Poirot investigates - Agatha Christie [65]
‘Was that a usual proceeding of his when he had guests?’ asked the inspector.
‘No, sir; it wasn’t. That’s what made me think it must be some business of a very unusual kind that he was going to discuss with these gentlemen.’
That finished Graves’s story. He had gone out about 8.30, and meeting a friend, had accompanied him to the Metropolitan Music Hall in Edgware Road.
Nobody had seen the two men leave, but the time of the murder was fixed clearly enough at 8.47. A small clock on the writing-table had been swept off by Foscatini’s arm, and had stopped at that hour, which agreed with Miss Rider’s telephone summons.
The police surgeon had made his examination of the body, and it was now lying on the couch. I saw the face for the first time–the olive complexion, the long nose, the luxuriant black moustache, and the full red lips drawn back from the dazzlingly white teeth. Not altogether a pleasant face.
‘Well,’ said the inspector, refastening his notebook. ‘The case seems clear enough. The only difficulty will be to lay our hands on this Signor Ascanio. I suppose his address is not in the dead man’s pocket-book by any chance?’
As Poirot had said, the late Foscatini was an orderly man. Neatly written in small, precise handwriting was the inscription, ‘Signor Paolo Ascanio, Grosvenor Hotel.’
The inspector busied himself with the telephone, then turned to us with a grin.
‘Just in time. Our fine gentleman was off to catch the boat train to the Continent. Well, gentlemen, that’s about all we can do here. It’s a bad business, but straightforward enough. One of these Italian vendetta things, as likely as not.’
Thus airily dismissed, we found our way downstairs. Dr Hawker was full of excitement.
‘Like the beginning of a novel, eh? Real exciting stuff. Wouldn’t believe it if you read about it.’
Poirot did not speak. He was very thoughtful. All the evening he had hardly opened his lips.
‘What says the master detective, eh?’ asked Hawker, clapping him on the back. ‘Nothing to work your grey cells over this time.’
‘You think not?’
‘What could there be?’
‘Well, for example, there is the window.’
‘The window? But it was fastened. Nobody could have got out or in that way. I noticed it specially.’
‘And why were you able to notice it?’
The doctor looked puzzled. Poirot hastened to explain.
‘It is to the curtains that I refer. They were not drawn. A little odd, that. And then there was the coffee. It was very black coffee.’
‘Well, what of it?’
‘Very black,’ repeated Poirot. ‘In conjunction with that let us remember that very little of the rice soufflé was eaten, and we get–what?’
‘Moonshine,’ laughed the doctor. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘Never do I pull the leg. Hastings here knows that I am perfectly serious.’
‘I don’t know what you are getting at, all the same,’ I confessed. ‘You don’t suspect the manservant, do you? He might have been in with the gang, and put some dope in the coffee. I suppose they’ll test his alibi?’
‘Without doubt, my friend; but it is the alibi of Signor Ascanio that interests me.’
‘You think he has an alibi?’
‘That is just what worries me. I have no doubt that we shall soon be enlightened on that point.’
The Daily Newsmonger enabled us to become conversant with succeeding events.
Signor Ascanio was arrested and charged with the murder of Count Foscatini. When arrested, he denied knowing the Count, and declared he had never been near Regent’s Court either on the evening of the crime or on the previous morning. The younger man had disappeared entirely. Signor Ascanio had arrived alone at the Grosvenor Hotel from the Continent two days before the murder. All efforts to trace the second man failed.
Ascanio, however, was not sent for trial. No less a personage than the Italian