One, Two, Buckle My Shoe 3 - The End (Pages 106 - end)

 RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!

Even though Japp thinks that there is nothing to investigate, Poirot is still not satisfied, and he is intrigued to know the whereabouts of Miss Sainsbury Seale, a woman of apparent no importance. His investigation leads him to the apartment of a woman called Sylvia Chapman. He is told that Sainsbury visited the place twice, and there Poirot finds the body of a woman placed in a chest. Her face has been smashed, but everything leads to believe that this is Miss Sainsbury because she is wearing the clothes the woman was last seen in. Yet, the dental records show that the dead woman is Mrs Chapman, which leaves Poirot disconcerted.

Poirot's investigation lead him to Mr Blunt, and he thinks that he is the real aim of these crimes, but Poirot can't really connect these three dead people. There are many incongruous pieces, and in the end Poirot realises that he has seen the crime from a wrong perspective. His idea is that the crime was public interest as Blunt represents a system many are against. Yet, he realises that the crime is based on private matters, and those private matters are Blunt's. The trigguer of this series of crimes is when Miss Sainsbury recognised Blunt and said that she knew his wife from India. The fact is that she was telling the truth, but she didn't mean Blunt's late wife. Blunt was already married when she met the rich woman who he married later, and this is the wife she meant. Blunt realised that Sainsbury could endanger his status, especially when he learnt that she and Mr Amberioritis had met on the ship from India and the woman had told him. Amberioritis put two and two together and had intentions to blackmail Blunt. So he and his wife, Gerda Grant, planned the murders. The dentist, Morley, was just a mere tool for his real aim. Blunt killed Morley, and his wife, dressed as Miss Sainsbury, came to the office, and helped him hide the body in Morley's office. She went away, and Amberioritis came and Blunt injected him the overdose, which killed him. Then he changed the records of Miss Sainsbury and Mrs Chapman so that the body found would be confused with Mrs Chapman's, and the police could not think of a connection to Morley and Amberioritis. Yet, the dead body was Miss Sainsbury, and Mrs Chapman is actually Gerda, who contacted Miss Sainsbury and killed her, and then she pretended to be hers. The buckle that is part of the title refers to the shoe that Poirot saw the dead woman wearing, which was a different size from the rest of her shoes, indicating that it was the wrong shoe. 

This was a clever plot even though some of the conclusion is a bit confusing in the explanation.