One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [20]
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 be 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 Diehards, 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 place of the old order — something that will work — not just something that sounds all right. Well, we needn’t go into that. We are 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 far-sighted 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 anæsthetist muffed the giving of the anæsthetic — 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 anæsthetist 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 is that Morley wasn’t!’
‘You think it was like that?’ said Hercule Poirot.
Mr Barnes said:
‘I do. It’s not easy to get at one of these big men, you know. They’re fairly well protected. The car stunt is risky and doesn’t always succeed. But a man is defenceless enough in a dentist’s chair.’
He took off his pince-nez, polished them and put them on again. He said:
‘That’s my theory! Morley wouldn’t do the job. He knew too much, though, so they had to put him out.’
‘They?’ asked Poirot.
‘When I say they — I mean the organization that’s behind all this. Only one person actually did the job, of course.’
‘Which person?’
‘Well, I could make a guess,’ said Mr Barnes, ‘but it’s only a guess and I might be wrong.’
Poirot said quietly: ‘Reilly?’
‘Of course! He’s the obvious person. I think that probably they never asked Morley to do the job himself. What he was to do, was to turn Blunt over