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I failed to see why the idea was so extremely amusing, and in any case I thought the joke was in poor taste. Poirot, poor old chap, is getting on. Jokes about his approaching demise can hardly be agreeable to him.
Perhaps my manner showed my feelings, for Japp changed the subject.
‘Have you heard about Monsieur Poirot’s anonymous letter?’
‘I showed it to Hastings the other day,’ said my friend.
‘Of course,’ I exclaimed. ‘It had quite slipped my memory. Let me see, what was the date mentioned?’
‘The 21st,’ said Japp. ‘That’s what I dropped in about. Yesterday was the 21st and just out of curiosity I rang up Andover last night. It was a hoax all right. Nothing doing. One broken shop window—kid throwing stones—and a couple of drunk and disorderlies. So just for once our Belgian friend was barking up the wrong tree.’
‘I am relieved, I must confess,’ acknowledged Poirot.
‘You’d quite got the wind up about it, hadn’t you?’ said Japp affectionately. ‘Bless you, we get dozens of letters like that coming in every day! People with nothing better to do and a bit weak in the top storey sit down and write ’em. They don’t mean any harm! Just a kind of excitement.’
‘I have indeed been foolish to take the matter so seriously,’ said Poirot. ‘It is the nest of the horse that I put my nose into there.’
‘You’re mixing up mares and wasps,’ said Japp.
‘Pardon?’
‘Just a couple of proverbs. Well, I must be off. Got a little business in the next street to see to—receiving stolen jewellery. I thought I’d just drop in on my way and put your mind at rest. Pity to let those grey cells function unnecessarily.’
With which words and a hearty laugh, Japp departed.
‘He does not change much, the good Japp, eh?’ asked Poirot.
‘He looks much older,’ I said. ‘Getting as grey as a badger,’ I added vindictively.
Poirot coughed and said:
‘You know, Hastings, there is a little device—my hairdresser is a man of great ingenuity—one attaches it to the scalp and brushes one’s own hair over it—it is not a wig, you comprehend—but—’
‘Poirot,’ I roared. ‘Once and for all I will have nothing to do with the beastly inventions of your confounded hairdresser. What’s the matter with the top of my head?’
‘Nothing—nothing at all.’
‘It’s not as though I were going bald.’
‘Of course not! Of course not!’
‘The hot summers out there naturally cause the hair to fall out a bit. I shall take back a really good hair tonic.’
‘Précisément.’
‘And, anyway, what business is it of Japp’s? He always was an offensive kind of devil. And no sense of humour. The kind of man who laughs when a chair is pulled away just as a man is about to sit down.’
‘A great many people would laugh at that.’
‘It’s utterly senseless.’
‘From the point of view of the man about to sit, certainly it is.’
‘Well,’ I said, slightly recovering my temper. (I admit that I am touchy about the thinness of my hair.) ‘I’m sorry that anonymous letter business came to nothing.’
‘I have indeed been in the wrong over that. About that letter, there was, I thought, the odour of the fish. Instead a mere stupidity. Alas, I grow old and suspicious like the blind watch-dog who growls when there is nothing there.’
‘If I’m going to co-operate with you, we must look about for some other “creamy” crime,’ I said with a laugh.
‘You remember your remark of the other day? If you could order a crime as one orders a dinner, what would you choose?’
I fell in with his humour.
‘Let me see now. Let’s review the menu. Robbery? Forgery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder—red-blooded murder—with trimmings, of course.’
‘Naturally. The hors d’oeuvres.’
‘Who shall the victim be—man or woman? Man, I think. Some big-wig. American millionaire. Prime Minister. Newspaper proprietor. Scene of the crime—well, what’s wrong with the good old library? Nothing like it for atmosphere. As for the weapon—well, it might be a curiously twisted dagger—or some blunt instrument—a carved stone idol—’
Poirot sighed.
‘Or, of course,’ I said, ‘there’s poison—but that’s always so technical. Or a revolver shot echoing in the night. Then there must be a beautiful girl or two—’
‘With auburn hair,’ murmured my friend.
‘Your same old joke. One of the beautiful girls, of course, must be unjustly suspected—and there’s some misunderstanding between her and the young man. And then, of course, there must be some other suspects—an older woman—dark, dangerous type—and some friend or rival of the dead man’s—and a quiet secretary—dark horse—and a hearty man with a bluff manner—and a couple of discharged servants or gamekeepers or somethings—and a damn fool of a detective rather like Japp—and well—that’s about all.’
‘That is your idea of the cream, eh?’
‘I gather you don’t agree.’
Poirot looked at me sadly.
‘You have made there a very pretty résumé of nearly all the detective stories that have ever been written.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘What would you order?’
Poirot closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. His voice came purringly from between his lips.
‘A very simple crime. A crime with no complications. A crime of quiet domestic life…very unimpassioned—very intime.’
‘How can a crime be intime?’
‘Supposing,’ murmured Poirot, ‘that four people sit down to play bridge and one, the odd man out, sits in a chair by the fire. At the end of the evening the man by the fire is found dead. One of the four, while he is dummy, has gone over and killed him, and intent on the play of the hand, the other three have not noticed. Ah, there would be a crime for you! Which of the four was it?’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I can’t see any excitement in that!’
Poirot threw me a glance of reproof.
‘No, because there are no curiously twisted daggers, no blackmail, no emerald that is the stolen eye of a god, no untraceable Eastern poisons. You have the melodramatic soul, Hastings. You would like, not one murder, but a series of murders.’
‘I admit,’ I said, ‘that a second murder in a book often cheers things up. If the murder happens in the first chapter, and you have to follow up everybody’s alibi until the last page but one—well, it does get a bit tedious.’
The telephone rang and Poirot rose to answer.
‘’Allo,’ he said. ‘’Allo. Yes, it is Hercule Poirot speaking.’
He listened for a minute or two and then I saw his face change.
His own side of the conversation was short and disjointed.
‘Mais oui…’
‘Yes, of course…’
‘But yes, we will come…’
‘Naturally…’
‘It may be as you say…’
‘Yes, I will bring it. A tout à l’heure then.’
He replaced the receiver and came across the room to me.
‘That was Japp speaking, Hastings.’
‘Yes?’
‘He had just got back to the Yard. There was a message from Andover…’
‘Andover?’ I cried excitedly.
Poirot said slowly:
‘An old woman of the name of Ascher who keeps a little tobacco and newspaper shop has been found murdered.’
I think I felt ever so slightly damped. My interest, quickened by the sound of Andover, suffered a faint check. I had expected something fantastic—out of the way! The murder of an old woman who kept a little tobacco shop seemed, somehow, sordid and uninteresting.
Poirot continued in the same slow, grave voice:
‘The Andover police believe they can put their hand on the man who did it—’
I felt a second throb of disappointment.
‘It seems the woman was on bad terms with her husband. He drinks and is by way of being rather a nasty customer. He’s threatened to take her life more than once.
‘Nevertheless,’ continued Poirot, ‘in view of what has happened, the police there would like to have another look at the anonymous letter I received. I have said that you and I will go down to Andover at once.’
My spirits revived a little. After all, sordid as this crime seemed to be, it was a crime, and it was a long time since I had had any association with crime and criminals.
I hardly listened to the next words Poirot said. But they were to come back to me with significance later.
‘This is the beginning,’ said Hercule Poirot.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_3ad63d93-4762-5415-b332-910f6cd2bef1)
Mrs Ascher (#ulink_3ad63d93-4762-5415-b332-910f6cd2bef1)
We were received at Andover by Inspector Glen, a tall fair-haired man with a pleasant smile.
For the sake of conciseness I think I had better give a brief résumé of the bare facts of the case.
The crime was discovered by Police Constable Dover at 1 am on the morning of the 22nd. When on his round he tried the door of the shop and found it unfastened, he entered and at first thought the place was empty. Directing his torch over the counter, however, he caught sight of the huddled-up body of the old woman. When the police surgeon arrived on the spot it was elicited that the woman had been struck down by a heavy blow on the back of the head, probably while she was reaching down a packet of cigarettes from the shelf behind the counter. Death must have occurred about nine to seven hours previously.
‘But we’ve been able to get it down a bit nearer than that,’ explained the inspector. ‘We’ve found a man who went in and bought some tobacco at 5.30. And a second man went in and found the shop empty, as he thought, at five minutes past six. That puts the time at between 5.30 and 6.5. So far I haven’t been able to find anyone who saw this man Ascher in the neighbourhood, but, of course, it’s early as yet. He was in the Three Crowns at nine o’clock pretty far gone in drink. When we get hold of him he’ll be detained on suspicion.’
‘Not a very desirable character, inspector?’ asked Poirot.
‘Unpleasant bit of goods.’
‘He didn’t live with his wife?’
‘No, they separated some years ago. Ascher’s a German. He was a waiter at one time, but he took to drink and gradually became unemployable. His wife went into service for a bit. Her last place was as cook-housekeeper to an old lady, Miss Rose. She allowed her husband so much out of her wages to keep himself, but he was always getting drunk and coming round and making scenes at the places where she was employed. That’s why she took the post with Miss Rose at The Grange. It’s three miles out of Andover, dead in the country. He couldn’t get at her there so well. When Miss Rose died, she left Mrs Ascher a small legacy, and the woman started this tobacco and newsagent business—quite a tiny place—just cheap cigarettes and a few newspapers—that sort of thing. She just about managed to keep going. Ascher used to come round and abuse her now and again and she used to give him a bit to get rid of him. She allowed him fifteen shillings a week regular.’
‘Had they any children?’ asked Poirot.
‘No. There’s a niece. She’s in service near Overton. Very superior, steady young woman.’
‘And you say this man Ascher used to threaten his wife?’
‘That’s right. He was a terror when he was in drink—cursing and swearing that he’d bash her head in. She had a hard time, did Mrs Ascher.’
‘What age of woman was she?’
‘Close on sixty—respectable and hard-working.’
Poirot said gravely:
‘It is your opinion, inspector, that this man Ascher committed the crime?’
The inspector coughed cautiously.
‘It’s a bit early to say that, Mr Poirot, but I’d like to hear Franz Ascher’s own account of how he spent yesterday evening. If he can give a satisfactory account of himself, well and good—if not—’
His pause was a pregnant one.
‘Nothing was missing from the shop?’
