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 know?’ 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.’