Chapter 6

The Scene of the Crime

The street in which the tragedy had occurred was a turning off the main street. Mrs Ascher’s shop was situated about halfway down it on the right-hand side.

As we turned into the street Poirot glanced at his watch and I realized why he had delayed his visit to the scene of the crime until now. It was just on half-past five. He had wished to reproduce yesterday’s atmosphere as closely as possible.

But if that had been his purpose it was defeated. Certainly at this moment the road bore very little likeness to its appearance on the previous evening. There were a certain number of small shops interspersed between private houses of the poorer class. I judged that ordinarily there would be a fair number of people passing up and down—mostly people of the poorer classes, with a good sprinkling of children playing on the pavements and in the road.

At this moment there was a solid mass of people standing staring at one particular house or shop and it took little perspicuity to guess which that was. What we saw was a mass of average human beings looking with intense interest at the spot where another human being had been done to death.

As we drew nearer this proved to be indeed the case. In front of a small dingy-looking shop with its shutters now closed stood a harassed-looking young policeman who was stolidly adjuring the crowd to ‘pass along there.’ By the help of a colleague, displacements took place—a certain number of people grudgingly sighed and betook themselves to their ordinary vocations, and almost immediately other persons came along and took up their stand to gaze their fill on the spot where murder had been committed.

Poirot stopped a little distance from the main body of the crowd. From where we stood the legend painted over the door could be read plainly enough. Poirot repeated it under his breath.

‘A. Ascher. Oui, c’est peut-être là —’

He broke off.

‘Come, let us go inside, Hastings.’

I was only too ready.

We made our way through the crowd and accosted the young policeman. Poirot produced the credentials which the inspector had given him. The constable nodded, and unlocked the door to let us pass within. We did so and entered to the intense interest of the lookers-on.

Inside it was very dark owing to the shutters being closed. The constable found and switched on the electric light. The bulb was a low-powered one so that the interior was still dimly lit.

I looked about me.

A dingy little place. A few cheap magazines strewn about, and yesterday’s newspapers—all with a day’s dust on them. Behind the counter a row of shelves reaching to the ceiling and packed with tobacco and packets of cigarettes. There were also a couple of jars of peppermint humbugs and barley sugar. A commonplace little shop, one of many thousand such others.

The constable in his slow Hampshire voice was explaining the mise en scène.

‘Down in a heap behind the counter, that’s where she was. Doctor says as how she never knew what hit her. Must have been reaching up to one of the shelves.’

‘There was nothing in her hand?’

‘No, sir, but there was a packet of Player’s down beside her.’

Poirot nodded. His eyes swept round the small space observing—noting.

‘And the railway guide was—where?’

‘Here, sir.’ The constable pointed out the spot on the counter. ‘It was open at the right page for Andover and lying face down. Seems as though he must have been looking up the trains to London. If so, it mightn’t have been an Andover man at all. But then, of course, the railway guide might have belonged to someone else what had nothing to do with the murder at all, but just forgot it here.’

‘Fingerprints?’ I suggested.

The man shook his head.

‘The whole place was examined straight away, sir. There weren’t none.’

‘Not on the counter itself?’asked Poirot.

‘A long sight too many, sir! All confused and jumbled up.’

‘Any of Ascher’s among them?’

‘Too soon to say, sir.’

Poirot nodded, then asked if the dead woman lived over the shop.

‘Yes, sir, you go through that door at the back, sir. You’ll excuse me not coming with you, but I’ve got to stay —’

Poirot passed through the door in question and I followed him. Behind the shop was a microscopic sort of parlour and kitchen combined—it was neat and clean but very dreary looking and scantily furnished. On the mantelpiece were a few photographs. I went up and looked at them and Poirot joined me.

The photographs were three in all. One was a cheap portrait of the girl we had been with that afternoon, Mary Drower. She was obviously wearing her best clothes and had the self-conscious, wooden smile on her face that so often disfigures the expression in posed photography, and makes a snapshot preferable.

The second was a more expensive type of picture—an artistically blurred reproduction of an elderly woman with white hair. A high fur collar stood up round the neck.

I guessed that this was probably the Miss Rose who had left Mrs Ascher the small legacy which had enabled her to start in business.

The third photograph was a very old one, now faded and yellow. It represented a young man and woman in somewhat old-fashioned clothes standing arm in arm. The man had a button-hole and there was an air of bygone festivity about the whole pose.

‘Probably a wedding picture,’ said Poirot. ‘Regard, Hastings, did I not tell you that she had been a beautiful woman?’

He was right. Disfigured by old-fashioned hairdressing and weird clothes, there was no disguising the handsomeness of the girl in the picture with her clear-cut features and spirited bearing. I looked closely at the second figure. It was almost impossible to recognise the seedy Ascher in this smart young man with the military bearing.

I recalled the leering drunken old man, and the toil-worn face of the dead woman—and I shivered a little at the remorselessness of time…

From the parlour a stair led to two upstairs rooms. One was empty and unfurnished, the other had evidently been the dead woman’s bedroom. After being searched by the police it had been left as it was. A couple of old worn blankets on the bed—a little stock of well-darned underwear in a drawer—cookery recipes in another—a paper-backed novel entitled The Green Oasis—a pair of new stockings—pathetic in their cheap shininess—a couple of china ornaments—a Dresden shepherd much broken, and a blue and yellow spotted dog—a black raincoat and a woolly jumper hanging on pegs—such were the worldly possessions of the late Alice Ascher.

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. 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.

‘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, 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?’

‘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, Hastings? I say to you: “Make a purchase quelconque”—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 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’ 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 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, 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 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, conjecture and hearsay.

Kept herself to herself, Mrs Ascher had. Not what you’d call really friendly, but there, she’d had a lot of trouble, poor soul, everyone knew that. And by rights Franz Ascher ought to have been locked up years ago. Not that Mrs Ascher had been afraid of him—real tartar she could be when roused! Give as good as she got any day. But there it was—the pitcher could go to the well once too often. Again and again, she, Mrs Fowler, had said to her: ‘One of these days that man will do for you. Mark my words.’ And he had done, hadn’t he? And there had she, Mrs Fowler, been right next door and never heard a sound.

In a pause Poirot managed to insert a question.

Had Mrs Ascher ever received any peculiar letters—letters without a proper signature—just something like ABC?

Regretfully, Mrs Fowler returned a negative answer.

‘I know the kind of thing you mean—anonymous letters they call them—mostly full of words you’d blush to say out loud. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure, if Franz Ascher ever took to writing those. Mrs Ascher never let on to me if he did. What’s that? A railway guide, an А В C? No, I never saw such a thing about—and I’m sure if Mrs Ascher had been sent one I’d have heard about it. I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard about this whole business. It was my girl Edie what came to me. “Mum,” she says, “there’s ever so many policemen next door.” Gave me quite a turn, it did. “Well,” I said, when I heard about it, “it does show that she ought never to have been alone in the house—that niece of hers ought to have been with her. A man in drink can be like a ravening wolf,” I said, “and in my opinion a wild beast is neither more nor less than what that old devil of a husband of hers is. I’ve warned her,” I said, “many times and now my words have come true. He’ll do for you,” I said. And he has done for her! You can’t rightly estimate what a man will do when he’s in drink and this murder’s a proof of it.’

She wound up with a deep gasp.

‘Nobody saw this man Ascher go into the shop, I believe?’ said Poirot.

Mrs Fowler sniffed scornfully.

‘Naturally he wasn’t going to show himself,’ she said.

How Mr Ascher had got there without showing himself she did not deign to explain.

She agreed that there was no back way into the house and that Ascher was quite well known by sight in the district.

‘But he didn’t want to swing for it and he kept himself well hid.’

Poirot kept the conversational ball rolling some little time longer, but when it seemed certain that Mrs Fowler had told all that she knew not once but many times over, he terminated the interview, first paying out the promised sum.

‘Rather a dear five pounds’ worth, Poirot,’ I ventured to remark when we were once more in the street.

‘So far, yes.’

‘You think she knows more than she has told?’

‘My friend, we are in the peculiar position of not knowing what questions to ask. We are like little children playing cache-cache in the dark. We stretch out our hands and grope about. Mrs Fowler has told us all that she thinks she knows—and has thrown in several conjectures for good measure! In the future, however, her evidence may be useful. It is for the future that I have invested that sum of five pounds.’

I did not quite understand the point, but at this moment we ran into Inspector Glen.