Agatha Christie - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Japp was busy looking through some letters in a drawer of the dressing table. Hercule Poirot gingerly pulled open a drawer of the chest of drawers. It was full of underclothing. He shut it again modestly, murmuring that Miss Sainsbury Seale seemed to believe in wearing wool next the skin, and opened another drawer which contained stockings.

Japp said:

"Got anything, Poirot?"

Poirot said sadly, as he dangled a pair:

"Ten inch, cheap shiny silk, price probably 2/11."

Japp said:

"You're not valuing for probate, old boy. Two letters here from India, one or two receipts from charitable organizations, no bills. Most estimable character, our Miss Sainsbury Seale."

"But very little taste in dress," said Poirot sadly.

"Probably thought dress worldly." Japp was noting down an address from an old letter dated two months back.

"These people may know something about her," he said. "Address up Hampstead way. Sound as though they were fairly intimate."

There was nothing more to be gleaned at the Glengowrie Court Hotel except the negative fact that Miss Sainsbury Seale had not seemed excited or worried in any way when she went out, and it would appear that she had definitely intended to return since, on passing her friend Mrs. Bolitho in the hall, she had called out:

"After dinner I will show you that Patience I was telling you about."

Moreover, it was the custom at the Glengowrie Court to give notice in the dining room if you intended to be out for a meal. Miss Sainsbury Seale had not done so. Therefore, it seemed clear that she had intended returning for dinner which was served from seven-thirty to eight-thirty.

But she had not returned. She had walked out into the Cromwell Road and disappeared.

Japp and Poirot called at the address in West Hampstead which had headed the letter found.

It was a pleasant house and the Adamses were pleasant people with a large family. They had lived in India for many years and spoke warmly of Miss Sainsbury Seale. But they could not help.

They had not seen her lately, not for a month, in fact, not since they came back from their Easter holidays.

She had been staying then at a hotel near Russell Square. Mrs. Adams gave Poirot the address of it and also the address of some other Anglo-Indian friends of Miss Sainsbury Seale's who lived in Streatham.

But the two men drew a blank in both places. Miss Sainsbury Seale had stayed at the hotel in question, but they remembered very little about her and nothing that could be of any help. She was a nice quiet lady and had lived abroad. The people in Streatham were no help either. They had not seen Miss Sainsbury Seale since February.

There remained the possibility of an accident, but that possibility was dispelled, too. No hospital had admitted any casualty answering to the description given.

Miss Sainsbury Seale had disappeared into space.

On the following morning, Poirot went to the Holborn Palace Hotel and asked for Mr. Howard Raikes.

By this time it would hardly have surprised him to hear that Mr. Howard Raikes, too, had stepped out one evening and had never returned.

Mr. Howard Raikes, however, was still at the Holborn Palace and was said to be breakfasting.

The apparition of Hercule Poirot at the breakfast table seemed to give Mr. Raikes doubtful pleasure.

Though not looking so murderous as in Poirot's disordered recollection of him, his scowl was still formidable – he stared at his uninvited guest and said ungraciously:

"What the hell?"

"You permit?"

Hercule Poirot drew a chair from another table.

Mr. Raikes said:

"Don't mind me! Sit down and make yourself at home!"

Poirot smilingly availed himself of the permission.

Mr. Raikes said ungraciously:

"Well, what do you want?"

"Do you remember me at all, Mr. Raikes?"

"Never set eyes on you in my life."

"There you are wrong. You sat in the same room with me for at least five minutes not more than three days ago."

"I can't remember everyone I meet at some Goddamned party or other."

"It was not a party," said Poirot. "It was a dentist's waiting room."

Some swift emotion flashed into the young man's eyes and died again at once. His manner changed. It was no longer impatient and casual. It became suddenly wary. He looked across at Poirot and said:

"Well?"

Poirot studied him carefully before replying. He felt, quite positively, that this was indeed a dangerous young man. A lean, hungry face, an aggressive jaw, the eyes of a fanatic. It was a face, though, that women might find attractive. He was untidily, even shabbily dressed, and he ate with a careless voraciousness that was, so the man watching him thought, significant.

Poirot summed him up to himself.

"It is a wolf with ideas…"

Raikes said harshly:

"What the hell do you mean – coming here like this?"

"My visit is disagreeable to you?"

"I don't even know who you are."

"I apologize."

Dexterously Poirot whipped out his card case. He extracted a card and passed it across the table. Again that emotion that he could not quite define showed upon Mr. Raikes' lean face. It was not fear – it was more aggressive than fear. After it, quite unquestionably, came anger.

He tossed the card back.

"So that's who you are, is it? I've heard of you."

"Most people have," said Hercule Poirot modestly.

"You're a private dick, aren't you? The expensive kind. The kind people hire when money is no object – when it's worth paying anything in order to save their miserable skins!"

"If you do not drink your coffee," said Hercule Poirot, "it will get cold."

He spoke kindly and with authority.

Raikes stared at him.

"Say, just what kind of an insect are you?"

"The coffee in this country is very bad anyway -" said Poirot.

"I'll say it is," agreed Mr. Raikes with fervor.

"But if you allow it to get cold it is practically undrinkable."

The young man leaned forward.

"What are you getting at? What's the big idea in coming round here?"

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

"I wanted to – see you."

"Oh, yes?" said Mr. Raikes sceptically.

His eyes narrowed.

"If it's money you're after, you've come to the wrong man! The people I'm in with can't afford to buy what they want. Better go back to the man who pays you your salary."

Poirot said, sighing:

"Nobody has paid me anything – yet."

"You're telling me," said Mr. Raikes.

"It is the truth," said Hercule Poirot. "I am wasting a good deal of valuable time for no recompense whatsoever. Simply, shall we say, to assuage my curiosity."

"And I suppose," said Mr. Raikes, "you were just assuaging your curiosity at that darned dentist's the other day."

Poirot shook his head. He said:

"You seem to overlook the most ordinary reason for being in a dentist's waiting room – which is that one is waiting to have one's teeth attended to."

"So that's what you were doing?" Mr. Raikes' tone expressed contemptuous unbelief. "Waiting to have your teeth seen to?"

"Certainly."

"You'll excuse me if I say I don't believe it."

"May I ask then, Mr. Raikes, what you were doing there?"

Mr. Raikes grinned suddenly. He said:

"Got you there! I was waiting to have my teeth seen to also."

"You had perhaps the toothache?"

"That's right, big boy."

"But all the same, you went away without having your teeth attended to?"

"What if I did? That's my business."

He paused – then he said, with a quick savagery of tone,

"Oh, what the hell's the use of all this slick talking? You were there to look after your big shot. Well, he's all right, isn't he? Nothing happened to your precious Mr. Alistair Blunt. You've nothing on me."