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 from 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 flower in his buttonhole 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 hair-dressing 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 recognize the seedy Ascher in this smart young man with the military bearing.
I recalled the leering drunken old man, and the worn, 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 paperbacked 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 now?" 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 the purchase quel conque'—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 attending to.