‘Best tell the gentleman what he wants, Bert,’ said the woman nervously.

‘You shut your blarsted mouth,’ roared the giant.

‘You did not, I think, go to the police of your own accord.’ Poirot slipped the remark in neatly.

‘Why the hell should I? It were no business of mine.’

‘A matter of opinion,’ said Poirot indifferently. ‘There has been a murder—the police want to know who has been in the shop—I myself think it would have—what shall I say?—looked more natural if you had come forward.’

‘I’ve got my work to do. Don’t say I shouldn’t have come forward in my own time—’

‘But as it was, the police were given your name as that of a person seen to go into Mrs Ascher’s and they had to come to you. Were they satisfied with your account?’

‘Why shouldn’t they be?’ demanded Bert truculently.

Poirot merely shrugged his shoulders.

‘What are you getting at, mister? Nobody’s got anything against me? Everyone knows who did the old girl in, that b—of a husband of hers.’

‘But he was not in the street that evening and you were.’

‘Trying to fasten it on me, are you? Well, you won’t succeed. What reason had I got to do a thing like that? Think I wanted to pinch a tin of her bloody tobacco? Think I’m a bloody homicidal maniac as they call it? Think I—?’

He rose threateningly from his seat. His wife bleated out:

‘Bert, Bert—don’t say such things. Bert—they’ll think—’

‘Calm yourself, monsieur,’ said Poirot. ‘I demand only your account of your visit. That you refuse it seems to me—what shall we say—a little odd?’

‘Who said I refused anything?’ Mr Riddell sank back again into his seat. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘It was six o’clock when you entered the shop?’

‘That’s right—a minute or two after, as a matter of fact. Wanted a packet of Gold Flake. I pushed open the door—’

‘It was closed, then?’

‘That’s right. I thought shop was shut, maybe. But it wasn’t. I went in, there wasn’t anyone about. I hammered on the counter and waited a bit. Nobody came, so I went out again. That’s all, and you can put it in your pipe and smoke it.’

‘You didn’t see the body fallen down behind the counter?’

‘No, no more would you have done—unless you was looking for it, maybe.’

‘Was there a railway guide lying about?’

‘Yes, there was—face downwards. It crossed my mind like that the old woman might have had to go off sudden by train and forgot to lock shop up.’

‘Perhaps you picked up the railway guide or moved it along the counter?’

‘Didn’t touch the b—thing. I did just what I said.’

‘And you did not see anyone leaving the shop before you yourself got there?’

‘Didn’t see any such thing. What I say is, why pitch on me—?’

Poirot rose.

‘Nobody is pitching upon you—yet. Bonsoir, monsieur.’

He left the man with his mouth open and I followed him.