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‘That is your idea of the cream, eh?’

‘I gather you don’t 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 and one, the odd man out, 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, has gone over and killed him, and intent on the play of the hand, the other three have not noticed. Ah, there would be a crime for you! Which of the four was it?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I can’t 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 everybody’s alibi until the last page but one—well, it does get a bit tedious.’

The telephone rang and Poirot rose to answer.

‘’Allo,’ 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…’

‘Yes, of course…’

‘But yes, we will come…’

‘Naturally…’

‘It may be as you say…’

‘Yes, I will bring it. À tout à l’heure 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 fantastic—out of the way! The murder of an old woman who kept a little tobacco shop seemed, somehow, sordid and uninteresting.

Poirot continued in the same slow, grave voice:

‘The Andover police believe they can put their hand on the man who did it —’

I felt a second throb of disappointment.

‘It seems the woman was on bad terms with her husband. He drinks and is by way of being rather a nasty customer. He’s threatened to take her life more than once.

‘Nevertheless,’ continued Poirot, ‘in view of what has happened, the police there would like to have another look at the anonymous letter I received. I have said that you and I will go down to Andover at once.’

My spirits revived a little. After all, sordid as this crime seemed to be, it was a crime, and it was a long time since I had had any association with crime and criminals.