

Poirot said:

"You suppose rightly – but why should you suppose anything of the kind?"

"My dear sir," said Mr. Barnes, "I've been retired from the Home Office for some time now – but I've not gone quite rusty yet. If there's any hush hush business, it's far better not to use the police. Draws attention to it all!"

Poirot said:

"I will ask yet another question. Why should you suppose this is a hush hush business?"

"Isn't it?" asked the other. "Well, if it isn't, in my opinion it ought to be."

He leaned forward and tapped with his pince-nez' on the arm of the chair.

"In Secret Service work it's never the little fry you want – it's the big bugs at the top – but to get them you've got to be careful not to alarm the little fry."

"It seems to me, Mr. Barnes, that you know more than I do," said Hercule Poirot.

"Don't know anything at all," replied the other, "just put two and two together."

"One of those two being?"

"Amberiotis," said Mr. Barnes promptly. "You forget I sat opposite to him in the waiting room for a minute or two. He didn't know me. I was always an insignificant chap. Not a bad thing sometimes. But I knew him all right – and I could guess what he was up to over here."

"Which was?"

Mr. Barnes twinkled more than ever.

"We're very tiresome people in this country. We're conservative, you know, conservative to the backbone. We grumble a lot, but we don't really want to smash our democratic government and try newfangled experiments. That's what's so heartbreaking to the wretched foreign agitator who's working full time and over! The whole trouble is – from their point of view – that we really are, as a country, comparatively solvent. Hardly any other country in Europe is at the moment! To upset England – really upset it – you've got to play hell with its finance – that's what it comes to! And you can't play hell with its finance when you've got men like Alistair Blunt at the helm."

Mr. Barnes paused and then went on:

"Blunt is the kind of man who in private life would always pay his bills and live within his income – whether he'd got twopence a year or several million makes no difference. He is that type of fellow. And he just simply thinks that there's no reason why a country shouldn't do the same! No costly experiments. No frenzied expenditure on possible Utopias. That's why -" he paused – "that's why certain people have made up their minds that Blunt must go."

"Ah," said Poirot.

Mr. Barnes nodded.

"Yes," he said. "I know what I'm talking about. Quite nice people, some of 'em. Long-haired, earnest-eyed, and full of ideals of a better world. Others not so nice, rather nasty in fact. Furtive little rats with beards and foreign accents. And another lot again of the Big Bully type. But they've all got the same idea: Blunt Must Go!"

He tilted his chair gently back and forward again.

"Sweep away the old order! The Tories, the Conservatives, the Die-hards, the hard-headed suspicious Business Men, that's the idea. Perhaps these people are right – I don't know – but I know one thing – you've got to have something to put in the place of the old order – something that will work – not just something that sounds all right. Well, we needn't go into that. We're dealing with concrete facts, not abstract theories. Take away the props and the building will come down. Blunt is one of the props of Things as They Are."

He leaned forward.

"They're out after Blunt all right. That I know. And it's my opinion that yesterday morning they nearly got him. I may be wrong – but it's been tried before. The method, I mean."

He paused and then quietly, circumspectly, he mentioned three names. An unusually able Chancellor of the Exchequer, a progressive and farsighted manufacturer, and a hopeful young politician who had captured the public fancy. The first had died on the operating table, the second had succumbed to an obscure disease which had been recognized too late, the third had been run down by a car and killed.

"It's very easy," said Mr. Barnes. "The anaesthetist muffled the giving of the anaesthetic – well, that does happen. In the second case the symptoms were puzzling. The doctor was just a well meaning G.P., couldn't be expected to recognize them. In the third case, anxious mother was driving car in a hurry to get to her sick child. Sob stuff – the jury acquitted her of blame!"

He paused:

"All quite natural. And soon forgotten. But I'll just tell you where those three people are now. The anaesthetist is set up on his own with a first-class research laboratory – no expense spared. That G.P. has retired from practice. He's got a yacht, and a nice little place on the Broads. The mother is giving all her children a first-class education, ponies to ride in the holidays, nice house in the country with a big garden and paddocks."

He nodded his head slowly.

"In every profession and walk of life there is someone who is vulnerable to temptation. The trouble in our case was that Morley wasn't!"

"You think it was like that?" said Hercule Poirot.