One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie

 

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie.

This edition published 22nd March 2018 by Harper Collins.

Originally published 1940.

From the cover of the book:

A dentist lies murdered at his Harley Street practice…

The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. A pistol lay on the floor near his outflung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anaesthetic. A clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments?

A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery.

Now – in the words of the rhyme – can Poirot pick up the sticks and lay them straight?

***********

Poirot reluctantly has to attend a check-up with his dentist, Dr Morley. After an anxious visit, during which he observes several other patients, including the famous financier Alistair Blunt, Poirot makes his way home - bumping into a middle-aged woman called Mabelle Sainsbury Seale, who catches her shoe buckle as she exits a taxi.

Later, Poirot receives a call from Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, informing him that Dr Morley appears to have committed suicide. Poirot refuses to believe that a man who appeared totally normal to him earlier in the day could possibly have killed himself. 

Poirot sets about investigating the strange circumstances surrounding the death, unconvinced by Japp's theory that Morley took his own life in a fit of guilt over the death of a patient who seems to have died of an overdose. The plot thickens when Mabelle Sainsbury Seale disappears, and Poirot begins to wonder if Dr Morley was the unintended victim of a political conspiracy...

On the face of it, this slow-burn Agatha Christie mystery plods along as Poirot upsets the investigation of Inspector Japp (in his first appearance) by refusing to believe that his dentist has committed suicide. The plots twists and turns in chapters entitled with progressive lines of the nursery rhyme, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which connect nicely with the 'lost buckle' incident at the beginning of the story - an episode that proves crucial in unpicking the mystery around Dr Morley's death.

Christie floods this story with red herrings, muddying the waters with luscious threads about blackmail, espionage, and false identities, which Poirot casts meticulously aside by looking into the movements and motives of a number of people present on the day of the suicide/murder. He eventually confronts the guilty party in an enlightening face-to-face interview that is fraught with moral dilemmas that feed into the themes that makes this book so interesting - the backdrop of political and financial instability in wartime, which Christie invites you to explore through the secret intentions of the characters and their ideological positions when it comes to conservatism vs fascism.

A bit on the gloomy side, without many laughs, and a few too many characters to make it really gripping, but this is on of those Poirot mysteries that is genuinely thought-provoking when it comes to time and place.

This is my August pick for #ReadChrisite2025 exploring the prompt of Medics, which I enjoyed via the voice talents of my favourite Hugh Fraser.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is available to buy now in multiple formats.

About the author:

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.