One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [59]
The police had not as yet found any evidence to prove Frank Carter’s possession of the pistol before the assault at Exsham.
Poirot hung up the receiver thoughtfully. It was a point in Carter’s favour. But so far it was the only one.
He had also learned from Beddoes a few more details as to the statement Frank Carter had made about his employment as gardener at Exsham. He stuck to his story of a Secret Service job. He had been given money in advance and some testimonials as to his gardening abilities and been told to apply to Mr MacAlister, the head gardener, for the post.
His instructions were to listen to the other gardeners’ conversations and sound them as to their ‘red’ tendencies, and to pretend to be a bit of a ‘red’ himself. He had been interviewed and instructed in his task by a woman who had told him that she was known as Q.H.56, and that he had been recommended to her as a strong anti-communist. She had interviewed him in a dim light and he did not think he would know her again. She was a red-haired lady with a lot of make-up on.
Poirot groaned. The Phillips Oppenheim touch seemed to be reappearing.
He was tempted to consult Mr Barnes on the subject.
According to Mr Barnes these things happened.
The last post brought him something which disturbed him more still.
A cheap envelope in an unformed handwriting, postmarked Hertfordshire.
Poirot opened it and read:
Dear Sir,—
Hoping as you will forgive me for troubling you, but I am very worried and do not know what to do. I do not want to be mixed up with the police in any way. I know that perhaps I ought to have told something I know before, but as they said the master had shot himself it was all right I thought and I wouldn’t have liked to get Miss Nevill’s young man into trouble and never thought really for one moment as he had done it but now I see he has been took up for shooting at a gentleman in the country and so perhaps he isn’t quite all there and I ought to say but I thought I would write to you, you being a friend of the mistress and asking me so particular the other day if there was anything and of course I wish now I had told you then. But I do hope it won’t mean getting mixed up with the police because I shouldn’t like that and my mother wouldn’t like it either. She has always been most particular.
Yours respectfully
Agnes Fletcher.
Poirot murmured:
‘I always knew it was something to do with some man. I guessed the wrong man, that is all.’
Fifteen, Sixteen,
Maids in the Kitchen
I
The interview with Agnes Fletcher took place in Hertford, in a somewhat derelict teashop, for Agnes had been anxious not to tell her story under Miss Morley’s critical eye.
The first quarter of an hour was taken up listening to exactly how particular Agnes’ mother had always been. Also how Agnes’ father, though a proprietor of licensed premises, had never once had any friction with the police, closing time being strictly observed to the second, and indeed Agnes’ father and mother were universally respected and looked up to in Little Darlingham, Gloucestershire, and none of Mrs Fletcher’s family of six (two having died in infancy) had ever occasioned their parents the least anxiety. And if Agnes, now, were to get mixed up with the police in any way, Mum and Dad would probably die of it, because as she’d been saying, they’d always held their heads high, and never had no trouble of any kind with the police.
After this had been repeated, da capo, and with various embellishments, several times, Agnes drew a little nearer to the subject of the interview.
‘I wouldn’t like to say anything to Miss Morley, sir, because it might be, you see, that she’d say as how I ought to have said something before, but me and cook, we talked it over and we didn’t see as it was any business of ours, because we’d read quite clear and plain in the paper as how the master had made a mistake in the drug he was giving and that he’d shot himself and the pistol was in his hands and everything,