‘He was, was he? Bring him along.’

Franz Ascher was indeed a miserable and unprepossessing specimen. He was blubbering and cringing and blustering alternately[59]. His bleary eyes moved shiftily from one face to another.

‘What do you want with me? I have not done nothing. It is a shame and a scandal to bring me here! You are swine, how dare you?’ His manner changed suddenly. ‘No, no, I do not mean that—you would not hurt a poor old man—not be hard on[60] him. Everyone is hard on poor old Franz. Poor old Franz.’

Mr Ascher started to weep.

‘That’ll do[61], Ascher,’ said the inspector. ‘Pull yourself together. I’m not charging you with anything—yet. And you’re not bound to make a statement unless you like. On the other hand, if you’re not concerned in the murder of your wife —’

Ascher interrupted him—his voice rising to a scream.

‘I did not kill her! I did not kill her! It is all lies! You are goddamned English pigs—all against me. I never kill her—never.’

‘You threatened to often enough, Ascher.’

‘No, no. You do not understand. That was just a joke—a good joke between me and Alice. She understood.’

‘Funny kind of joke! Do you care to say where you were yesterday evening, Ascher?’

‘Yes, yes—I tell you everything. I did not go near Alice. I am with friends—good friends. We are at the Seven Stars—and then we are at the Red Dog —’

He hurried on, his words stumbling over each other.

‘Dick Willows—he was with me—and old Curdie—and George—and Platt and lots of the boys. I tell you I do not never go near Alice. Ach Gott[62], it is the truth I am telling you.’

His voice rose to a scream. The inspector nodded to his underling.

‘Take him away. Detained on suspicion.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said as the unpleasant, shaking old man with the malevolent, mouthing jaw was removed. ‘If it wasn’t for the letter[63], I’d say he did it.’ ‘What about the men he mentions?’

‘A bad crowd—not one of them would stick at perjury. I’ve no doubt he was with them the greater part of the evening. A lot depends on whether any one saw him near the shop between half-past five and six.’

Poirot shook his head thoughtfully.

‘You are sure nothing was taken from the shop?’

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

‘That depends. A packet or two of cigarettes might have been taken—but you’d hardly commit murder for that.’

‘And there was nothing—how shall I put it—introduced into the shop? Nothing that was odd there—incongruous?’

‘There was a railway guide,’ said the inspector.

‘A railway guide?’

‘Yes. It was open and turned face downward on the counter. Looked as though someone had been looking up the trains from Andover. Either the old woman or a customer.’

‘Did she sell that type of thing?’

The inspector shook his head.

‘She sold penny time-tables. This was a big one—kind of thing only Smith’s or a big stationer would keep.’

A light came into Poirot’s eyes. He leant forward.

A light came into the inspector’s eye also.

‘A railway guide, you say. A Bradshaw—or an ABC[64]?

‘By the Lord[65],’ he said. ‘It was an A B C.’

I think that I can date my interest in the case from that first mention of the ABC railway guide. Up till then I had not been able to raise much enthusiasm. This sordid murder of an old woman in a back-street shop was so like the usual type of crime reported in the newspapers that it failed to strike a significant note[66]. In my own mind I had put down the anonymous letter with its mention of the 21st as a mere coincidence. Mrs Ascher, I felt reasonably sure, had been the victim of her drunken brute of a husband. But now the mention of the railway guide (so familiarly known by its abbreviation of А В C, listing as it did all railway stations in their alphabetical order) sent a quiver of excitement through me. Surely—surely this could not be a second coincidence?

The sordid crime took on a new aspect.

Who was the mysterious individual who had killed Mrs Ascher and left an А В C railway guide behind him?

When we left the police station our first visit was to the mortuary to see the body of the dead woman. A strange feeling came over me as I gazed down on that wrinkled old face with the scanty grey hair drawn back tightly from the temples. It looked so peaceful, so incredibly remote from violence.

‘Never knew who or what struck her,’ observed the sergeant. ‘That’s what Dr Kerr says. I’m glad it was that way, poor old soul. A decent woman she was.’

‘She must have been beautiful once,’ said Poirot.

‘Really?’ I murmured incredulously.

‘But yes, look at the line of the jaw, the bones, the moulding of the head.’

He sighed as he replaced the sheet and we left the mortuary.

Our next move was a brief interview with the police surgeon.

Dr Kerr was a competent-looking middle-aged man. He spoke briskly and with decision.

‘The weapon wasn’t found,’ he said. ‘Impossible to say what it may have been. A weighted stick, a club, a form of sandbag—any of those would fit the case.’

‘Would much force be needed to strike such a blow?’

The doctor shot a keen glance at Poirot.

‘Meaning, I suppose, could a shaky old man of seventy do it? Oh, yes, it’s perfectly possible—given sufficient weight in the head of the weapon, quite a feeble person could achieve the desired result.’

‘Then the murderer could just as well be a woman as a man?’

The suggestion took the doctor somewhat aback[67].

‘A woman, eh? Well, I confess it never occurred to me to connect a woman with this type of crime. But of course it’s possible—perfectly possible. Only, psychologically speaking, I shouldn’t say this was a woman’s crime.’

Poirot nodded his head in eager agreement.

‘Perfectly, perfectly. On the face of it, highly improbable. But one must take all possibilities into account[68]. The body was lying—how?’

The doctor gave us a careful description of the position of the victim. It was his opinion that she had been standing with her back to the counter (and therefore to her assailant) when the blow had been struck. She had slipped down in a heap behind the counter quite out of sight of anyone entering the shop casually.

When we had thanked Dr Kerr and taken our leave, Poirot said:

‘You perceive, Hastings, that we have already one further point in favour of Ascher’s innocence. If he had been abusing his wife and threatening her, she would have been facing him over the counter. Instead she had her back to her assailant—obviously she is reaching down tobacco or cigarettes for a customer.’

I gave a little shiver.

‘Pretty gruesome.’

Poirot shook his head gravely.

‘Pauvre femme[69],’ he murmured.

Then he glanced at his watch.

‘Overton is not, I think, many miles from here. Shall we run over there and have an interview with the niece of the dead woman?’

‘Surely you will go first to the shop where the crime took place?’

‘I prefer to do that later. I have a reason.’

He did not explain further, and a few minutes later we were driving on the London road in the direction of Overton.