He looks much older, I said. Getting as grey as a badger, I added vindictively.
Poirot coughed and said:
You know, Hastings, there is a little devicemy hairdresser is a man of great ingenuityone attaches it to the scalp and brushes ones own hair over itit is not a wig, you comprehendbut
Poirot, I roared. Once and for all[35] I will have nothing to do with the beastly inventions of your confounded hairdresser. Whats the matter with the top of my head?
Nothingnothing at all.
Its not as though I were going bald.
Of course not! Of course not!
The hot summers out there naturally cause the hair to fall out a bit. I shall take back a really good hair tonic.
Précisément.[36]
And, anyway, what business is it of Japps? He always was an offensive kind of devil. And no sense of humour. The kind of man who laughs when a chair is pulled away just as a man is about to sit down.
A great many people would laugh at that.
Its utterly senseless.
From the point of view of the man about to sit, certainly it is.
Well, I said, slightly recovering my temper. (I admit that I am touchy about the thinness of my hair.) Im sorry that anonymous letter business came to nothing.
I have indeed been in the wrong[37] over that. About that letter, there was, I thought, the odour of the fish. Instead a mere stupidity. Alas, I grow old and suspicious like the blind watch-dog who growls when there is nothing there.
If Im going to co-operate with you, we must look about for some other creamy crime, I said with a laugh.
You remember your remark of the other day? If you could order a crime as one orders a dinner, what would you choose?
I fell in with[38] his humour.
Let me see now. Lets review the menu. Robbery? Forgery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murderred-blooded murderwith trimmings, of course.
Naturally. The hors-dœuvres[39].
Who shall the victim beman or woman? Man, I think. Some big-wig. American millionaire. Prime Minister. Newspaper proprietor. Scene of the crimewell, whats wrong with the good old library? Nothing like it for atmosphere. As for the weaponwell, it might be a curiously twisted daggeror some blunt instrumenta carved stone idol
Poirot sighed.
Or, of course, I said, theres poisonbut thats always so technical. Or a revolver shot echoing in the night. Then there must be a beautiful girl or two
With auburn hair, murmured my friend.
Your same old joke. One of the beautiful girls, of course, must be unjustly suspectedand theres some misunderstanding between her and the young man. And then, of course, there must be some other suspectsan older womandark, dangerous typeand some friend or rival of the dead mansand a quiet secretarydark horseand a hearty man with a bluff mannerand a couple of discharged servants or gamekeepers or somethingsand a damn fool of a detective rather like Jappand wellthats about all.
That is your idea of the cream, eh?
I gather you dont agree.
Poirot looked at me sadly.
You have made there a very pretty resume of nearly all the detective stories that have ever been written.
Well, I said. What would you order?
Poirot closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. His voice came purringly from between his lips.
A very simple crime. A crime with no complications. A crime of quiet domestic life very unimpassioned very intime.
How can a crime be intime?
Supposing, murmured Poirot, that four people sit down to play bridge[40] and one, the odd man out[41], sits in a chair by the fire. At the end of the evening the man by the fire is found dead. One of the four, while he is dummy[42], has gone over and killed him, and intent on the play of the hand[43], the other three have not noticed. Ah, there would be a crime for you! Which of the four was it?
Well, I said. I cant see any excitement in that!
Poirot threw me a glance of reproof.
No, because there are no curiously twisted daggers, no blackmail, no emerald that is the stolen eye of a god, no untraceable Eastern poisons. You have the melodramatic soul, Hastings. You would like, not one murder, but a series of murders.
I admit, I said, that a second murder in a book often cheers things up. If the murder happens in the first chapter, and you have to follow up everybodys alibi until the last page but onewell, it does get a bit tedious.
The telephone rang and Poirot rose to answer.
Allo[44], he said. Allo. Yes, it is Hercule Poirot speaking.
He listened for a minute or two and then I saw his face change.
His own side of the conversation was short and disjointed.
Mais oui[45]
Yes, of course
But yes, we will come
Naturally
It may be as you say
Yes, I will bring it. À tout à lheure[46] then.
He replaced the receiver and came across the room to me.
That was Japp speaking, Hastings.
Yes?
He had just got back to the Yard. There was a message from Andover
Andover? I cried excitedly.
Poirot said slowly:
An old woman of the name of Ascher who keeps a little tobacco and newspaper shop has been found murdered.
I think I felt ever so slightly damped. My interest, quickened by the sound of Andover, suffered a faint check. I had expected something fantasticout of the way[47]! The murder of an old woman who kept a little tobacco shop seemed, somehow, sordid and uninteresting.