Агата Кристи - Зло под солнцем / Evil Under the Sun

“M. Poirot?”

Poirot leaped to the water’s edge.

“Madame?”

Arlena Marshall said: “Do something for me, will you?”

“Anything.”

She smiled at him.

She murmured: “Don’t tell any one where I am.” She made her glance appealing. “Every one will follow me about so. I just want for once to be alone.”

She paddled off vigorously.

Poirot walked up the beach.

He murmured to himself: “Ah ça, jamais! That, par exemple, I do not believe.”

He doubted if Arlena Smart, to give her stage name, had ever wanted to be alone in her life. Hercule Poirot, that man of the world, knew better. Arlena Marshall was doubtless keeping a rendezvous, and Poirot had a very good idea with whom. Or thought he had, but there he found himself proved wrong. For just as the float rounded the point of the bay and disappeared out of sight Patrick Redfern closely followed by Kenneth Marshall came striding down the beach from the hotel.

Marshall nodded to Poirot. “Morning, Poirot. Seen my wife anywhere about?”

Poirot’s answer was diplomatic. “Has Madame then risen so early?”

Marshall said: “She’s not in her room.” He looked up at the sky. “Lovely day. I shall have a bathe right away. Got a lot of typing to do this morning.”

Patrick Redfern, less openly, was looking up and down the beach. He sat down near Poirot and prepared to wait for the arrival of his lady.

Poirot said: “And Madame Redfern? Has she too risen early?”

Patrick Redfern said: “Christine? Oh, she’s going off sketching. She’s rather keen on art just now.”

He spoke impatiently, his mind clearly elsewhere. As time passed he displayed his impatience for Arlena’s arrival only too crudely. At every footstep he turned an eager head to see who it was coming down from the hotel.

Disappointment followed disappointment. First Mr and Mrs Gardener complete with knitting and book and then Miss Brewster arrived. Mrs Gardener, industrious as ever, settled herself in her chair, and began to knit vigorously and talk at the same time.

“Well, M. Poirot. The beach seems very deserted this morning. Where is everybody?”

Poirot replied that the Mastermans and the Cowans, two families with young people in them, had gone off on an all-day sailing excursion.

“Why, that certainly does make all the difference, not having them around laughing and calling out. And only one person bathing, Captain Marshall.”

Marshall had just finished his swim. He came up the beach swinging his towel.

“Pretty good in the sea this morning,” he said. “Unfortunately I’ve got a lot of work to do. Must go and get on with it.”

“Why, if that isn’t too bad, Captain Marshall. On a beautiful day like this, too. My, wasn’t yesterday too terrible? I said to Mr Gardener that if the weather was going to continue like that, we’d just have to leave. It’s so melancholy, you know, with the mist right up around the island. Gives you a kind of ghostly feeling, but then I’ve always been very susceptible to atmosphere ever since I was a child. Sometimes, you know, I’d feel I just had to scream and scream. And that, of course, was very trying to my parents. But my mother was a lovely woman and she said to my father, ‘Sinclair, if the child feels like that, we must let her do it. Screaming is her way of expressing herself.’ And of course my father agreed. He was devoted to my mother and just did everything she said. They were a perfectly lovely couple, as I’m sure Mr Gardener will agree. They were a very remarkable couple, weren’t they, Odell?”

“Yes, darling,” said Mr Gardener.

“And where’s your girl this morning, Captain Marshall?”

“Linda? I don’t know. I expect she’s mooning round the island somewhere.”

“You know, Captain Marshall, that girl looks kind of peaky to me. She needs feeding up and very, very sympathetic treatment.”

Kenneth Marshall said curtly: “Linda’s all right.”

He went up to the hotel. Patrick Redfern did not go into the water. He sat about, frankly looking up towards the hotel. He was beginning to look a shade sulky. Miss Brewster was brisk and cheerful when she arrived.

The conversation was much as it had been on a previous morning. Gentle yapping from Mrs Gardener and short staccato barks from Miss Brewster.

She remarked at last: “Beach seems a bit empty. Every one off on excursions?”

Mrs Gardener said: “I was saying to Mr Gardener only this morning that we simply must make an excursion to Dartmoor. It’s quite near and the associations are all so romantic. And I’d like to see that convict prison – Princetown, isn’t it? I think we’d better fix up right away and go there tomorrow, Odell.”

Mr Gardener said: “Yes, darling.”

Hercule Poirot said to Miss Brewster: “You are going to bathe, Mademoiselle?”

“Oh, I’ve had my morning dip before breakfast. Somebody nearly brained me with a bottle, too. Chucked it out of one of the hotel windows.”

“Now that’s a very dangerous thing to do,” said Mrs Gardener. “I had a very dear friend who got concussion by a toothpaste tin falling on him in the street – thrown out of a thirty-fifth storey window it was. A most dangerous thing to do. He got very substantial damages.” She began to hunt among her skeins of wool. “Why, Odell, I don’t believe I’ve got that second shade of purple wool. It’s in the second drawer of the bureau in our bedroom or it might be the third.”

“Yes, darling.”

Mr Gardener rose obediently and departed on his search. Mrs Gardener went on:

“Sometimes, you know, I do think that maybe we’re going a little too far nowadays. What with all our great discoveries and all the electrical waves there must be in the atmosphere, I do think it leads to a great deal of mental unrest and I just feel that maybe the time has come for a new message to humanity. I don’t know, M. Poirot, if you’ve ever interested yourself in the prophecies from the Pyramids.”

“I have not,” said Poirot.

“Well, I do assure you that they’re very, very interesting. What with Moscow being exactly a thousand miles due North of – now what was it? – Would it be Nineveh? – but anyway you take a circle and it just shows the most surprising things and one can just see that there must have been special guidance, and that those ancient Egyptians couldn’t have thought of what they did all by themselves. And when you’ve gone into the theory of the numbers and their repetition, why, it’s all just so clear that I can’t see how any one can doubt the truth of it for a moment.”

Mrs Gardener paused triumphantly but neither Poirot nor Miss Emily Brewster felt moved to argue the point.

Poirot studied his white suede shoes ruefully.

Emily Brewster said: “You been paddling with your shoes on, M. Poirot?”

Poirot murmured: “Alas! I was precipitate.”

Emily Brewster lowered her voice. She said: “Where’s our Vamp this morning? She’s late.”

Mrs Gardener, raising her eyes from her knitting to study Patrick Redfern, murmured:

“He looks just like a thundercloud. Oh! Dear, I do feel the whole thing is such a pity. I wonder what Captain Marshall thinks about it all. He’s such a nice quiet man – very British and unassuming. You just never know what he’s thinking about things.”

Patrick Redfern rose and began to pace up and down the beach. Mrs Gardener murmured:

“Just like a tiger.”

Three pairs of eyes watched his pacing. Their scrutiny seemed to make Patrick Redfern uncomfortable. He looked more than sulky now. He looked in a flaming temper. In the stillness a faint chime from the mainland came to their ears. Emily Brewster murmured:

“Wind’s from the East again. That’s a good sign when you can hear the church clock strike.”

Nobody said any more until Mr Gardener returned with a skein of brilliant magenta wool.

“Why, Odell, what a long time you have been!”

“Sorry, darling, but you see it wasn’t in your bureau at all. I found it on your wardrobe shelf.”

“Why, isn’t that too extraordinary? I could have declared I put it in that bureau drawer. I do think it’s fortunate that I’ve never had to give evidence in a court case. I’d just worry myself to death in case I wasn’t remembering a thing just right.”

Mr Gardener said: “Mrs Gardener is very conscientious.”

It was some five minutes later that Patrick Redfern said:

“Going for your row this morning, Miss Brewster? Mind if I come with you?”

Miss Brewster said heartily: “Delighted.”

“Let’s row right round the island,” proposed Redfern.

Miss Brewster consulted her watch.

“Shall we have time? Oh, yes, it’s not half past eleven yet. Come on then, let’s start.”

They went down the beach together. Patrick Redfern took first turn at the oars. He rowed with a powerful stroke. The boat leapt forward. Emily Brewster said approvingly:

“Good. We’ll see if you can keep that up.”

He laughed into her eyes. His spirits had improved.

“I shall probably have a fine crop of blisters by the time we get back.” He threw up his head tossing back his black hair. “God, it’s a marvellous day! If you do get a real summer’s day in England there’s nothing to beat it.”

Emily Brewster said gruffly: “Can’t beat England anyway in my opinion. Only place in the world to live in.”

“I’m with you.”

They rounded the point of the bay to the west and rowed under the cliffs. Patrick Redfern looked up.

“Any one on Sunny Ledge this morning? Yes, there’s a sunshade. Who is it, I wonder?”

Emily Brewster said: “It’s Miss Darnley, I think. She’s got one of those Japanese affairs.”

They rowed up the coast. On their left was the open sea. Emily Brewster said:

“We ought to have gone the other way round. This way we’ve got the current against us.”

“There’s very little current. I’ve swum out here and not noticed it. Anyway we couldn’t go the other way. The causeway wouldn’t be covered.”

“Depends on the tide, of course. But they always say that bathing from Pixy Cove is dangerous if you swim out too far.”

Patrick was rowing vigorously still. At the same time he was scanning the cliffs attentively. Emily Brewster thought suddenly:

“He’s looking for the Marshall woman. That’s why he wanted to come with me. She hadn’t shown up this morning and he’s wondering what she’s up to. Probably she’s done it on purpose. Just a move in the game – to make him keener.”

They rounded the jutting point of rock to the south of the little bay named Pixy’s Cove. It was quite a small cove, with rocks dotted fantastically about the beach. It faced nearly northwest and the cliff overhung it a good deal. It was a favourite place for picnic teas. In the morning, when the sun was off it, it was not popular and there was seldom any one there. On this occasion, however, there was a figure on the beach. Patrick Redfern’s stroke checked and recovered. He said in a would-be casual tone:

“Hullo, who’s that?”

Miss Brewster said drily: “It looks like Mrs Marshall.”

Patrick Redfern said as though struck by the idea: “So it does.”

He altered his course, rowing inshore. Emily Brewster protested. “We don’t want to land here, do we?”

Patrick Redfern said quickly: “Oh, plenty of time.”

His eyes looked into hers – something in them, a naive pleading look rather like that of an importunate dog, silenced Emily Brewster. She thought to herself:

“Poor boy, he’s got it badly. Oh, well, it can’t be helped. He’ll get over it in time.”