Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories. Агата Кристи

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 Ambassador himself came forward and testified at the police-court proceedings that Ascanio had been with him at the Embassy from eight till nine that evening. The prisoner was discharged. Naturally, a lot of people thought that the crime was a political one, and was being deliberately hushed up.

      Poirot had taken a keen interest in all these points. Nevertheless, I was somewhat surprised when he suddenly informed me one morning that he was expecting a visitor at eleven o’clock, and that the visitor was none other than Ascanio himself.

      ‘He wishes to consult you?’

      ‘Du tout, Hastings, I wish to consult him.’

      ‘What about?’

      ‘The Regent’s Court murder.’

      ‘You are going to prove that he did it?’

      ‘A man cannot be tried twice for murder, Hastings. Endeavour to have the common sense. Ah, that is our friend’s ring.’

      A few minutes later Signor Ascanio was ushered in – a small, thin man with a secretive and furtive glance in his eyes. He remained standing, darting suspicious glances from one to the other of us.

      ‘Monsieur Poirot?’