The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

On another occasion, Poirot introduced the game of tracing footprints on a sheet of paper. The following morning, going with his soft cat-like tread into the library, the detective startled Owen Trefusis, who leaped from his chair as though he had been shot.

‘You must really excuse me, M. Poirot,’ he said primly, ‘but you have us on the jump.’

‘Indeed, how is that?’ demanded the little man innocently.

‘I will admit,’ said the secretary, ‘that I thought the case against Charles Leverson utterly overwhelming, You apparently do not find it so.’

Poirot was standing looking out of the window. He turned suddenly to the other.

‘I shall tell you something, M. Trefusis — in confidence.’

‘Yes?’

Poirot seemed in no hurry to begin. He waited a minute, hesitating. When he did speak, his opening words were coincident with the opening and shutting of the front door. For a man saying something in confidence, he spoke rather loudly, his voice drowning the sound of a footstep in the hall outside.

‘I shall tell you this in confidence, Mr Trefusis. There is new evidence. It goes to prove that when Charles Leverson entered the Tower room that night, Sir Reuben was already dead.’

The secretary stared at him.

‘But what evidence? Why have we not heard of it?’

‘You will hear,’ said the little man mysteriously. ‘In the meantime, you and I alone know the secret.’

He skipped nimbly out of the room, and almost collided with Victor Astwell in the hall outside.

‘You have just come in, eh, Monsieur?’

Astwell nodded.

‘Beastly day outside,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘cold and blowy.’

‘Ah,’ said Poirot, ‘I shall not promenade myself today — me, I am like a cat, I sit by the fire and keep myself warm.’

‘Ça marche, George,’ he said that evening to the faithful valet, rubbing his hands as he spoke, ‘they are on the tenterhooks — the jump! It is hard, George, to play the game of the cat, the waiting game, but it answers, yes, it answers wonderfully. Tomorrow we make a further effect.’

On the following day, Trefusis was obliged to go up to town. He went up by the same train as Victor Astwell. No sooner had they left the house than Poirot was galvanized into a fever of activity.

‘Come, George, let us hurry to work. If the housemaid should approach these rooms, you must delay her. Speak to her sweet nothings, George, and keep her in the corridor.’

He went first to the secretary's room, and began a thorough search. Not a drawer or a shelf was left uninspected. Then he replaced everything hurriedly, and declared his quest finished. George, on guard in the doorway, gave way to a deferential cough.

‘If you will excuse me, sir?’

‘Yes, my good George?’

‘The shoes, sir. The two pairs of brown shoes were on the second shelf, and the patent leather ones were on the shelf underneath. In replacing them you have reversed the order.’

‘Marvellous!’ cried Poirot, holding up his hands. ‘But let us not distress ourselves over that. It is of no importance, I assure you, George. Never will M. Trefusis notice such a trifling matter.’

‘As you think, sir,’ said George.

‘It is your business to notice such things,’ said Poirot encouragingly as he clapped the other on the shoulder. ‘It reflects credit upon you.’

The valet did not reply, and when, later in the day, the proceeding was repeated in the room of Victor Astwell, he made no comment on the fact that Mr Astwell's underclothing was not returned to its drawers strictly according to plan. Yet, in the second case at least, events proved the valet to be right and Poirot wrong. Victor Astwell came storming into the drawing-room that evening.

‘Now, look here, you blasted little Belgian jackanapes, what do you mean by searching my room? What the devil do you think you are going to find there? That's what comes of having a ferreting little spy in the house.’

Poirot's hands spread themselves out eloquently as his words tumbled one over the other. He offered a hundred apologies, a thousand, a million. He had been maladroit, officious, he was confused. He had taken an unwarranted liberty. In the end the infuriated gentleman was forced to subside, still growling.

And again that evening, sipping his tisane, Poirot murmured to George: ‘It marches, my good George, yes — it marches.’

‘Friday,’ observed Hercule Poirot thoughtfully, ‘is my lucky day.’

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘You are not superstitious, perhaps, my good George?’

‘I prefer not to sit down thirteen at table, sir, and I am adverse to passing under ladders. I have no superstitions about a Friday, sir.’

‘That is well,’ said Poirot, ‘for, see you, today we make our Waterloo.’

‘Really, sir.’

‘You have such enthusiasm, my good George, you do not even ask what I propose to do.’

‘And what is that, sir?’

‘Today, George, I make a final thorough search of the Tower room.’