One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [23]
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 Adams 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, not in fact 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.
VI
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 Howard 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 smiling 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 every one I meet at some God-damned 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