Агата Кристи - Зло под солнцем / Evil Under the Sun

The little crowd of people flocked out of The Red Bull. The brief inquest was over – adjourned for a fortnight. Rosamund Darnley joined Captain Marshall. She said in a low voice:

“That wasn’t so bad, was it, Ken?”

He did not answer at once. Perhaps he was conscious of the staring eyes of the villagers, the fingers that nearly pointed to him and only just did not quite do so!

“That’s ‘im, my dear.” “See, that’s ‘er ‘usband” “That be the ‘usband.” “Look, there ‘e goes…”

The murmurs were not loud enough to reach his ears, but he was none the less sensitive to them. This was the modern day pillory. The press he had already encountered – self-confident, persuasive young men, adept at battering down his wall of silence, of “Nothing to say” that he had endeavoured to erect. Even the curt monosyllables that he had uttered thinking that they at least could not lead to misapprehension had reappeared in this morning’s papers in a totally different guise. “Asked whether he agreed that the mystery of his wife’s death could only be explained on the assumption that a homicidal murderer had found his way on to the island, Captain Marshall declared that – ” and so on and so forth.

Cameras had clicked ceaselessly. Now, at this minute, the well-known sound caught his ear. He half turned – a smiling young man was nodding cheerfully, his purpose accomplished.

Rosamund murmured: “Captain Marshall and a friend leaving The Red Bull after the inquest.”

Marshall winced.

Rosamund said: “It’s no use, Ken! You’ve got to face it! I don’t mean just the fact of Arlena’s death – I mean all the attendant beastliness. The staring eyes and gossiping tongues, the fatuous interviews in the papers – and the best way to meet it is to find it funny! Come out with all the old inane clichés and curl a sardonic lip at them.”

He said: “Is that your way?”

“Yes.” She paused. “It isn’t yours, I know. Protective colouring is your line. Remain rigidly non-active and fade into the background! But you can’t do that here – you’ve no background to fade into. You stand out clear for all to see – like a striped tiger against a white backcloth. The husband of the murdered woman!”

“For God’s sake, Rosamund – ”

She said gently: “My dear, I’m trying to be good for you!”

They walked for a few steps in silence. Then Marshall said in a different voice:

“I know you are. I’m not really ungrateful, Rosamund.”

They had progressed beyond the limits of the village. Eyes followed them but there was no one very near. Rosamund Darnley’s voice dropped as she repeated a variant of her first remark.

“It didn’t really go so badly, did it?”

He was silent for a moment, then he said:

“I don’t know.”

“What do the police think?”

“They’re noncommittal.”

After a minute Rosamund said:

“That little man – Poirot – is he really taking an active interest?”

Kenneth Marshall said: “Seemed to be sitting in the Chief Constable’s pocket all right the other day.”

“I know – but is he doing anything?”

“How the hell should I know, Rosamund?”

She said thoughtfully: “He’s pretty old. Probably more or less ga ga.”

“Perhaps.”

They came to the causeway. Opposite them, serene in the sun, lay the island. Rosamund said suddenly:

“Sometimes – things seem unreal. I can’t believe, this minute, that it ever happened…”

Marshall said slowly: “I think I know what you mean. Nature is so – regardless! One ant the less – that’s all it is in Nature!”

Rosamund said: “Yes – and that’s the proper way to look at it really.”

He gave her one very quick glance. Then he said in a low voice:

“Don’t worry, my dear. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Linda came down to the causeway to meet them. She moved with the spasmodic jerkiness of a nervous colt. Her young face was marred by deep black shadows under her eyes. Her lips were dry and rough.

She said breathlessly: “What happened – what – what did they say?”

Her father said abruptly: “Inquest adjourned for a fortnight.”

“That means they – they haven’t decided?”

“Yes. More evidence is needed.”

“But – but what do they think?”

Marshall smiled a little in spite of himself.

“Oh, my dear child – who knows? And whom do you mean by they? The Coroner, the jury, the police, the newspaper reporters, the fishing folk of Leathercombe Bay?”

Linda said slowly: “I suppose I mean – the police.”

Marshall said drily: “Whatever the police think, they’re not giving it away at present.”

His lips closed tightly after the sentence. He went into the hotel.

As Rosamund Darnley was about to follow suit, Linda said:

“Rosamund!”

Rosamund turned. The mute appeal in the girl’s unhappy face touched her. She linked her arm through Linda’s and together they walked away from the hotel, taking the path that led to the extreme end of the island.

Rosamund said gently: “Try not to mind so much, Linda. I know it’s all very terrible and a shock and all that, but it’s no use brooding over these things. And it can be only the – the horror of it, that is worrying you. You weren’t in the least fond of Arlena, you know.”

She felt the tremor that ran through the girl’s body as Linda answered:

“No, I wasn’t fond of her…”

Rosamund went on: “Sorrow for a person is different – one can’t put that behind one. But one can get over shock and horror by just not letting your mind dwell on it all the time.”

Linda said sharply: “You don’t understand.”

“I think I do, my dear.”

Linda shook her head.

“No, you don’t. You don’t understand in the least – and Christine doesn’t understand either! Both of you have been nice to me, but you can’t understand what I’m feeling. You just think it’s morbid – that I’m dwelling on it all when I needn’t.” She paused. “But it isn’t that at all. If you knew what I know – ”

Rosamund stopped dead. Her body did not tremble – on the contrary it stiffened. She stood for a minute or two, then she disengaged her arm from Linda’s. She said:

“What is it that you know, Linda?”

The girl gazed at her. Then she shook her head. She muttered:

“Nothing.”

Rosamund caught her by the arm. The grip hurt and Linda winced slightly. Rosamund said:

“Be careful, Linda. Be damned careful.”

Linda had gone dead white.

She said: “I am very careful – all the time.”

Rosamund said urgently: “Listen, Linda, what I said a minute or two ago applies just the same – only a hundred times more so. Put the whole business out of your mind. Never think about it. Forget – forget… You can if you try! Arlena is dead and nothing can bring her back to life… Forget everything and live in the future. And above all, hold your tongue.”

Linda shrank a little.

She said: “You – you seem to know all about it?”

Rosamund said energetically: “I don’t know anything! In my opinion a wandering maniac got onto the island and killed Arlena. That’s much the most probable solution. I’m fairly sure that the police will have to accept that in the end. That’s what must have happened! That’s what did happen!”

Linda said: “If Father – ”

Rosamund interrupted her. “Don’t talk about it.”

Linda said: “I’ve got to say one thing. My Mother – ”

“Well, what about her?”

“She – she was tried for murder, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

Linda said slowly: “And then Father married her. That looks, doesn’t it, as though Father didn’t really think murder was very wrong – not always, that is.”

Rosamund said sharply: “Don’t say things like that – even to me! The police haven’t got anything against your father. He’s got an alibi – an alibi that they can’t break. He’s perfectly safe.”

Linda whispered: “Did they think at first that Father – ?”

Rosamund cried: “I don’t know what they thought! But they know now that he couldn’t have done it. Do you understand? He couldn’t have done it.”

She spoke with authority, her eyes commanded Linda’s acquiescence. The girl uttered a long fluttering sigh. Rosamund said:

“You’ll be able to leave here soon. You’ll forget everything – everything!”

Linda said with sudden unexpected violence: “I shall never forget.”

She turned abruptly and ran back to the hotel. Rosamund stared after her.

“There is something I want to know, Madame?”

Christine Redfern glanced up at Poirot in a slightly abstracted manner. She said:

“Yes?”

Hercule Poirot took very little notice of her abstraction. He had noted the way her eyes followed her husband’s figure where he was pacing up and down on the terrace outside the bar, but for the moment he had no interest in purely conjugal problems. He wanted information.

He said: “Yes, Madame. It was a phrase – a chance phrase of yours the other day which roused my attention.”

Christine, her eyes till on Patrick, said:

“Yes? What did I say?”

“It was in answer to a question from the Chief Constable. You described how you went into Miss Linda Marshall’s room on the morning of the crime and how you found her absent from it and how she returned there and it was then that the Chief Constable asked you where she had been.”

Christine said rather impatiently: “And I said she had been bathing? Is that it?”

“Ah, but you did not say quite that. You did not say ‘she had been bathing.’ Your words were ‘she said she had been bathing.’”

Christine said: “It’s the same thing, surely.”

“No, it is not the same! The form of your answer suggested a certain attitude of mind on your part. Linda Marshall came into the room – she was wearing a bathing-wrap and yet – for some reason – you did not at once assume she had been bathing. That is shown by your words ‘she said she had been bathing.’ What was there about her appearance – was it her manner, or something that she was wearing or something she said, that led you to feel surprised when she said she had been bathing?”

Christine’s attention left Patrick and focused itself entirely on Poirot. She was interested. She said:

“That’s clever of you. It’s quite true, now I remember… I was, just faintly, surprised when Linda said she had been bathing.”

“But why, Madame, why?”

“Yes, why? That’s just what I’m trying to remember. Oh, yes, I think it was the parcel in her hand.”

“She had a parcel?”

“Yes.”

“You do not know what was in it?”

“Oh, yes, I do. The string broke. It was loosely done up the way they do in the village. It was candles – they were scattered on the floor. I helped her to pick them up.”

“Ah,” said Poirot. “Candles.”

Christine stared at him. She said:

“You seem excited, M. Poirot.”

Poirot asked: “Did Linda say why she had bought candles?”

Christine reflected.

“No, I don’t think she did. I suppose it was to read by at night – perhaps the electric light wasn’t good.”

“On the contrary, Madame, there was a bedside electric lamp in perfect order.”

Christine said: “Then I don’t know what she wanted them for.”

Poirot said: “What was her manner – when the string broke and the candles fell out of the parcel?”