ONE, TWO, BUCKLE MY SHOE

Hercule Poirot meets former actress Mabelle Sainsbury Seale while leaving his appointment
with dentist Henry Morley. In this meeting, he retrieves a shiny buckle for her that had fallen
from her shoe. Later that day, his friend Inspector Japp informs him that Morley has been
found dead. He has been shot in the head. Between Poirot's appointment and Morley's
death, there were four patients – Mabelle, Alistair Blunt, a banker, and a Greek gentleman
Amberiotis, Howard Raikes, an American left-wing activist who disliked Blunt but but has
relationship with his niece, Jane Olivera. Amberiotis is later found dead from an overdose of
anaesthetic, which makes police believe that Morley accidentally killed him and committed
suicide after realising his mistake. Poirot disagrees with this belief. He learns that prior to
Morley's death, his secretary Gladys Nevill had been called away by a fake telegram and that
her boyfriend Frank Carter was disliked by the dentist.
Mabelle soon goes missing. A search turns up a body after a month. Her face was smashed
in the apartment of Mrs. Chapman, a woman who also has disappeared. Poirot makes a note
of the dull buckled shoes on the body. Dental records soon reveal that the body was
Chapman's. Poirot then investigates the life of the Blunt family, where Carter tried to kill Blunt
(Raikes was also behind that operation). Carter had obtained a job as a gardener at the
house under a false identity and is found with a gun in his possession, identical to the one
that killed Morley. Poirot presses him for the truth, knowing he will be convicted of murder
and attempted murder. Carter admits that while waiting to speak to Morley, he saw two
people leave his surgery; when he entered, Morley was already dead.
With this information, Poirot meets with Blunt and denounces him and his Scottish second
cousin, Gerda Montressor, as the killers. Montressor is actually Blunt's first wife, whom he
had met alongside Mabelle in India. He had never divorced her when he returned to Britain
and married his now-deceased second wife, Rebecca Arnholt; if his bigamy was exposed, he
would be shamed and disgraced, and he would lose the fortune. Blunt had not expected to
come across Mabelle when he was leaving Morley's surgery after an appointment; although
she recognised him, she did not know about his new life. Amberiotis had found out about this
and used that knowledge to blackmail Blunt. Blunt learned by chance that Amberiotis had
become a new patient of Morley's, so he and Gerda decided to take advantage of his dental
appointment to murder him.
The morning of the murder, Gerda invited Mabelle to Mrs. Chapman's apartment and killed
her to steal her identity. She then went to attend Mabelle's dental appointment. Her husband
killed Morley when his appointment was over, rang for the next patient, and then pretended to
leave. Once Gerda was in the surgery, she let her husband back in. While he hid Morley's
body in a side office, Gerda changed Mabelle's records to become those of Mrs. Chapman
and both this and Mabelle's face being disfigured after her murder, were to mislead the police
on who the body in Chapman's apartment was. After his wife left, Blunt posed as Morley,
knowing Amberiotis had never seen the dentist before. After summoning him into the surgery,
Blunt injected him with a fatal dose of anaesthetic. Once Amberiotis had left, Blunt moved
Morley's body back into the surgery, set it up to appear as a scene of suicide, and then left.
Poirot reveals the plan was exposed by a few facts – Carter had seen Blunt leave the surgery
after Amberiotis' appointment, while he was waiting to see Morley; the telegram to Nevill was
made by the pair, to ensure she would not be there when Blunt posed as the dentist; Gerda
wore new shoes when impersonating Mabelle, as she could not fit into Mabelle's shoes after
killing her. Blunt and his wife are handed over to the police.