The ABC Murders

by Agatha Christie

‘Couldn’t you simply have asked—without all that tissue of lies?’ ‘No, mon ami. If I had “simply asked”, as you put it, I should have got no answer at all to my questions. You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened. We know also that that particular time was a “busy time”—that is, that everyone would be intent on their own concerns and that there would be a fair number of people passing along the pavements. Our murderer chose his time well, Hastings.’ He paused and then added on a deep note of reproach: ‘Is it that you have not in any degree the common sense, Hastings? I say to you: “Make a purchase quelconque”—and you deliberately choose the strawberries! Already they commence to creep through their bag and endanger your good suit.’ With some dismay, I perceived that this was indeed the case. I hastily presented the strawberries to a small boy who seemed highly astonished and faintly suspicious. Poirot added the lettuce, thus setting the seal on the child’s bewilderment.