---

Скачать книгу

---

to auntie to have me near by. But now’—again the tears rose in her eyes—‘there’s no reason I should stay, and so I’ll go back to London. It’s gayer for a girl there.’

      ‘I wish that, when you do go, you would give me your address. Here is my card.’

      He handed it to her. She looked at it with a puzzled frown.

      ‘Then you’re not—anything to do with the police, sir?’

      ‘I am a private detective.’

      She stood there looking at him for some moments in silence.

      She said at last:

      ‘Is there anything—queer going on, sir?’

      ‘Yes, my child. There is—something queer going on. Later you may be able to help me.’

      ‘I—I’ll do anything, sir. It—it wasn’t right, sir, auntie being killed.’

      A strange way of putting it—but deeply moving.

      A few seconds later we were driving back to Andover.

      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[79].

      ‘A. Ascher. Oui, c’est peut-être là[80] —’

      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[81].

      ‘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[82] 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[83]. 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

---

Скачать книгу