by Mark Place
Blunt said blankly: ‘With a shoe?’
Hercule Poirot nodded. ‘Yes, a buckled shoe. I came out from my séance at the dentist’s and as I stood on the steps of 58, Queen Charlotte Street, a taxi stopped outside, the door opened and a woman’s foot prepared to descend. I am a man who notices a woman’s foot and ankle. It was a well-shaped foot, with a good ankle and an expensive stocking, but I did not like the shoe. It was a new, shining patent leather shoe with a large ornate buckle. Not chic—not at all chic!
‘And whilst I was observing this, the rest of the lady came into sight—and frankly it was a disappointment—a middle-aged lady without charm and badly dressed.’
‘Miss Sainsbury Seale?’
‘Precisely. As she descended a contretemps occurred—she caught the buckle of her shoe in the door and it was wrenched off. I picked it up and returned it to her. That was all. The incident was closed.
‘Later, on that same day, I went with Chief Inspector Japp to interview the lady. (She had not as yet sewn on the buckle, by the way.)
‘On that same evening, Miss Sainsbury Seale walked out of her hotel and vanished. That, shall we say, is the end of Part One.
‘Part Two began when Chief Inspector Japp summoned me to King Leopold Mansions. There was a fur chest in a flat there, and in that fur chest there had been found a body. I went into the room, I walked up to the chest—and the first thing I saw was a shabby buckled shoe!’
‘Well?’
‘You have not appreciated the point. It was a shabby shoe—a well-worn shoe. But you see, Miss Sainsbury Seale had come to King Leopold Mansions on the evening of that same day—the day of Mr Morley’s murder. In the morning the shoes were new shoes—in the evening they were old shoes. One does not wear out a pair of shoes in a day, you comprehend.’ Alistair Blunt said without much interest:
‘She could have two pairs of shoes, I suppose?’
‘Ah, but that was not so . For Japp and I had gone up to her room at the Glengowrie Court and had looked at all her possessions—and there was no pair of buckled shoes there. She might have had an old pair of shoes, yes. She might have changed into them after a tiring day to go out in the evening, yes? But if so, the other pair would have been at the hotel. It was curious, you will admit?’
‘I can’t see that it is important.’
‘No, not important. Not at all important. But one does not like things that one cannot explain. I stood by the fur chest and I looked at the shoe—the buckle had recently been sewn on by hand. I will confess that I then had a moment of doubt—of myself. Yes, I said to myself, Hercule Poirot, you were a little light-headed perhaps this morning. You saw the world through rosy spectacles. Even the old shoes looked like new ones to you?’
‘Perhaps that was the explanation?’
‘But no, it was not. My eyes do not deceive me! To continue, I studied the dead body of this woman and I did not like what I saw. Why had the face been wantonly, deliberately smashed and rendered unrecognizable?’ Alistair Blunt moved restlessly. He said: ‘Must we go over that again? We know—’
Hercule Poirot said firmly: ‘It is necessary. I have to take you over the steps that led me at last to the truth. I said to myself: “Something is wrong here. Here is a dead woman in the clothes of Miss Sainsbury Seale (except, perhaps, the shoes?) and with the handbag of Miss Sainsbury Seale—but why is her face unrecognizable? Is it, perhaps, because the face is not the face of Miss Sainsbury Seale?” And immediately I begin to put together what I have heard of the appearance of the other woman—the woman to whom the flat belongs, and I ask myself—Might it not perhaps be this other woman who lies dead here? I go then and look at the other woman’s bedroom. I try to picture to myself what sort of woman she is. In superficial appearance, very different to the other. Smart, showily dressed, very much made up.
But in essentials, not unlike. Hair, build, age…But there is one difference. Mrs Albert Chapman took a five in shoes. Miss Sainsbury Seale, I knew, took a 10-inch stocking—that is to say she would take at least a 6 in shoes. Mrs Chapman, then, had smaller feet than Miss Sainsbury Seale. I went back to the body. If my half-formed idea was right, and the body was that of Mrs Chapman wearing Miss Sainsbury Seale’s clothes, then the shoes should be too big . I took hold of one. But it was not loose. It fitted tightly.
That looked as though it were the body of Miss Sainsbury Seale after all! But in that case, why was the face disfigured? Her identity was already proved by the handbag, which could easily have been removed, but which had not been removed. ‘It was a puzzle—a tangle. In desperation I seized on Mrs Chapman’s address book—a dentist was the only person who could prove definitely who the dead woman was—or was not. By coincidence, Mrs Chapman’s dentist was Mr Morley. Morley was dead, but identification was still possible. You know the result. The body was identified in the Coroner’s Court by Mr Morley’s successor as that of Mrs Albert Chapman.’
Blunt was fidgeting with some impatience, but Poirot took no notice. He went on: ‘I was left now with a psychological problem. What sort of a woman was Mabelle Sainsbury Seale? There were two answers to that question. The first was the obvious one borne out by her whole life in India and by the testimony of her personal friends. That depicted her as an earnest, conscientious, slightly stupid woman. Was there another Miss Sainsbury Seale? Apparently there was. There was a woman who had lunched with a well-known foreign agent, who had accosted you in the street and claimed to be a close friend of your wife’s (a statement that was almost certainly untrue), a woman who had left a man’s house very shortly before a murder had been committed, a woman who had visited another woman on the evening when in all probability that other woman had been murdered, and who had since disappeared although she must be aware that the police force of England was looking for her. Were all these actions compatible with the character which her friends gave her? It would seem that they were not. Therefore, if Miss Sainsbury Seale were not the good, amiable creature she seemed, then it would appear that she was quite possibly a cold-blooded murderess or almost certainly an accomplice after the fact.
‘I had one more criterion—my own personal impression. I had talked to Mabelle Sainsbury Seale myself. How had she struck me? And that, M. Blunt, was the most difficult question to answer of all. Everything that she said, her way of talking, her manner, her gestures, all were perfectly in accord with her given character. But they were equally in accord with a clever actress playing a part . And, after all, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale had started life as an actress. ‘I had been much impressed by a conversation I had had with Mr Barnes of Ealing who had also been a patient at 58, Queen Charlotte Street on that particular day. His theory, expressed very forcibly, was that the deaths of Morley and of Amberiotis were only incidental, so to speak—that the intended victim was you.’
Alistair Blunt said: ‘Oh, come now—that’s a bit far-fetched.’
‘Is it, M. Blunt? Is it not true that at this moment there are various groups of people to whom it is vital that you should be—removed, shall we say? Shall be no longer capable of exerting your influence?’
Blunt said: ‘Oh yes, that’s true enough. But why mix up this business of Morley’s death with that?’ Poirot said: ‘Because there is a certain—how shall I put it?—lavishness about the case—Expense is no object—human life is no object. Yes, there is a recklessness, a lavishness—that points to a big crime!’
‘You don’t think Morley shot himself because of a mistake?’
‘I never thought so—not for a minute. No, Morley was murdered, Amberiotis was murdered, an unrecognizable woman was murdered—Why? For some big stake. Barnes’ theory was that somebody had tried to bribe Morley or his partner to put you out of the way.’
Alistair Blunt said sharply: ‘Nonsense!’
‘Ah, but is it nonsense? Say one wishes to put someone out of the way. Yes, but that someone is forewarned, forearmed, difficult of access. To kill that person it is necessary to be able to approach him without awa
kening his suspicions—and where would a man be less suspicious than in a dentist’s chair?’
‘Well, that’s true, I suppose. I never thought of it like that.’
‘It is true. And once I realized it I had my first vague glimmering of the truth.’
‘So you accepted Barnes’ theory? Who is Barnes, by the way?’
‘Barnes was Reilly’s twelve o’clock patient. He is retired from the Home Office and lives in Ealing. An insignificant little man. But you are wrong when you say I accepted his theory. I did not. I only accepted the principle of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘All along, all the way through, I have been led astray—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and for a purpose. All along it was presented to me, forced upon me, that this was what you might call a public crime. That is to say, that you, M. Blunt, were the focus of it all, in your public character. You, the banker, you the controller of finance, you, the upholder of conservative tradition! ‘But every public character has a private life also. That was my mistake, I forgot the private life. There existed private reasons for killing Morley—Frank Carter’s for instance.
‘There could also exist private reasons for killing you …You had relations who would inherit money when you died. You had people who loved and hated you—as a man —not as a public figure.
‘And so I came to the supreme instance of what I call “the forced card”. The purported attack upon you by Frank Carter. If that attack was genuine—then it was a political crime. But was there any other explanation? There could be . There was a second man in the shrubbery. The man who rushed up and seized Carter. A man who could easily have fired that shot and then tossed the pistol to Carter’s feet so that the latter would almost inevitably pick it up and be found with it in his hand…‘I considered the problem of Howard Raikes. Raikes had been at Queen Charlotte Street that morning of Morley’s death. Raikes was a bitter enemy of all that you stood for and were. Yes, but Raikes was something more. Raikes was the man who might marry your niece , and with you dead, your niece would inherit a very handsome income, even though you had prudently arranged that she could not touch the principal.
‘Was the whole thing, after all, a private crime—a crime for private gain, for private satisfaction? Why had I thought it a public crime? Because, not once, but many times, that idea had been suggested to me, had been forced upon me like a forced card …‘It was then, when that idea occurred to me, that I had my first glimmering of the truth. I was in church at the time and singing a verse of a psalm. It spoke of a snare laid with cords…‘A snare? Laid for me? Yes, it could be…But in that case who had laid it? There was only one person who could have laid it …And that did not make sense—or did it? Had I been looking at the case upside down? Money no object? Exactly! Reckless disregard of human life? Yes again. For the stakes for which the guilty person was playing were enormous …‘But if this new, strange idea of mine were right, it must explain everything . It must explain, for instance, the mystery of the dual nature of Miss Sainsbury Seale. It must solve the riddle of the buckled shoe. And it must answer the question: Where is Miss Sainsbury Seale now?
‘Eh bien—it did all that and more. It showed me that Miss Sainsbury Seale was the beginning and middle and end of the case. No wonder it had seemed to me that there were two Mabelle Sainsbury Seales. There were two Mabelle Sainsbury Seales. There was the good, stupid, amiable woman who was vouched for so confidently by her friends. And there was the other—the woman who was mixed up with two murders and who told lies and who vanished mysteriously.
‘Remember, the porter at King Leopold Mansions said that Miss Sainsbury Seale had been there once before…‘In my reconstruction of the case, that first time was the only time. She never left King Leopold Mansions. The other Miss Sainsbury Seale took her place . That other Mabelle Sainsbury Seale, dressed in clothes of the same type and wearing a new pair of shoes with buckles because the others were too large for her, went to the Russell Square Hotel at a busy time of day, packed up the dead woman’s clothes, paid the bill and left. She went to the Glengowrie Court Hotel. None of the real Miss Sainsbury Seale’s friends saw her after that time, remember. She played the part of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale there for over a week. She wore Mabelle Sainsbury Seale’s clothes, she talked in Mabelle Sainsbury Seale’s voice, but she had to buy a smaller pair of evening shoes, too. And then—she vanished, her last appearance being when she was seen re-entering King Leopold Mansions on the evening of the day Morley was killed.’
‘Are you trying to say,’ demanded Alistair Blunt, ‘that it was Mabelle Sainsbury Seale’s dead body in that flat, after all.’
‘Of course it was! It was a very clever double bluff—the smashed face was meant to raise a question of the woman’s identity!’
‘But the dental evidence?’
‘Ah! Now we come to it. It was not the dentist himself who gave evidence. Morley was dead. He couldn’t give evidence as to his own work. He would have known who the dead woman was. It was the charts that were put in as evidence—and the charts were faked. Both women were his patients, remember. All that had to be done was to re label the charts, exchanging the names.’
Hercule Poirot added: ‘And now you see what I meant when you asked me if the woman was dead and I replied, “That depends.” For when you say “Miss Sainsbury Seale”—which woman do you mean? The woman who disappeared from the Glengowrie Court Hotel or the real Mabelle Sainsbury Seale.’
Alistair Blunt said: ‘I know, M. Poirot, that you have a great reputation. Therefore I accept that you must have some grounds for this extraordinary assumption—for it is an assumption, nothing more. But all I can see is the fantastic improbability of the whole thing. You are saying, are you not, that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was deliberately murdered and that Morley was also murdered to prevent his identifying her dead body. But why ? That’s what I want to know. Here’s this woman—a perfectly harmless, middle-aged woman—with plenty of friends and apparently no enemies. Why on earth all this elaborate plot to get rid of her?’
‘Why? Yes, that is the question. Why ? As you say, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a perfectly harmless creature who wouldn’t hurt a fly! Why, then, was she deliberately and brutally murdered? Well, I will tell you what I think.’
‘Yes?’
Hercule Poirot leaned forward. He said: ‘It is my belief that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was murdered because she happened to have too good a memory for faces.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘We have separated the dual personality. There is the harmless lady from India. But there is one incident that falls between the two roles. Which Miss Sainsbury Seale was it who spoke to you on the doorstep of Mr Morley’s house? She claimed, you will remember, to be “a great friend of your wife’s”. Now that claim was adjudged by her friends and by the light of ordinary probability to be untrue. So we can say: “That was a lie. The real Miss Sainsbury Seale does not tell lies.” So it was a lie uttered by the impostor for a purpose of her own.’
Alistair Blunt nodded. ‘Yes, that reasoning is quite clear. Though I still don’t know what the purpose was.’
Poirot said: ‘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.’