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.