Agatha Christie - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Poirot said gently:

"It is an attractive vision."

Jane looked at him scornfully.

"You say that, too!"

"Perhaps because I am old. Their old men have dreams – only dreams, you see."

He paused and then asked in a matter-of-fact voice:

"Why did Mr. Howard Raikes make that appointment in Queen Charlotte Street?"

"Because I wanted him to meet Uncle Alistair and I couldn't see otherwise how to manage it. He'd been so bitter about Uncle Alistair – so full of – of – well – of hate really, that I felt if he could only see him – see what a nice, kindly, unassuming person he is – that – that he would feel differently… I couldn't arrange meeting here because of mother – she would have spoiled everything."

Poirot said:

"But after having made that arrangement, you were – afraid."

Her eyes grew wide and dark. She said:

"Yes. Because – because – sometimes Howard gets carried away. He – he -"

Hercule Poirot said:

"He wants to take a short cut. To exterminate -"

Jane Olivera cried, "Don't!"

Time went on. It was over a month since Mr. Morley's death and there was still no news of Miss Sainsbury Seale.

Japp became increasingly wrathful on the subject.

"Dash it all, Poirot, the woman's got to be somewhere."

"Indubitably, mon cher."

"Either she's dead or alive. If she's dead, where's her body? Say, for instance, she committed suicide -"

"Another suicide?"

"Don't let's get back to that. You still say Morley was murdered – I say it was suicide."

"You haven't traced the pistol?"

"No, it's a foreign make."

"That is suggestive, is it not?"

"Not in the way you mean. Morley had been abroad. He went on cruises, he and his sister. Everybody in the British Isles goes on cruises. He may have picked it up abroad. Lots of people like a gun when they're abroad. They like to feel life's dangerous."

He paused and said:

"Don't sidetrack me. I was saying that if – only if, mind you – that blasted woman committed suicide, if she'd drowned herself, for instance, the body would have come ashore by now. If she was murdered, the same thing."

"Not if a weight was attached to her body and it was put into the Thames."

"From a cellar in Limehouse, I suppose! You're talking like a thriller by a lady novelist."

"I know – I know. I blush when I say these things!"

"And she was done to death by an International gang of crooks, I suppose?"

Poirot sighed. He said:

"I have been told lately that there really are such things."

"Who told you so?"

"Mr. Reginald Barnes of Castlegardens Road, Ealing."

"Well, he might know," said Japp dubiously. "He dealt with aliens when he was at the Home Office."

"And you do not agree?"

"It isn't my branch – oh, yes, there are such things – but they're rather futile as a rule."

There was a momentary silence as Poirot twirled his moustache.

Japp said:

"We've got one or two additional bits of information. She came home from India on the same boat as Amberiotis. But she was second class and he was first, so I don't suppose there's anything in that, although one of the waiters at the Savoy thinks she lunched there with him about a week or so before he died."

"So there may have been a connection between them?"

"There may – but I can't feel it's likely. I can't see a missionary lady being mixed up in any funny business."

"Was Amberiotis mixed up in any 'funny business' as you term it?"

"Yes, he was. He was in close touch with some of our Central European friends. Espionage racket."

"You are sure of that?"

"Yes. Oh, he wasn't doing any of the dirty work himself. We wouldn't have been able to touch him. Organizing and receiving reports – that was his lay."

Japp paused and then went on:

"But that doesn't help us with the Sainsbury Seale. She wouldn't have been in on that racket."

"She had lived in India, remember. There was a lot of unrest there last year."

"Amberiotis and the excellent Miss Sainsbury Seale – I can't feel they were likely teammates."

"Did you know that Miss Sainsbury Seale was a close friend of the late Mrs. Alistair Blunt?"

"Who says so? I don't believe it. Not in the same class."

"She said so."

"Who'd she say that to?"

"Mr. Alistair Blunt."

"Oh! That sort of thing. He must be used to that lay. Do you mean that Amberiotis was using her that way? It wouldn't work. Blunt would get rid of her with a subscription. He wouldn't ask her down for a week-end or anything of that kind. He's not so unsophisticated as that."

This was so palpably true that Poirot could only agree. After a minute or two, Japp went on with his summing up of the Sainsbury Seale situation.

"I suppose her body might have been lowered into a tank of acid by a mad scientist – that's another solution they're very fond of in books! But take my word for it, these things are all my eye and Betty Martin. If the woman is dead, her body has just been quietly buried somewhere."

"But where?"

"Exactly. She disappeared in London. Nobody's got a garden there – not a proper one. A lonely chicken farm, that's what we want!"

A garden? Poirot's mind flashed suddenly to that neat prim garden at Ealing with its formal beds. How fantastic if a dead woman should be buried there! He told himself not to be absurd.

"And if she isn't dead," went on Japp, "where is she? Over a month now, description published in the Press, circulated all over England -"

"And nobody has seen her?"

"Oh, yes, practically everybody has seen her! You've no idea how many middle-aged, faded looking women wearing olive green cardigan suits there are. She's been seen on Yorkshire moors, and in Liverpool hotels, in guest houses in Devon and on the beach at Ramsgate! My men have spent their time patiently investigating all these reports – and one and all they've led nowhere, except to getting us in wrong with a number of perfectly respectable middle-aged ladies."

Poirot clicked his tongue sympathetically.

"And yet," went on Japp, "she's a real person all right. I mean sometimes you come across a dummy, so to speak – someone who just comes to a place and poses as a Miss Spinks – when all the time there isn't a Miss Spinks. But this woman's genuine – she's got a past, a background! We know all about her from her childhood upwards! She's led a perfectly normal reasonable life – and suddenly, hey, presto! – vanished!"

"There must be a reason," said Poirot.

"She didn't shoot Morley, if that's what you mean. Amberiotis saw him alive after she left – and we've checked up on her movements after she left Queen Charlotte Street that morning."

Poirot said impatiently:

"I am not suggesting for a moment that she shot Morley. Of course she did not. But all the same -"

Japp said:

"If you are right about Morley, then it's far more likely that he told her something which, although she doesn't suspect it, gives a clue to his murderer. In that case, she might have been deliberately put out of the way."

Poirot said:

"All this involves an organization, some big concern quite out of proportion to the death of a quiet dentist in Queen Charlotte Street."

"Don't you believe everything Reginald Barnes tells you. He's a funny old bird – got spies and communists on the brain."

Japp got up and Poirot said:

"Let me know if you have news."

When Japp had gone out, Poirot sat frowning down at the table in front of him.

He had definitely the feeling of waiting for something.

What was it?

He remembered how he had sat before, jotting down various unrelated facts and a series of names.