If there had been any personal papers, the police had taken them.
‘Pauvre femme,’ murmured Poirot. ‘Come, Hastings, there is nothing for us here.’
When we were once more in the street, he hesitated for a minute or two, then crossed the road. Almost exactly opposite Mrs Ascher’s was a greengrocer’s shop—of the type that has most of its stock outside rather than inside.
In a low voice Poirot gave me certain instructions. Then he himself entered the shop. After waiting a minute or two I followed him in. He was at the moment negotiating for a lettuce. I myself bought a pound of strawberries.
Poirot was talking animatedly to the stout lady who was serving him.
‘It was just opposite you, was it not, that this murder occurred? What an affair! What a sensation it must have caused you!’
The stout lady was obviously tired of talking about the murder. She must have had a long day of it. She observed:
‘It would be as well if some of that gaping crowd cleared off. What is there to look at, I’d like to know?’
‘It must have been very different last night,’ said Poirot. ‘Possibly you even observed the murderer enter the shop—a tall, fair man with a beard, was he not? A Russian, so I have heard.’
‘What’s that?’ The woman looked up sharply. ‘A Russian did it, you say?’
‘I understand that the police have arrested him.’
‘Did you ever know?’ The woman was excited, voluble. ‘A foreigner.’
‘Mais oui[85]. I thought perhaps you might have noticed him last night?’
‘Well, I don’t get much chance of noticing, and that’s a fact. The evening’s our busy time and there’s always a fair few passing along and getting home after their work. A tall, fair man with a beard—no, I can’t say I saw anyone of that description anywhere about.’
I broke in on my cue[86].
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said to Poirot. ‘I think you have been misinformed. A short dark man I was told.’
An interested discussion intervened in which the stout lady, her lank husband and a hoarse-voiced shop-boy all participated. No less than four short dark men had been observed, and the hoarse boy had seen a tall fair one, ‘but he hadn’t got no beard,’ he added regretfully.
Finally, our purchases made, we left the establishment, leaving our falsehoods uncorrected.
‘And what was the point of all that, Poirot?’ I demanded somewhat reproachfully.
‘Parbleu[87], I wanted to estimate the chances of a stranger being noticed entering the shop opposite.’
‘Couldn’t you simply have asked—without all that tissue of lies[88]?’
‘No, mon ami. If I had “simply asked”, as you put it, I should have got no answer at all to my questions. You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened. We know also that that particular time was a “busy time”—that is, that everyone would be intent on their own concerns and that there would be a fair number of people passing along the pavements. Our murderer chose his time well, Hastings.’
He paused and then added on a deep note of reproach:
‘Is it that you have not in any degree the common sense[89], Hastings? I say to you: “Make a purchase quelconque[90]”—and you deliberately choose the strawberries! Already they commence to creep through their bag and endanger your good suit.’
With some dismay, I perceived that this was indeed the case.
I hastily presented the strawberries to a small boy who seemed highly astonished and faintly suspicious.
Poirot added the lettuce, thus setting the seal on[91] the child’s bewilderment.
He continued to drive the moral home.
‘At a cheap greengrocer’s—not strawberries. A strawberry, unless fresh picked, is bound to exude juice. A banana—some apples—even a cabbage—but strawberries —’
‘It was the first thing I thought of,’ I explained by way of excuse.
‘That is unworthy of your imagination,’ returned Poirot sternly.
He paused on the sidewalk.
The house and shop on the right of Mrs Ascher’s was empty. A ‘To Let’[92] sign appeared in the windows. On the other side was a house with somewhat grimy muslin curtains.
To this house Poirot betook himself and, there being no bell, executed a series of sharp flourishes with the knocker.
The door was opened after some delay by a very dirty child with a nose that needed attention.
‘Good evening,’ said Poirot. ‘Is your mother within?’
‘Ay?’ said the child.
It stared at us with disfavour and deep suspicion.
‘Your mother,’ said Poirot.
This took some twelve seconds to sink in, then the child turned and, bawling up the stairs ‘Mum, you’re wanted,’ retreated to some fastness in the dim interior.
A sharp-faced woman looked over the balusters and began to descend.
‘No good[93] you wasting your time —’ she began, but Poirot interrupted her.
He took off his hat and bowed magnificently.
‘Good evening, madame. I am on the staff of the Evening Flicker. I want to persuade you to accept a fee of five pounds and let us have an article on your late neighbour, Mrs Ascher.’
The irate words arrested on her lips, the woman came down the stairs smoothing her hair and hitching at her skirt.
‘Come inside, please—on the left there. Won’t you sit down, sir.’
The tiny room was heavily over-crowded with a massive pseudo-Jacobean suite[94], but we managed to squeeze ourselves in and on to a hard-seated sofa.
‘You must excuse me,’ the woman was saying. ‘I am sure I’m sorry I spoke so sharp just now, but you’d hardly believe the worry one has to put up with—fellows coming along selling this, that and the other—vacuum cleaners, stockings, lavender bags[95] and such-like foolery—and all so plausible and civil spoken. Got your name, too, pat they have. It’s Mrs Fowler this, that and the other.’
Seizing adroitly on the name, Poirot said:
‘Well, Mrs Fowler, I hope you’re going to do what I ask.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ The five pounds hung alluringly before Mrs Fowler’s eyes. ‘I knew Mrs Ascher, of course, but as to writing anything.’
Hastily Poirot reassured her. No labour on her part was required. He would elicit the facts from her and the interview would be written up.
Thus encouraged, Mrs Fowler plunged willingly into reminiscence,