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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 withtobacco 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 .
    â€œDown 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.”
    â€œThere was nothing in her hand?”
    â€œNo, sir, but there was a packet of Player’s down beside her.”
    Poirot nodded. His eyes swept round the small space observing—noting.
    â€œAnd the railway guide was—where?”
    â€œHere, 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.”
    â€œFingerprints?” I suggested.
    The man shook his head.
    â€œThe whole place was examined straight away, sir. There weren’t none.”
    â€œNot on the counter itself?” asked Poirot.
    â€œA long sight too many, sir! All confused and jumbled up.”
    â€œAny of Ascher’s among them?”
    â€œToo soon to say, sir.”
    Poirot nodded, then asked if the dead woman lived over the shop.
    â€œYes, 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. The man had a buttonhole and there was an air of bygone festivity about the whole pose.
    â€œProbably 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