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Mrs.
     Ascher.”
    The irate words arrested on her lips, the woman came down the stairs smoothing her hair
     and hitching at her skirt.
    “Come inside, please - on the left there. Won't you sit down, sir.”
    The tiny room was heavily over-crowded with a massive pseudo-Jacobean suite, but we
     managed to squeeze ourselves in and on to a hard-seated sofa.
    “You must excuse me,” the woman was saying. “I am sure I'm sorry I spoke so sharp just
     now, but you'd hardly believe the worry one has to put up with - fellows coming along
     selling this, that and the other - vacuum cleaners, stockings, lavender bags and such like
     foolery - and all so plausible and civil spoken. Got your name, too, pat they have. It's
     Mrs. Fowler this, that and the other.”
    Seizing adroitly on the name, Poirot said:
    “Well, Mrs. Fowler, I hope you're going to do what I ask.”
    “I don't know, I'm sure.” The five pounds hung alluringly before Mrs. Fowler's eyes. “I
     knew Mrs. Ascher, of course, but as to writing anything.”
    Hastily Poirot reassured her. No labour on her part was required. He would elicit the
     facts from her and the interview would be written up. Thus encouraged, Mrs. Fowler plunged
     willingly into reminiscence, conjecture and hearsay.
    Kept to herself, Mrs. Ascher had. Not what you'd call really friendly, but there, she'd
     had a lot of trouble, poor soul, every one knew that. And by right Franz Ascher ought to
     have been locked up years ago. Not that Mrs. Ascher had been afraid of him - a real tartar
     she could be when roused! Give as good as she got any day. But there it was - the pitcher
     could go to the well once too often. Again and again, she, Mrs. Fowler, had said to her:
     “One of these days that man will do for you. Mark my words.” And he had done, hadn't he?
     And there had she, Mrs. Fowler, been right next door and never heard a sound.
    In a pause Poirot managed to insert a question.
    Had Mrs. Ascher ever received any peculiar letters - letters without a proper signature -
     just something like A.B.C.?
    Regretfully, Mrs. Fowler returned a negative answer.
    “I know the kind of thing you mean - anonymous letters they call them - mostly full of
     words you'd blush to say out loud. Well, I don't know, I'm sure, if Franz Ascher ever took
     to writing those. Mrs. Ascher never let on to me if he did. What's that? A railway guide,
     an A.B.C.? No, I never saw such a thing about - and I'm sure if Mrs. Ascher had been sent
     one I'd have heard about it. I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather when
     I heard about this whole business. It was my girl Edie what came to me. 'Mum,' she says,
     'there's ever so many policemen next door.' Gave me quite a turn, it did. 'Well,' I said,
     when I heard about it, 'it does show that she ought never to have been alone in the house
     - that niece of hers ought to have been with her. A man in drink can be like a ravening
     wolf,' I said, 'and in my opinion a wild beast is neither more nor less than what that old
     devil of a husband of hers is. I've warned her,' I said, 'many times and now my words have
     come true. He'll do for you,' I said. And he has done for her! You can't rightly estimate
     what a man will do when he's in drink and this murder's a proof of it.”
    She wound up with a deep gasp.
    “Nobody saw this man Ascher go into the shop, I believe?” said Poirot.
    Mrs. Fowler sniffed scornfully.
    “Naturally he wasn't going to show himself,” she said.
    How Mr. Ascher had got there without showing himself she did not deign to explain.
    She agreed that there was no back way into the house and that Ascher was quite well known
     by sight in the district.
    “But he didn't want to swing for it and he kept himself well hid.”
    Poirot kept the conversational ball rolling some little time longer but when it seemed
     certain that Mrs. Fowler had told all that she knew not once but many times over, he
     terminated the