It was late evening a week later when the summons came. Japp’s voice was brusque over thetelephone.

“That you, Poirot? We’ve found her. You’d better come round. King Leopold Mansions¹.

Battersea Park. Number 45.”

A quarter of an hour later a taxi deposited Poirot outside King Leopold Mansions.

It was a big block of mansion² flats looking out over Battersea Park. Number 45 was on thesecond floor. Japp himself opened the door.

His face was set in grim lines.

“Come in,” he said. “It’s not particularly pleasant, but I expect you’ll want to see for yourself.”

Poirot said—but it was hardly a question:

“Dead?”

“What you might describe as very dead!”

Poirot cocked his head at a familiar sound coming from a door on his right.

“That’s the porter,” said Japp. “Being sick in the scullery sink! I had to get him up here to see ifhe could identify her.”

He led the way down the passage and Poirot followed him. His nose wrinkled.

“Not nice,” said Japp. “But what can you expect? She’s been dead well over a month.”

The room they went into was a small lumber³ and box room. In the middle of it was a big metalchest of the kind used for storing furs. The lid was open.

Poirot stepped forward and looked inside.

He saw the foot first, with the shabby shoe on it and the ornate buckle⁴. His first sight of MissSainsbury Seale had been, he remembered, a shoe buckle.

His gaze travelled up, over the green wool coat and skirt till it reached the head.

He made an inarticulate noise.

“I know,” said Japp. “It’s pretty horrible.”

The face had been battered⁵ out of all recognizable shape. Add to that the natural process ofdecomposition, and it was no wonder that both men looked a shade pea green as they turned away.

“Oh well,” said Japp. “It’s all in a day’s work—our day’s work. No doubt about it, ours is alousy job sometimes. There’s a spot of brandy in the other room. You’d better have some.”

The living room was smartly furnished in an up-to-date style—a good deal of chromium andsome large square-looking easy chairs upholstered in a pale fawn⁶ geometric fabric⁷.

Poirot found the decanter and helped himself to some brandy. As he finished drinking, he said:

“It was not pretty, that! Now tell me, my friend, all about it.”

Japp said:

“This flat belongs to a Mrs. Albert Chapman. Mrs. Chapman is, I gather, a well-upholsteredsmart blonde of forty- odd. Pays her bills, fond of an occasional game of bridge with herneighbours but keeps herself to herself more or less. No children. Mr. Chapman is a commercialtraveller.

“Sainsbury Seale came here on the evening of our interview with her. About seven fifteen. Soshe probably came straight here from the Glengowrie Court. She’d been here once before, so theporter says. You see, all perfectly⁸ clear and aboveboard—nice friendly call. The porter took MissSainsbury Seale up in the lift to this flat. The last he saw of her was standing⁹ on the mat pressingthe bell.”

Poirot commented:

“He has taken his time to remember this!”

“He’s had gastric¹⁰ trouble, it seems, been away in hospital while another man took ontemporarily for him. It wasn’t until about a week ago that he happened to notice in an old paperthe description of a ‘wanted woman’ and he said to his wife, ‘Sounds quite like that old cup of teawho came to see Mrs. Chapman on the second floor. She had on a green wool dress and buckles¹¹ onher shoes.’ And after about another hour he registered again—‘Believe she had a name, too,something like that. Blimey, it was—Miss Something or other Seale!’

“After that,” continued Japp, “it took him about four days to overcome his natural distrust ofgetting mixed up with the police and come along with his information.

“We didn’t really think it would lead to anything. You’ve no idea how many of these falsealarms we’ve had. However, I sent Sergeant¹² Beddoes along—he’s a bright young fellow. A bit toomuch of this high-class education but he can’t help that. It’s fashionable now.

“Well, Beddoes got a hunch¹³ at once that we were on to something at last. For one thing thisMrs. Chapman hadn’t been seen about for over a month. She’d gone away without leaving anyaddress. That was a bit odd. In fact everything he could learn about Mr. and Mrs. Chapmanseemed odd.

“He found out the porter hadn’t seen Miss Sainsbury Seale leave again. That in itself wasn’tunusual. She might easily have come down the stairs and gone out without his seeing her. But thenthe porter told him that Mrs. Chapman had gone away rather suddenly. There was just a bigprinted notice outside the door the next morning:

NO MILK. TELL NELLIE I AM CALLED AWAY.

“Nellie was the daily maid who did for her. Mrs. Chapman had gone away suddenly once ortwice before, so the girl didn’t think it odd, but what was odd was the fact that she hadn’t rung forthe porter to take her luggage down or get her a taxi.

“Anyway, Beddoes decided¹⁴ to get into the flat. We got a search warrant and a pass key from themanager. Found nothing of interest except in the bathroom. There had been some hasty clearingup done there. There was a trace of blood on the linoleum—in the corners where it had beenmissed when the floor was washed over. After that, it was just a question of finding the body. Mrs.

Chapman couldn’t have left with any luggage with her or the porter would have known. Thereforethe body must still be in the flat. We soon spotted¹⁵ that fur chest—airtight, you know—just theplace. Keys were in the dressing¹⁶ table drawer.

“We opened it up—and there was the missing lady! Mistletoe Bough¹⁷ up-to-date.”

Poirot asked:

“What about Mrs. Chapman?”

“What indeed? Who is Sylvia (her name’s Sylvia, by the way), what is she? One thing iscertain. Sylvia, or Sylvia’s friends, murdered the lady and put her in the box.”

Poirot nodded.

He asked:

“But why was her face battered in? It is not nice, that.”

“I’ll say it isn’t nice! As to why—well, one can only guess. Sheer vindictiveness¹⁸, perhaps. Or itmay have been with the idea of concealing¹⁹ the woman’s identity.”

“But it did not conceal²⁰ her identity.”

“No, because not only had we got a pretty good description of what Mabelle Sainsbury Sealewas wearing when she disappeared, but her handbag had been stuffed into the fur box too andinside the handbag there was actually an old letter addressed to her at her hotel in Russell Square.”

Poirot sat up. He said:

“But that—that does not make the common sense!”

“It certainly doesn’t. I suppose it was a slip.”

“Yes—perhaps—a slip. But—”

He got up.

“You have been over the flat?”

“Pretty well. There’s nothing illuminating²¹.”

“I should like to see Mrs. Chapman’s bedroom.”

“Come along then.”

The bedroom showed no signs of a hasty departure. It was neat and tidy. The bed had not beenslept in, but was turned down ready for the night. There was a thick coating of dust everywhere.

Japp said:

“No finger-prints, so far as we can see. There are some on the kitchen things, but I expectthey’ll turn out to be the maid’s.”

“That means that the whole place was dusted very carefully after the murder?”

“Yes.”

Poirot’s eyes swept slowly round the room. Like the sitting room it was furnished in the modernstyle—and furnished, so he thought, by someone with a moderate income. The articles in it wereexpensive but not ultra expensive. They were showy but not first-class. The colour scheme wasrose pink. He looked into the built-in wardrobe and handled the clothes—smart clothes but againnot of first-class quality. His eyes fell to the shoes—they were largely of the sandal variety popularat the moment, some had exaggerated cork²² soles. He balanced one in his hand, registered the factthat Mrs. Chapman had taken a 5 in shoes and put it down again. In another cupboard he found apile of furs, shoved in a heap.

Japp said:

“Came out of the fur chest.”

Poirot nodded.

He was handling a grey squirrel coat. He remarked appreciatively: “First-class skins.”

He went into the bathroom.

There was a lavish²³ display of cosmetics²⁴. Poirot looked at them with interest. Powder, rouge,vanishing cream, skin food, two bottles of hair application.

Japp said:

“Not one of our natural platinum²⁵ blondes, I gather.”

Poirot murmured:

“At forty, mon ami, the hair of most women has begun to go grey but Mrs. Chapman was notone to yield to nature.”

“She’s probably gone henna red by now for a change.”

“I wonder.”

Japp said:

“There’s something worrying you, Poirot. What is it?”

Poirot said:

“But yes, I am worried. I am very seriously worried. There is here, you see, for me an insolubleproblem.”

Resolutely²⁶, he went once more into the box room….

He took hold of the shoe on the dead woman’s foot. It resisted and came off with difficulty.

He examined the buckle. It had been clumsily sewn on by hand.

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said:

“It is that I am dreaming!”

Japp said curiously²⁷:

“What are you trying to do—make the thing more difficult?”

“Exactly that.”

Japp said:

“One patent leather shoe, complete with buckle. What’s wrong with that?”

Hercule Poirot said:

“Nothing—absolutely nothing. But all the same—I do not understand.”

 

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