描述:121200big.jpg 内容简介 　　喜爱日光浴的阿琳娜·斯图尔特美丽的棕色身体脸朝下横陈在海滩上，但是这一次没有阳光——她被人勒死了。阿琳娜一出现，赫尔克里·波洛就在海滩的空气中嗅到了情欲的气息。但是，这个显而易见的“激情犯罪”中，也许包含着更多的邪恶和阴谋？赫尔克里·波洛探长该如何侦破这一悬案？

一章就一楼的那些是因为2章一起发的话超过字数限制

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 1

When Captain Roger Angmering built himself a house in the year 1782 on the island off Leathercombe Bay, it was thought the height of eccentricity on his part. A man of good family such as he was should have had a decorous mansion set in wide meadows with, perhaps, a running stream and good pasture. But Captain Roger Angmering had only one great love, the sea. So he built his house a sturdy house too, as it needed to be, on the little windswept gull-haunted promontory cut off from land at each high tide. He did not marry, the sea was his first and last spouse, and at his death the house and island went to a distant cousin. That cousin and his descendants thought little of the bequest. Their own acres dwindled, and their heirs grew steadily poorer.

In 1922 when the great cult of the Seaside for Holidays was finally established and the coast of Devon and Cornwall was no longer thought too hot in the summer, Arthur Angmering found his vast inconvenient late Georgian house unsaleable, but he got a good price for the odd bit of property acquired by the seafaring Captain Roger. The sturdy house was added to and embellished. A concrete causeway was laid down from the mainland to the island. "Walks" and "Nooks" were cut and devised all round the island. There were two tennis courts, sunterraces leading down to a little bay embellished with rafts and divingboards. The Jolly Roger Hotel, Smugglers' Island, Leathercombe Bay came triumphantly into being. And from June till September (with a short season at Easter) the Jolly Roger Hotel was usually packed to the attics. It was enlarged and improved in 1934 by the addition of a cocktail bar, a bigger dining-room and some extra bathrooms. The prices went up. People said: "Ever been to Leathercombe Bay? Awfully jolly hotel there, on a sort of island. Very comfortable and no trippers or charabancs. Good cooking and all that. You ought to go." And people did go.

There was one very important person (in his own estimation at least) staying at the Jolly Roger. Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit, with a Panama hat tilted over his eyes, his moustaches magnificently befurled, lay back in an improved type of deck-chair and surveyed the bathing beach. A series of terraces led down to it from the hotel. On the beach itself were floats, lilos, rubber and canvas boats, balls and rubber toys. There were a long springboard and three rafts at varying distances from the shore. Of the bathers, some were in the sea, some were lying stretched out in the sun, and some were anointing themselves carefully with oil. On the terrace immediately above, the non-bathers sat and commented on the weather, the scene in front of them, the news in the morning papers and any other subject that appealed to them.

On Poirot's left a ceaseless flow of conversation poured in gentle monotone from the lips of Mrs Gardener while at the same time her needles clacked as she knitted vigorously. Beyond her, her husband, Odell C. Gardener, lay in a hammock chair, his hat tilted forward over his nose, and occasionally uttered a brief statement when called upon to do so. On Poirot's right, Miss Brewster, a tough athletic woman with grizzled hair and a pleasant weatherbeaten face, made gruff comments. The result sounded rather like a sheepdog whose short stentorian barks interrupted the ceaseless yapping of a Pomeranian. Mrs Gardener was saying: "And so I said to Mr Gardener, why, I said, sightseeing is all very well, and I do like to do a place thoroughly. But, after all, I said, we've done England pretty well and all I want now is to get some quiet spot by the seaside and just relax. That's what I said, wasn't it, Odell? Just relax. I feel I must relax, I said. That's so, isn't it, Odell?"

Mr Gardener, from behind his hat, murmured: "Yes, darling."

Mrs Gardener pursued the theme. "And so, when I mentioned it to Mr Kelso, at Cook's (He's arranged all our itinerary for us and been most helpful in every way. I don't really know what we'd have done without him!) Well, as I say, when I mentioned it to him, Mr Kelso said that we couldn't do better than come here. A most picturesque spot, he said, quite out of the world, and at the same time very comfortable and most exclusive in every way. And of course Mr Gardener, he chipped in there and said what about the sanitary arrangements? Because, if you'll believe me, Mr Poirot, a sister of Mr Gardener's went to stay at a guesthouse once, very exclusive they said it was, and in the heart of the moors, but would you believe me, nothing but an earth closet! So naturally that made Mr Gardener suspicious of those out-of-the-world places, didn't it, Odell?"

"Why, yes, darling," said Mr Gardener.

"But Mr Kelso reassured us at once. The sanitation, he said, was absolutely the latest word, and the cooking was excellent. And I'm sure that's so. And what I like about it is, it's intime if you know what I mean. Being a small place we all talk to each other and everybody knows everybody. If there is a fault about the British it is that they're inclined to be a bit stand-offish until they've known you a couple of years. After that nobody could be nicer. Mr Kelso said that interesting people came here and I see he was right. There's you, Mr Poirot and Miss Darnley. Oh! I was just tickled to death when I found out who you were, wasn't I, Odell?"

"You were, darling."

"Ha!" said Miss Brewster, breaking in explosively. "What a thrill, eh, M. Poirot?"

Hercule Poirot raised his hands in deprecation. But it was no more than a polite gesture. Mrs Gardener flowed smoothly on. "You see, M. Poirot, I'd heard a lot about you from Cornelia Robson. Mr Gardener and I were at Badenhof in May. And of course Cornelia told us all about that business in Egypt when Linnet Ridgeway was killed. She said you were wonderful and I've always been simply crazy to meet you, haven't I, Odell?"

"Yes, darling."

"And then Miss Darnley, too. I get a lot of my things at Rose Mond's and of course she is Rose Mond, isn't she? I think her clothes are ever so clever. Such a marvellous line. That dress I had on last night was one of hers. She's just a lovely woman in every way, I think."

From beyond Miss Brewster, Major Barry who had been sitting with protuberant eyes glued to the bathers granted out: "Distinguished-lookin' gal!"

Mrs Gardener clacked her needles. "I've just got to confess one thing, M. Poirot. It gave me a kind of a turn meeting you here - not that I wasn't just thrilled to meet you, because I was. Mr Gardener knows that. But it just came to me that you might be here well, professionally. You know what I mean? Well, I'm just terribly sensitive, as Mr Gardener will tell you, and I just couldn't bear it if I was to be mixed up in crime of any kind. You see -"

Mr Gardener cleared his throat. He said: "You see, M. Poirot, Mrs Gardener is very sensitive."

The hands of Hercule Poirot shot into the air. "But let me assure you, Madame, that I am here simply in the same way that you are here yourselves - to enjoy myself - to spend the holiday. I do not think of crime even."

Miss Brewster said again giving her short gruff bark: "No bodies on Smugglers' Island."

Hercule Poirot said: "Ah! but that, it is not strictly true." He pointed downward. "Regard them there, lying out in rows. What are they? They are not men and women. There is nothing personal about them. They are just - bodies!"

Major Barry said appreciatively: "Good-looking fillies, some of 'em. Bit on the thin side, perhaps."

Poirot cried: "Yes, but what appeal is there? What mystery? I, I am old, of the old school. When I was young, one saw barely the ankle. The glimpse of a foamy petticoat, how alluring! The gentle swelling of the calf - a knee - a beribboned garter -"

"Naughty, naughty!" said Major Barry hoarsely.

"Much more sensible - the things we wear nowadays," said Miss Brewster.

"Why, yes, M. Poirot," said Mrs Gardener. "I do think, you know, that our girls and boys nowadays lead a much more natural healthy life. They just romp about together and they - well, they -" Mrs Gardener blushed slightly for she had a nice mind - "they think nothing of it, if you know what I mean?"

"I do know," said Hercule Poirot. "It is deplorable!"

"Deplorable?" squeaked Mrs Gardener.

"To remove all the romance all the mystery! Today everything is standardized!" He waved a hand towards the recumbent figures. "That reminds me very much of the Morgue in Paris."

"M. Poirot!" Mrs Gardener was scandalized.

"Bodies arranged on slabs like butcher's meat!"

"But M. Poirot, isn't that too far-fetched for words?"

Hercule Poirot admitted: "It may be, yes."

"All the same," Mrs Gardener knitted with energy, "I'm inclined to agree with you on one point. These girls that lie out like that in the sun will grow hair on their legs and arms. I've said so to Irene - that's my daughter, M. Poirot. Irene, I said to her, if you lie out like that in the sun, you'll have hair all over you, hair on your arms and hair on your legs and hair on your bosom, and what will you look like then? I said to her. Didn't I, Odell?"

"Yes, darling," said Mr Gardener.

Every one was silent, perhaps making a mental picture of Irene when the worst had happened. Mrs Gardener rolled up her knitting and said: "I wonder now -"

Mr Gardener said: "Yes, darling?" He struggled out of the hammock chair and took Mrs Gardener's knitting and her book. He asked: "What about joining us for a drink, Miss Brewster?"

"Not just now, thanks."

The Gardeners went up to the hotel. Miss Brewster said: "American husbands are wonderful!"

Mrs Gardener's place was taken by the Reverend Stephen Lane. Mr Lane was a tall vigorous clergyman of fifty odd. His face was tanned and his dark grey flannel trousers were holidayfied and disreputable. He said with enthusiasm: "Marvellous country! I've been from Leathercombe Bay to Harford and back over the cliffs."

"Warm work walking today," said Major Barry who never walked.

"Good exercise," said Miss Brewster. "I haven't been for my row yet. Nothing like rowing for your stomach muscles." The eyes of Hercule Poirot dropped somewhat ruefully to a certain protuberance in his middle. Miss Brewster, noting the glance, said kindly: "You'd soon get that off, M. Poirot, if you took a rowing-boat out every day."

"Merci, Mademoiselle. I detest boats!"

"You mean small boats?"

"Boats of all sizes!" He closed his eyes and shuddered. "The movement of the sea, it is not pleasant."

"Bless the man, the sea is as calm as a mill pond today."

Poirot replied with conviction: "There is no such thing as a really calm sea. Always, always, there is motion."

"If you ask me," said Major Barry, "seasickness is nine-tenths nerves."

"There," said the clergyman, smiling a little, "speaks the good sailor - eh, Major?"

"Only been ill once - and that was crossing the channel! Don't think about it, that's my motto."

"Seasickness is really a very odd thing," mused Miss Brewster. "Why should some people be subject to it and not others? It seems so unfair. And nothing to do with one's ordinary health. Quite sickly people are good sailors. Some one told me once it was something to do with one's spine. Then there's the way some people can't stand heights. I'm not very good myself, but Mrs Redfern is far worse. The other day, on the cliff path to Harford, she turned quite giddy and simply clung to me. She told me she once got stuck halfway down that outside staircase on Milan Cathedral. She'd gone up without thinking but coming down did for her."

"She'd better not go down the ladder to Pixy Cove, then," observed Lane.

Miss Brewster made a face. "I funk that myself. It's all right for the young. The Cowan boys and the young Mastermans, they run up and down it and enjoy it."

Lane said: "Here comes Mrs Redfern now coming up from her bathe."

Miss Brewster remarked: "M. Poirot ought to approve of her. She's no sun bather."

Young Mrs Redfern had taken off her rubber cap and was shaking out her hair. She was an ash blonde and her skin was of that dead fairness that goes with that colouring. Her legs and arms were very white. With a hoarse chuckle, Major Barry said: "Looks a bit uncooked among the others, doesn't she?"

Wrapping herself in a long bathrobe Christine Redfern came up the beach and mounted the steps towards them. She had a fair serious face, pretty in a negative way, and small dainty hands and feet. She smiled at them and dropped down beside them, tucking her bath-wrap round her. Miss Brewster said: "You have earned M. Poirot's good opinion. He doesn't like the sun-tanning crowd. Says they're like joints of butcher's meat or words to that effect."

Christine Redfern smiled ruefully. She said: "I wish I could sunbathe! But I don't brown. I only blister and get the most frightful freckles all over my arms."

"Better than getting hair all over them like Mrs Gardener's Irene," said Miss Brewster. In answer to Christine's inquiring glance she went on: "Mrs Gardener's been in grand form this morning. Absolutely non stop. 'Isn't that so, Odell?' 'Yes, darling.'" She paused and then said: "I wish, though, M. Poirot, that you'd played up to her a bit. Why didn't you tell her that you were down here investigating a particularly gruesome murder, and that the murderer, an homicidal maniac, was certainly to be found among the guests of the hotel?"

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said: "I very much fear she would have believed me."

Major Barry gave a wheezy chuckle. He said: "She certainly would."

Emily Brewster said: "No, I don't believe even Mrs Gardener would have believed in a crime staged here. This isn't the sort of place you'd get a body!"

Hercule Poirot stirred a little in his chair. He protested. He said: "But why not, Mademoiselle? Why should there not be what you call a 'body' here on Smugglers' Island?"

Emily Brewster said: "I don't know. I suppose some places are more unlikely than others. This isn't the kind of spot -" She broke off, finding it difficult to explain her meaning.

"It is romantic, yes," agreed Hercule Poirot. "It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun."

The clergyman stirred in his chair. He leaned forward. His intensely blue eyes lighted up. Miss Brewster shrugged her shoulders. "Oh! of course I realize that, but all the same -"

"But all the same this still seems to you an unlikely setting for crime? You forget one thing, Mademoiselle."

"Human nature, I suppose?"

"That, yes. That, always. But that was not what I was going to say. I was going to point out to you that here every one is on holiday."

Emily Brewster turned a puzzled face to him. "I don't understand."

Hercule Poirot beamed kindly at her. He made dabs in the air with an emphatic forefinger. "Let us say, you have an enemy. If you seek him out in his flat, in his office, in the street - eh bien, you must have a reason - you must account for yourself. But here at the seaside it is necessary for no one to account for himself. You are at Leathercombe Bay, why? Parbleu! it is August - one goes to the seaside in August - one is on one's holiday. It is quite natural, you see, for you to be here and for Mr Lane to be here and for Major Barry to be here and for Mrs Redfern and her husband to be here. Because it is the custom in England to go to the seaside in August."

"Well," admitted Miss Brewster, "that's certainly a very ingenious idea. But what about the Gardeners? They're American." Poirot smiled. "Even Mrs Gardener, as she told us, feels the need to relax. Also, since she is 'doing' England, she must certainly spend a fortnight at the seaside - as a good tourist, if nothing else. She enjoys watching people."

Mrs Redfern murmured: "You like watching the people too, I think?"

"Madame, I will confess it. I do."

She said thoughtfully: "You see - a good deal."

There was a pause. Stephen Lane cleared his throat and said with a trace of self-consciousness: "I was interested, M. Poirot, in something you said just now. You said that there was evil done everywhere under the sun. It was almost a quotation from Ecclesiastes." He paused and then quoted himself. "Yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live." His face lit up with an almost fanatical light. "I was glad to hear you say that. Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But, M. Poirot, evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in Evil as I believe in Good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!" He stopped. His breath was coming fast. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and looked suddenly apologetic. "I'm sorry. I got carried away."

Poirot said calmly: "I understand your meaning. Up to a point I agree with you. Evil does walk the earth and can be recognized as such."

Major Barry cleared his throat. "Talking of that sort of thing, some of these fakir fellers in India -"

Major Barry had been long enough at the Jolly Roger for every one to be on their guard against his fatal tendency to embark on long India stories. Both Miss Brewster and Mrs Redfern burst into speech. "That's your husband swimming in now, isn't it, Mrs Redfern? How magnificent his crawl stroke is. He's an awfully good swimmer." At the same moment Mrs Redfern said: "Oh, look! What a lovely little boat that is out there with the red sails. It's Mr Blatt's, isn't it?" The sailing boat with the red sails was just crossing the end of the bay.

Major Barry grunted: "Fanciful idea, red sails," but the menace of the story about the fakir was avoided.

Hercule Poirot looked with appreciation at the young man who had just swum to shore. Patrick Redfern was a good specimen of humanity. Lean, bronzed, with broad shoulders and narrow thighs, there was about him a kind of infectious enjoyment and gaiety - a native simplicity that endeared him to all women and most men. He stood there shaking the water from him and raising a hand in gay salutation to his wife. She waved back, calling out: "Come up here, Pat."

"I'm coming."

He went a little way along the beach to retrieve the towel he had left there. It was then that a woman came down past them from the hotel to the beach. Her arrival had all the importance of a stage entrance. Moreover, she walked as though she knew it. There was no self-consciousness apparent. It would seem that she was too used to the invariable effect her presence produced. She was tall and slender. She wore a simple backless white bathing dress and every inch of her exposed body was tanned a beautiful even shade of bronze. She was as perfect as a statue. Her hair was a rich flaming auburn curling richly and intimately into her neck. Her face had that slight hardness which is seen when thirty years have come and gone, but the whole effect of her was one of youth - of superb and triumphant vitality. There was a Chinese immobility about her face, and an upward slant of the dark blue eyes. On her head she wore a fantastic Chinese hat of jade-green cardboard. There was that about her which made very other woman on the beach seem faded and insignificant. And with equal inevitability, the eye of every male present was drawn and rivetted on her.

The eyes of Hercule Poirot opened, his moustache quivered appreciatively. Major Barry sat up and his protuberant eyes bulged even further with excitement; on Poirot's left the Reverend Stephen Lane drew in his breath with a little hiss and his figure stiffened. Major Barry said in a hoarse whisper: "Arlena Stuart (that's who she was before she married Marshall) - I saw her in Come and Go before she left the stage. Something worth looking at, eh?"

Christine Redfern said slowly and her voice was cold: "She's handsome - yes. I think - she looks rather a beast!"

Emily Brewster said abruptly: "You talked about evil just now, M. Poirot. Now to my mind that woman's a personification of evil! She's a bad lot through and through. I happen to know a good deal about her."

Major Barry said reminiscently: "I remember a gal out in Simla. She had red hair too. Wife of a subaltern. Did she set the place by the ears? I'll say she did! Men went mad about her! All the women, of course, would have liked to gouge her eyes out! She upset the apple cart in more homes than one." He chuckled reminiscently. "Husband was a nice quiet fellow. Worshipped the ground she walked on. Never saw a thing - or made out he didn't."

Stephen Lane said in a low voice full of intense feeling: "Such women are a menace - a menace to -" He stopped.

Arlena Stuart had come to the water's edge. Two young men, little more than boys, had sprung up and come eagerly toward her. She stood smiling at them. Her eyes slid past them to where Patrick Redfern was coming along the beach. It was, Hercule Poirot thought, like watching the needle of a compass. Patrick Redfern was deflected, his feet changed their direction. The needle, do what it will, must obey the law of magnetism and turn to the North. Patrick Redfern's feet brought him to Arlena Stuart. She stood smiling at him. Then she moved slowly along the beach by the side of the waves. Patrick Redfern went with her. She stretched herself out by a rock. Redfern dropped to the shingle beside her. Abruptly, Christine Redfern got up and went into the hotel.

There was an uncomfortable little silence after she had left. Then Emily Brewster said: "It's rather too bad. She's a nice little thing. They've only been married a year or two."

"Gal I was speaking of," said Major Barry, "the one in Simla. She upset a couple of really happy marriages. Seemed a pity, what?"

"There's a type of woman," said Miss Brewster, "who likes smashing up homes." She added after a minute or two, "Patrick Redfern's a fool!" Hercule Poirot said nothing. He was gazing down the beach, but he was not looking at Patrick Redfern and Arlena Stuart. Miss Brewster said: "Well, I'd better go and get hold of my boat." She left them.

Major Barry turned his boiled gooseberry eyes with mild curiosity on Poirot. "Well, Poirot," he said. "What are you thinking about? You've not opened your mouth. What do you think of the siren? Pretty hot?"

Poirot said: "C'est possible."

"Now then, you old dog. I know you Frenchmen!"

Poirot said coldly: "I am not a Frenchman!"

"Well, don't tell me you haven't got an eye for a pretty girl! What do you think of her, eh?"

Hercule Poirot said: "She is not young."

"What does that matter? A woman's as old as she looks! Her looks are all right."

Hercule Poirot nodded. He said: "Yes, she is beautiful. But it is not beauty that counts in the end. It is not beauty that makes every head (except one) turn on the beach to look at her."

"It's it, my boy," said the Major. "That's what it is - it." Then he said with sudden curiosity: "What are you looking at so steadily?"

Hercule Poirot replied: "I'm looking at the exception. At the one man who did not look up when she passed."

Major Barry followed his gaze to where it rested on a man of about forty, fair-haired and sun-tanned. He had a quiet, pleasant face and was sitting on the beach smoking a pipe and reading the Times. "Oh, that!" said Major Barry. "That's the husband, my boy. That's Marshall."

Hercule Poirot said: "Yes, I know."

Major Barry chuckled. He himself was a bachelor. He was accustomed to think of The Husband in three lights only - as "the Obstacle," "the Inconvenience" or "the Safeguard." He said: "Seems a nice fellow. Quiet. Wonder if my Times has come?" He got up and went up towards the hotel.

Poirot's glance shifted slowly to the face of Stephen Lane. Stephen Lane was watching Arlena Marshall and Patrick Redfern. He turned suddenly to Poirot. There was a stern fanatical light in his eyes. He said: "That woman is evil through and through. Do you doubt it?"

Poirot said slowly: "It is difficult to be sure."

Stephen Lane said: "But, man alive, don't you feel it in the air? All round you? The presence of Evil."

Slowly, Hercule Poirot nodded his head.

第一章



　　罗吉·安墨林船长于一七八二年在皮梳湾外的小岛上建造一栋大房子的时候，大家都觉得那是他怪异行径的极致。像他这样出身名门的人，应该有一幢华厦，座落在一大片草地上，附近也许有一条小溪流过，还有很好的牧场。可是安墨林船长毕生只爱一样：就是大海。所以他把他的大房子——而且由于必要，是一栋非常坚固的大房子——建在这个有风吹袭，海鸥翱翔的小岛上。每次一涨潮，这里就会和陆地隔开。他没有娶妻，大海就是他唯一的配偶。他死了之后，这栋房子和这座小岛到了他一个远房堂弟手里。这位仁兄和他的后代很少想到这个地方，他们自己的地越卖越少，他们的后人也越来越穷。
　　到了一九二二年，到海边度假蔚为风气，而一般人也认为从狄文到康威尔一带的海边在夏天不太热。亚瑟·安墨林发现他那栋大而无当的房子卖不出去，可是当年罗吉船长所传留下来的那点小产业却可以卖到个好价钱。那栋坚固的大房子经过添加和改建，又在岛陆之间加建了一条水泥的堤路。岛上到处都铺上小路和栈道，辟了两个网球场，还有大阳台，往下可以通到一个小湾，湾里还有小筏子和跳水台。这样，皮梳湾私贩岛的乐园旅馆就很得意地开张了。从六月到九月(再加上复活节前后的短短假期)，乐园旅馆一直都住客常满。一九三四年，又加以扩建和改进，加了一间鸡尾酒吧，一间大一点的餐厅和几间浴室，价钱也涨了，大家都说：“有没有去过皮梳湾？那里有个好棒的旅馆，造在一个小岛上，很舒服，没有只到那里玩一天的观光客和游览车来吵，那里的菜也很棒，你真该去玩玩。”大家也真的都去。
　　在乐园旅馆里，住了一个很重要的人物(至少他自认为如此)，赫邱里·白罗，穿着一身耀眼的白西装，一顶圆边草帽斜盖到眼睛，两撇小胡子修得很漂亮，他躺靠在一张改良过的海滩椅上，看着四下海滨浴场上的一切。从旅馆那边有阶梯直通下来，海上有浮筒，用帆布和橡皮做的小艇，球和橡皮玩具。有一条长长的跳板，还有三座和岸边距离彼此不相等的浮台。至于泳客，有些在水里，有些躺着晒太阳，也有些在仔细小心地往身上搽防晒油。临着这边的阳台上，那些不下水的客人坐在那里聊着天气、眼前的景色、今早报上的新闻和其他想到的话题。
　　白罗的左边是贾德纳太太，嘴里一直不停地在说着话，一面忙着织毛线，再过去是她的丈夫欧帝尔·贾德纳，躺在一张帆布摺椅上，帽子直盖到鼻尖，每次在他老婆问到他的时候，就发出一两声应答的话。白罗的右边是布雷斯特小、姐，她是个运动女将型的人，一头花白头发，一张饱经风霜但很和蔼的脸，说话却很不客气。其结果听来就像一只牧羊犬用短促的吠声打断了一只德国小狗不停的吠声。贾德纳太太正在说着：“后来我跟贾德纳先生说，哎，我说，观光是一件很好的事情，我也喜欢把一个地方看得很彻底，可是，我说，到底我们在英国各地都去过了，我现在只想去海边一个安静的地方，放松一下。我是这样说的吧？是不是？欧帝尔？只要放松一下。我说，我觉得我一定要放松放松。我是不是这样说的？欧帝尔？”
　　贾德纳先生在他帽子底下喃喃地道：“是啦，亲爱的。”
　　贾德纳太太继续说道：“所以，我在富客旅行社跟齐松先生一提(我们所有旅行的事都由他替我们安排，他在每一方面都再帮忙不过了，我真不知道要是没有他的话，我们怎么办！)——呃，我刚要说，我跟他这么一提，齐松先生就讲我们到这里来最好了。他说，这是个最漂亮的地方，像是世外桃源，而且在每一方面说来都非常舒服而独特。当然贾德纳先生这时候插嘴说，卫生设备怎么样？因为，不晓得你相不相信，白罗先生，贾德纳先生的一个姊姊有次住在一家宾馆里，他们说那是个一流的地方，在一个猎场中心，可是你信不信，那里居然只在地上搭了间小棚子当厕所！所以贾德纳先生当然会对这些与世隔绝的地方产生怀疑了，对不对？欧帝尔？”
　　“哎，对啦，亲爱的。”贾德纳先生说。
　　“可是齐松先生马上向我们保证，他说，这里的卫生设备绝对是最新的，这里菜也非常的好。我相信一定是如此，我最喜欢的一点是，这里很叫人觉得‘近乎’，你明白我的意思吧。地方小，我们都会彼此聊天，每个人都认得每个人。要是说英国人有什么缺点的话，那就是他们老是一副拒人于千里之外的样子，一定要等跟你认得一两年了。以后就再没有人比他们更好了。齐松先生说有很多很有意思的人到这里来，我也看得出他的话不错，比方说你啦，还有戴礼小、姐。哦，我知道你是谁之后，真是兴奋得要死，你说是吧？欧帝尔？”
　　“真的，亲爱的。”
　　“哈！”布雷斯特小、姐像爆炸似地插嘴说道：“真薀妄瘾之至吧，呃，白罗先生？”
　　赫邱里·白罗求饶似地举起双手。可是那只不过是表示礼貌而已。贾德纳太太丝毫不受打扰地继续说：“你知道吧，白罗先生，我从卡妮莉亚·罗勃森那里听说到很多你的事。贾德纳先生和我五月间在巴德贺夫，当然卡妮莉亚把埃及那个案子的事情全都跟我们讲了。她说你好了不起，我一直就好想能见到你，是不是，欧帝尔？”
　　“是的，亲爱的。”
　　“我也好想认得戴礼小、姐，我很多衣服都是在玫瑰屋买的，当然，她就是政瑰屋罗。是吧？我觉得她设计的衣服都好漂亮，线条太美了。我昨天晚上穿的那套衣服就是她设计的。我觉得，她在每方面说起来都是个可爱的女人哩。”
　　坐在布雷斯特小、姐那头的巴瑞少校两眼一直盯在那些泳装美女身上，这时哼着说：“看起来很高贵。”
　　贾德纳太太不停地编织。“我一定要坦白地向你说句话，白罗先生，能在这里见到你真有点叫我吃惊——不是说见到你不感到兴奋，因为我的确觉得好兴奋，贾德纳先生也知道的。可是我就是会想到你可能之所以会到这里来——呃，是有职业上的原因，你知道我是什么意思吧？哎，我这个人就是敏感得可怕，贾德纳先生也知道的，我实在受不了会牵扯到什么罪案里来。你知道——”
　　贾德纳先生清了下嗓子，说道：“你知道，白罗先生，贾德纳太太是个很敏感的人。”
　　赫邱里·白罗的两手伸进空中，“我可以向你保证，夫人，我之所以到这里来就和你们两位来的目的完全一样——来享受一下——来度假的。我甚至连犯罪的事想都不想。”
　　布雷斯特小、姐又用她短促的声音说道：“在私贩岛上可没有尸体。”
　　赫邱里·白罗说：“啊，这话并不见得完全对。”他指着下面说：“看看他们，成排地躺着，他们算什么呢？他们不是男人和女人。他们没有一点个性，只不过是一些——人体而已！”
　　巴瑞少校很表赞赏地说：“有些妞儿还真漂亮呢，也许嫌瘦了一点。”
　　白罗叫道：“不错，可是那有什么？有什么神秘可言？我，我年纪大了，是老一辈的人。我年轻的时候，最多只能看到女人的足踝，瞥到一眼有花边的衬裙，真具诱惑力！小腿柔和的曲线——膝盖——吊袜带——”
　　“坏孩子，坏孩子！”巴瑞少校用沙哑的声音说道。
　　“现在我们穿的衣服——要有道理得多了。”布雷斯特小、姐说。
　　“哎，不错，白罗先生，”贾德纳太太说：“我以为，你知道，现在的男孩子和女孩子过的生活要自然而健康得多。他们现在一起，他们——呃，他们——”贾德纳太太脸上微微发红，因为她的思想很正派——“他们不觉得那有什么大不了，你们懂我的意思吧？”
　　“我知道，”白罗说：“实在可叹。”
　　“可叹？”贾德纳太太诧异地问道。
　　“舍弃所有的浪漫情调——所有的神秘！现在一切都标准化了！”他朝底下那一排排的人体挥了一下手。“这很让我想起了巴黎的停尸间。”
　　“白罗先生！”贾德纳太太大不以为然地说道。
　　“人的身子——排得好好的——就像屠夫的砧上肉！”
　　“可是，白罗先生，这样说法不是太过分了吗？”
　　赫邱里·白罗承认道：“可能吧。”
　　“不管怎么说，”贾德纳太太起劲地编织着，“有一点我倒是同意你的。那些这样子躺在太阳下的女孩子，会长满手满腿的毛。我就跟伊兰妮说过——她是我女儿，白罗先生，我说，伊兰妮，要是你那样躺在太阳底下的话，你就会全身长毛，你手上、腿上、胸口都会长毛，那你会是个什么样子？我这样跟她说的。对不对，欧帝尔？”
　　“对啦，亲爱的。”贾德纳先生说。
�

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 3

Rosamund Darnley and Kenneth Marshall sat on the short springy tuff of the cliff overlooking Gull Cove. This was on the east side of the island. People came here in the morning sometimes to bathe when they wanted to be peaceful. Rosamund said: "It's nice to get away from people."

Marshall murmured inaudibly: "Mm, yes." He rolled over sniffing at the short tuff. "Smells good. Remember the downs at Shipley?"

"Rather."

"Pretty good, those days."

"Yes."

"You're not changed much, Rosamund."

"Yes, I have. I've changed enormously."

"You've been very successful and you're rich and all that, but you're the same old Rosamund."

Rosamund murmured: "I wish I were."

"What's that?"

"Nothing. It's a pity, isn't it, Kenneth, that we can't keep the nice natures and high ideals that we had when we were young?"

"I don't know that your nature was ever particularly nice, my child. You used to get into the most frightful rages. You half choked me once when you flew at me in a temper."

Rosamund laughed. She said: "Do you remember the day that we took Toby down to get water rats?"

They spent some minutes in recalling old adventures. Then there came a pause. Rosamund's fingers played with the clasp of her bag. She said at last: "Kenneth?"

"Um." His reply was indistinct. He was still lying on his face on the tuff.

"If I say something to you that is probably outrageously impertinent, will you never speak to me again?"

He rolled over and sat up. "I don't think," he said seriously, "that I would ever regard anything you said as impertinent. You see, you belong."

She nodded in acceptance of all that last phrase meant. She concealed only the pleasure it gave her. "Kenneth, why don't you get a divorce from your wife?"

His face altered. It hardened - the happy expression died out of it. He took a pipe from his pocket and began filling it. Rosamund said: "I'm sorry if I've offended you."

He said quietly: "You haven't offended me."

"Well, then, why don't you?"

"You don't understand, my dear girl."

"Are you so frightfully fond of her?"

"It's not just a question of that. You see, I married her."

"I know. But she's pretty notorious."

He considered that for a moment, ramming in the tobacco carefully. "Is she? I suppose she is."

"You could divorce her, Ken."

"My dear girl, you've got no business to say a thing like that. Just because men lose their heads about her a bit isn't to say that she loses hers."

Rosamund bit off a rejoinder. Then she said: "You could fix it so that she divorced you - if you prefer it that way."

"I daresay I could."

"You ought to, Ken. Really, I mean it. There's the child."

"Linda?"

"Yes, Linda."

"What's Linda got to do with it?"

"Arlena's not good for Linda. She isn't really. Linda, I think, feels things a good deal."

Kenneth Marshall applied a match to his pipe. Between puffs he said: "Yes - there's something in that. I suppose Arlena and Linda aren't very good for each other. Not the right thing for a girl perhaps. It's a bit worrying."

Rosamund said: "I like Linda - very much. There's something - fine about her."

Kenneth said: "She's like her mother. She takes things hard like Ruth did."

Rosamund said: "Then don't you think - really - that you ought to get rid of Arlena?"

"Fix up a divorce?"

"Yes. People are doing that all the time."

Kenneth Marshall said with sudden vehemence: "Yes, and that's just what I hate."

"Hate?" She was startled.

"Yes. Sort of attitude to life there is nowadays. If you take on a thing and don't like it, then you get yourself out of it as quick as possible! Dash it all, there's got to be such a thing as good faith. If you marry a woman and engage yourself to look after her, well, it's up to you to do it. It's your show. You've taken it on. I'm sick of quick marriage and easy divorce. Arlena's my wife, that's all there is to it."

Rosamund leaned forward. She said in a low voice: "So it's like that with you? 'Till death do us part'?"

Kenneth Marshall nodded his head. He said: "That's just it."

Rosamund said: "I see."

Mr Horace Blatt, returning to Leathercombe Bay down a narrow twisting lane, nearly ran down Mrs Redfern at a corner. As she flattened herself into the hedge, Mr Blatt brought his Sunbeam to a halt by applying the brakes vigorously. "Hullo-ullo-ullo," said Mr Blatt cheerfully. He was a large man with a red face and a fringe of reddish hair round a shining bald spot. It was Mr Blatt's apparent ambition to be the life and soul of any place he happened to be in. The Jolly Roger Hotel, in his opinion, given somewhat loudly, needed brightening up. He was puzzled at the way people seemed to melt and disappear when he himself arrived on the scene. "Nearly made you into strawberry jam, didn't I?" said Mr Blatt gaily.

Christine Redfern said: "Yes, you did."

"Jump in," said Mr Blatt.

"Oh, thanks I think I'll walk."

"Nonsense," said Mr Blatt. "What's a car for?"

Yielding to necessity Christine Redfern got in. Mr Blatt restarted the engine which had stopped owing to the suddenness with which he had previously pulled up. Mr Blatt inquired: "And what are you doing walking about all alone? That's all wrong, a nice-looking girl like you."

Christine said hurriedly: "Oh! I like being alone."

Mr Blatt gave her a terrific dig with his elbow, nearly sending the car into the hedge at the same time. "Girls always say that," he said. "They don't mean it. You know, that place, the Jolly Roger, wants a bit of livening up. Nothing jolly about it. No life in it. Of course there's a good amount of duds staying there. A lot of kids, to begin with, and a lot of old fogeys too. There's that old Anglo-Indian bore and that athletic parson and those yapping Americans and that foreigner with the moustache makes me laugh that moustache of his! I should say he's a hair-dresser, something of that sort."

Christine shook her head. "Oh, no, he's a detective."

Mr Blatt nearly let the car go into the hedge again. "A detective? D'you mean he's in disguise?"

Christine smiled faintly. She said: "Oh, no, he really is like that. He's Hercule Poirot. You must have heard of him."

Mr Blatt said: "Didn't catch his name properly. Oh, yes, I've heard of him. But I thought he was dead... Dash it, he ought to be dead. What's he after down here?"

"He's not after anything - he's just on a holiday."

"Well, I suppose that might be so." Mr Blatt seemed doubtful about it. "Looks a bit of a bounder, doesn't he?"

"Well," said Christine and hesitated. "Perhaps a little peculiar."

"What I say is," said Mr Blatt, "what's wrong with Scotland Yard? Buy British every time for me." He reached the bottom of the hill and with a triumphant fanfare of the horn ran the car into the Jolly Roger's garage which was situated, for tidal reasons, on the mainland opposite the hotel.

Linda Marshall was in the small shop which catered to the wants of visitors to Leathercombe Bay. One side of it was devoted to shelves on which were books which could be borrowed for the sum of twopence. The newest of them was ten years old, some were twenty years old and others older still. Linda took first one and then another doubtfully from the shelf and glanced into it. She decided she couldn't possibly read The Four Feathers or Vice Versa. She took out a small squat volume in brown calf. The time passed... With a start Linda shoved the book back in the shelf as Christine Redfern's voice said: "What are you reading, Linda?"

Linda said hurriedly: "Nothing. I'm looking for a book." She pulled out The Marriage of William Ashe at random and advanced to the counter fumbling for twopence.

Christine said: "Mr Blatt just drove me home after nearly running over me first, I really felt I couldn't walk all across the causeway with him, so I said I had to buy some things."

Linda said: "He's awful, isn't he? Always saying how rich he is and making the most terrible jokes."

Christine said: "Poor man. One really feels rather sorry for him."

Linda didn't agree. She didn't see anything to be sorry for in Mr Blatt. She was young and ruthless. She walked with Christine Redfern out of the shop and down towards the causeway. She was busy with her own thoughts. She liked Christine Redfern. She and Rosamund Darnley were the only bearable people on the island in Linda's opinion. Neither of them talked much to her for one thing. Now, as they walked, Christine didn't say anything. That, Linda thought, was sensible. If you hadn't anything worth saying why go chattering all the time? She lost herself in her own perplexities.

She said suddenly: "Mrs Redfern, have you ever felt that everything's so awful - so terrible - that you'll, oh, burst..."

The words were almost comic, but Linda's face, drawn and anxious, was not. Christine Redfern, looking at her vaguely, with scarcely comprehending eyes, certainly saw nothing to laugh at... She caught her breath sharply. She said: "Yes - yes I have felt - just that..."

Mr Blatt said: "So you're the famous sleuth, eh?" They were in the cocktail bar, a favorite haunt of Mr Blatt's.

Hercule Poirot acknowledged the remark with his usual lack of modesty. Mr Blatt went on. "And what are you doing down here - on a job?"

"No, no. I repose myself. I take the holiday."

Mr Blatt winked. "You'd say that anyway, wouldn't you?"

Poirot replied: "Not necessarily."

Horace Blatt said: "Oh! come now. As a matter of fact you'd be safe enough with me. I don't repeat all I hear! Learnt to keep my mouth shut years ago. Shouldn't have got on the way I have if I hadn't known how to do that. But you know what most people are - yap, yap, yap, about everything they hear! Now you can't afford that in your trade! That's why you've got to keep it up that you're here holiday-making and nothing else."

Poirot asked: "And why should you suppose the contrary?"

Mr Blatt dosed one eye. He said: "I'm a man of the world. I know the cut of a fellow's jib. A man like you would be at Deauville or Le Touquet or down at Juan les Pins. That's your - what's the phrase? - spiritual home."

Poirot sighed. He looked out of the window. Rain was falling and mist encircled the island. He said: "It is possible that you are right! There, at least, in wet weather there are the distractions."

"Good old Casino!" said Mr Blatt. "You know, I've had to work pretty hard most of my life. No time for holidays or kickshaws. I meant to make good and I have made good. Now I can do what I please. My money's as good as any man's. I've seen a bit of life in the last few years, I can tell you."

Poirot murmured: "Ah, yes?"

"Don't know why I came to this place," Mr Blatt continued.

Poirot observed: "I, too, wondered."

"Eh, what's that?"

Poirot waved an eloquent hand. "I, too, am not without observation. I should have expected you most certainly to choose Deauville or Biarritz."

"Instead of which, we're both here, eh?" Mr Blatt gave a hoarse chuckle. "Don't really know why I came here," he mused. "I think, you know, it sounded romantic. Jolly Roger Hotel, Smugglers' Island. That kind of address tickles you up, you know. Makes you think of when you were a boy. Pirates, smuggling, all that." He laughed rather self-consciously. "I used to sail quite a bit as a boy. Not this part of the world. Off the East coast. Funny how a taste for that sort of thing never leaves you. I could have a tiptop yacht if I liked, but somehow I don't really fancy it. I like mucking about in that little yawl of mine. Redfern's keen on sailing, too. He's been out with me once or twice. Can't get hold of him now - always hanging round that red-haired wife of Marshall's." He paused, then lowering his voice, he went on. "Mostly a dried-up lot of sticks in this hotel! Mrs Marshall's about the only lively spot! I should think Marshall's got his hands full looking after her. All sorts of stories about her in her stage days - and after! Men go crazy after her. You'll see, there'll be a spot of trouble one of these days."

Poirot said: "What kind of trouble?"

Horace Blatt replied: "That depends. I'd say, looking at Marshall, that he's a man with a funny kind of temper. As a matter of fact, I know he is. Heard something about him. I've met that quiet sort. Never know where you are with that kind. Redfern had better look out -"

He broke off, as the subject of his words came into the bar. He went on speaking loudly and self-consciously. "And, as I say, sailing round this coast is good fun. Hullo, Redfern, have one with me? What'll you have? Dry Martini? Right. What about you, Mr Poirot?"

Poirot shook his head. Patrick Redfern sat down and said: "Sailing? It's the best fun in the world. Wish I could do more of it. Used to spend most of my time as a boy in a sailing dinghy round this coast."

Poirot said: "Then you know this part of the world well?"

"Rather! I knew this place before there was a hotel on it. There were just a few fishermen's cottages at Leathercombe Bay and a tumbledown old house, all shut up, on the island."

"There was a house here?"

"Oh, yes, but it hadn't been lived in for years. Was practically falling down. There used to be all sorts of stories of secret passages from the house to Pixy's Cave. We were always looking for that secret passage, I remember."

Horace Blatt spilt his drink. He cursed, mopped himself and asked: "What is this Pixy's Cave?"

Patrick said: "Oh, don't you know it? It's on Pixy Cove. You can't find the entrance to it easily. It's among a lot of piled-up boulders at one end. Just a long thin crack. You can just squeeze through it. Inside it widens out into quite a big cave. You can imagine what fun it was to a boy! An old fisherman showed it to me. Nowadays, even the fishermen don't know about it. I asked one the other day why the place was called Pixy Cove and he couldn't tell me."

Hercule Poirot said: "But I still do not understand. What is this Pixy?"

Patrick Redfern said: "Oh! that's typically Devonshire. There's a Pixy's Cave on Sheepstor on the Moor. You're supposed to leave a pin, you know, as a present for the Pixy. A Pixy is a kind of moor spirit."

Hercule Poirot said: "Ah! but it is interesting, that."

Patrick Redfern went on. "There's a lot of pixy lore on Dartmoor still. There are Tors that are said to be pixy-ridden, and I expect that farmers coming home after a thick night still complain of being pixy-led."

Horace Blatt said: "You mean when they've had a Couple?"

Patrick Redfern said with a smile: "That's certainly the commonsense explanation!"

Blatt looked at his watch. He said: "I'm going in to dinner. On the whole, Redfern, pirates are my favourites, not pixies."

Patrick Redfern said with a laugh as the other went out: "Faith, I'd like to see the old boy pixy-led himself!"

Poirot observed meditatively: "For a hard-bitten business man, M. Blatt seems to have a very romantic imagination."

Patrick Redfern said: "That's because he's only half educated. Or so my wife says. Look at what he reads! Nothing but thrillers or Wild West stories."

Poirot said: "You mean that he has still the mentality of a boy?"

"Well, don't you think so, sir?"

"Me, I have not seen very much of him."

"I haven't really, either. I've been out sailing with him once or twice, but he doesn't really like having any one with him. He prefers to be on his own."

Hercule Poirot said: "That is indeed curious. It is singularly unlike his practice on land."

Redfern laughed. He said: "I know. We all have a bit of trouble keeping out of his way. He'd like to turn this place into a cross between Margate and Le Touquet."

Poirot said nothing for a minute or two. He was studying the laughing face of his companion very attentively. He said suddenly and unexpectedly: "I think, Mr Redfern, that you enjoy living."

Patrick stared at him, surprised. "Indeed I do. Why not?"

"Why not indeed," agreed Poirot. "I make you my felicitation on the fact."

Smiling a little Patrick Redfern said: "Thank you, sir."

"That is why, as an older man, a very much older man, I venture to offer you a piece of advice."

"Yes, sir?"

"A very wise friend of mine in the Police Force said to me years ago: 'Hercule, my friend, if you would know tranquillity, avoid women.'"

Patrick Redfern said: "I'm afraid it's a bit late for that, sir. I'm married, you know."

"I do know. You wife is a very charming, a very accomplished woman. She is, I think, very fond of you."

Patrick Redfern said sharply: "I'm very fond of her."

"Ah," said Hercule Poirot, "I am delighted to hear it."

Patrick's brow was suddenly like thunder. "Look here, M. Poirot, what are you getting at?"

"Les femmes." Poirot leaned back and closed his eyes. "I know something of them. They are capable of complicating life unbearably. And the English, they conduct their affairs indescribably. If it was necessary for you to come here, M. Redfern, why, in the name of Heaven, did you bring your wife?"

Patrick Redfern said angrily: "I don't know what you mean."

Hercule Poirot said calmly: "You know perfectly. I am not so foolish as to argue with an infatuated man. I utter only the word of caution."

"You've been listening to these damned scandalmongers. Mrs Gardener, the Brewster woman - nothing to do but to clack their tongues all day. Just because a woman's good-looking they're down on her like a sack of coals."

Hercule Poirot got up. He murmured: "Are you really as young as all that?" Shaking his head, he left the bar. Patrick Redfern stared angrily after him.

Hercule Poirot paused in the hall on his way from the dining-room. The doors were open a breath of soft night air came in. The rain had stopped and the mist had dispersed. It was a fine night again. Hercule Poirot found Mrs Redfern in her favourite seat on the cliff ledge. He stopped by her and said: "This seat is damp. You should not sit here. You will catch the chill."

"No, I shan't. And what does it matter anyway."

"Tscha, tscha, you are not a child! You are an educated woman. You must look at things sensibly."

She said coldly: "I can assure you I never take cold."

Poirot said: "It has been a wet day. The wind blew, the rain came down, and the mist was everywhere so that one could not see through it. Eh bien, what is it like now? The mists have rolled away, the sky is clear and up above the stars shine. That is like life, Madame."

Christine said in a low fierce voice: "Do you know what I am most sick of in this place?"

"What, Madame?"

"Pity." She brought the word out like a flick of a whip. She went on: "Do you think I don't know? That I can't see? All the time people are saying: 'Poor Mrs Redfern - that poor little woman.' And anyway I'm not little, I'm tall. They say little because they are sorry for me. And I can't bear it!"

Cautiously Hercule Poirot spread his handkerchief on the seat and sat down. He said thoughtfully: "There is something in that."

She said: "That woman -" and stopped.

Poirot said gravely: "Will you allow me to tell you something, Madame? Something that is as true as the stars above us? The Arlena Smarts or Arlena Marshalls of this world - do not count."

Christine Redfern said: "Nonsense."

"I assure you, it is true. Their Empire is of the moment and for the moment. To count, really and truly to count a woman must have goodness or brains."

Christine said scornfully: "Do you think men care for goodness or brains?"

Poirot said gravely: "Fundamentally, yes."

Christine laughed shortly. She said: "I don't agree with you."

Poirot said: "Your husband loves you, Madame, I know it."

"You can't know it."

"Yes, yes. I know it. I have seen him looking at you."

Suddenly she broke down. She wept stormily and bitterly against Poirot's accommodating shoulder. She said: "I can't bear it... I can't bear it..."

Poirot patted her arm. He said soothingly: "Patience - only patience."

She sat up and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. She said in a stifled voice: "It's all right. I'm better now. Leave me. I'd - I'd rather be alone."

He obeyed and left her sitting there while he himself followed the winding path down to the hotel. He was nearly there when he heard the murmur of voices. He turned a little aside from the path. There was a gap in the bushes. He saw Arlena Marshall and Patrick Redfern beside her. He heard the man's voice, with the throb in it of emotion. "I'm crazy about you - crazy - you've driven me mad... You do care a little - you do care?"

He saw Arlena Marshall's face - it was, he thought, like a sleek happy cat - it was animal, not human. She said softly: "Of course, Patrick darling, I adore you. You know that..."

For once Hercule Poirot cut his eavesdropping short. He went back to the path and on down to the hotel.

A figure joined him suddenly. It was Captain Marshall. Marshall said: "Remarkable night, what? After that foul day." He looked up at the sky. "Looks as though we should have fine weather tomorrow."

第三章



　　罗莎梦·戴礼和甘逸世·马歇尔坐在岩顶剪得短短的草坪上，下面就是鸥湾。这里位于岛的东侧，有些人在早上到这里来游泳，因为这里比较安静。罗莎梦说：“能离开人群真是好。”
　　马歇尔含糊地应道：“嗯，”他翻过身去，嗅着草皮，“气味真好，还记得家乡的草原吗？”
　　“当然。”
　　“那些日子真好。”
　　“嗯。”
　　“你没有变多少，罗莎梦。”
　　“变了，我变了好多。”
　　“你一直很成功，你也很有钱，可是你还是以前那个罗莎梦。”
　　罗莎梦喃喃地道：“我倒希望真是这样。”
　　“你说什么？”
　　“没什么，甘逸世，我们没法保持年轻时那些好的本性和很高的理想，实在是一件可惜的事，是不是？”
　　“我倒不知道你的本性有多好，孩子，你以前常常会大发脾气。有一次在发火的时候差点把我给扼死了。”
　　罗莎梦大声笑了起来。她说：“你还记得那天我们带托比去抓水老鼠的事吗？”
　　他们谈了一阵子往事，然后停顿下来，罗莎梦的手指玩弄着她皮包的搭扣。最后她终于开口说道：“甘逸世？”
　　“嗯。”他的回答似乎听不清楚，他还俯身躺在草坪上。
　　“要是我说几句实在不该说的话，你以后会不会从此不再和我说话了？”
　　他翻过身，坐了起来，很严肃地说道：“我想我绝不会认为你有什么话是不该说的。你知道，你是很有分寸的人。”
　　她点了点头，表示接受他最后那句话的意思，只掩饰了她因这句话而感到的高兴。“甘逸世，你为什么不跟你的太太离婚？”
　　他的脸上起了变化。表情变冷了——原先的快乐都消失不见。他将烟斗从口袋里掏了出来，开始装烟丝。罗莎梦说：
　　“要是我这话冒犯了你，请你原谅。”
　　他不动声色地说：“你没有冒犯我。”
　　“啊，那，你为什么不离婚呢？”
　　“你不了解。”
　　“难道你——那么喜欢她吗？”
　　“不只是这个问题而已，你知道，我娶了她呢。”
　　“我知道，可是她——声名相当狼藉。”
　　他想了想，仔细地将烟丝填装进去，“是吗？——我想也是。”
　　“你可以跟她离婚的，甘逸世。”
　　“亲爱的孩子，你实在不该说这种话，只因为别的男人对她会昏了头，并不表示她也会昏了头。”
　　罗莎梦忍住了要说出口的话，然后说道：“你可以安排得让她主动提出和你离婚——如果你情愿那样子的话。”
　　“当然是可以的。”
　　“你应该这样做。甘，真的，我不是开玩笑，你还要考虑孩子的事。”
　　“琳达？”
　　“是的，琳达。”
　　“琳达和这件事有什么关系？”
　　“艾莲娜对琳达不好，真的。我觉得琳达对很多事情有她的感觉。”
　　甘逸世·马歇尔划着了火柴去点烟斗。他吸了两口烟，说：“嗯——这是个问题，我想艾莲娜和琳达彼此并不好，也许对那个小女孩来说不是一件好事，这有点叫我担心。”
　　罗莎梦说：“我喜欢琳达——很喜欢，她有些——很好的地方。”
　　甘逸世说：“她就像她母亲，她对什么都很看重。”
　　罗莎梦说：“那难道你不觉得——真的——该摆脱艾莲娜吗？”
　　“安排离婚？”
　　“是呀，随时都有人这样做的嘛。”
　　甘逸世·马歇尔突然忿忿地说：“不错，我正是讨厌这一点。”
　　“讨厌？”她吃了一惊。
　　“不错，现代人的这种生活态度。要是你弄上一件你不喜欢的东西，马上就尽快摆脱掉。该死的，世界上总该有所谓信心这东西吧。要是你娶了一个女人，决心要照顾她，哎，那你就要做到，这是你的责任，是你自己找的，我实在讨厌结得快，离得也容易的婚姻，艾莲娜是我的妻子，事情就是这样子了。”
　　罗莎梦的身子俯向前去，她用低沉的声音说道：“你就是这样的想法？至死不离？”
　　甘逸世·马歇尔点了点头，他说：“正是如此。”
　　罗莎梦道：“啊。”
　　由一条曲折而又狭窄的小路回到皮梳湾来的贺雷士·卜拉特先生在一个拐弯的地方，差点撞倒了雷德方太太。她整个人贴靠在山壁上，卜拉特先生用力把车煞住。“你好——你好。”卜拉特先生很开心地招呼道。他的个子很大，一张脸通红，一圈红发围着秃顶，他的野心是所到之处都要成为团体的灵魂人物。乐园旅馆在他看来，很需要再添加些欢乐的气氛。他常常不解为什么他一到，就有很多人好像消失不见了。
　　“差点把你做成草莓酱了吧？”卜拉特先生得意地说。
　　克莉丝汀·雷德方说：“不错，真差一点。”
　　“上车吧，”卜拉特先生说。
　　“哦，谢谢你——我还是走路吧。”
　　“胡说，”卜拉特说：“那车子是做什么用的？”
　　在这种情形下，克莉丝汀·雷德方上了车。卜拉特先生重新发动引擎，因为他刚才猛地煞住车，引擎就停了。卜拉特先生问道：“你一个人走来走去干吗？像你这样漂亮的女孩子，这样是不对的。”
　　克莉丝汀急急地说：“哦，我喜欢一个人。”
　　卜拉特先生用手肘轻撞了她一下，差点因此让车子撞上了山岩。“女孩子老是喜欢这样说，”他说：“其实根本不是这个意思。你知道，这个地方，乐园旅馆，需要加进点活力，这里一点也不乐，没有活力。当然，有不少人住在这里，不少孩子，可是也有不少阿公阿婆，比方说那个去过印度的英国人，无聊透了，还有那个体育健将型的牧师，那对喋喋不休的美国夫妇，还有那个留了小胡子的外国人——他那两撇胡子真叫我觉得好笑！我想他一定是个理发师一类的人。”
　　克莉丝汀摇了摇头，“不是的，他是个侦探。”
　　卜拉特先生差点又把车撞上了山岩，“是个侦探？你是说，他化了妆？”
　　克莉丝汀·雷德方微微笑了笑说：“不是，他本来就是这个样子，他叫做赫邱里·白罗，你想必听说过他。”
　　卜拉特先生说：“没听清楚他的名字。啊，对了，我听说过他，可是我以为他早已经死了……妈的，他应该已经死了嘛，他到这里来查什么案的？”
　　“他不是来查案——只是来度假的。”
　　“嗯，我想也是。”卜拉特先生似乎很表怀疑，“看起来有点粗鲁，是不是？”
　　“呃，”克莉丝汀有点迟疑地说：“也许有点怪吧。”
　　“我的意思是说，”卡拉特先生说：“苏格兰场有什么不好？我随时还是支持英国的。”他们到了山脚下，他很得意地按了声喇叭，把车停放在旅馆的车房里。车房为了潮涨潮落的关系，设在旅馆对面的陆地上。
　　琳达·马歇尔在一家小店里，这里卖的全是给皮梳湾的游客买的东西。一边的架子上放满了两块钱租一次的书，其中最新的书也有十年了，有些是二十年前的旧书，还有些则更老。琳达先拿了一本，又很怀疑地从架子上抽下另外一本，翻了一下，她决定自己不可能看《四羽毛及其他》。她拿下一本用棕色软皮做封面的小书，看得忘记了时间……然后琳达陡然一惊，把书插回架上，因为克莉丝汀·雷德方的声音在她身边响起，说道：“你在看什么书呀，琳达？”
　　琳达急急地说：“没什么，我正在找一本书。”她信手抽出一本书来，走到柜台前，摸出两块钱来付租金。
　　克莉丝汀说：“卜拉特先生刚开车送我回来——起先差点把我给撞倒了，我实在没办法跟他一起走堤路回旅馆去，所以我说我得来买点东西。”
　　琳达说：“他真可怕，总在说他多有钱，说的英语又差劲得要命。”
　　克莉丝汀道：“可怜的家伙，我倒替他难过呢。”
　　琳达不表同意，她不觉得卜拉特先生有什么值得可怜的，她还年轻而不懂事。她陪着克莉丝汀·雷德方一起走出小店，向堤路走去。她一直忙着想心事，她喜欢克莉丝汀·雷德方，在琳达看起来，岛上只有克莉丝汀和罗莎梦·戴礼还可以叫人忍受，她们两个都不多嘴，比方现在走在一起的时候，克莉丝汀就什么也没说。琳达觉得这是很有道理的一件事，如果没什么值得一谈的事，又何必一直吱吱喳喳呢？她沉入了自己的思索中。
　　她突然说道：“雷德方太太，你有没有觉得这一切都好可怕——可怕得——叫你——呃，好像要爆炸一样……”
　　这几句话十分可笑，可是琳达绷紧了脸，表情充满了焦虑，却一点也不笑。克莉丝汀·雷德方起先有点不解地望着她，发现一点也没有可以取笑之处……她倒吸了一口气，说道：“有过——我曾经有过——正是这样的感觉……”
　　卜拉特先生说：“原来你就是那个有名的大侦探，呃？”他们坐在酒吧间里，那是卜拉特先生最喜欢去的地方。
　　赫邱里·白罗以他惯常那种毫不谦虚的态度认可了对方的话。卜拉特先生继续说道：“你到这里来干吗呢——查案子吗？”
　　“不是，不是，我来休闲的，我在度假。”
　　卜拉特先生眨了下眼睛，“你反正一定会那样说的，是不是？”
　　白罗回答说：“那倒不一定。”
　　贺雷士·卜拉特说：“啊！算了吧，说老实话，你跟我在一起绝对安全，我听到什么都不会说出去！多年前就学会守口如瓶了，要是我不知道该怎么做的话，就不会贸然去做的。可是你知道大部分人是什么样的——对听到的东西，不管是什么事，都叽叽喳喳地说个不停，你这一行可受不了这种事！所以你非坚持说你到这里来不是为了别的事，只是来度假的不可了。”
　　白罗问道：“你为什么会有相反的想法呢？”卜拉特先生闭起一只眼睛，他说：“我世面见多了，我了解各人的习性，像你这样的人，应该会去杜维里，或是托奎特，或是到法国的什么地方度假，那里才能让你——那该是怎么说来着？——得其所哉。”
　　白罗叹了口气，他望望窗外，雨正在落着，浓雾围着小岛，他说：“你说得可能很对！至少，那些地方在下雨时也会有很多娱乐消遣。”
　　“有赌场……”卜拉特先生说：“你知道，我这大半辈子都工作得很辛苦，没时间度假找乐子，我想要干得好，我也干得很好，现在我可以随心所欲了，我的钱不少，我告诉你，过去几年里，我可享受了不少。”
　　白罗喃喃地道：“哦，是吗？”
　　“不知道我怎么会到这个地方来的。”卜拉特先生继续说道。
　　白罗说：“我也觉得奇怪。”
　　“呃？你说什么？”
　　白罗摆了摆手，“我也不是一个没见过世面的人，我也觉得你该去杜维里或是比瑞市的。”
　　“可是我们没去那些地方，却都到了这里。”卜拉特先生发出沙哑的笑声。“真不知道我为什么到这里来，”他想了想说：“你知道，我想是私贩岛和乐园旅馆这个名字听起来很浪漫。你知道，这种地方会让你心动的，让你想起小时候，海盗、私贩之类的东西。”他有点尴尬地笑了起来，“我小时候常驾船出去，当然不是在这边，是在东岸，奇怪的是，这种事一旦尝到味道就再也丢不开了。如果我想要的话，就可以去弄一条相当好的游艇，可是我却又不这么想，我喜欢只驾着我那条小船逛逛，雷德方也好想驾船，他和我一起出去过一两次，现在可难找得到他了——一天到晚死缠着马歇尔那个红头发的老婆。”他停了一下，然后放低了声音继续说道：“这个旅馆里大部分全是些老柴棒子，马歇尔太太大概是唯一鲜蹦活跳的吧！我想马歇尔要盯着她就够他忙的了。关于她在舞台上——跟舞台下的故事一大堆，好多男人为她疯狂，你看着好了，总有一天会出事的。”
　　白罗问道：“出什么样的事？”
　　贺雷士·卜拉特说：“那就要看情形了，你看看马歇尔，我觉得他的脾气很怪。其实，我知道他是什么人，听过一些他的事，我以前也见过像他这样不说话的人，你根本不知道他会怎么样，雷德方最好还是小心点——”
　　他打住了话头，因为他说到的那位先生走进了酒吧间。他有点不自在地继续大声说道：“我说过，在这一带驾船实在很好玩。你好，雷德方，跟我一起喝一杯吧。你喝什么？马丁尼？好，你呢？白罗先生？”
　　白罗摇了摇头，派屈克·雷德方坐了下来，说道：“驾船？这是世界上最好玩的事，真希望我能多上几次船。我小时候经常在海边划小船的

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 5

Inspector Colgate stood back by the cliff waiting for the police surgeon to finish with Arlena's body. Patrick Redfern and Emily Brewster stood a little to one side. Dr Neasdon rose from his knees with a quick deft movement. He said: "Strangled - and by a pretty powerful pair of hands. She doesn't seem to have put up much of a struggle. Taken by surprise. H'm - well - nasty business."

Emily Brewster had taken one look and then quickly averted her eyes from the dead woman's face. That horrible purple convulsed countenance. Inspector Colgate asked: "What about time of death?"

Neasdon said irritably: "Can't say definitely without knowing more about her. Lots of factors to take into account. Let's see, it's quarter to one now. What time was it when you found her?"

Patrick Redfern, to whom the question was addressed, said vaguely: "Some time before twelve. I don't know exactly."

Emily Brewster said: "It was exactly a quarter to twelve when we found she was dead."

"Ah, and you came here in the boat. What time was it when you caught sight of her lying here?"

Emily Brewster considered. "I should say we rounded the point about five or six minutes earlier." She turned to Redfern. "Do you agree?"

He said vaguely: "Yes - yes - about that, I should think."

Neasdon asked the Inspector in a low voice: "This the husband? Oh! I see, my mistake. Thought it might be. He seems rather done in over it." He raised his voice officially. "Let's put it at twenty minutes to twelve. She cannot have been killed very long before that. Say between then and eleven - quarter to eleven at the earliest outside limit."

The Inspector shut his notebook with a snap. "Thanks," he said. "That ought to help us considerably. Puts it within very narrow limits - less than an hour all told." He turned to Miss Brewster. "Now then, I think it's all clear so far. You're Miss Emily Brewster and this is Mr Patrick Redfern, both staying at the Jolly Roger Hotel. You identify this lady as a fellow guest of yours at the hotel - the wife of Captain Marshall?"

Emily Brewster nodded.

"Then, I think," said Inspector Colgate, "that we'll adjourn to the hotel." He beckoned to a constable. "Hawkes, you stay here and don't allow any one onto this cove. I'll be sending Phillips along later."

"Upon my soul!" said Colonel Weston. "This is a surprise finding you here!"

Hercule Poirot replied to the Chief Constable's greeting in a suitable manner. He murmured: "Ah, yes, many years have passed since that affair at St Loo."

"I haven't forgotten it, though," said Weston. "Biggest surprise of my life. The thing I've never got over, though, is the way you got round me about that funeral business. Absolutely unorthodox, the whole thing. Fantastic!"

"Tout de mкme, mon Colonel," said Poirot. "It produced the goods, did it not?"

"Er - well, possibly. I daresay we should have got there by more orthodox methods."

"It is possible," agreed Poirot diplomatically.

"And here you are in the thick of another murder," said the Chief Constable. "Any ideas about this one?"

Poirot said slowly: "Nothing definite - but it is interesting."

"Going to give us a hand?"

"You would permit it, yes?"

"My dear fellow, delighted to have you. Don't know enough yet to decide whether it's a case for Scotland Yard or not. Offhand it looks as though our murderer must be pretty well within a limited radius. On the other hand, all these people are strangers down here. To find out about them and their motives you've got to go to London."

Poirot said: "Yes, that is true."

"First of all," said Weston, "we've got to find out who last saw the dead woman alive. Chambermaid took her breakfast at nine. Girl in the bureau downstairs saw her pass through the lounge and go out about ten."

"My friend," said Poirot, "I suspect that I am the man you want."

"You saw her this morning? What time?"

"At five minutes past ten. I assisted her to launch her float from the bathing beach."

"And she went off on it?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Did you see which direction she took?"

"She paddled round that point there to the right."

"In the direction of Pixy's Cove, that is?"

"Yes."

"And the time then was -"

"I should say she actually left the beach at a quarter past ten."

Weston considered. "That fits in well enough. How long should you say that it would take her to paddle round to the Cove?"

"Ah, me, I am not an expert. I do not go in boats or expose myself on floats. Perhaps half an hour?"

"That's about what I think," said the Colonel. "She wouldn't be hurrying, I presume. Well, if she arrived there at a quarter to eleven, that fits in well enough."

"At what time does your doctor suggest she died?"

"Oh, Neasdon doesn't commit himself. He's a cautious chap. A quarter to eleven is his earliest outside limit."

Poirot nodded. He said: "There is one other point that I must mention. As she left Mrs Marshall asked me not to say I had seen her."

Weston stared. He said: "H'm, that's rather suggestive, isn't it?"

Poirot murmured: "Yes, I thought so myself."

Weston tugged at his moustache. He said: "Look here, Poirot. You're a man of the world. What sort of a woman was Mrs Marshall?"

A faint smile came to Poirot's lips. He asked: "Have you not already heard?"

The Chief Constable said drily: "I know what the women say of her. They would. How much truth is there in it? Was she having an affair with this fellow Redfern?"

"I should say undoubtedly yes."

"He followed her down here, eh?"

"There is reason to suppose so."

"And the husband? Did he know about it? What did he feel?"

Poirot said slowly: "It is not easy to know what Captain Marshall feels or thinks. He is a man who does not display his emotions."

Weston said sharply: "But he might have 'em, all the same."

Poirot nodded. He said: "Oh, yes, he might have them."

The Chief Constable was being as tactful as it was in his nature to be with Mrs Castle. Mrs Castle was the owner and proprietress of the Jolly Roger Hotel. She was a woman of forty odd with a large bust, rather violent henna-red hair, and an almost offensively refined manner of speech. She was saying: "That such a thing should happen in my Hotel! Ay am sure it has always been the quayettest place imaginable! The people who come here are such nice people. No rowdiness - if you know what Ay mean. Not like the big hotels in St Loo."

"Quite so, Mrs Castle," said Colonel Weston. "But accidents happen in the best-regulated - er - households."

"Ay'm sure Inspector Colgate will bear me out," said Mrs Castle, sending an appealing glance towards the Inspector who was sitting looking very official. "As to the laycensing laws. Ay am most particular. There has never been any irregularity!"

"Quite, quite," said Weston. "We're not blaming you in any way, Mrs Castle."

"But it does so reflect upon an establishment," said Mrs Castle, her large bust heaving. "When Ay think of the noisy gaping crowds. Of course no one but hotel guests are allowed upon the island - but all the same they will no doubt come and point from the shore." She shuddered.

Inspector Colgate saw his chance to turn the conversation to good account. He said: "In regard to that point you've just raised. Access to the island. How do you keep people off?"

"Ay am most particular about it."

"Yes, but what measures do you take? What keeps 'em off? Holiday crowds in summer-time swarm everywhere like flies."

Mrs Castle shuddered slightly again. She said: "That is the fault of the charabancs. Ay have seen eighteen at one time parked by the quay at Leathercombe Bay. Eighteen!"

"Just so. How do you stop them coming here?"

"There are notices. And then, of course, at high tide, we are cut off."

"Yes, but at low tide?"

Mrs Castle explained. At the island end of the causeway there was a gate. This said, "Jolly Roger Hotel. Private. No entry except to Hotel." The rocks rose sheer out of the sea on either side there and could not be climbed.

"Any one could take a boat, though, I suppose, and row round and land on one of the coves? You couldn't stop them doing that. There's a right of access to the foreshore. You can't stop people being on the between low and high watermark."

But this, it seemed, very seldom happened. Boats could be obtained at Leathercombe Bay harbour but from there it was a long row to the island and there was also a strong current just outside Leathercombe Bay harbour. There were notices, too, on both Gull Cove and Pixy Cove by the ladder. She added that George or William was always on the lookout at the bathing beach proper which was the nearest to the mainland.

"Who are George and William?"

"George attends to the bathing beach. He sees to the costumes and the floats. William is the gardener. He keeps the paths and marks the tennis courts and all that."

Colonel Weston said impatiently: "Well, that seems clear enough. That's not to say that nobody could have come from outside, but anyone who did so took a risk - the risk of being noticed. We'll have a word with George and William presently."

Mrs Castle said: "Ay do not care for trippers - a very noisy crowd and they frequently leave orange peel and cigarette boxes on the causeway and down by the rocks, but all the same Ay never thought one of them would turn out to be a murderer. Oh, dear! It really is too terrible for words. A lady like Mrs Marshall murdered and what's so horrible, actually - er - strangled..." Mrs Castle could hardly bring herself to say the word. She brought it out with the utmost reluctance.

Inspector Colgate said soothingly: "Yes, it's a nasty business."

"And the newspapers. My hotel in the newspapers!"

Colgate said, with a faint grin: "Oh, well, it's advertisement, in a way."

Mrs Castle drew herself up. Her bust heaved and whale-bone creaked. She said icily: "That is not the kind of advertisement Ay care about, Mr Colgate."

Colonel Weston broke in. He said: "Now then, Mrs Castle, you've got a list of the guests staying here, as I asked you?"

"Yes, sir."

Colonel Weston pored over the hotel register. He looked over to Poirot who made the forth member of the group assembled in the Manageress's office. "This is where you'll probably be able to help us presently." He read down the names. "What about servants?"

Mrs Castle produced a second list. "There are four chambermaids, the head waiter and three under him and Henry in the bar. William does the boots and shoes. Then there's the cook and two under her."

"What about the waiters?"

"Well, sir, Albert, the Mater Dotel, came to me from the Vincent at Plymouth. He was there for some years. The three under him have been here for three years - one of them four. They are very nice lads and most respectable. Henry has been here since the hotel opened. He is quite an institution."

Weston nodded. He said to Colgate: "Seems all right. You'll check up on them, of course. Thank you, Mrs Castle."

"That will be all you require?"

"For the moment, yes."

Mrs Castle creaked out of the room. Weston said: "First thing to do is to talk with Captain Marshall."

Kenneth Marshall sat quietly answering the questions put to him. Apart from a slight hardening of his features he was quite calm. Seen here, with the sunlight falling on him from the window, you realized that he was a handsome man. Those straight features, the steady blue eyes, the firm mouth. His voice was low and pleasant. Colonel Weston was saying: "I quite understand, Captain Marshall, what a terrible shock this must be to you. But you realize that I am anxious to get the fullest information as soon as possible."

Marshall nodded. He said: "I quite understand. Carry on."

"Mrs Marshall was your second wife?"

"Yes."

"And you have been married, how long?"

"Just over four years."

"And her name before she was married?"

"Helen Stuart. Her acting name was Arlena Stuart."

"She was an actress?"

"She appeared in Revue and musical shows."

"Did she give up the stage on her marriage?"

"No. She continued to appear. She actually retired only about a year and a half ago."

"Was there any special reason for her retirement?"

Kenneth Marshall appeared to consider. "No," he said. "She simply said that she was tired of it all."

"It was not - er - in obedience to your special wish?"

Marshall raised his eyebrows. "Oh, no."

"You were quite content for her to continue acting after your marriage?"

Marshall smiled very faintly. "I should have preferred her to give it up - that, yes. But I made no fuss about it."

"It caused no point of dissension between you?"

"Certainly not. My wife was free to please herself."

"And - the marriage was a happy one?"

Kenneth Marshall said coldly: "Certainly."

Colonel Weston paused a minute. Then he said: "Captain Marshall, have you any idea who could possibly have killed your wife?"

The answer came without the least hesitation. "None whatsoever."

"Had she any enemies?"

"Possibly."

"Ah?"

The other went on quickly. He said: "Don't misunderstand me, sir. My wife was an actress. She was also a very good-looking woman. In both capacities she aroused a certain amount of envy and jealousy. There were fusses over parts - there was rivalry from other women - there was a good deal, shall we say, of general envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness! But that is not to say that there was any one who was capable of deliberately murdering her."

Hercule Poirot spoke for the first time. He said: "What you really mean. Monsieur, is that her enemies were mostly, or entirely, women?"

Kenneth Marshall looked across at him. "Yes," he said. "That is so."

The Chief Constable said: "You know of no man who had a grudge against her?"

"No."

"Was she previously acquainted with any one in this hotel?"

"I believe she had met Mr Redfern before - at some cocktail party. Nobody else to my knowledge."

Weston paused. He seemed to deliberate as to whether to pursue the subject. Then he decided against that course. He said: "We now come to this morning. When was the last time you saw your wife?"

Marshall paused a minute, then he said: "I looked in on my way down to breakfast -"

"Excuse me, you occupied separate rooms?"

"Yes."

"And what time was that?"

"It must have been about nine o'clock."

"What was she doing?"

"She was opening her letters."

"Did she say anything?"

"Nothing of any particular interest. Just good-morning - and that it was a nice day - that sort of thing."

"What was her manner? Unusual at all?"

"No, perfectly normal."

"She did not seem excited, or depressed, or upset in any way?"

"I certainly didn't notice it."

Hercule Poirot said: "Did she mention at all what were the contents of her letters?"

Again a faint smile appeared on Marshall's lips. He said: "As far as I can remember, she said they were all bills."

"Your wife breakfasted in bed?"

"Yes."

"Did she always do that?"

"Invariably."

Hercule Poirot said: "What time did she usually come downstairs?"

"Oh! between ten and eleven - usually nearer eleven."

Poirot went on: "If she were to descend at ten o'clock exactly, that would be rather surprising?"

"Yes. She wasn't often down as early as that."

"But she was this morning. Why do you think that was, Captain Marshall?"

Marshall said unemotionally: "Haven't the least idea. Might have been the weather - extra fine day and all that."

"You missed her?"

Kenneth Marshall shifted a little in his chair. He said: "Looked in on her again after breakfast. Room was empty. I was a bit surprised."

"And then you came down on the beach and asked me if I had seen her?"

"Er - yes." He added with a faint emphasis in his voice: "And you said you hadn't..."

The innocent eyes of Hercule Poirot did not falter. Gently, he caressed his large and flamboyant moustache.

Weston said: "Had you any special reason for wanting to find your wife this morning?"

Marshall shifted his glance amiably to the Chief Constable. He said: "No, just wondered where she was, that's all."

Weston paused. He moved his chair slightly. His voice fell into a different key. He said: "Just now, Captain Marshall, you mentioned that your wife had a previous acquaintance with Mr Patrick Redfern. How well did your wife know Mr Redfern?"

Kenneth Marshall said: "Mind if I smoke?" He felt through his pockets. "Dash! I've mislaid my pipe somewhere."

Poirot offered him a cigarette which he accepted. Lighting it, he said: "You were asking about Redfern. My wife told me she had come across him at some cocktail party or other."

"He was, then, just a casual acquaintance?"

"I believe so."

"Since then -" the Chief Constable paused. "I understand that that acquaintanceship has ripened into something rather closer."

Marshall said sharply: "You understand that, do you? Who told you so?"

"It is the common gossip of the hotel."

For a moment Marshall's eyes went to Hercule Poirot. They dwelt on him with a kind of cold anger. He said: "Hotel gossip is usually a tissue of lies!"

"Possibly. But I gather that Mr Redfern and your wife gave some grounds for the gossip."

"What grounds?"

"They were constantly in each other's company."

"Is that all?"

"You do not deny that that was so?"

"May have been. I really didn't notice."

"You did not - excuse me, Captain Marshall - object to your wife's friendship with Mr Redfern?"

"I wasn't in the habit of criticizing my wife's conduct."

"You did not protest or object in any way?"

"Certainly not."

"Not even though it was becoming a subject of scandal and an estrangement was growing up between Mr Redfern and his wife?"

Kenneth Marshall said coldly: "I mind my own business and I expect other people to mind theirs. I don't listen to gossip and tittle tattle."

"You won't deny that Mr Redfern admired your wife?"

"He probably did. Most men did. She was a very beautiful woman."

"But you yourself were persuaded that there was nothing serious in the affair?"

"I never thought about it, I tell you."

"And suppose we have a witness who can testify that they were on terms of the greatest intimacy?"

Again those blue eyes went to Hercule Poirot. Again an expression of dislike showed on that usually impassive face. Marshall said: "If you want to listen to tales, listen to 'em. My wife's dead and can't defend herself."

"You mean that you, personally, don't believe them?"

For the first time a faint dew of sweat was observable on Marshall's brow. He said: "I don't propose to believe anything of the kind." He went on: "Aren't you getting a good way from the essentials of this business? What I believe or don't believe is surely not relevant to the plain fact of murder?"

Hercule Poirot answered before either of the others could speak. He said: "You do not comprehend, Captain Marshall. There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of person Arlena Marshall was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that springs the necessity of our questions."

Marshall turned to the Chief Constable. He said: "That your view, too?"

Weston boggled a little. He said: "Well, up to a point - that is to say -"

Marshall gave a short laugh. He said: "Thought you wouldn't agree. This character stuff is M. Poirot's specialty, I believe."

Poirot said, smiling: "You can at least congratulate yourself on having done nothing to assist me!"

"What do you mean?"

"What have you told us about your wife? Exactly nothing at all. You have told us only what every one could see for themselves. That she was beautiful and admired. Nothing more."

Kenneth Marshall shrugged his shoulders. He said simply: "You're crazy." He looked towards the Chief Constable and said with emphasis: "Anything else, sir, that you'd like me to tell you?"

"Yes, Captain Marshall, your own movements this morning, please."

Kenneth Marshall nodded. He had clearly expected this. He said: "I breakfasted downstairs about nine o'clock as usual and read the paper. As I told you I went up to my wife's room afterwards and found she had gone out. I came down to the beach, saw M. Poirot and asked if he had seen her. Then I had a quick bathe and went up to the hotel again. It was then, let me see, about twenty to to eleven - yes, just about that. I saw the clock in the lounge. It was just after twenty minutes to. I went up to my room, but the chambermaid hadn't quite finished it. I asked her to finish as quickly as she could. I had some letters to type which I wanted to get off by the post. I went downstairs again and had a word or two with Henry in the bar. I went up again to my room at ten minutes to eleven. There I typed my letters. I typed until ten minutes to twelve. I then changed into tennis kit as I had a date to play tennis at twelve. We'd booked the court the day before."

"Who was we?"

"Mrs Redfern, Miss Darnley, Mr Gardener and myself. I came down at twelve o'clock and went up to the court. Miss Darnley was there and Mr Gardener. Mrs Redfern arrived a few minutes later. We played tennis for an hour. Just as we came into the hotel afterwards I - I - got the news."

"Thank you. Captain Marshall. Just as a matter of form, is there any one who can corroborate the fact that you were typing in your room between - er - ten minutes to eleven and ten minutes to twelve?"

Kenneth Marshall said with a faint smile: "Have you got some idea that I killed my own wife? Let me see now. The chambermaid was about doing the rooms. She must have heard the typewriter going. And then there are the letters themselves. With all this upset I haven't posted them. I should imagine they are as good evidence as anything."

He took three letters from his pocket. They were addressed, but not stamped. He said: "Their contents, by the way, are strictly confidential. But when it's a case of murder, one is forced to trust in the discretion of the police. They contain lists of figures and various financial statements. I think you will find that if you put one of your men on to type them out, he won't do it in much under an hour." He paused. "Satisfied, I hope?"

Weston said smoothly: "It is no question of suspicion. Every one on the island will be asked to account for his or her movements between a quarter to eleven and twenty minutes to twelve this morning."

Kenneth Marshall said: "Quite."

Weston said: "One more thing, Captain Marshall. Do you know anything about the way your wife was likely to have disposed of any property she had?"

"You mean a will? I don't think she ever made a will."

"Her solicitors are Barkett, Markett & Applegood, Bedford Square. They saw to all her contracts, etc. But I'm fairly certain she never made a will. She said once that doing a thing like that would give her the shivers."

"In that case, if she has died intestate, you, as her husband, succeed to her property."

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"Had she any near relatives?"

"I don't think so. If she had, she never mentioned them. I know that her father and mother died when she was a child and she had no brothers or sisters."

"In any case, I suppose, she had nothing very much to leave?"

Kenneth Marshall said coolly: "On the contrary. Only two years ago, Sir Robert Erskine, who was an old friend of hers, died and left her a good deal of his fortune. It amounted, I think, to about fifty thousand pounds."

Inspector Colgate looked up. An alertness came into his glance. Up to now he had been silent. Now he asked: "Then actually. Captain Marshall, your wife was a rich woman?"

Kenneth Marshall shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose she was really."

"And you still say she did not make a will?"

"You can ask the solicitors. But I'm pretty certain she didn't. As I tell you, she thought it unlucky." There was a pause, then Marshall added: "Is there anything further?"

Weston shook his head. "Don't think so - eh, Colgate? No. Once more, Captain Marshall, let me offer you all my sympathy in your loss."

Marshall blinked. He said jerkily: "Oh - thanks." He went out.

The three men looked at each other. Weston said: "Cool customer. Not giving anything away, is he? What do you make of him, Colgate?"

The Inspector shook his head. "It's difficult to tell. He's not the kind that shows anything. That sort makes a bad impression in the witness box, and yet it's a bit unfair on them really. Sometimes they're as cut up as anything and yet can't show it. That kind of manner made the jury bring in a verdict of Guilty against Wallace. It wasn't the evidence. They just couldn't believe that a man could lose his wife and talk and act so coolly about it."

Weston turned to Poirot. "What do you think, Poirot?"

Hercule Poirot raised his hands. He said: "What can one say? He is the closed box - the fastened oyster. He has chosen his role. He has heard nothing, he has seen nothing, he knows nothing!"

"We've got a choice of motives," said Colgate. "There's jealousy and there's the money motive. Of course, in a way, a husband's the obvious suspect. One naturally thinks of him first. If he knew his missus was carrying on with the other chap -"

Poirot interrupted. He said: "I think he knew that."

"Why do you say so?"

"Listen, my friend. Last night I had been talking with Mrs Redfern on Sunny Ledge. I came down from there to the hotel and on my way I saw those two together - Mrs Marshall and Patrick Redfern. And a moment or two after I met Captain Marshall. His face was very stiff. It says nothing - but nothing at all! It is almost too blank, if you understand me. Oh! He knew all right."

Colgate grunted doubtfully. He said: "Oh, well, if you think so -"

"I am sure of it! But even then, what does that tell us? What did Kenneth Marshall feel about his wife?"

Colonel Weston said: "Takes her death coolly enough."

Poirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner. Inspector Colgate said: "Sometimes these quiet ones are the most violent underneath, so to speak. It's all bottled up. He may have been madly fond of her - and madly jealous. But he's not the kind to show it."

Poirot said slowly: "That is possible - yes. He is a very interesting character, this Captain Marshall. I interest myself in him greatly. And in his alibi."

"Alibi by typewriter," said Weston with a short bark of a laugh. "What have you got to say about that, Colgate?"

Inspector Colgate screwed up his eyes. He said: "Well, you know, sir, I rather fancy that alibi. It's not too good, if you know what I mean. It's - well, it's natural. And if we find the chambermaid was about, and did hear the typewriter going, well then, it seems to me that it's all right and that we'll have to look elsewhere."

"H'm," said Colonel Weston. "Where are you going to look?"

For a minute or two the three men pondered the question. Inspector Colgate spoke first. He said: "It boils down to this - was it an outsider, or a guest at the hotel? I'm not eliminating the servants entirely, mind, but I don't expect for a minute that we'll find any of them had a hand in it. No, it's a hotel guest, or it's some one from right outside. We've got to look at it this way. First of all - motive. There's gain. The only person to gain by her death was the lady's husband it seems. What other motives are there? First and foremost - jealousy. It seems to me - just looking at it - that if ever you've got a crime passionnel (he bowed to Poirot) this is one."

Poirot murmured as he looked up at the ceiling: "There are so many passions."

Inspector Colgate went on: "Her husband wouldn't allow that she had any enemies - real enemies, that is, but I don't believe for a minute that that's so! I should say that a lady like her would - well, would make some pretty bad enemies - eh, sir, what do you say?"

Poirot responded. He said: "Mais oui, that is so. Arlena Marshall would make enemies. But in my opinion, the enemy theory is not tenable, for you see. Inspector, Arlena Marshall's enemies would, I think, as I said just now, always be women."

Colonel Weston grunted and said: "Something in that. It's the women who've got their knife into her here all right."

Poirot went on: "It seems to be hardly possible that the crime was committed by a woman. What does the medical evidence say?"

Weston grunted again. He said: "Neasdon's pretty confident that she was strangled by a man. Big hands - powerful grip. It's just possible, of course, that an unusually athletic woman might have done it - but it's damned unlikely."

Poirot nodded. "Exactly. Arsenic in a cup of tea - a box of poisoned chocolates - a knife - even a pistol - but strangulation - no! It is a man we have to look for. And immediately," he went on, "it becomes more difficult. There are two people here in this hotel who have a motive for wishing Arlena Marshall out of the way - but both of them are women."

Colonel Weston asked: "Redfern's wife is one of them, I suppose?"

"Yes. Mrs Redfern might have made up her mind to kill Arlena Stuart. She had, let us say, ample cause. I think, too, that it would be possible for Mrs Redfern to commit a murder. But not this kind of murder. For all her

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Chapter 6

Colonel Weston was poring over the hotel register. He read aloud.

"Major and Mrs Cowan, Miss Pamela Cowan, Master Robert Cowan, Master Evan Cowan. Rydal's Mount, Leatherhead.

"Mr and Mrs Masterman, Mr Edward Masterman, Miss Jennifer Masterman, Mr Roy Masterman, Master Frederick Masterman. 5 Malborough Avenue, London, N.W.

"Mr and Mrs Gardener. New York.

"Mr and Mrs Redfern. Crossgates, Seldon, Princes Risborough.

"Major Barry. 18 Cardon Street, St James, London, S.W.1.

"Mr Horace Blatt. 5 Pickersgill Street, London, E.C.2.

"Mr Hercule Poirot. Whitehaven Mansions, London, W.1.

"Miss Rosamund Darnley. 8 Cardigan Court, W.1.

"Miss Emily Brewster. Southgates, Sunbury-on-Thames.

"Rev. Stephen Lane. London.

"Captain and Mrs Marshall. 73 Upscott Mansions.

"Miss Linda Marshall. London, S.W.7."

He stopped. Inspector Colgate said: "I think, sir, that we can wash out the first two entries. Mrs Castle tells me that the Mastermans and the Cowans come here regularly every summer with their children. This morning they went off on an all-day excursion sailing, taking lunch with them. They left just after nine o'clock. A man called Andrew Baston took them. We can check up for him, but I think we can put them right out of it."

Weston nodded. "I agree. Let's eliminate every one we can. Can you give us a pointer on any of the rest of them, Poirot?"

Poirot said: "Superficially, that is easy. The Gardeners are a middle-aged married couple, pleasant, travelled. All the talking is done by the lady. The husband is acquiescent. He plays tennis and golf and has a form of dry humour that is attractive when one gets him to oneself."

"Sounds quite O.K."

"Next - the Redferns. Mr Redfern is young, attractive to women, a magnificent swimmer, a good tennis player and accomplished dancer. His wife I have already spoken of to you. She is quiet, pretty in a washed-out way. She is, I think, devoted to her husband. She has something that Arlena Marshall did not have."

"What is that?"

"Brains."

Inspector Colgate sighed. He said: "Brains don't count for much when it comes to an infatuation, sir."

"Perhaps not. And yet I do truly believe that in spite of his infatuation for Mrs Marshall, Patrick Redfern really cares for his wife."

"That may be, sir. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened."

Poirot murmured: "That is the pity of it! It is always the thing women find it hardest to believe." He went on: "Major Barry, Retired Indian Army. An admirer of women. A teller of long and boring stories."

Inspector Colgate sighed. "You needn't go on. I've met a few, sir."

"Mr Horace Blatt. He is, apparently, a rich man. He talks a good deal - about Mr Blatt. He wants to be everybody's friend. It is sad. For nobody likes him very much. And there is something else. Mr Blatt last night asked me a good many questions. Mr Blatt was uneasy. Yes, there is something not quite right about Mr Blatt." He paused and went on with a change of voice: "Next comes Miss Rosamund Darnley. Her business name is Rose Mond, Ltd. She is a celebrated dressmaker. What can I say of her? She has brains and charm and chic. She is very pleasing to look at." He paused and added: "And she is a very old friend of Captain Marshall's."

Weston sat up in his chair. "Oh, she is, is she?"

"Yes. They had not met for some years."

Weston asked: "Did she know he was going to be down here?"

"She says not." Poirot paused and then went on: "Who comes next? Miss Brewster. I find her just a little alarming." He shook his head. "She has a voice like a man's. She is gruff and what you call hearty. She rows boats and has a handicap of four at golf." He paused. "I think, though, that she has a good heart."

Weston said: "That leaves only the Reverend Stephen Lane. Who's the Reverend Stephen Lane?"

"I can only tell you one thing. He is a man who is in a condition of great nervous tension. Also he is, I think, a fanatic."

Inspector Colgate said: "Oh, that kind of person."

Weston said: "And that's the lot!" He looked at Poirot. "You seem very lost in thought, my friend."

Poirot said: "Yes. Because, you see, when Mrs Marshall went off this morning and asked me not to tell any one I had seen her, I jumped at once in my own mind to a certain conclusion. I thought that her friendship with Patrick Redfern had made trouble between her and her husband. I thought that she was going to meet Patrick Redfern somewhere and that she did not want her husband to know where she was."

He paused. "But that, you see, was where I was wrong. Because, although her husband appeared almost immediately on the beach and asked if I had seen her, Patrick Redfern arrived also - and was most patently and obviously looking for her! And therefore, my friends, I am asking myself. Who was it that Arlena Marshall went off to meet?"

Inspector Colgate said: "That fits in with my idea. A man from London or somewhere."

Hercule Poirot shook his head. He said: "But, my friend, according to your theory, Arlena Marshall had broken with this mythical man. Why, then, should she take such trouble and pains to meet him?"

Inspector Colgate shook his head. He said: "Who do you think it was?"

"That is just what I cannot imagine. We have just read through the list of hotel guests. They are all middle-aged - dull. Which of them would Arlena Marshall prefer to Patrick Redfern? No, that is impossible. And yet, all the same, she did go to meet some one - and that some one was not Patrick Redfern."

Weston murmured: "You don't think she just went off by herself?"

Poirot shook his head. "Mon cher," he said. "It is very evident that you never met the dead woman. Somebody once wrote a learned treatise on the difference that solitary confinement would mean to Beau Brummell or a man like Newton. Arlena Marshall, my dear friend, would practically not exist in solitude. She only lived in the light of a man's admiration. No, Arlena Marshall went to meet some one this morning. Who was it?"

Colonel Weston sighed, shook his head and said: "Well, we can go into theories later. Got to get through these interviews now. Got to get it down in black and white where everyone was. I suppose we'd better see the Marshall girl now. She might be able to tell us something useful."

Linda Marshall came into the room clumsily, knocking against the doorpost. She was breathing quickly and the pupils of her eyes were dilated. She looked like a startled young colt. Colonel Weston felt a kindly impulse towards her. He thought: "Poor kid - she's nothing but a kid after all. This must have been a pretty bad shock to her." He drew up a chair and said in a reassuring voice: "Sorry to put you through this. Miss - Linda, isn't it?"

"Yes, Linda."

Her voice had that indrawn breathy quality that is often characteristic of schoolgirls, Her hands rested helplessly on the table in front of him - pathetic hands, big and red, with large bones and long wrists. Weston thought: "A kid oughtn't to be mixed up in this sort of thing." He said reassuringly: "There's nothing very alarming about all this. We just want you to tell us anything you know that might be useful, that's all."

Linda said: "You mean - about Arlena?"

"Yes. Did you see her this morning at all?"

The girl shook her head. "No. Arlena always gets down rather late. She has breakfast in bed."

Hercule Poirot said: "And you, Mademoiselle?"

"Oh, I get up. Breakfast in bed's so stuffy."

Weston said: "Will you tell us just what you did this morning?"

"Well, I had a bathe first and then breakfast and then I went with Mrs Redfern to Gull Cove."

Weston said: "What time did you and Mrs Redfern start?"

"She said she'd be waiting for me in the hall at half past ten. I was afraid I was going to be late, but it was all right. We started off at about three minutes to the half hour."

Poirot said: "And what did you do at Gull Cove?"

"Oh, I oiled myself and sunbathed and Mrs Redfern sketched. Then, later, I went into the sea and Christine went back to the hotel to get changed for tennis."

Weston said, keeping his voice quite casual: "Do you remember what time that was?"

"When Mrs Redfern went back to the hotel? Quarter to twelve."

"Sure of that time - quarter to twelve?"

Linda, opening her eyes wide, said: "Oh, yes. I locked at my watch."

"The watch you have on now?"

Linda glanced down at her wrist. "Yes."

Weston said: "Mind if I see?"

She held out her wrist. He compared the watch with his own and with the hotel clock on the wall. He said, smiling: "Correct to a second. And after that you had a bathe?"

"Yes."

"And you got back to the hotel - when?"

"Just about one o'clock. And - and then - I heard - about Arlena..." Her voice changed.

Colonel Weston said: "Did you - er - get on with your stepmother all right?"

She looked at him for a minute without replying. Then she said: "Oh, yes."

Poirot asked: "Did you like her, Mademoiselle?"

Linda said again: "Oh, yes." She added: "Arlena was quite kind to me."

Weston said with rather uneasy facetiousness: "Not the cruel stepmother, eh?"

Linda shook her head without smiling.

Weston said: "That's good. That's good. Sometimes, you know, there's a bit of difficulty in families - jealousy - all that. Girl and her father great pals and then she resents it a bit when he's all wrapped up in the new wife. You didn't feel like that, eh?"

Linda stared at him. She said with obvious sincerity: "Oh, no."

Weston said: "I suppose your father was - er - very wrapped up in her?"

Linda said simply: "I don't know."

Weston went on: "All sorts of difficulties, as I say, arise in families. Quarrels - rows - that sort of thing. If husband and wife get ratty with each other, that's a bit awkward for a daughter, too. Anything of that sort?"

Linda said clearly: "Do you mean, did Father and Arlena quarrel?"

"Well - yes." Weston thought to himself: "Rotten business - questioning a child about her father. Why is one a policeman? Damn it all, it's got to be done, though."

Linda said positively: "Oh, no." She added: "Father doesn't quarrel with people. He's not like that at all."

Weston said: "Now, Miss Linda, I want you to think very carefully. Have you any idea at all who might have killed your stepmother? Is there anything you've ever heard or anything you know that could help us on that point?"

Linda was silent a minute. She seemed to be giving the question a serious unhurried consideration. She said at last: "No, I don't know who could have wanted to kill Arlena." She added: "Except, of course, Mrs Redfern."

Weston said: "You think Mrs Redfern wanted to kill her? Why?"

Linda said: "Because her husband was in love with Arlena. But I don't think she would really want to kill her. I mean she'd just feel that she wished she was dead - and that isn't the same thing at all, is it?"

Poirot said gently: "No, it is not at all the same."

Linda nodded. A queer sort of spasm passed across her face. She said: "And anyway, Mrs Redfern could never do a thing like that - kill anybody. She isn't - she isn't violent, if you know what I mean."

Weston and Poirot nodded. The latter said: "I know exactly what you mean, my child, and I agree with you. Mrs Redfern is not of those who, as your saying goes, 'sees red.' She would not be -" He leaned back half closing his eyes, picking his words with care - "shaken by a storm of feeling - seeing life narrowing in front of her - seeing a hated face - a hated white neck - feeling her hands clench - longing to feel them press into flesh -"

He stopped. Linda moved jerkily back from the table. She said in a trembling voice:

"Can I go now? Is that all?"

Colonel Weston said: "Yes, yes, that's all. Thank you. Miss Linda." He got up to open the door for her. Then came back to the table and lit a cigarette. "Phew," he said. "Not a nice job, ours. I can tell you I felt a bit of a cad questioning that child about the relations between her father and her stepmother. More or less inviting a daughter to put a rope around her father's neck. All the same, it had to be done. Murder is murder. And she's the person most likely to know the truth of things. I'm rather thankful, though, that she'd nothing to tell us in that line."

Poirot said: "Yes, I thought you were."

Weston said with an embarrassed cough: "By the way, Poirot, you went a bit far, I thought, at the end. All that hands-sinking-into-flesh business! Not quite the sort of idea to put into a kid's head."

Hercule Poirot looked at him with thoughtful eyes. He said: "So you thought I put ideas into her head?"

"Well, didn't you? Come now." Poirot shook his head. Weston sheered away from the point. He said: "On the whole we got very little useful stuff out of her. Except a more or less complete alibi for the Redfern woman. If they were together from half past ten to a quarter to twelve that lets Christine Redfern out of it. Exit the jealous wife suspect."

Poirot said: "There are better reasons than that for leaving Mrs Redfern out of it. It would, I am convinced, be physically impossible and mentally impossible for her to strangle any one. She is cold rather than warm blooded, capable of deep devotion and unanswering constancy, but not of hot-blooded passion or rage. Moreover, her hands are far too small and delicate."

Colgate said: "I agree with Mr Poirot. She's out of it. Dr Neasdon says it was a full-sized pair of hands throttled that dame."

Weston said: "Well, I suppose we'd better see the Redferns next. I expect he's recovered a bit from the shock now."

Patrick Redfern had recovered full composure by now. He looked pale and haggard and suddenly very young, but his manner was quite composed.

"You are Mr Patrick Redfern of Crossgates, Seldon, Princes Risborough?"

"Yes."

"How long had you known Mrs Marshall?"

Patrick Redfern hesitated, then said: "Three months."

Weston went on: "Captain Marshall had told as that you and she met casually at a cocktail party. Is that right?"

"Yes, that's how it came about."

Weston said: "Captain Marshall has implied that until you both met down here you did not know each other well. Is that the truth, Mr Redfern?"

Again Patrick Redfern hesitated a minute. Then he said: "Well - not exactly. As a matter of fact I saw a fair amount of her one way and another."

"Without Captain Marshall's knowledge?"

Redfern flushed slightly. He said: "I don't know whether he knew about it or not."

Hercule Poirot spoke. He murmured: "And was it also without your wife's knowledge, Mr Redfern?"

"I believe I mentioned to my wife that I had met the famous Arlena Stuart."

Poirot persisted. "But she did not know how often you were seeing her?"

"Well, perhaps not."

Weston said: "Did you and Mrs Marshall arrange to meet down here?"

Redfern was silent a minute or two. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well," he said. "I suppose it's bound to come out now. It's no good my fencing with you. I was crazy about the woman - mad - infatuated - anything you like. She wanted me to come down here. I demurred a bit and then I agreed. I - I - well, I would have agreed to do any mortal thing she liked. She had that kind of effect on people."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "You paint a very clear picture of her. She was the eternal Circe. Just that!"

Patrick Redfern said bitterly: "She turned men into swine all right!" He went on: "I'm being frank with you, gentlemen. I'm not going to hide anything. What's the use? As I say, I was infatuated with her. Whether she cared for me or not, I don't know. She pretended to, but I think she was one of those women who lose interest in a man once they've got him body and soul. She knew she'd got me all right. This morning, when I found her there on the beach, dead, it was as though -" he paused - "as though something had hit me straight between the eyes. I was dazed - knocked out!"

Poirot leaned forward. "And now?"

Patrick Redfern met his eyes squarely. He said: "I've told you the truth. What I want to ask is this - how much of it has got to be made public? It's not as though it could have any bearing on her death. And if it all comes out, it's going to be pretty rough on my wife. Oh, I know," he went on quickly. "You think I haven't thought much about her up to now? Perhaps that's true. But, though I may sound the worst kind of hypocrite, the real truth is that I care for my wife - I care for her very deeply. The other -" he twitched his shoulders - "it was a madness - the kind of idiotic fool thing men do - but Christine is different. She's real. Badly as I've treated her, I've known all along, deep down, that she was the person who really counted." He paused - sighed - and said rather pathetically: "I wish I could make you believe that."

Hercule Poirot leant forward. He said: "But I do believe it. Yes, yes, I do believe it!"

Patrick Redfern looked at him gratefully. He said: "Thank you."

Colonel Weston cleared his throat. He said: "You may take it, Mr Redfern, that we shall not go into irrelevancies. If your infatuation for Mrs Marshall played no part in the murder, then there will be no point in dragging it into the case. But what you don't seem to realize is that that - er - intimacy - may have a very direct bearing on the murder. It might establish, you understand, a motive for the crime."

Patrick Redfern said: "Motive?"

Weston said: "Yes, Mr Redfern, motive! Captain Marshall, perhaps, was unaware of the affair. Suppose that he suddenly found out."

Redfern said: "Oh, God! You mean he got wise and - and killed her?"

The Chief Constable said rather drily: "That solution had not occurred to you?"

Redfern shook his head. He said: "No - funny. I never thought of it. You see, Marshall's such a quiet chap. I - oh, it doesn't seem likely."

Weston asked: "What was Mrs Marshall's attitude to her husband in all this? Was she - well, uneasy - in case it should come to his ears? Or was she indifferent?"

Redfern said slowly: "She was - a bit nervous. She didn't want him to suspect anything."

"Did she seem afraid of him?"

"Afraid? No, I wouldn't say that."

Poirot murmured: "Excuse me, M. Redfern, there was not, at any time, the question of a divorce?"

Patrick Redfern shook his head decisively. "Oh, no, there was no question of anything like that. There was Christine, you see. And Arlena, I am sure, never thought of such a thing. She was perfectly satisfied married to Marshall. He's - well, rather a big bug in his way -" He smiled suddenly. "County - all that sort of thing, and quite well off. She never thought of me as a possible husband. No, I was just one of a succession of poor mutts - just something to pass the time with. I knew that all along, and yet, queerly enough, it didn't alter my feelings towards her..."

His voice trailed off. He sat there thinking. Weston recalled him to the needs of the moment. "Now, Mr Redfern, had you any particular appointment with Mrs Marshall this morning?"

Patrick Redfern looked slightly puzzled. He said: "Not a particular appointment, no. We usually met every morning on the beach. We used to paddle about on floats."

"Were you surprised not to find Mrs Marshall there this morning?"

"Yes, I was. Very surprised. I couldn't understand it at all."

"What did you think?"

"Well, I didn't know what to think. I mean, all the time I thought she would be coming."

"If she were keeping an appointment elsewhere you had no idea with whom that appointment might be?" Patrick Redfern merely stared and shook his head. "When you had a rendezvous with Mrs Marshall, where did you meet?"

"Well, sometimes I'd meet her in the afternoon down at Gull Cove. You see the sun is off Gull Cove in the afternoon and so there aren't usually many people there. We met there once or twice."

"Never on the other cove? Pixy Cove?"

"No. You see Pixy Cove faces west and people go round there in boats or on floats in the afternoon. We never tried to meet in the morning. It would have been too noticeable. In the afternoon people go and have a sleep or mouch around and nobody knows much where any one else is." Weston nodded. Patrick Redfern went on: "After dinner, of course, on the fine nights, we used to go off for a stroll together to different parts of the island."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "Ah, yes!" and Patrick Redfern shot him an inquiring glance.

Weston said: "Then you can give us no help whatsoever as to the cause that took Mrs Marshall to Pixy Cove this morning?"

Redfern shook his head. He said, and his voice sounded honestly bewildered: "I haven't the faintest idea! It wasn't like Arlena."

Weston said: "Had she any friends down here staying in the neighbourhood?"

"Not that I know of. Oh, I'm sure she hadn't."

"Now, Mr Redfern, I want you to think very carefully. You knew Mrs Marshall in London. You must be acquainted with various members of her circle. Is there any one you know of who could have had a grudge against her? Some one, for instance, whom you may have supplanted in her fancy?"

Patrick Redfern thought for some minutes. Then he shook his head. "Honestly," he said. "I can't think of any one."

Colonel Weston drummed with his fingers on the table. He said at last: "Well, that's that. We seem to be left with three possibilities. That of an unknown killer - some monomaniac - who happened to be in the neighbourhood - and that's a pretty tall order -"

Redfern said, interrupting: "And yet surely, it's by far the most likely explanation."

Weston shook his head: "This isn't one of the 'lonely copse' murders. This cove place was pretty inaccessible. Either the man would have to come up from the causeway past the hotel, over the top of the island and down by that ladder contraption, or else he came there by boat. Either way is unlikely for a casual killing."

Patrick Redfern said: "You said there were three possibilities."

"Um - yes," said the Chief Constable. "That's to say, there were two people on this island who had a motive for killing her. Her husband, for one, and your wife for another."

Redfern stared at him. He looked dumbfounded. He said: "My wife? Christine? D'you mean that Christine had anything to do with this?" He got up and stood there stammering slightly in his incoherent haste to get the words out. "You're mad - quite mad - Christine? Why, it's impossible. It's laughable!"

Weston said: "All the same, Mr Redfern, jealousy is a very powerful motive. Women who are jealous lose control of themselves completely."

Redfern said earnestly: "Not Christine. She's - oh, she's not like that. She was unhappy, yes. But she's not the kind of person to - Oh, there's no violence in her."

Hercule Poirot nodded thoughtfully. Violence. The same word that Linda Marshall had used. As before, he agreed with the sentiment. "Besides," went on Redfern confidently, "it would be absurd. Arlena was twice as strong physically as Christine. I doubt if Christine could strangle a kitten - certainly not a strong wiry creature like Arlena. And then Christine could never have got down that ladder to the beach. She has no head for that sort of thing. And - oh, the whole thing is fantastic!"

Colonel Weston scratched his ear tentatively.

"Well," he said. "Put like that it doesn't seem likely. I grant you that. But motive's the first thing we've got to look for." He added: "Motive and opportunity."

When Redfern had left the room, the Chief Constable observed with a slight smile: "Didn't think it necessary to tell the fellow his wife had got an alibi. Wanted to hear what he'd have to say to the idea. Shook him up a bit, didn't it?"

Hercule Poirot murmured: "The arguments he advanced were quite as strong as any alibi."

"Yes. Oh! She didn't do it! She couldn't have done it - physically impossible as you said. Marshall could have done it - but apparently he didn't."

Inspector Colgate coughed. He said: "Excuse me, sir. I've been thinking about that alibi. It's possible, you know, if he'd thought this thing out, that those letters were got ready beforehand."

Weston said: "That's a good idea. We must look into -"

He broke off as Christine Redfern entered the room. She was wearing a white tennis frock and a pale blue pullover. It accentuated her fair, rather anaemic prettiness. Yet, Hercule Poirot thought to himself, it was neither a silly face nor a weak one. It had plenty of resolution, courage and good sense. He nodded appreciatively. Colonel Weston thought: "Nice little woman. Bit wishy-washy, perhaps. A lot too good for that philandering young ass of a husband of hers. Oh, well, the boy's young. Women usually make a fool of you once!" He said: "Sit down, Mrs Redfern. We've got to go through a certain amount of routine, you see. Asking everybody for an account of their movements this morning. Just for our records."

Christine Redfern nodded. She said in her quiet precise voice: "Oh, yes, I quite understand. Where do you want me to begin?"

Hercule Poirot said: "As early as possible, Madame. What did you do when you first got up this morning?"

Christine said: "Let me see. On my way down to breakfast I went into Linda Marshall's room and fixed up with her to go to Gull Cove this morning. We agreed to meet in the lounge at half past ten."

Poirot asked: "You did not bathe before breakfast, Madame?"

"No. I very seldom do." She smiled. "I like the sea well warmed before I get into it. I'm rather a chilly person."

"But your husband bathes then?"

"Oh, yes. Nearly always."

"And Mrs Marshall, she also?"

A change came over Christine's voice. It became cold and almost acrid. She said: "Oh, no, Mrs Marshall was the sort of person who never made an appearance before the middle of the morning."

With an air of confusion, Hercule Poirot said: "Pardon, Madame, I interrupted you. You were saying that you went to Miss Linda Marshall's room. What time was that?"

"Let me see - half past eight - no, a little later."

"And was Miss Marshall up then?"

"Oh, yes, she had been out."

"Out?"

"Yes, she said she'd been bathing."

There was a faint - a very faint note of embarrassment in Christine's voice. It puzzled Hercule Poirot.

Weston said: "And then?"

"Then I went down to breakfast."

"And after breakfast?"

"I went upstairs, collected my sketching box and sketching book, and we started out."

"You and Miss Linda Marshall?"

"Yes."

"What time was that?"

"I think it was just on half past ten."

"And what did you do?"

"We went to Gull Cove. You know, the cove on the east side of the island. We settled ourselves there. I did a sketch and Linda sunbathed."

"What time did you leave the cove?"

"At a quarter to twelve. I was playing tennis at twelve and had to change."

"You had your watch with you?"

"No, as a matter of fact I hadn't. I asked Linda the time."

"I see. And then?"

"I packed up my sketching things and went back to the hotel."

Poirot said: "And Mademoiselle Linda?"

"Linda? Oh, Linda went into the sea."

Poirot said: "Were you far from the sea where you were sitting?"

"Well, we were well above high-water mark. Just under the cliff - so that I could be a little in the shade and Linda the sun."

Poirot said: "Did Linda Marshall actually enter the sea before you left the beach?"

Christine frowned a little in the effort to remember. She said: "Let me see. She ran down the beach - I fastened my box - Yes, I heard her splashing in the waves as I was on the path up the cliff."

"You are quite sure of that, Madame? That she really entered the sea?"

"Oh, yes." She stared at him in surprise.

Colonel Weston also stared at him. Then he said: "Go on, Mrs Redfern."

"I went back to the hotel, changed, and went to the tennis courts where I met the others."

"Who were?"

"Captain Marshall, Mr Gardener and Miss Darnley. We played two sets. We were just going in again when the news came about - about Mrs Marshall."

Hercule Poirot leant forward. He said: "And what did you think, Madame, when you heard that news?"

"What did I think?" Her face showed a faint distaste for the question.

"Yes."

Christine Redfern said slowly: "It was - a horrible thing to happen."

"Ah, yes, your fastidiousness was revolted. I understand that. But what did it mean to you - personally?"

She gave him a quick look - a look of appeal. He responded to it. He said in a matter-of-fact voice: "I am appealing to you, Madame, as a woman of intelligence with plenty of good sense and judgment. You had doubtless during your stay here formed an opinion of Mrs Marshall, of the kind of woman she was?"

Christine said cautiously: "I suppose one always does that more or less when one is staying in hotels."

"Certainly, it is the natural thing to do. So I ask you, Madame, were you really very surprised at the manner of her death?"

Christine said slowly: "I think I see what you mean. No, I was not, perhaps, surprised. Shocked, yes. But she was the kind of woman -"

Poirot finished the sentence for her. "She was the kind of woman to whom such a thing might happen... Yes, Madame, that is the truest and most significant thing that has been said in this room this morning. Laying all - er - (he stressed it carefully) personal feeling aside, what did you really think of the late Mrs Marshall?"

Christine Redfern said calmly: "Is it really worth while going into all that now?"

"I think it might be, yes."

"Well, what shall I say?" Her fair skin was suddenly suffused with colour. The careful poise of her manner was relaxed. For a short space the natural raw woman looked out. "She's the kind of woman that to my mind is

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 7

Christine stared at him, not seeming at once to take in what he meant. She answered almost mechanically. "I suppose - because she was being blackmailed. She was the sort of person who would be."

Colonel Weston said earnestly: "But - do you know she was being blackmailed?"

A faint colour rose in the girl's cheeks. She said rather awkwardly: "As a matter of fact I do happen to know it. I - I overheard something."

"Will you explain, Mrs Redfern?"

Flushing still more, Christine Redfern said: "I - I didn't mean to overhear. It was an accident. It was two - no, three nights ago. We were playing bridge." She turned towards Poirot. "You remember? My husband and I, M. Poirot and Miss Darnley. I was dummy. It was very stuffy in the card room, and I slipped out of the window for a breath of fresh air. I went down towards the beach and I suddenly heard voices. One - it was Arlena Marshall's - I knew it at once - said: 'It's no good pressing me. I can't get any more money now. My husband will suspect something.' And then a man's voice said: 'I'm not taking any excuses. You've got to cough up.' And then Arlena Marshall said: 'You blackmailing brute!' And the man said: 'Brute or not, you'll pay up, my lady.'" Christine paused. "I'd turned back and a minute after Arlena Marshall rushed past me. She looked - well, frightfully upset."

Weston said: "And the man? Do you know who he was?"

Christine Redfern shook her head. She said: "He was keeping his voice low. I barely heard what he said."

"It didn't suggest the voice to you of any one you knew?"

She thought again, but once more shook her head. She said: "No, I don't know. It was gruff and low. It - oh, it might have been anybody's."

Colonel Weston said: "Thank you, Mrs Redfern."

When the door had closed behind Christine Redfern Inspector Colgate said: "Now we are getting somewhere!"

Weston said: "You think so, eh?"

"Well, it's suggestive, sir, you can't get away from it. Somebody in this hotel was blackmailing the lady."

Poirot murmured: "But it is not the wicked blackmailer who lies dead. It is the victim."

"That's a bit of a setback, I agree," said the Inspector. "Blackmailers aren't in the habit of bumping off their victims. But what it does give us is this, it suggests a reason for Mrs Marshall's curious behaviour this morning. She'd got a rendezvous with this fellow who was blackmailing her, and she didn't want either her husband or Redfern to know about it."

"It certainly explains that point," agreed Poirot.

Inspector Colgate went on: "And think of the place chosen. The very spot for the purpose. The lady goes off on her float. That's natural enough. It's what she does every day. She goes round to Pixy Cove where no one ever goes in the morning and which will be a nice quiet place for an interview."

Poirot said: "But yes, I too was struck by that point. It is, as you say, an ideal spot for a rendezvous. It is deserted, it is only accessible from the land side by descending a vertical steel ladder which is not everybody's money, bien entendu. Moreover, most of the beach is invisible from above because of the overhanging cliff. And it has another advantage. Mr Redfern told me of that one day. There is a cave on it, the entrance to which is not easy to find but where any one could wait unseen."

Weston said: "Of course, the Pixy's Cave - remember hearing about it."

Inspector Colgate said: "Haven't heard it spoken of for years, though. We'd better have a look inside it. Never know, we might find a pointer of some kind."

Weston said: "Yes, you're right, Colgate, we've got the solution to part one of the puzzle. Why did Mrs Marshall go to Pixy's Cove? We want the other half of that solution, though. Who did she go there to meet? Presumably someone staying in this hotel. None of them fitted as a lover - but a blackmailer's a different proposition." He drew the register towards him. "Excluding the waiters, boots, etc., whom I don't think likely, we've got the following. The American - Gardener, Major Barry, Mr Horace Blatt, and the Reverend Stephen Lane."

Inspector Colgate said: "We can narrow it down a bit, sir. We might almost rule out the American, I think. He was on the beach all the morning. That's so, isn't it, M. Poirot?"

Poirot replied: "He was absent for a short time when he fetched a skein of wool for his wife."

Colgate said: "Oh, well, we needn't count that."

Weston said: "And what about the other three?"

"Major Barry went out at ten o'clock this morning. He returned at one-thirty. Mr Lane was earlier still. He breakfasted at eight. Said he was going for a tramp. Mr Blatt went off for a sail at nine-thirty same as he does most days. Neither of them is back yet?"

"A sail, eh?" Colonel Weston's voice was thoughtful.

Inspector Colgate's voice was responsive. He said: "Might fit in rather well, sir."

Weston said: "Well, we'll have a word with this Major bloke - and let me see, who else is there? Rosamund Darnley. And there's the Brewster woman who found the body with Redfern. What's she like, Colgate?"

"Oh, a sensible party, sir. No nonsense about her."

"She didn't express any opinions on the death?"

The inspector shook his head. "I don't think she'll have anything more to tell us, sir, but we'll have to make sure. Then there are the Americans."

Colonel Weston nodded. He said: "Let's have 'em all in and get it over as soon as possible. Never know, might learn something. About the blackmailing stunt if about nothing else."

Mr and Mrs Gardener came into the presence of authority together. Mrs Gardener explained immediately. "I hope you'll understand how it is, Colonel Weston (that is the name, I think?)." Reassured on this point she went on: "But this has been a very bad shock to me and Mr Gardener is always very, very careful of my health -"

Mr Gardener here interpolated. "Mrs Gardener," he said, "is very sensitive."

"- and he said to me, 'Why, Carrie,' he said, 'naturally I'm coming right along with you.' It's not that we haven't the highest admiration for British police methods, because we have. I've been told that British police procedure is the most refined and delicate and I've never doubted it and certainly when I once had a bracelet missing at the Savoy Hotel nothing could have been more lovely and sympathetic than the young man who came to see me about it, and of course I hadn't really lost the bracelet at all, but just mislaid it, that's the worst of rushing about so much, it makes you kind of forgetful where you put things -" Mrs Gardener paused, inhaled gently and started off again. "And what I say is, and I know Mr Gardener agrees with me, that we're only too anxious to do anything to help the British police in every way. So go right ahead and ask me anything at all you want to know -"

Colonel Weston opened his mouth to comply with this invitation but had momentarily to postpone speech while Mrs Gardener went on. "That's what I said, Odell, isn't it? And that's so, isn't it?"

"Yes, darling," said Mr Gardener.

Colonel Weston spoke hastily. "I understand, Mrs Gardener, that you and your husband were on the beach all the morning?"

For once Mr Gardener was able to get in first. "That's so," he said.

"Why, certainly we were," said Mrs Gardener. "And a lovely peaceful morning it was, just like any other morning, if you get me, perhaps even more so, and not the slightest idea in our minds of what was happening round the corner on that lonely beach."

"Did you see Mrs Marshall at all today?"

"We did not. And I said to Odell, 'Why, wherever can Mrs Marshall have got to this morning?' I said. And first her husband coming looking for her and then that good-looking young man, Mr Redfern, and so impatient he was, just sitting there on the beach scowling at every one and everything. And I said to myself, 'Why, when he has that nice pretty little wife of his own, must he go running after that dreadful woman?' Because that's just what I felt she was. I always felt that about her, didn't I, Odell?"

"Yes, darling."

"However that nice Captain Marshall came to marry such a woman I just cannot imagine - and with that nice young daughter growing up, and it's so important for girls to have the right influence. Mrs Marshall was not at all the right person - no breeding at all - and I should say a very animal nature. Now if Captain Marshall had had any sense he'd have married Miss Darnley who's a very, very charming woman and a very distinguished one. I must say I admire the way she's gone straight ahead and built up a first-class business as she has. It takes brains to do a thing like that - and you've only to look at Rosamund Darnley to see she's just frantic with brains. She could plan and carry out any mortal thing she liked. I just admire that woman more than I can say. And I said to Mr Gardener the other day that any one could see she was very much in love with Captain Marshall - crazy about him was what I said, didn't I, Odell?"

"Yes, darling."

"It seems they knew each other as children, and, why, now, who knows, it may all come right after all with that woman out of the way. I'm not a narrow-minded woman, Colonel Weston, and it isn't that I disapprove of the stage as such - why, quite a lot of my best friends are actresses - but I've said to Mr Gardener all along that there was something evil about that woman. And you see, I've been proved right."

She paused triumphantly. The lips of Hercule Poirot quivered in a little smile. His eyes met for a minute the shrewd grey eyes of Mr Gardener. Colonel Weston said rather desperately: "Well, thank you, Mrs Gardener. I suppose there's nothing that either of you has noticed since you've been here that might have a bearing upon the case?"

"Why, no, I don't think so." Mr Gardener spoke with a slow drawl. "Mrs Marshall was around with young Redfern most of the time - but everybody can tell you that."

"What about her husband? Did he mind, do you think?"

Mr Gardener said cautiously: "Captain Marshall is a very reserved man."

Mrs Gardener confirmed this by saying: "Why, yes, he is a real Britisher!"

On the slightly apoplectic countenance of Major Barry various emotions seemed contending for mastery. He was endeavouring to look properly horrified but could not subdue a kind of shamefaced gusto. He was saying in his hoarse slightly wheezy voice: "Glad to help you any way I can. 'Course I don't know anythin' about it - nothin' at all. Not acquainted with the parties. But I've knocked about a bit in my time. Lived a lot in the East, you know. And I can tell you that after being in an Indian hill station what you don't know about human nature isn't worth knowin'." He paused, took a breath and was off again. "Matter of fact this business reminds me of a case in Simla. Fellow called Robinson or was it Falconer? Anyway he was in the East Wilts or was it the North Surreys? Can't remember now and anyway it doesn't matter. Quiet chap, you know, great reader - mild as milk you'd have said. Went for his wife one evening in their bungalow. Got her by the throat. She'd been carryin' on with some feller or other and he'd got wise to it. By Jove, he nearly did for her! It was touch and go. Surprised us all! Didn't think he had it in him."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "And you see there an analogy to the death of Mrs Marshall?"

"Well, what I mean to say - strangled, you know. Same idea. Feller suddenly sees red!"

Poirot said: "You think that Captain Marshall felt like that?"

"Oh, look here, I never said that." Major Barry's face went even redder. "Never said anything about Marshall. Thoroughly nice chap. Wouldn't say a word against him for the world."

Poirot murmured: "Ah, pardon, but you did refer to the natural reactions of a husband."

Major Barry said: "Well, I mean to say, I should think she'd been pretty hot stuff. Eh? Got young Redfern on a string all right. And there were probably others before him. But the funny thing is, you know, that husbands are a dense lot. Amazin'. I've been surprised by it again and again. They see a fellow sweet on their wife but they don't see that she's sweet on him! Remember a case like that in Poona. Very pretty woman. Jove, she led her husband a dance -"

Colonel Weston stirred a little restively. He said: "Yes, yes. Major Barry. For the moment we've just got to establish the facts. You don't know of anything personally - that you've seen or noticed that might help us in this case?"

"Well, really, Weston, I can't say I do. Saw her and young Redfern one afternoon on Gull Cove -" Here he winked knowingly and gave a deep hoarse chuckle - "Very pretty it was, too. But it's not evidence of that kind you're wanting. Ha, ha."

"You did not see Mrs Marshall at all this morning?"

"Didn't see anybody this morning. Went over to St Loo. Just my luck. Sort of place here where nothin' happens for months and when it does you miss it!"

The Major's voice held a ghoulish regret. Colonel Weston prompted him. "You went to St Loo, you say?"

"Yes, wanted to do some telephonin'. No telephone here and that post office place at Leathercombe Bay isn't very private."

"Were your telephone calls of a very private nature?"

The Major winked again cheerfully. "Well, they were and they weren't. Wanted to get through to a pal of mine and get him to put somethin' on a horse. Couldn't get through to him, worse luck."

"Where did you telephone from?"

"Call box in the G.P.O. at St Loo. Then on the way back I got lost - these confounded lanes - twistin' and turnin' all over the place. Must have wasted an hour over that at least. Damned confusing part of the world. I only got back half an hour ago."

Colonel Weston said: "Speak to any one or meet any one in St Loo?"

Major Barry said with a chuckle: "Wantin' me to prove an alibi? Can't think of anythin' useful. Saw about fifty thousand people in St Loo - but that's not to say they'll remember seem' me."

The Chief Constable said: "We have to ask these things, you know."

"Right you are. Call on me at any time. Glad to help you. Very fetchin' woman, the deceased. Like to help you catch the feller who did it. The Lonely Beach Murder - bet you that's what the papers will call it. Reminds me of the time -"

It was Inspector Colgate who firmly nipped this latest reminiscence in the bud and manoeuvred the garrulous Major out of the door. Coming back he said: "Difficult to check up on anything in St Loo. It's the middle of the holiday season."

The Chief Constable said: "Yes, we can't take him off the list. Not that I seriously believe he's implicated. Dozens of old bores like him going about. Remember one or two of them in my Army days. Still - he's a possibility. I leave all that to you, Colgate. Check what time he took the car out - petrol - all that. It's humanly possible that he parked the car somewhere in a lonely spot, walked back here and went to the cove. But it doesn't seem feasible to me. He'd have run too much risk of being seen."

Colgate nodded. He said: "Of course there are a good many charabancs here today. Fine day. They start arriving round about half past eleven. High tide was at seven. Low tide would be about one o'clock. People would be spread out over the sands and the causeway."

Weston said: "Yes. But he'd have to come up from the causeway past the hotel."

"Not right past it. He could branch off on the path that leads up over the top of the island."

Weston said doubtfully: "I'm not saying that he mightn't have done it without being seen. Practically all the hotel guests were on the bathing beach except for Mrs Redfern and the Marshall girl who were down in Gull Cove, and the beginning of that path would only be overlooked by a few rooms of the hotel and there are plenty of chances against any one looking out of those windows just at that moment. For the matter of that, I daresay it's possible for a man to walk up to the hotel, through the lounge and out again without any one happening to see him. But what I say is, he couldn't count on no one seeing him."

Colgate said: "He could have gone round to the cove by boat."

Weston nodded. He said: "That's much sounder. If he'd had a boat handy in one of the coves near by, he could have left the car, rowed or sailed to Pixy's Cove, done the murder, rowed back, picked up the car and arrived back with this tale about having been to St Loo and lost his way - a story that he'd know would be pretty hard to disprove."

"You're right, sir."

The Chief Constable said: "Well. I leave it to you, Colgate. Comb the neighbourhood thoroughly. You know what to do. We'd better see Miss Brewster now."

Emily Brewster was not able to add anything of material value to what they already knew. Weston said after she had repeated her story: "And there's nothing you know of that could help us in any way?"

Emily Brewster said shortly: "Afraid not. It's a distressing business. However I expect you'll soon get to the bottom of it."

Weston said: "I hope so too."

Emily Brewster said drily: "Ought not to be difficult."

"Now what do you mean by that, Miss Brewster?"

"Sorry. Wasn't attempting to teach you your business. All I meant was that with a woman of that kind it ought to be easy enough."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "That is your opinion?"

Emily Brewster snapped out: "Of course. De mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that, but you can't get away from facts. That woman was a bad lot through and through. You've only got to hunt round a bit in her unsavoury past."

Hercule Poirot said gently: "You did not like her?"

"I know a bit too much about her." In answer to the inquiring looks she went on. "My first cousin married one of the Erskines. You've probably heard that that woman induced old Sir Robert when he was in his dotage to leave most of his fortune to her away from his own family."

Colonel Weston said: "And the family - er - resented that?"

"Naturally. His association with her was a scandal anyway and on top of that to leave her a sum like fifty thousand pounds shows just the kind of woman she was. I daresay I sound hard, but in my opinion the Arlena Stuarts of this world deserve very little sympathy. I know of something else too - a young fellow who lost his head about her completely - he'd always been a bit wild, naturally his association with her pushed him over the edge. He did something rather fishy with some shares - solely to get money to spend on her - and only just managed to escape prosecution. That woman contaminated every one she met. Look at the way she was ruining young Redfern. No, I'm afraid I can't have any regret for her death - though of course it would have been better if she'd drowned herself, or fallen over a cliff. Strangling is rather unpleasant."

"And you think the murderer was some one out of her past?"

"Yes, I do."

"Some one who came from the mainland with no one seeing him?"

"Why should any one see him? We were all on the beach. I gather the Marshall child and Christine Redfern were down on Gull Cove out of the way. Captain Marshall was in his room in the hotel. Then who on earth was there to see him except possibly Miss Darnley?"

"Where was Miss Darnley?"

"Sitting up on the cutting at the top of the cliff. Sunny Ledge it's called. We saw her there, Mr Redfern and I, when we were rowing round the island."

Colonel Weston said: "You may be right, Miss Brewster."

Emily Brewster said positively: "I'm sure I'm right. When a woman's neither more nor less than a nasty mess, then she herself will provide the best possible clue. Don't you agree with me, M. Poirot?"

Hercule Poirot looked up. His eyes met her confident grey ones. He said: "Oh, yes - I agree with that which you have just this minute said. Arlena Marshall herself is the best, the only clue, to her own death."

Miss Brewster said sharply: "Well, then!" She stood there, an erect sturdy figure, her cool self-confident glance going from one man to the other.

Colonel Weston said: "You may be sure, Miss Brewster, that any clue there may be in Mrs Marshall's past life will not be overlooked."

Emily Brewster went out.

Inspector Colgate shifted his position at the table. He said in a thoughtful voice: "She's a determined one, she is. And she'd got her knife in to the dead lady, proper, she had." He stopped a minute and said reflectively: "It's a pity in a way that she's got a cast-iron alibi for the whole morning. Did you notice her hands, sir? As big as a man's. And she's a hefty woman - as strong and stronger than many a man I'd say..." He paused again. His glance at Poirot was almost pleading. "And you say she never left the beach this morning, M. Poirot?"

Slowly Poirot shook his head. He said: "My dear Inspector, she came down to the beach before Mrs Marshall could have reached Pixy's Cove and she was within my sight until she set off with Mr Redfern in the boat."

Inspector Colgate said gloomily: "Then that washes her out." He seemed upset about it.

As always, Hercule Poirot felt a keen sense of pleasure at the sight of Rosamund Darnley. Even to a bare police inquiry into the ugly facts of murder she brought a distinction of her own. She sat down opposite Colonel Weston and turned a grave and intelligent face to him. She said: "You want my name and address? Rosamund Anne Darnley. I carry on a dressmaking business under the name of Rose Mond, Ltd at 622 Brook Street."

"Thank you. Miss Darnley. Now can you tell us anything that may help us?"

"I don't really think I can."

"Your own movements -"

"I had breakfast about nine-thirty. Then I went up to my room and collected some books and my sunshade and went out to Sunny Ledge. That must have been about twenty-five past ten. I came back to the hotel about ten minutes to twelve, went up and got my tennis racquet and went out to the tennis courts where I played tennis until lunchtime."

"You were in the cliff recess, called by the hotel, Sunny Ledge, from about half past ten until ten minutes to twelve?"

"Yes."

"Did you see Mrs Marshall at all this morning?"

"No."

"Did you see her from the cliff as she paddled her float round to Pixy's Cove?"

"No, she must have gone by before I got there."

"Did you notice any one on a float or in a boat at all this morning?"

"No, I don't think I did. You see I was reading. Of course I looked up from my book from time to time but as it happened the sea was quiet each time I did so."

"You didn't even notice Mr Redfern and Miss Brewster when they went round?"

"No."

"You were, I think, acquainted with Mr Marshall?"

"Captain Marshall is an old family friend. His family and mine lived next door to each other. I had not seen him, however, for a good many years - it must be something like twelve wears."

"And Mrs Marshall?"

"I'd never exchanged half a dozen words with her until I met her here."

"Were Captain and Mrs Marshall, as far as you knew, on good terms with each other?"

"On perfectly good terms, I should say."

"Was Captain Marshall very devoted to his wife?"

Rosamund said: "He may have been. I can't really tell you anything about that. Captain Marshall is rather old-fashioned - but he hasn't got the modern habit of shouting matrimonial woes upon the housetop."

"Did you like Mrs Marshall, Miss Darnley?"

"No." The monosyllable came quietly and evenly. It sounded what it was - a simple statement of fact.

"Why was that?"

A half smile came to Rosamund's lips. She said: "Surely you've discovered that Arlena Marshall was not popular with her own sex? She was bored to death with women and showed it. Nevertheless I should like to have had the dressing of her. She had a great gift for clothes. Her clothes were always just right and she wore them well. I should like to have had her as a client."

"She spent a good deal on clothes?"

"She must have. But then she had money of her own and of course Captain Marshall is quite well off."

"Did you ever hear or did it ever occur to you that Mrs Marshall was being blackmailed, Miss Darnley?"

A look of intense astonishment came over Rosamund Darnley's expressive face. She said: "Blackmailed? Arlena?"

"The idea seems to surprise you."

"Well, yes, it does rather. It seems so incongruous."

"But surely it is possible?"

"Everything's possible, isn't it? The world soon teaches one that. But I wondered what any one could blackmail Arlena about?"

"There are certain things, I suppose, that Mrs Marshall might be anxious should not come to her husband's ears?"

"We-ll, yes." She explained the doubt in her voice by saying with a half smile: "I sound skeptical, but then, you see, Arlena was rather notorious in her conduct. She never made much of a pose of respectability."

"You think, then, that her husband was aware of her - intimacies with other people?"

There was a pause. Rosamund was frowning. She spoke at last in a slow reluctant voice. She said: "You know, I don't really know what to think. I've always assumed that Kenneth Marshall accepted his wife, quite frankly, for what she was. That he had no illusions about her. But it may not be so."

"He may have believed in her absolutely?"

Rosamund said with semi-exasperation: "Men are such fools. And Kenneth Marshall is unworldly under his sophisticated manner. He may have believed in her blindly. He may have thought she was just - admired."

"And you know of no one - that is you have heard of no one who was likely to have had a grudge against Mrs Marshall?"

Rosamund Darnley smiled. She said: "Only resentful wives. And I presume since she was strangled, that it was a man who killed her."

"Yes."

Rosamund said thoughtfully: "No, I can't think of any one. But then I probably shouldn't know. You'll have to ask some one in her own intimate set."

"Thank you, Miss Darnley."

Rosamund turned a little in her chair. She said: "Hasn't M. Poirot any questions to ask?" Her faintly ironic smile flashed out at him.

Hercule Poirot smiled and shook his head. He said: "I can think of nothing."

Rosamund Darnley got up and went out.

第七章



　　克莉丝汀瞪着他，好像一时没听懂他的意思。她几乎是很机械地回答道：“我想——因为她受到了勒索。她是那种会遭人勒索的人。”
　　温斯顿上校很热切地说：“可是——你知道她遭人勒索吗？”
　　她的两颊上起了一阵红晕，她有点尴尬地说：“说老实话，我碰巧知道，我，我——偶而听到了一些话。”
　　“你能不能解释一下？雷德方太太？”
　　克莉丝汀·雷德方的脸越来越红，她说：“我——我并不是有意偷听，完全是意外。那是两——不是，是三天之前，我们正在玩桥牌。”她转头对白罗问道：“你还记得吧？我先生和我，白罗先生和戴礼小、姐，我正好是空位。桥牌室里空气很闷，我就从落地长窗走到外面去吸口新鲜空气。我向海滩走去时，突然听到有人声，一个声音——就是艾莲娜·马歇尔——我马上就听出来了，她说：‘这样逼我也没有用，我现在再弄不到钱了，我丈夫会怀疑的。’然后有个男人的声音说：‘我不管你有什么借口，你一定得把钱吐出来。’艾莲娜·马歇尔说：‘你这个勒索人的下流胚子，’那个男人说：‘下流不下流，你还是得付钱，夫人’。”克莉丝汀停了一下。“我转身往回走，一分钟之后，艾莲娜·马歇尔从我身边冲过，她看来——呃，非常不高兴的样子。”
　　温斯顿说：“那个男人呢？你知道他是什么人吗？”
　　克莉丝汀·雷德方摇了摇头说：“他的声音压得很低，我都几乎听不清他说些什么。”
　　“听不出是你认得的那个人的声音吗？”
　　她想了想，但又摇了摇头。她说：“我不知道，声音很含糊，也很低。那声音——啊，可以是任何一个人的声音。”
　　温斯顿上校说：“谢谢你，雷德方太太。”
　　等克莉丝汀·雷德方出去把门带上了之后，柯根德巡官说：“这下我们有点头绪了。”
　　温斯顿说：“你认为如此，呃？”
　　“哎，这很有参考性。局长，不能丢下不管，这个旅馆里有人在勒索那位女士。”
　　白罗喃喃地道：“可是死的不是那个勒索的歹徒，而是被害人。”
　　“这一点有些叫人懊恼，我同意，”巡官说：“勒索的人通常是不会把他们勒索对象干掉的。不过这至少给了我们一个答案，给马歇尔太太那天早上的奇异行径提供了一个理由。她是去和那个勒索她的人见面，她不希望让她的丈夫或雷德方知道这件事。”
　　“这点倒的确可以解释得通。”白罗同意道。
　　柯根德巡官继续说道：“想想所选定的地方，正是为这目的而安排的适当地点。那位太太乘着小筏子去，够自然的了。她每天都这样的，她绕到小妖湾那样一个早上从来没人去的地方，正是谈话的安静地方。”
　　白罗说：“不错，我也想到这些。那里正如你所说的，是个碰头的好地点，没有别人，要从陆地这边到那里，只有由崖顶沿梯子下去，那不是每个人都爱走的一条路。还有，那个地方大部分从上面都看不见，因为被悬崖遮挡住了。另外还有个好处。雷德方先生那天才跟我说起过，那里有个山洞，入口很难找得到，但任何人都可以在那里等着而不被别人看到。”
　　温斯顿说：“对了，叫妖精洞——记得听人提起过。”
　　柯根德巡官说：“不过已经有好多年没听人说到了。我们最好到洞里去查一查，谁知道呢，说不定可以找到点线索什么的。”
　　温斯顿说：“对，说得对，柯根德，我们已经得到这个谜的一部分答案了，知道了马歇尔太太为什么去小妖湾。不过，我们还要另外一半答案，她到那里去见什么人？假定那也是个住在这个旅馆里的人。这里没有一个够资格做她的情人——可是勒索者又是另外一种身分了。”他把旅客登记簿拉了过来，“把侍者、佣人什么的除外，我觉得他们不大可能，剩下的是：那个美国佬，贾德纳、巴瑞少校、贺雷士·卜拉特先生，还有史蒂文·蓝恩牧师。”
　　柯根德巡官说：“我们还可以把范围再缩小一点，局长。我想我们也可以把那个美国佬除外，他一整个上午都在海滩上，是这样的吧？白罗先生？”
　　白罗回答道：“他有一小段时间不在，去给他太太拿毛线去了。”
　　柯根德说：“啊，呃，那不必算。”
　　温斯顿说：“另外三个呢？”
　　“巴瑞少校今早十点钟出去的，一点半回来。蓝恩牧师更早，他八点钟吃早饭，说他要去健行。卜拉特先生九点半驾船出海，跟他平常一样，他们几个都还没回来吧？”
　　“驾船出去了？呃？”温斯顿上校说话时好像在想着什么。
　　柯根德巡官随声附和地说道：“蛮相合的呢，局长。”
　　温斯顿说：“呃，我们要跟那位少校谈谈——我看看，还有些什么人？罗莎梦·戴礼，还有那个姓布雷斯特的女人，她跟雷德方一起发现尸体的。她是个什么样的人？柯根德？”
　　“啊，一个很理智的人，局长，什么都实事求是。”
　　“她对这件案子有没有发表过什么意见？”
　　巡官摇了摇头，“我想她再没什么要告诉我们的了，局长，不过我们得确定一下。另外就是那对美国夫妇。”
　　温斯顿上校点了点头，他说：“我们让他们一起进来，尽早把话问完，谁晓得呢，说不定会有什么发现。即使不说别的，也许在勒索案上有点线索。”
　　贾德纳夫妇到了他们面前，贾德纳太太马上解�

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 8

They were standing in the bedroom that had been Arlena Marshall's. Two big bay windows gave onto a balcony that overlooked the bathing beach and the sea beyond. Sunshine poured into the room flashing over the bewildering array of bottles and jars on Arlena's dressing-table. Here there was every kind of cosmetic and unguent known to beauty parlours. Amongst this panoply of women's affairs three men moved purposefully. Inspector Colgate went about shutting and opening drawers. Presently he gave a grunt. He had come upon a packet of folded letters. He and Weston ran through them together.

Hercule Poirot had moved to the wardrobe. He opened the door of the hanging cupboard and looked at the multiplicity of gowns and sports suits that hung there. He opened the other side. Foamy lingerie lay in piles. On a wide shelf were hats. Two more beach cardboard hats in lacquer red and pale yellow - a big Hawaiian straw hat - another of drooping dark blue linen and three or four little absurdities for which, no doubt, several guineas had been paid apiece - a kind of beret in dark blue - a tuft, no more, of black velvet - a pale grey turban. Hercule Poirot stood scanning them - a faintly indulgent smile came to his lips. He murmured: "Les femmes!"

Colonel Weston was refolding the letters. "Three from young Redfern," he said. "Damned young ass. He'll learn not to write to women in a few more years. Women always keep letters and then swear they've burnt them. There's one other letter here. Same line of country." He held it out and Poirot took it.

"Darling Arlena,

"God, I feel blue. To be going out to China - and perhaps not seeing you again for years and years. I didn't know any man could go on feeling crazy about a woman like I feel about you. Thanks for the cheque. They won't prosecute now. It was a near shave, though, and all because I wanted to make big money for you. Can you forgive me? I wanted to set diamonds in your ears - your lovely lovely ears and clasp great milk-white pearls round your throat only they say pearls are no good nowadays. A fabulous emerald, then? Yes, that's the thing. A great emerald, cool and green and full of hidden fire. Don't forget me - but you won't, I know. You're mine - always.

"Good-bye - goodbye - good-bye.

"J.N."

Inspector Colgate said: "Might be worth while to find out if J.N. really did go to China. Otherwise - well, he might be the person we're looking for. Crazy about the woman, idealizing her, suddenly finding out he'd been played for a sucker. It sounds to me as though this is the boy Miss Brewster mentioned. Yes, I think this might be useful."

Hercule Poirot nodded. He said: "Yes, that letter is important. I find it very important."

He turned round and stared at the room - at the bottles on the dressing table - at the open wardrobe and at a big Pierrot doll that lolled insolently on the bed. They went into Kenneth Marshall's room. It was next door to his wife's but with no communicating door and no balcony. It faced the same way and had two windows, but it was much smaller. Between the two windows a gilt mirror hung on the wall. In the corner beyond the right-hand window was the dressing-table. On it were two ivory brushes, a clothes brush and a bottle of hair lotion. In the corner by the left-hand window was a writing-table. An open typewriter stood on it and papers were ranged in a stack beside it.

Colgate went through them rapidly. He said: "All seems straightforward enough. Ah, here's the letter he mentioned this morning. Dated the 24th - that's yesterday. And here's the envelope - postmarked Leathercombe Bay this morning. Seems all square. Now we'll have an idea if he could have prepared that answer of his beforehand."

He sat down. Colonel Weston said: "We'll leave you to it, for a moment. We'll just glance through the rest of the rooms. Every one's been kept out of this corridor until now and they're getting a bit restive about it." They went next into Linda Marshall's room. It faced east, looking out over the rocks down to the sea below.

Weston gave a glance round. He murmured: "Don't suppose there's anything to see here. But it's possible Marshall might have put something in his daughter's room that he didn't want us to find. Not likely, though. It isn't as though there had been a weapon or anything to get rid of." He went out again.

Hercule Poirot stayed behind. He found something that interested him in the grate. Something had been burnt there recently. He knelt down, working patiently. He laid out his finds on a sheet of paper. A large irregular blob of candle grease - some fragments of green paper or cardboard, possibly a pull-off calendar, for with it was an unburnt fragment bearing a large figure 5 and a scrap of printing... noble deeds... There was also an ordinary pin and some burnt animal matter which might have been hair. Poirot arranged them neatly in a row and stared at them. He murmured: "'Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long.' C'est possible. But what is one to make of this collection? C'est fantastique!" And he picked up the pin and his eyes grew sharp and green. He murmured: "Pour l'amour de Dieu! Is it possible?"

Hercule Poirot got up from where he had been kneeling by the grate. Slowly he looked round the room and this time there was an entirely new expression on his face. It was grave and almost stern. To the left of the mantelpiece there were some shelves with a row of books. Hercule Poirot looked thoughtfully along the titles. A Bible, a battered copy of Shakespeare's plays. The Marriage of William Ashe by Mrs Humphry Ward. The Young Stepmother by Charlotte Yonge. The Shropshire Lad. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Bernard Shaw's St Joan. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The Burning Court by Dickson Carr.

Poirot took out two books. The Young Stepmother and William Ashe, and glanced inside at the blurred stamp affixed to the title page. As he was about to replace them, his eye caught sight of a book that had been shoved behind the other books. It was a small dumpy volume bound in brown calf. He took it out and opened it. Very slowly he nodded his head. He murmured: "So I was right... Yes, I was right. But for the other - is that possible too? No, it is not possible, unless..."

He stayed there, motionless, stroking his moustaches whilst his mind ranged busily over the problem. He said again softly: "Unless -?"

Colonel Weston looked in at the door. "Hullo, Poirot, still there?"

"I arrive. I arrive," cried Poirot. He hurried out into the corridor. The room next to Linda's was that of the Redferns. Poirot looked into it, noting automatically the traces of two different individualities - a neatness and tidiness which he associated with Christine and a picturesque disorder which was characteristic of Patrick. Apart from these sidelights on personality the room did not interest him. Next to it again was Rosamund Darnley's room and here he lingered for a moment in the sheer pleasure of the owner's personality. He noted the few books that lay on the table next to the bed, the expensive simplicity of the toilet set on the dressing-table. And there came gently to his nostrils, the elusive expensive perfume that Rosamund Darnley used.

Next to Rosamund Darnley's room at the northern end of the corridor was an open window leading to a balcony from which an outside stair led down to the rocks below. Weston said: "That's the way people go down to bathe before breakfast - that is, if they bathe off the rocks as most of them do."

Interest came into Hercule Poirot's eyes. He stepped outside and looked down. Below, a path led to steps cut zigzag leading down the rocks to the sea. There was also a path that led round the hotel to the left. He said: "One could go down these stairs, go to the left round the hotel and join the main path up from the causeway."

Weston nodded. He amplified Poirot's statement. "One could go right across the island without going through the hotel at all." He added: "But one might still be seen from a window."

"What window?"

"Two of the public bathrooms look out that way - north - and the staff bathroom, and the cloakroom on the ground floor. Also the billiard room."

Poirot nodded. He said: "And all the former have frosted glass windows and one does not play billiards on a fine morning."

"Exactly." Weston paused and said: "If he did it, that's the way he went."

"You mean Captain Marshall?"

"Yes. Blackmail, or no blackmail, I still feel it points to him. And his manner - well, his manner is unfortunate."

Hercule Poirot said drily: "Perhaps - but a manner does not make a murderer!"

Weston said: "Then you think he's out of it?"

Poirot shook his head. He said: "No, I would not say that."

Weston said: "We'll see what Colgate can make out of the typewriting alibi. In the meantime I've got the chambermaid of this floor waiting to be interviewed. A good deal may depend on her evidence."

The chambermaid was a woman of thirty, brisk, efficient and intelligent. Her answers came readily. Captain Marshall had come up to his room not long after ten-thirty. She was then finishing the room. He had asked her to be as quick as possible. She had not seen him come back but she had heard the sound of the typewriter a little later. She put it at about five minutes to eleven. She was then in Mr and Mrs Redfern's room. After she had done that she moved on to Miss Darnley's room, as near as she could say, at just after eleven o'clock. She remembered hearing Leathercombe Church strike the hour as she went in. At a quarter past eleven she had gone downstairs for her eleven o'clock cup of tea and "snack." Afterwards she had gone to do the rooms in the other wing of the hotel. In answer to the Chief Constable's question she explained that she had done the rooms in this corridor in the following order: Miss Linda Marshall's, the two public bathrooms, Mrs Marshall's room and private bath, Captain Marshall's room. Mr and Mrs Redfern's room and private bath. Miss Darnley's room and private bath. Captain Marshall's and Miss Marshall's rooms had no adjoining bathrooms. During the time she was in Miss Darnley's room and bathroom she had not heard any one pass the door or go out by the staircase to the rocks, but it was quite likely she wouldn't have heard if any one went quietly.

Weston then directed his questions to the subject of Mrs Marshall.

No, Mrs Marshall wasn't one for rising early as a rule. She, Gladys Narracott, had been surprised to find the door open and Mrs Marshall gone down at just after ten. Something quite unusual, that was.

"Did Mrs Marshall always have her breakfast in bed?"

"Oh, yes, sir, always. Not very much of it either. Just tea and orange juice and one piece of toast. Slimming like so many ladies."

No, she hadn't noticed anything unusual in Mrs Marshall's manner that morning. She'd seemed quite as usual.

Hercule Poirot murmured: "What did you think of Mrs Marshall, Mademoiselle?"

Gladys Narracott stared at him. She said: "Well, that's hardly for me to say, is it, sir?"

"But yes, it is for you to say. We are anxious - very anxious - to hear your impression."

Gladys gave a slightly uneasy glance towards the Chief Constable who endeavoured to make his face sympathetic and approving, though actually he felt slightly embarrassed by his foreign colleague's methods of approach. He said: "Er - yes, certainly. Go ahead."

For the first time Gladys Narracott's brisk efficiency deserted her. Her fingers fumbled with her print dress. She said: "Well, Mrs Marshall - she wasn't exactly a lady, as you might say. What I mean is she was more like an actress."

Colonel Weston said: "She was an actress."

"Yes, sir, that's what I'm saying. She just went on exactly as she felt like it. She didn't - well, she didn't trouble to be polite if she wasn't feeling polite. And she'd be all smiles one minute and then if she couldn't find something or the bell wasn't answered at once or her laundry wasn't back, well, she'd be downright rude and nasty about it. None of us as you might say liked her. But her clothes were beautiful, and of course she was a very handsome lady, so it was only natural she should be admired."

Colonel Weston said: "I am sorry to have to ask you what I am going to ask you, but it is a very vital matter. Can you tell me how things were between her and her husband?"

Gladys Narracott hesitated a minute. She said: "You don't - it wasn't - you don't think as he did it?"

Hercule Poirot said quickly: "Do you?"

"Oh! I wouldn't like to think so. He's such a nice gentleman, Captain Marshall. He couldn't do a thing like that - I'm sure he couldn't."

"But you are not very sure - I hear it in your voice."

Gladys Narracott said reluctantly: "You do read things in the papers! When there's jealously. If there's been goings-on - and of course every one's been talking about it - about her and Mr Redfern, I mean. And Mrs Redfern's such a nice quiet lady! It does seem a shame! And Mr Redfern's a nice gentleman too, but it seems men can't help themselves when it's a lady like Mrs Marshall - one who's used to having her own way. Wives have to put up with a lot, I'm sure." She sighed and paused. "But if Captain Marshall found out about it -"

Colonel Weston said sharply: "Well?"

Gladys Narracott said slowly: "I did think sometimes that Mrs Marshall was frightened of her husband knowing."

"What makes you say that?"

"It wasn't anything definite, sir. It was only I felt - that sometimes she was - afraid of him. He was a very quiet gentleman but he wasn't - he wasn't easy."

Weston said: "But you've nothing definite to go on? Nothing either of them ever said to each other." Slowly Gladys Narracott shook her head. Weston sighed. He went on: "Now, as to letters received by Mrs Marshall this morning. Can you tell us anything about those?"

"There were about six or seven, sir. I couldn't say exactly."

"Did you take them up to her?"

"Yes, sir. I got them from the office as usual and put them on her breakfast tray."

"Do you remember anything about the look of them?"

The girl shook her head. "They were just ordinary-looking letters. Some of them were bills and circulars, I think, because they were torn up on the tray."

"What happened to them?"

"They went into the dustbin, sir. One of the police gentlemen is going through that now."

Weston nodded. "And the contents of the wastepaper baskets, where are they?"

"They'll be in the dustbin too."

Weston said: "H'm - well, I think that is all at present." He looked inquiringly at Poirot.

Poirot leaned forward. "When you did Miss Linda Marshall's room this morning, did you do the fireplace?"

"There wasn't anything to do, sir. There had been no fire lit."

"And there was nothing in the fireplace itself?"

"No, sir, it was perfectly all right."

"What time did you do her room?"

"About a quarter past nine, sir, when she'd gone down to breakfast."

"Did she come up to her room after breakfast, do you know?"

"Yes, sir. She came up about a quarter to ten."

"Did she stay in her room?"

"I think so, sir. She came out, hurrying rather, just before half past ten."

"You didn't go into her room again?"

"No, sir. I had finished with it."

Poirot nodded. He said: "There is another thing I want to know. What people bathed before breakfast this morning?"

"I couldn't say about the other wing and the floor above. Only about this one."

"That is all I want to know."

"Well, sir. Captain Marshall and Mr Redfern were the only ones this morning, I think. They always go down for an early dip."

"Did you see them?"

"No, sir, but their wet bathing things were hanging over the balcony rail as usual."

"Miss Linda Marshall did not bathe this morning?"

"No, sir. All her bathing dresses were quite dry."

"Ah," said Poirot. "That is what I wanted to know."

Gladys Narracott volunteered: "She does most mornings, sir."

"And the other three, Miss Darnley, Mrs Redfern and Mrs Marshall?"

"Mrs Marshall never, sir. Miss Darnley has once or twice, I think. Mrs Redfern doesn't often bathe before breakfast - only when it's very hot, but she didn't this morning."

Again Poirot nodded. Then he asked: "I wonder if you have noticed whether a bottle is missing from any of the rooms you look after in this wing?"

"A bottle, sir? What kind of bottle?"

"Unfortunately I do not know. But have you noticed - if one has gone?"

Gladys said frankly: "I shouldn't from Mrs Marshall's room, sir, and that's a fact. She has ever so many."

"And the other rooms?"

"Well, I'm not sure about Miss Darnley. She has a good many creams and lotions. But from the other rooms, yes, I would, sir. I mean if I were to look special. If I were noticing, so to speak."

"But you haven't actually noticed?"

"No, because I wasn't looking special, as I say."

"Perhaps you would go and look now, then."

"Certainly, sir."

She left the room, her print dress rustling. Weston looked at Poirot. He said: "What's all this?"

Poirot murmured: "My orderly mind, that is vexed by trifles! Miss Brewster, this morning, was bathing off the rocks before breakfast, and she says that a bottle was thrown from above and nearly hit her. Eh bien, I want to know who threw that bottle and why?"

"My dear man, any one may have chucked a bottle away."

"Not at all. To begin with, it could only have been thrown from a window on the east side of the hotel - that is, one of the windows of the rooms we have just examined. Now I ask you, if you have an empty bottle on your dressing-table or in your bathroom, what do you do with it? I will tell you, you drop it into the wastepaper basket. You do not take the trouble to go out on your balcony and hurl it into the sea! For one thing you might hit some one, for another it would be too much trouble. No, you would only do that if you did not want any one to see that particular bottle."

Weston stared at him. Weston said: "I know that Chief Inspector Japp, whom I met over a case not long ago, always says you have a damned tortuous mind. You're not going to tell me now that Arlena Marshall wasn't strangled at all, but poisoned out of some mysterious bottle with a mysterious drug?"

"No, no, I do not think there was poison in that bottle."

"Then what was there?"

"I do not know at all. That's why I am interested."

Gladys Narracott came back. She was a little breathless. She said: "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't find anything missing. I'm sure there's nothing gone from Captain Marshall's room or Miss Linda Marshall's room or Mr and Mrs Redfern's room, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing gone from Miss Darnley's either. But I couldn't say about Mrs Marshall's. As I say, she's got such a lot."

Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He said: "No matter. We will leave it."

Gladys Narracott said: "Is there anything more, sir?" She looked from one to the other of them.

Weston said: "Don't think so. Thank you."

Poirot said: "I thank you, no. You are sure, are you not, that there is nothing - nothing at all, that you have forgotten to tell us?"

"About Mrs Marshall, sir?"

"About anything at all. Anything unusual, out of the way, unexplained, slightly peculiar, rather curious - enfin, something that has made you say to yourself or to one of your colleagues: That's funny!'?"

Gladys said doubtfully: "Well, not the sort of thing that you would mean, sir?"

Hercule Poirot said: "Never mind what I mean. You do not know what I mean. It is true, then, that you have said to yourself or to a colleague today: 'That is funny!'?" He brought out the three words with ironic detachment.

Gladys said: "It was nothing really. Just a bath being run. And I did pass the remark to Elsie, downstairs, that it was funny somebody having a bath round about twelve o'clock."

"Whose bath, who had a bath?"

"That I couldn't say, sir. We heard it going down the waste from this wing, that's all, and that's when I said what I did to Elsie."

"You're sure it was a bath? Not one of the handbasins?"

"Oh! quite sure, sir. You can't mistake bath-water running away."

Poirot displaying no further desire to keep her, Gladys Narracott was permitted to depart.

Weston said: "You don't think this bath question is important, do you, Poirot? I mean, there's no point to it. No bloodstains or anything like that to wash off. That's the -" He hesitated.

Poirot cut in: "That, you would say, is the advantage of strangulation! No bloodstains, no weapon - nothing to get rid of or conceal! Nothing is needed but physical strength - and the soul of a killer!" His voice was so fierce, so charged with feeling, that Weston recoiled a little. Hercule Poirot smiled at him apologetically. "No, no," he said, "the bath is probably of no importance. Any one may have had a bath. Mrs Redfern before she went to play tennis. Captain Marshall, Miss Darnley. As I say, any one. There is nothing in that."

A Police Constable knocked at the door, and put in his head. "It's Miss Darnley, sir. She says she'd like to see you again for a minute. There's something she forgot to tell you, she says."

Weston said: "We're coming down - now."

The first person they saw was Colgate. His face was gloomy. "Just a minute, sir." Weston and Poirot followed him into Mrs Castle's office. Colgate said: "I've been checking up with Heald on this typewriting business. Not a doubt of it, it couldn't be done under an hour. Longer, if you had to stop and think here and there. That seems to me pretty well to settle it. And look at this letter." He held it out.

"My dear Marshall,

"Sorry to worry you on your holiday but an entirely unforeseen situation has arisen over the Burley and Tender contracts..."

"Etcetera, etcetera," said Colgate. "Dated the 24th - that's yesterday. Envelope postmarked yesterday evening E.C.I and Leathercombe Bay this morning. Same typewriter used on envelope and in letter. And by the contents it was clearly impossible for Marshall to prepare his answer beforehand. The figures arise out of the ones in the letter - the whole thing is quite intricate."

"H'm," said Weston gloomily. "That seems to let Marshall out. We'll have to look elsewhere." He added: "I've got to see Miss Darnley again. She's waiting now."

Rosamund came in crisply. Her smile held an apologetic nuance. She said: "I'm frightfully sorry. Probably it isn't worth bothering about. But one does forget things so."

"Yes, Miss Darnley?" The Chief Constable indicated a chair.

She shook her shapely black head. "Oh, it isn't worth sitting down. It's simply this. I told you that I spent the morning lying out on Sunny Ledge. That isn't quite accurate. I forgot that once during the morning I went back to the hotel and out again."

"What time was that, Miss Darnley?"

"It must have been about a quarter past eleven."

"You went back to the hotel, you said?"

"Yes, I'd forgotten my glare glasses. At first I thought I wouldn't bother and then my eyes got tired and I decided to go in and get them."

"You went straight to your room and out again."

"Yes. At least, as a matter of fact, I just looked in on Ken - Captain Marshall. I heard his machine going and I thought it was so stupid of him to stay indoors typing on such a lovely day. I thought I'd tell him to come out."

"And what did Captain Marshall say?"

Rosamund smiled rather shamefacedly.

"Well, when I opened the door he was typing so vigorously, and frowning and looking so concentrated that I just went away quietly. I don't think he even saw me come in."

"And that was - at what time, Miss Darnley?"

"Just about twenty past eleven. I noticed the clock in the hall as I went out again."

"And that puts the lid on it finally," said Inspector Colgate. "The chambermaid heard him typing up till five minutes to eleven. Miss Darnley saw him at twenty minutes past, and the woman was dead at a quarter to twelve. He says he spent that hour typing in his room and it seems quite clear that he was typing in his room. That washes Captain Marshall right out." He stopped, then looking at Poirot with some curiosity he asked: "M. Poirot's looking very serious over something."

Poirot said thoughtfully: "I was wondering why Miss Darnley suddenly volunteered this extra evidence."

Inspector Colgate cocked his head alertly. "Think there's something fishy about it? That it isn't just a question of 'forgetting'?" He considered for a moment or two, then he said slowly: "Look here, sir, let's look at it this way. Supposing Miss Darnley wasn't on Sunny Ledge this morning as she says. That story's a lie. Now suppose that after telling us her story, she finds that somebody saw her somewhere else or alternatively that some one went to the Ledge and didn't find her there. Then she thinks up this story quick and comes and tells it to us to account for her absence. You'll notice that she was careful to say Captain Marshall didn't see her when she looked into his room."

Poirot murmured: "Yes, I noticed that."

Weston said incredulously: "Are you suggesting that Miss Darnley's mixed up in this? Nonsense, seems absurd to me. Why should she be?"

Inspector Colgate coughed. He said: "You'll remember what the American lady, Mrs Gardener, said. She sort of hinted that Miss Darnley was sweet on Captain Marshall. There'd be a motive there, sir."

Weston said impatiently: "Arlena Marshall wasn't killed by a woman. It's a man we've got to look for. We've got to stick to the men in the case."

Inspector Colgate sighed. He said: "Yes, that's true, sir. We always come back to that, don't we?"

Weston went on: "Better put a constable on to timing one or two things. From the hotel across the island to the top of the ladder. Let him do it running and walking. Same thing with the ladder itself. And somebody had better check the time it takes to go on a float from the bathing beach to the cove."

Inspector Colgate nodded. "I'll attend to all that, sir," he said confidently.

The Chief Constable said: "Think I'll go along to the cove now. See if Phillips has found anything. Then there's that Pixy's Cave that we've been hearing about. Ought to see if there are any traces of a man waiting in there. Eh? Poirot. What do you think?"

"By all means. It is a possibility."

Weston said: "If somebody from outside had nipped over to the island that would be a good hiding-place - if he knew about it. I suppose the locals know?"

Colgate said: "Don't believe the younger generation would. You see, ever since this hotel was started the coves have been private property. Fishermen don't go there, or picnic parties. And the hotel people aren't local. Mrs Castle's a Londoner."

Weston said: "We might take Redfern with us. He told us about it. What about you, M. Poirot?"

Hercule Poirot hesitated. He said, his foreign intonation very pronounced: "No, I am like Miss Brewster and Mrs Redfern, I do not like to descend perpendicular ladders."

Weston said: "You can go round by boat."

Again Hercule Poirot sighed. "My stomach, it is not happy on the sea."

"Nonsense, man, it's a beautiful day. Calm as a mill pond. You can't let us down, you know."

Hercule Poirot hardly looked like responding to this British adjuration. But at that moment, Mrs Castle poked her ladylike face and elaborate coiffure round the door. "Ay'm sure Ay hope Ay am not intruding," she said. "But Mr Lane, the clergyman, you know, has just returned. Ay thought you might like to know."

"Ah, yes, thanks, Mrs Castle. We'll see him right away."

Mrs Castle came a little further into the room. She said: "Ay don't know if it is worth mentioning, but Ay have heard that the smallest incident should not be ignored -"

"Yes, yes?" said Weston impatiently.

"It is only that there was a lady and gentleman here about one o'clock. Came over from the mainland. For luncheon. They were informed that there had been an accident and that under the circumstances no luncheon could be served."

"Any idea who they were?"

"Ay couldn't say at all. Naturally no name was given. They expressed disappointment and a certain amount of curiosity as to the nature of the accident. Ay couldn't tell them anything, of course. Ay should say, myself, they were summer visitors of the better class."

Weston said brusquely: "Ah, well, thank you for telling us. Probably not important but quite right - er - to remember everything."

"Naturally," said Mrs Castle, "Ay wish to do my Duty!"

"Quite, quite. Ask Mr Lane to come here."

Stephen Lane strode into the room with his usual vigor. Weston said: "I'm the Chief Constable of the County, Mr Lane. I suppose you've been told what has occurred here?"

"Yes - oh, yes - I heard as soon as I got here. Terrible... Terrible..." His thin frame quivered. He said in a low voice: "All along - ever since I arrived here - I have been conscious - very conscious - of the forces of evil close at hand." His eyes, burning eager eyes, went to Hercule Poirot. He said: "You remember, M. Poirot? Our conversation some days ago? About the reality of evil?"

Weston was studying the tall gaunt figure in some perplexity. He found it difficult to make this man out. Lane's eyes came back to him. The clergyman said with a slight smile: "I daresay that seems fantastic to you, sir. We have left off believing in evil in these days. We have abolished Hell fire! We no longer believe in the Devil! But Satan and Satan's emissaries were never more powerful than they are today!"

Weston said: "Er - er - yes, perhaps. That, Mr Lane, is your province. Mine is more prosaic - to clear up a case of murder."

Stephen Lane said: "An awful word. Murder! One of the earliest sins known on earth - the ruthless shedding of an innocent brother's blood..." He paused, his eyes half closed. Then, in a more ordinary voice he said: "In what way can I help you?"

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 9

For the second time that morning Patrick Redfern was rowing a boat into Pixy's Cove. The other occupants of the boat were Hercule Poirot, very pale with a hand to his stomach, and Stephen Lane. Colonel Weston had taken the land route. Having been delayed on the way he arrived on the beach at the same time as the boat grounded. A Police Constable and a plain clothes sergeant were on the beach already. Weston was questioning the latter as the three from the boat walked up and joined him.

Sergeant Phillips said: "I think I've been over every inch of the beach, sir."

"Good, what did you find?"

"It's all together here, sir, if you like to come and see." A small collection of objects was laid out neatly on a rock. There were a pair of scissors, an empty Gold Flake packet, five patent bottle tops, a number of used matches, three pieces of string, one or two fragments of newspaper, a fragment of a smashed pipe, four buttons, the drumstick bone of a chicken and an empty bottle of sun-bathing oil.

Weston looked down appraisingly on the objects. "H'm," he said. "Rather moderate for a beach nowadays! Most people seem to confuse a beach with a public rubbish dump! Empty bottle's been here some time by the way the label's blurred - so have most of the other things, I should say. The scissors are new, though. Bright and shining. They weren't out in yesterday's rain! Where were they?"

"Close by the bottom of the ladder, sir. Also this bit of pipe."

"H'm, probably dropped by some one going up or down. Nothing to say who they belong to?"

"No, sir. Quite an ordinary pair of nail scissors. Pipe's a good quality briar - expensive."

Poirot murmured thoughtfully: "Captain Marshall told us, I think, that he had mislaid his pipe."

Weston said: "Marshall's out of the picture. Anyway he's not the only person who smokes a pipe."

Hercule Poirot was watching Stephen Lane as the latter's hand went to his pocket and away again. He said pleasantly: "You also smoke a pipe, do you not, Mr Lane?"

The clergyman started. He looked at Poirot. He said: "Yes. Oh, yes. My pipe is an old friend and companion." Putting his hand into his pocket again he drew out a pipe, filled it with tobacco and lighted it.

Hercule Poirot moved away to where Redfern was standing, his eyes blank. He said in a low voice: "I'm glad - they've taken her away..."

Stephen Lane asked: "Where was she found?"

The Sergeant said cheerfully: "Just about where you're standing, sir."

Lane moved swiftly aside. He stared at the spot he had just vacated. The Sergeant went on: "Place where the float was drawn up agrees with putting the time she arrived here at 10.45. That's going by the tide. It's turned now."

Weston said: "Photography all done?"

"Yes, sir."

Weston turned to Redfern. "Now then, man, where's the entrance to this cave of yours?"

Patrick Redfern was still staring down at the beach where Lane had been standing. It was as though he was seeing that sprawling body that was no longer there. Weston's words recalled him to himself. He said: "It's over here." He led the way to where a great mass of tumbled down rocks were massed picturesquely against the cliffside. He went straight to where two big rocks, side by side, showed a straight narrow cleft between them. He said: "The entrance is here."

Weston said: "Here? Doesn't look as though a man could squeeze through."

"It's deceptive, you'll find, sir. It can just be done."

Weston inserted himself gingerly into the cleft. It was not as narrow as it looked. Inside, the space widened and proved to be a fairly roomy recess with room to stand upright and to move about. Hercule Poirot and Stephen Lane joined the Chief Constable. The others stayed outside. Light filtered in through the opening, but Weston had also got a powerful torch which he played freely over the interior. He observed: "Handy place. You'd never suspect it from the outside." He played the torch carefully over the floor.

Hercule Poirot was delicately sniffing the air. Noticing this, Weston said: "Air quite fresh, not fishy or seaweedy, but of course this place is well above highwater mark."

But to Poirot's sensitive nose, the air was more than fresh. It was delicately scented. He knew two people who used that elusive perfume... Weston's torch came to rest. He said: "Don't see anything out of the way in here."

Poirot's eyes rose to a ledge a little way above his head. He murmured: "One might perhaps see that there is nothing up there?"

Weston said: "If there's anything up there it would have to be deliberately put there. Still, we'd better have a look."

Poirot said to Lane: "You are, I think, the tallest of us, Monsieur. Could we venture to ask you to make sure there is nothing resting on that ledge?"

Lane stretched up, but he could not quite reach to the back of the shelf. Then, seeing a crevice in the rock, he inserted a toe in it and pulled himself up by one hand. He said: "Hullo, there's a box up here."

In a minute or two they were out in the sunshine examining the clergyman's find. Weston said: "Careful, don't handle it more than you can help. May be fingerprints."

It was a dark green tin box and bore the word Sandwiches on it. Sergeant Phillips said: "Left from some picnic or other, I suppose." He opened the lid with his handkerchief. Inside were small tin containers marked salt, pepper, mustard, and two larger square tins evidently for sandwiches. Sergeant Phillips lifted the lid of the salt container. It was full to the brim. He raised the next one, commenting: "H'm, got salt in the pepper one too." The mustard compartment also contained salt. His face suddenly alert, the police sergeant opened one of the bigger square tins. That, too, contained the same white crystalline powder.

Very gingerly, Sergeant Phillips dipped a finger in and applied it to his tongue. His face changed. He said - and his voice was excited: "This isn't salt, sir. Not by a long way! Bitter taste! Seems to me it's some kind of drug."

"The third angle," said Colonel Weston with a groan. They were back at the hotel again. The Chief Constable went on: "If by any chance there's a dope gang mixed up in this, it opens up several possibilities. First of all, the dead woman may have been in with the gang herself. Think that's likely?"

Hercule Poirot said cautiously: "It is possible."

"She may have been a drug addict?"

Poirot shook his head. He said: "I should doubt that. She had steady nerves, radiant health, there were no marks of hypodermic injections (not that that proves anything. Some people sniff the stuff.). No, I do not think she took drugs."

"In that case," said Weston, "she may have run into the business accidentally and she was deliberately silenced by the people running the show. We'll know presently just what the stuff is. I've sent it to Neasdon. If we're on to some dope ring, they're not the people to stick at trifles -"

He broke off as the door opened and Mr Horace Blatt came briskly into the room. Mr Blatt was looking hot. He was wiping the perspiration from his forehead. His big hearty voice billowed out and filled the small room. "Just this minute got back and heard the news! You the Chief Constable? They told me you were in here. My name's Blatt - Horace Blatt. Any way I can help you? Don't suppose so. I've been out in my boat since early this morning. Missed the whole blinking show. The one day that something does happen in this out-of-the-way spot, I'm not there. Just like life, that, isn't it? Hullo, Poirot, didn't see you at first. So you're in on this? Oh, well, I suppose you would be. Sherlock Holmes v. the local police, is that it? Ha, ha! Lestrade - all that stuff. I'll enjoy seeing you do a bit of fancy sleuthing."

Mr Blatt came to anchor in a chair, pulled out a cigarette case and offered it to Colonel Weston who shook his head. He said, with a slight smile: "I'm an inveterate pipe smoker."

"Same here. I smoke cigarettes as well - but nothing beats a pipe."

Colonel Weston said with sudden geniality: "Then light up, man."

Blatt shook his head. "Not got my pipe on me at the moment. But put me wise about all this. All I've heard so far is that Mrs Marshall was found murdered on one of the beaches here."

"On Pixy Cove," said Colonel Weston, watching him.

But Mr Blatt merely asked excitedly: "And she was strangled?"

"Yes, Mr Blatt."

"Nasty - very nasty. Mind you, she asked for it! Hot stuff - très moutarde - eh, M. Poirot? Any idea who did it, or mustn't I ask that?"

With a faint smile Colonel Weston said: "Well, you know, it's we who are supposed to ask the questions."

Mr Blatt waved his cigarette. "Sorry - sorry - my mistake. Go ahead."

"You went out sailing this morning. At what time?"

"Left here at a quarter to ten."

"Was any one with you?"

"Not a soul. All on my little lonesome."

"And where did you go?"

"Along the coast in the direction of Plymouth. Took lunch with me. Not much wind so I didn't actually get very far."

After another question or two, Weston asked: "Now about the Marshalls? Do you know anything that might help us?"

"Well, I've given you my opinion. Crime passionnel! All I can tell you is, it wasn't me! The fair Arlena had no use for me. Nothing doing in that quarter. She had her own blue-eyed boy! And if you ask me, Marshall was getting wise to it."

"Have you any evidence for that?"

"Saw him give young Redfern a dirty look once or twice. Dark horse, Marshall. Looks very meek and mild and as though he were half asleep all the time - but that's not his reputation in the City. I've heard a thing or two about him. Nearly had up for assault once. Mind you, the fellow in question had put up a pretty dirty deal. Marshall had trusted him and the fellow had let him down cold. Particularly dirty business, I believe. Marshall went for him and half killed him. Fellow didn't prosecute - too afraid of what might come out. I give you that for what it's worth."

"So you think it possible," said Poirot, "that Captain Marshall strangled his wife?"

"Not at all. Never said anything of the sort. Just letting you know that he's the sort of fellow who could go berserk on occasions."

Poirot said: "Mr Blatt, there is reason to believe that Mrs Marshall went this morning to Pixy Cove to meet some one. Have you any idea who that some one might be?"

Mr Blatt winked. "It's not a guess. It's a certainty. Redfern!"

"It was not Mr Redfern."

Mr Blatt seemed taken aback. He said hesitatingly: "Then I don't know... No, I can't imagine..." He went on, regaining a little of his aplomb. "As I said before, it wasn't me! No such luck! Let me see, couldn't have been Gardener - his wife keeps far too sharp an eye on him! That old ass Barry? Rot! And it would hardly be the parson. Although, mind you, I've seen his Reverence watching her a good bit. All holy disapproval, but perhaps an eye for the contours all the same! Eh? Lot of hypocrites, most parsons. Did you read the case last month? Parson and the Churchwarden's daughter? Bit of an eyeopener." Mr Blatt chuckled.

Colonel Weston said coldly: "There is nothing you can think of that might help us?"

The other shook his head. "No. Can't think of a thing." He added: "This will make a bit of a stir, I imagine. The press will be on to it like hot cakes. There won't be quite so much of this high-toned exclusiveness about the Jolly Roger in future. Jolly Roger, indeed. Precious little jollity about it."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "You have not enjoyed your stay here?"

Mr Blatt's face got slightly redder. He said: "Well, no, I haven't. The sailing's all right and the scenery and the service and the food - but there's no mateyness in the place, you know what I mean! What I say is, my money's as good as another man's. We're all here to enjoy ourselves. Then why not get together and do it? All these cliques and people sitting by themselves and giving you frosty Good-mornings - and Good-evenings - and Yes, very pleasant weather. No joy de viver. Lot of stuck-up dummies!" Mr Blatt paused - by now very red indeed. He wiped his forehead once more and said apologetically: "Don't pay any attention to me. I get all worked up."

Hercule Poirot murmured: "And what do we think of Mr Blatt?"

Colonel Weston grinned and said: "What do you think of him? You've seen more of him than I have."

Poirot said softly: "There are many of your English idioms that describe him. The rough diamond! The self-made man! The social climber! He is, as you choose to look at it, pathetic, ludicrous, blatant! It is a matter of opinion. But I think, too, that he is something else."

"And what is that?"

Hercule Poirot, his eyes raised to the ceiling, murmured: "I think that he is - nervous!"

Inspector Colgate said: "I've got those times worked out. From the hotel to the ladder down to Pixy Cove three minutes. That's walking till you are out of sight of the hotel and then running like hell."

Weston raised his eyebrows. He said: "That's quicker than I thought."

"Down ladder to beach one minute and three quarters. Up same two minutes. That's P.C. Flint. He's a bit of an athlete. Walking and taking the ladder in the normal way the whole business takes close to a quarter of an hour."

Weston nodded. He said: "There's another thing we must go into, the pipe question."

Colgate said: "Blatt smokes a pipe, so does Marshall, so does the parson. Redfern smokes cigarettes, the American prefers a cigar. Major Barry doesn't smoke at all. There's one pipe in Marshall's room, two in Blatt's, and one in the parson's. Chambermaid says Marshall has two pipes. The other chambermaid isn't a very bright girl. Doesn't know how many pipes the other two have. Says vaguely she's noticed two or three about in their rooms."

Weston nodded. "Anything else?"

"I've checked up on the staff. They all seem quite O.K. Henry, in the bar, checks Marshall's statement about seeing him at ten to eleven. William, the beach attendant, was down repairing the ladder on the rocks most of the morning. He seems all right. George marked the tennis court and then bedded out some plants round by the dining-room. Neither of them would have seen any one who came across the causeway to the island."

"When was the causeway uncovered?"

"Round about 9.30, sir."

Weston pulled at his moustache. "It's possible somebody did come that way. We've got a new angle, Colgate." He told of the discovery of the sandwich box in the cave. There was a tap on the door.

"Come in," said Weston.

It was Captain Marshall. He said: "Can you tell me what arrangements I can make about the funeral?"

"I think we shall manage the inquest for the day after tomorrow. Captain Marshall."

"Thank you."

Inspector Colgate said: "Excuse me, sir, allow me to return you these." He handed over the three letters.

Kenneth Marshall smiled rather sardonically. He said: "Has the police department been testing the speed of my typing? I hope my character is cleared."

Colonel Weston said pleasantly: "Yes, Captain Marshall, I think we can give you a clean bill of health. Those sheets take fully an hour to type. Moreover, you were heard typing them by the chambermaid up till five minutes to eleven and you were seen by another witness at twenty minutes past."

Captain Marshall murmured: "Really? That all seems very satisfactory!"

"Yes. Miss Darnley came to your room at twenty minutes past eleven. You were so busy typing that you did not observe her entry."

Kenneth Marshall's face took on an impassive expression. He said: "Does Miss Darnley say that?" He paused. "As a matter of fact she is wrong. I did see her, though she may not be aware of the fact. I saw her in the mirror."

Poirot murmured: "But you did not interrupt your typing?"

Marshall said shortly: "No. I wanted to get finished." He paused a minute, then in an abrupt voice, he said: "Nothing more I can do for you?"

"No, thank you. Captain Marshall."

Kenneth Marshall nodded and went out. Weston said with a sigh: "There goes our most hopeful suspect - cleared! Hullo, here's Neasdon."

The doctor came in with a trace of excitement in his manner. He said: "That's a nice little death lot you sent me along."

"What is it?"

"What is it? Diamorphine hydrochloride. Stuff that's usually called heroin."

Inspector Colgate whistled. He said: "Now we're getting places, all right! Depend upon it, this dope stunt is at the bottom of the whole business."

第九章



　　派屈克·雷德方今天这是第二次划着小船往小妖湾去。船上还坐着脸色苍白，一手抚着胃部的赫邱里·白罗和史蒂文·蓝恩。温斯顿上校走陆路过去，因为路上略有耽搁，所以他到海滩时，小船也正好进海湾内。海滩上已经有了一名警员和一个便衣警佐，温斯顿正在和便衣警佐说话时，船上的三个人都走了过来。
　　菲力浦警佐说：“我想海滩上每一寸地方我都查过了。”
　　“很好，有没有发现什么？”
　　“都在这边，局长，请过来看看。”一小堆东西很整齐地排放在一块大石头上。有一把剪刀，一个空纸袋，五个特殊设计的瓶盖，几根用过的火柴，三条绳子，一两片碎报纸，一块打烂了的烟斗的碎片，四颗扣子，一根鸡腿的骨头，还有一个装防晒油的空瓶子。
　　温斯顿低头看看这些东西，“唔，”他说：“就今日海滩的情况看来，这些东西还算是少的了。大部分人好像都搞不清海滩不是垃圾堆。空瓶子在这里很久了，标签都模糊了——其他的东西，我看也很久了。不过这把剪刀倒是新的，还很亮。昨天下雨的时候还没给淋到！这是在哪里捡到的？”
　　“靠梯子下面，那块烟斗的碎片也是那里找到的。”
　　“啊，可能是什么人从那里上下的时候掉的，看不出是什么人的吗？”
　　“看不出，是一把很普通的、剪指甲用的剪刀，烟斗的质料倒很好——价钱不便宜。”
　　白罗沉吟地喃喃说道：“我想，马歇尔先生跟我们说过他的烟斗不知放到那里去了。”
　　温斯顿说：“马歇尔已经和这案子无关了，而且又不只有他一个人抽烟斗。”
　　赫邱里·白罗注意地看着史蒂文·蓝恩的手伸向口袋，又缩了回来，他用很高兴的语调问道：“你也抽烟斗的吧？蓝恩先生？”
　　那个牧师吃了一惊，他望着白罗，说道：“是的，哦，我也吸烟斗，烟斗是我的老朋友和伴侣。”他又把手伸进口袋里，拿出一支烟斗来，装上烟丝，点了火。
　　赫邱里·白罗走到雷德方站着的地方，眼中没有一点表情。他低声地说：“我很高兴——他们已经把尸体移走了……”
　　史蒂文，蓝恩问道：“是在哪里发现她的？”
　　警佐用很轻快的语调说：“就在你站着的地方。”蓝恩很快地闪到一边，他瞪着刚才他站的地方。警佐继续说道：“从停泊小筏子的地方，推断她抵达的时间是十点四十五分。当时是顺潮水来的，现在流向反过来了。”
　　温斯顿说：“照片都照了吗？”
　　“照好了，局长。”
　　温斯顿转身对雷德方说：“好了，老兄，你说的那个山洞入口在哪里？”
　　派屈克·雷德方仍然在瞪着海滩上蓝恩刚才站着的那块地方。就好像他还能看见那具现在已经不在那里了的尸体。温斯顿的声音使他醒了过来。他说：“就在这边。”他带着路向悬崖底下一大堆凌乱的岩石走去，直接走到并立的两块巨石之间，那里有一条狭窄的缝隙，他说：“入口就在这里。”
　　温斯顿说：“这里？看起来不像一个人可以挤得过去。”
　　“这是视觉上的错觉，局长，人正好可以通得过。”
　　温斯顿很快地走进石缝，那里果然不像看来那么窄。里面的空间渐渐变大，相当的空，可以让人站得直，也可以走动。赫邱里·白罗和史蒂文·蓝恩也走了进去。其他的人则留在洞外。光从石缝里透照进来，温斯顿手里也拿了一个大手电筒，在洞里各处照着。他说：“很方便的地方，从外面再也猜不到里面会是这个样子。”他把手电筒仔细地在地上照着。
　　赫邱里·白罗在空中不停地嗅着，温斯顿注意到了，他说：“空气相当新鲜，没有鱼腥味或海草气，不过这是当然的事，这里在最高水位线以上呢。”
　　可是对白罗敏感的鼻子来说，这里的空气不只是很新鲜，而且有股淡淡的香味。他知道有两个人用这种香水的……温斯顿手里的电筒光关熄了。他说：“这里没有看到什么不对劲的东西。”
　　白罗的眼光抬向比他头部略高的一块突出的石头。“从这里大概看不到上面有没有东西吧？”
　　温斯顿说：“如果上面有什么的话，那一定薀褪意放在那里的。不过，我们最好还是看一看。”
　　白罗对蓝恩说：“我想，我们三个里就数你最高了，可不可以劳驾你看看上面是不是确实没有什么东西？”
　　蓝恩踮起了脚尖，可是他还是无法完全摸到底。然后，他发现石头上有点小缝，就把脚尖塞进去，利用一双手将身体撑高了。他说：“哎哟，上面有个盒子呢。”
　　一两分钟之后，他们回到洞外的阳光下，仔细看那位牧师找到的东西。温斯顿说：“小心，不要过分乱动，恐怕有指纹在上面。”
　　那是一个深绿色的铁皮盒子，上面有“三明治”的字样。菲力浦警佐说：“我想，是什么人野餐之后丢下的。”他用手帕垫着打开了盖子。里面是一些小的铁制容器，标明盐，胡椒、芥末等，还有两个较大的方块形容器，显然是放三明治用的。菲力浦警佐把盐罐的盖子打开，里面的盐放得满满的。他打开第二个小罐的盖子，说道：“唔，胡椒罐子里也放的是盐。”放芥末的罐子里放的还是盐。这位警佐脸上突然露出了警党的表情，打开方形扁盒的盖子，那里面同样的放满了白色晶体状的粉末。
　　菲力浦警佐很快地将手指伸进去蘸了下，再送到舌边舔舔，他脸上的表情变了，用非常激动的声音说道：“这不是盐，局长，一点也不是！味道苦苦的！我想是某种毒品。”
　　“第三种角度。”温斯顿上校呻吟一声道。他们又回到了旅馆里，警察局长继续说道：“如果这件案子还牵扯到贩毒，那又引出了好几种可能，第一，死者很可能也是贩毒的这帮人之一，你想有这可能吗？”
　　赫邱里·白罗很谨慎地回答道：“有这可能。”
　　“也许她自己就是用毒的人？”
　　白罗摇了摇头说：“不会吧，她的精神状态稳定，身体健康，容光焕发，身上没有注射的针孔(倒不是说这点能证明什么，有些人是吸用的)。我想她不是个吸毒的人。”
　　“如果是这样的话，”温斯顿说：“她很可能是偶然撞见了他们，结果被人杀了灭口，我们马上就可以知道这些东西是什么，我送去给倪司敦化验了。如果真是碰上贩毒集团，他们可不是那种——”
　　他的话突然煞住，因为门开了，贺雷士·卜拉特先生很快地走了进来。卜拉特先生看来很热的样子，正在擦他额头上的汗水。他又大又亮的声音充塞了整个房间。“我刚回来就听到了这个消息！你是警察局长？他们告诉我说你在这里。我的名字叫卜拉特，贺雷士·卜拉特。有没有什么我可以帮忙的地方？我想大概没有。今天一大早我就上了船，错过了所有的热闹。在这样一个小地方碰上真正出事的这一天，我偏偏又不在。人生就是如此，是不是？你好，白罗，起先没有看到你。原来你也在办这个案子？哦，好呀，我想你也会办的。福尔摩斯和本地警察。对不对？哈哈！真来劲，能看你表演些侦探的本事，一定很过瘾的。”
　　卜拉特先生坐进一张椅子里，拿出一个烟盒，递给温斯顿上校。他摇了摇头，微笑道：“我是个抽烟斗的。”
　　“我也一样，我也抽香烟——不过没什么比得过烟斗就是了。”
　　温斯顿上校突然很亲切地说：“那就点起烟斗来抽吧，老兄。”
　　卜拉特摇了摇头。“现在烟斗不在我身上。先把这件案子跟我说一说吧。到现在为止，我听说的只是马歇尔太太被人谋杀，死在这里的一处海滩上。”
　　“是小妖湾。”温斯顿上校说着，一面仔细地看着他。
　　可是卜拉特先生只很兴奋地问道：“她是被扼死的？”
　　“是的，卜拉特先生。”
　　“差劲——真差劲！我说，她这是咎由自取！事情很棘手吧？呃？白罗先生？知不知道是谁干的？还是说，我不该问这个问题？”
　　温斯顿上校带着淡淡的微笑说：“哎，你知道，应该是我们来发问的呢。”
　　卜拉特先生挥着手里的香烟，“抱歉——抱歉——是我的错，请问吧。”
　　“你今天早上驾船出海，是几点钟？”
　　“十点差一刻离开这里的。”
　　“有没有谁和你一起？”
　　“一个人也没有，完全孤伶伶一个人。”
　　“你去了什么地方呢？”
　　“顺海岸往扑莱茅斯那方向。我带着午餐，风不太大，所以我其实没有去多远。”
　　再问过一两个问题之后，温斯顿问道：“关于马歇尔夫妇，你是不是知道什么可以有助于我们破案的事？”
　　“啊，我已经向你们表示过了我的意见，情欲引起的犯罪啦！我能说的是，跟我无关，漂亮的艾莲娜对我没有用，这方面扯不上关系。她有她自己的蓝眼男孩子！要是你们问我的意见，我说是马歇尔听到了风声了。”
　　“这件事你有何证据吗？”
　　“看到他有一两次横着眼瞪年轻的小伙子雷德方，马歇尔可是匹黑马呀，看起来很软弱温驯，整天好像都是半睡半醒——可是他在伦敦的名声可不是如此。我听说过关于他的一两件事。有次差点吃上伤害官司，我告诉你，对方的生意做得很下流，马歇尔信任了他，他却欺上瞒下，我想，那种做生意的手法真卑劣。马歇尔发现了去找他算帐。打得他半死。那家伙没敢提起上诉，怕事情闹出来，我告诉你们这件事，你们就知道怎么样了。”
　　“那你想可能是，”白罗说：“马歇尔扼死了他太太吗？”
　　“不是呀，我从来没有说这种话。只是让你们晓得他偶而会发狂。”
　　白罗说：“卜拉特先生，由于某种原因，我们相信马歇尔太太今天早上到小妖湾是去见什么人的。你知不知道她可能会去见谁呢？”
　　卜拉特先生眨了眨眼说：“我不是猜测，是说得定的，准是去见雷德方！”
　　“那个人不是雷德方先生。”
　　卜拉特先生似乎大吃了一惊，他有点迟疑地说：“那我就不知道了……哎，我想不出……”他略为恢复了些平日的自信，继续说道：“我先也说过，总不会是我！我没那么好的福气！我想想看，不可能是贾德纳——他老婆盯他可盯得紧哩！是巴瑞那个老家伙吗？该死！也不大可能是那个牧师。不过，我告诉你，我也看到那位牧师常常盯着她看咧。他满口批评她，可是说不定还是一样要取眼皮子供养，呃？世界上伪君子可多着呢，大部分人都是，你有没有看过上个月那个案子？牧师和教堂执事的女儿搅七捻三？可真让人大开眼界。”
　　卜拉特先生咯咯地笑了起来。
　　温斯顿上校冷冷地说：“你没有再想到什么对我们有帮助的事了吗？”
　　卜拉特摇了摇头。“没有，想不起什么来了。”他说：“我想，这总会搞出点热闹来的吧。新闻记者一定会来像抢刚出炉的热蛋糕一样。以后乐园旅馆就没什么好再神气了，还说什么乐园，有啥好乐的呢？”
　　赫邱里·白罗喃喃地说道：“你在这里玩得并不开心吗？”
　　卜拉特先生的一张红脸变得比先前更红，他说：“呃，我不开心。驾船出去还不错，还有此地的风景，此地的服务和餐饮——可是这里的人不够亲近，你懂我的意思吧！我要说的是，我的钱跟人家的钱一样好，我们都是到这里来开心的。那为什么不大家一起来玩玩呢？结果各有各的小圈圈，自己坐在一堆，只冷冷地跟你说早呀——晚安——是呀，天气真好，一点也不热闹开心，全是些木偶布娃娃似的。”卜拉特先生停了下来——他的脸现在真是非常的红了。他又擦了下额头，有点抱歉地说：“不要理我这些话，我一下子太激动了。”
　　赫邱里·白罗喃喃地说道：“我们对卜拉特先生有何看法？”
　　温斯顿上校咧嘴一笑道：“你认为他怎么样？你对他比我认识得多了。”
　　白罗柔和地说：“你们英国人有不少俗语可以用来形容他的。未琢的钻石！白手起家的人！在社交界拼命往上爬的！说起来，你会觉得他可怜、可笑、可厌，看你怎么想，完全是各人的看法。可是我也觉得他另有一番面目。”
　　“那又是什么呢？”
　　赫邱里·白罗两眼望着天花板，喃喃说道：“我想他是——紧张。”
　　柯根德巡官说：“我已经把各种时间算过了，从旅馆下到小妖湾的那道梯子一共三分钟，那是走到旅馆里的人看不到你的地方再拼命跑过去所需的时间。”
　　温斯顿挑起了盾毛，他说：“比我想象的要快多了。”
　　“从梯子下到海滩上，一分钟又四十五秒，上来的话是两分钟。做这试验的是符灵特，他有点运动家的派头。照一般人走路和上下梯子的速度来算，全部大约将近十五分钟左右。”
　　温斯顿点了点头。他说：“还有一件事我们必须调查清楚，就是烟斗的问题。”
　　柯根德说：“卜拉特抽烟斗，马歇尔也一样，还有那位牧师。雷德方抽香烟，那个美国佬喜欢雪茄，巴瑞少校根本不吸烟。马歇尔房间皇有一根清烟斗的烟签，卜拉特房间有两根，牧师房里有一根。女佣说马歇尔有两支烟斗，另外一个女佣是个比较笨的女孩子，搞不清楚另外两个人有几支烟斗，只含而糊之地说她注意到他们房间有两支还是三支。”
　　温斯顿点了点头。“还有什么别的吗？”
　　“我也查过旅馆的职员，好像都没有问题，在酒吧间的亨利，证实了马歇尔的话，说在十一点差十分时见过他。负责照顾海水浴场的威廉，早上大部分时间都在整修岩石上的梯子，他好像也没有问题。乔治在网球场上画线，然后在餐厅外面整理花木，要是有人从堤路过来，到小岛上的话，他们几个都不会看见的。”
　　“堤路上的水什么时候退尽？”
　　“大约九点半左右。”
　　温斯顿摸着胡子。“很可能真的有人从这条路过来。我们又有了新的发现，柯根德。”他把在洞里找到那个三明治盒子的事告诉了这个巡官。
　　门上响起了敲门声。
　　“请进。”温斯顿说。
　　来的人是马歇尔，他说：“你能不能告诉我可以在什么时候安排葬礼的事？”
　　“我想我们在后天就要验尸了，马歇尔先生。”
　　“谢谢你。”
　　柯根德巡官说：“对不起，这几件东西还给你。”他把那三封信递了过去。
　　甘逸世·马歇尔有点挖苦地笑了笑。他说：“警方有没有试验过我打字的速度？我希望可以还我清白了吧。”
　　温斯顿上校用很开朗的语气说：“是的，马歇尔先生，我想我们可以给你开张健康证明书。这些信至少要花整整一小时来打字，而且，女佣听到你打字，一直到十一点差五分，二十分钟之后，另外一位证人又看到了你。”
　　马歇尔喃喃地道，“真的吗？那一切都很令人满意了。”
　　“是的，戴礼小、姐在十一点二十分的时候，到了你房间里，你当时正忙着打字，所以根本没注意到她进来。”
　　甘逸世·马歇尔的脸上表情冷淡地说：“戴礼小、姐这样说的吗？”他停了一下，“其实她错了，我看到了她，不过她不知道而已，我是从镜子里看到她的。”
　　白罗喃喃地说道：“可是你并没有把打字的工作停下来？”
　　马歇尔不快地说：“没有。我想把信赶完。”他停了下，然后突然问道：“没有什么别的可以效劳的地方了吧？”
　　“没有了，谢谢你，马歇尔先生。”
　　甘逸世·马歇尔点了点头，走出房间。温斯顿叹了口气说：“这下我们最有希望的一个嫌疑犯没有了——刷清了嫌疑。啊，倪司敦来了！”
　　那位法医很兴奋地走了进来，他说：“你们送来的东西真不得了。”
　　“是什么呢？”
　　“是什么？就是俗称‘海洛因’的毒品。”
　　柯根德巡官吹了声口哨，他说：“这下我们可真有点东西了！照这样说起来，整个案子到底恐怕跟这个毒品有关哩。”


Chapter 10

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

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 11

Inspector Colgate was reporting to the Chief Constable.

"I've got on to one thing, sir, and something pretty sensational. It's about Mrs Marshall's money. I've been into it with her lawyers. I'd say it's a bit of a shock to them. I've got proof of the blackmail story. You remember she was left fifty thousand pounds by old Erskine? Well, all that's left of that is about fifteen thousand."

The Chief Constable whistled. "Whew, what's become of the rest?"

"That's the interesting point, sir. She's sold out stuff from time to time, and each time she's handled it in cash or negotiable securities - that's to say she's handed out money to some one that she didn't want traced. Blackmail all right."

The Chief Constable nodded. "Certainly looks like it. And the blackmailer is here in this hotel. That means it must be one of those three men. Got anything fresh on any of them?"

"Can't say I've got anything definite, sir. Major Barry's a retired Army man, as he says. Lives in a small flat, has a pension and a small income from stocks. But he's paid in pretty considerable sums into his accounts in the last year."

"That sounds promising. What's his explanation?"

"Says they're betting gains. It's perfectly true that he goes to all the large race meetings. Places his bets on the course too, doesn't run an account."

The Chief Constable nodded. "Hard to disprove that," he said. "But it's suggestive."

Colgate went on: "Next, the Reverend Stephen Lane. He's bona fide all right - had a living at St Helen's, Whiteridge, Surrey - resigned his living just over a year ago owing to ill-health. His ill-health amounted to his going into a nursing home for mental patients. He was there for over a year."

"Interesting," said Weston.

"Yes, sir. I tried to get as much as I could out of the doctor in charge but you know what these medicos are - it's difficult to pin them down to anything you can get hold of.

But as far as I can make out, his Reverence's trouble was an obsession about the Devil - especially the Devil in the guise of woman - scarlet woman - whore of Babylon."

"H'm," said Weston. "There have been precedents for murder there."

"Yes, sir. It seems to me that Stephen Lane is at least a possibility. The late Mrs Marshall was a pretty good example of what a clergyman would call a Scarlet Woman - hair and goings-on and all. Seems to me it's not impossible he may have felt it his appointed task to dispose of her. That is if he is really batty."

"Nothing to fit in with the blackmail theory?"

"No, sir. I think we can wash him out as far as that's concerned. Has some private means of his own, but not very much, and no sudden increase lately."

"What about his story of his movements on the day of the crime?"

"Can't get any confirmation of them. Nobody remembers meeting a parson in the lanes. As to the book at the church, the last entry was three days before and nobody looked at it for about a fortnight. He could have quite easily gone over the day before, say, or even a couple of days before, and dated his entry the 25th."

Weston nodded. He said: "And the third man?"

"Horace Blatt? It's my opinion, sir, that there's definitely something fishy there. Pays income tax on a sum far exceeding what he makes out of his hardware business. And mind you, he's a slippery customer. He could probably cook up a reasonable statement - he gambles a bit on the Stock Exchange and he's in with one or two shady deals. Oh, yes, there may be plausible explanations, but there's no getting away from it that he's been making pretty big sums from unexplained sources for some years now."

"In fact," said Weston, "the idea is that Mr Horace Blatt is a successful blackmailer by profession?"

"Either that, sir, or it's dope. I saw Chief Inspector Ridgeway who's in charge of the dope business, and he was no end keen. Seems there's been a good bit of heroin coming in lately. They're on to the small distributors and they know more or less who's running it the other end, but it's the way it's coming into the country that's baffled them so far."

Weston said: "If the Marshall woman's death is the result of her getting mixed up, innocently or otherwise, with the dope-running stunt, then we'd better hand the whole thing over to Scotland Yard. It's their pigeon. Eh? What do you say?"

Inspector Colgate said rather regretfully: "I'm afraid you're right, sir. If it's dope, then it's a case for the Yard."

Weston said after a moment or two's thought: "It really seems the most likely explanation."

Colgate nodded gloomily. "Yes, it does. Marshall's right out of it - though I did get some information that might have been useful if his alibi hadn't been so good. Seems his firm is very near the rocks. Not his fault or his partner's, just the general result of the crisis last year and the general state of trade and finance. And as far as he knew, he'd come into fifty thousand pounds if his wife died. And fifty thousand would have been a very useful sum." He sighed. "Seems a pity when a man's got two perfectly good motives for murder, that he can be proved to have nothing to do with it!"

Weston smiled. "Cheer up, Colgate. There's still a chance we may distinguish ourselves. There's the blackmail angle still and there's the batty parson, but personally I think the dope solution is far the most likely." He added: "And if it was one of the dope gang who put her out we'll have been instrumental in helping Scotland Yard to solve the dope problem. In fact, take it all round, one way or another, we've done pretty well."

An unwilling smile showed on Colgate's face. He said: "Well, that's the lot, sir. By the way, I checked up on the writer of that letter we found in her room. The one signed J.N. Nothing doing. He's in China safe enough. Same chap as Miss Brewster was telling us about. Bit of a young scallywag. I've checked up on the rest of Mrs Marshall's friends. No leads there. Everything there is to get, we've got, sir."

Weston said: "So now it's up to us." He paused and then added: "Seen anything of our Belgian colleague? Does he know all you've told me?"

Colgate said with a grin: "He's a queer little cuss, isn't he? D'you know what he asked me day before yesterday? He wanted particulars of any cases of strangulation in the last three years."

Colonel Weston sat up. "He did, did he? Now I wonder -" he paused a minute. "When did you say the Reverend Stephen Lane went into that mental home?"

"A year ago last Easter, sir."

Colonel Weston was thinking deeply. He said: "There was a case - body of a young woman found somewhere near Bagshot. Going to meet her husband somewhere and never turned up. And there was what the papers called the Lonely Copse Mystery. Both in Surrey if I remember rightly."

His eyes met those of his Inspector. Colgate said: "Surrey? My word, sir, it fits, doesn't it? I wonder..."

Hercule Poirot sat on the turf on the summit of the island. A little to his left was the beginning of the steel ladder that led down to Pixy's Cove. There were several rough boulders near the head of the ladder, he noted, forming easy concealment for any one who proposed to descend to the beach below. Of the beach itself little could be seen from the top owing to the overhang of the cliff.

Hercule Poirot nodded his head gravely. The pieces of his mosaic were fitting into position. Mentally he went over those pieces considering each as a detached item.

A morning on the bathing beach some few days before Arlena Marshall's death.

One, two, three, four, five, separate remarks uttered that morning.

The evening of a bridge game. He, Patrick Redfern and Rosamund Darnley had been at the table. Christine had wandered out while dummy and had overheard a certain conversation. Who else had been in the lounge at that time? Who had been absent?

The evening before the crime. The conversation he had had with Christine on the cliff and the scene he had witnessed on his way back to the hotel.

Gabrielle No. 8.

A pair of scissors.

A broken pipe.

A bottle thrown from a window.

A green calendar.

A packet of candles.

A mirror and a typewriter.

A skein of magenta wool.

A girl's wristwatch.

Bath-water rushing down the waste-pipe.

Each of these unrelated facts must fit into its appointed place. There must be no loose ends. And then, with each concrete fact fitted into position, on to the next step: his own belief in the presence of evil on the island... Evil... He looked down at a typewritten list in his hands. Nellie Parsons - found strangled in a lonely copse near Chobham. No clue to her murderer ever discovered. Nellie Parsons? Alice Corrigan. He read very carefully the details of Alice Corrigan's death.

To Hercule Poirot, sitting on the ledge overlooking the sea, came Inspector Colgate. Poirot liked Inspector Colgate. He liked his rugged face, his shrewd eyes, and his slow unhurried manner. Inspector Colgate sat down. He said, glancing down at the typewritten sheets in Poirot's hand: "Done anything with those cases, sir?"

"I have studied them - yes."

Colgate got up, he walked along and peered into the next niche. He came back, saying: "One can't be too careful. Don't want to be overheard."

Poirot said: "You are wise."

Colgate said: "I don't mind telling you, M. Poirot, that I've been interested in those cases myself - though perhaps I shouldn't have thought about them if you hadn't asked for them." He paused. "I've been interested in one case in particular."

"Alice Corrigan?"

"Alice Corrigan." He paused. "I've been on to the Surrey police about that case - wanted to get all the ins and outs of it."

"Tell me, my friend. I am interested - very interested."

"I thought you might be. Alice Corrigan was found strangled in Caesar's Grove on Blackridge Heath - not ten miles from Marley Copse where Nellie Parsons was found - and both those places are within twelve miles of Whiteridge where Mr Lane was vicar."

Poirot said: "Tell me more about the death of Alice Corrigan."

Colgate said: "The Surrey police didn't at first connect her death with that of Nellie Parsons. That's because they'd pitched on the husband as the guilty party. Don't quite know why except that he was a bit of what the press calls a 'mystery man' - not much known about him - who he was or where he came from. She'd married him against her people's wishes, she'd a bit of money of her own - and she'd insured her life in his favour - all that was enough to raise suspicion, as I think you'll agree, sir?" Poirot nodded.

"But when it came down to brass tacks the husband was washed right out of the picture. The body was discovered by one of these woman hikers - hefty young woman in shorts. She was an absolutely competent and reliable witness - games mistress at a school in Lancashire. She noted the time when she found the body - it was exactly four fifteen - and gave it as her opinion that the woman had been dead quite a short time - not more than ten minutes. That fitted in well enough with the police surgeon's view when he examined the body at 5.45. She left everything as it was and tramped across country to Bagshot police station where she reported the death. Now from three o'clock to four ten, Edward Corrigan was in the train coming down from London where he'd gone up for the day on business. Four other people were in the carriage with him. From the station he took the local bus, two of his fellow passengers travelling by it also. He got off at the Pine Ridge Café where he'd arranged to meet his wife for tea. Time then was four twenty-five. He ordered tea for them both, but said not to bring it till she came. Then he walked about outside waiting for her. When, by five o'clock she hadn't turned up, he was getting alarmed - thought she might have sprained her ankle. The arrangement was that she was to walk across the moors from the village where they were staying to the Pine Ridge Café and go home by bus. Caesar's Grove is not far from the café and it's thought that as she was ahead of time she sat down there to admire the view for a bit before going on, and that some tramp or madman came upon her there and caught her unawares. Once the husband was proved to be out of it, naturally they connected up her death with that of Nellie Parsons - that rather flighty servant girl who was found strangled in Marley Copse. They decided that the same man was responsible for both crimes but they never caught him - and what's more they never came near catching him! Drew a blank everywhere."

He paused and then he said slowly: "And now - here's a third woman strangled - and a certain gentleman we won't name right on the spot." He stopped. His small shrewd eyes came round to Poirot. He waited hopefully.

Poirot's lips moved. Inspector Colgate leaned forward. Poirot was murmuring: "- so difficult to know what pieces are part of the fur rug and which are the cat's tail."

"I beg pardon, sir?" said Inspector Colgate, startled.

Poirot said quickly: "I apologize. I was following a train of thought of my own."

"What's this about a fur rug and a cat?"

"Nothing - nothing at all." He paused.

"Tell me, Inspector Colgate, if you suspected some one of telling lies - many, many lies, but you had no proof, what would you do?"

Inspector Colgate considered. "It's difficult, that is. But it's my opinion that if any one tells enough lies, they're bound to trip up in the end."

Poirot nodded. "Yes, that is very true. You see, it is only in my mind that certain statements are lies. I think that they are lies, but I cannot know they are lies. But one might perhaps make a test - a test of one little not very noticeable lie. And if that were proved to be a lie - why then, one would know that all the rest were lies, too!"

Inspector Colgate looked at him curiously. "Your mind works a funny way, doesn't it, sir? But I daresay it comes out all right in the end. If you'll excuse my asking, what put you on to asking about strangulation cases in general?"

Poirot said slowly: "You have a word in your language - slick. This crime seemed to me a very slick crime! It made me wonder, if, perhaps, it was not a first attempt."

Inspector Colgate said: "I see."

Poirot went on: "I said to myself, let us examine the past crimes of a similar kind and if there is a crime that closely resembles this one - eh bien, we shall have there a very valuable clue."

"You mean using the same method of death, sir?"

"No, no, I mean more than that. The death of Nellie Parsons for instance tells me nothing. But the death of Alice Corrigan - tell me, Inspector Colgate, do you not notice one striking form of similarity to this crime?"

Inspector Colgate turned the problem over in his mind. He said at last: "No, sir, I can't say that I do really. Unless it's that in each case the husband has got a iron-cast alibi."

Poirot said softly: "Ah, so you have noticed that?"

"Ha, Poirot. Glad to see you. Come in. Just the man I want." Hercule Poirot responded to the invitation. The Chief Constable pushed over a box of cigarettes, took one himself, and lighted it. Between puffs he said: "I've decided, more or less, on a course of action. But I'd like your opinion on it before I act decisively."

Hercule Poirot said: "Tell me, my friend."

Weston said: "I've decided to call in Scotland Yard and hand the case over to them. In my opinion, although there have been grounds for suspicion against one or two people, the whole case hinges on dope smuggling. It seems clear to me that that place, Pixy's Cove, was a definite rendezvous for the stuff."

Poirot nodded. "I agree."

"Good man. And I'm pretty certain who our dope smuggler is. Horace Blatt."

Again Poirot assented. He said: "That, too, is indicated."

"I see our minds have both worked the same way. Blatt used to go sailing in that boat of his. Sometimes he'd invite people to go with him, but most of the time he went out alone. He had some rather conspicuous red sails on that boat but we've found that he had some white sails as well stowed away. I think he sailed out on a good day to an appointed spot, and was met by another boat - sailing boat or motor yacht - something of the kind, and the stuff was handed over. Then Blatt would run ashore into Pixy's Cove at a suitable time of day -"

Hercule Poirot smiled: "Yes, yes, at half past one. The hour of the British lunch when every one is quite sure to be in the dining-room. The island is private. It is not a place where outsiders come for picnics. People take their tea sometimes from the hotel to Pixy's Cove in the afternoon when the sun is on it, or if they want a picnic they would go somewhere far afield, many miles away."

The Chief Constable nodded. "Quite," he said. "Therefore Blatt ran ashore there and stowed the stuff on that ledge in the cave. Somebody else was to pick it up there in due course."

Poirot murmured: "There was a couple, you remember, who came to the island for lunch on the day of the murder? That would be a way of getting the stuff. Some summer visitors from a hotel on the Moor or at St Loo come over to Smuggler's Island. They announce that they will have lunch. They walk round the island first. How easy to descend to the beach, pick up the sandwich box, place it, no doubt, in Madame's bathing bag which she carries - and return for lunch to the hotel - a little late, perhaps, say at ten minutes to two, having enjoyed their walk whilst every one else was in the dining room."

Weston said: "Yes, it all sounds practicable enough. Now these dope organizations are pretty ruthless. If any one blundered in and got wise to things they wouldn't make any bones about silencing that person. It seems to me that that is the right explanation of Arlena Marshall's death. It's possible that on that morning Blatt was actually at the cove stowing the stuff away. His accomplices were to come for it that very day. Arlena arrives on her float and sees him going into the cave with the box. She asks him about it and he kills her then and there and sheers off in his boat as quick as possible."

Poirot said: "You think definitely that Blatt is the murderer?"

"It seems the most probable solution. Of course it's possible that Arlena might have got on to the truth earlier, said something to Blatt about it and some other member of the gang fixed a fake appointment with her and did her in. As I say, I think the best course is to hand the case over to Scotland Yard. They've a far better chance than we have of proving Blatt's connection with the gang."

Hercule Poirot nodded thoughtfully.

Weston said: "You think that's the wise thing to do - eh?"

Poirot was thoughtful. He said at last: "It may be."

"Dash it all, Poirot, have you got something up your sleeve, or haven't you?"

Poirot said gravely: "If I have, I am not sure that I can prove it."

Weston said: "Of course, I know that you and Colgate have other ideas. Seems a bit fantastic to me but I'm bound to admit there may be something in it. But even if you're right, I still think it's a case for the Yard. We'll give them the facts and they can work in with the Surrey police. What I feel is that it isn't really a case for us. It's not sufficiently localized." He paused. "What do you think, Poirot? What do you feel ought to be done about it?"

Poirot seemed lost in thought. At last he said: "I know what I should like to do."

"Yes, man."

Poirot murmured: "I should like to go for a picnic."

Colonel Weston stared at him.

第十一章



　　柯根德巡官在向警察局长报告。
　　“我查到了一件事，局长，这件事相当有意思，跟马歇尔太太的钱有关，我和她的律师深谈了一下，这件事对他们来说，相当令他们感到吃惊。我得到她受人勒索的证明了，你还记得老安思勤爵士赠给她五万镑吧？呃，她现在手里只剩下大约一万五千镑了。”
　　温斯顿吹了声口哨，“喔，其余的钱呢？”
　　“有意思的就在这一点，局长，她不时会卖一些东西，而每次都要拿现金或是不记名的公债券——也就是说她把钱给了人之后，还不希望能让人追查得到。一定是勒索。”
　　警察局长点了点头。“看来的确是如此。而勒索者也在这个旅馆里，也就是说，必定是这三位男士之一。有没有他们的新资料？”
　　“还没什么决定性的东西，局长。巴瑞少校是一个已经退休的军人，和他说的一样。住在一间小公寓里，有一份养老金，还有股票上来的小收入。可是他在去年却在银行户头里收进好几笔大数目的钱。”
　　“这倒好像值得一查，他的解释如何？”
　　“说是赛马赢来的，他的确都到所有的大赛马场去，也都赌马，不过没有固定的户头。”
　　警察局长点了点头。“也很难提出反证，”他说：“不过很有问题。”
　　柯根德继续说道：“其次，是史蒂文·蓝恩牧师，他的资料没有问题——他原先在苏瑞郡白崖镇的圣海伦教区——因为健康情形不佳，在一年前辞去了圣职。他的病使他进了一家精神病疗养院，他在那里住了一年多。”
　　“很有意思。”温斯顿说。
　　“是的，局长，我尽量想从负责诊治的大夫那里挖点内幕出来，可是你知道那些医生都是那个样子的——反正很难把他们逼着给你要的东西。可是据我调查所得，这位牧师的毛病在对魔鬼有他的偏执想法——尤其是魔鬼以女人的形态出现——猩红色的女人——巴比伦的妓女。”
　　“嗯，”温斯顿说：“也有因此而犯谋杀案的先例。”
　　“是的，局长，我觉得蓝恩牧师至少是个可能的嫌疑。已故的马歇尔太太正是这位牧师所说的那样一个坏女人的典型——红头发，以及她的风情等等。在我看起来，要是他觉得他是上天派来毁灭那个女人的，也不是不可能的事。我是说，如果他真有那么疯的话。”
　　“他没什么和勒索案扯得上关系的地方吗？”
　　“没有，局长。我想在这方面可以洗清他的嫌疑。他自己有点小钱，不过不多，最近也没有什么突然的增加。”
　　“案发那天他的行踪有没有什么问题？”
　　“没法证实，没有一个人记得在路上见过有牧师走过，至于教堂里的那本签名簿，最后一个名字也是三天前填进去的，而且从来没有人去看它。他很可能在，比方说前一天，或是两三天前去，把他签名的日期填成二十五号。”
　　温斯顿点了点头，他说：“第三位呢？”
　　“贺雷士·卜拉特。局长，在我看起来，他最有问题，他所付的税数量大过他那五金生意所能赚得到的利润。还有，他是个很滑溜的人，他恐怕会想出个很合理的说法来——他在股票市场上做一点股票，也有一两样额外的买卖。呃，反正，他总会有说得通的解释，可是再怎么说，他近好几年来一直从很多无法解释的来源赚了很多钱。”
　　“说起来，”温斯顿说：“你认为贺雷士·卜拉特先生是个职业性的勒索者吗？”
　　“要不是这样，局长，那就是贩毒。我去见了缉毒组的督察雷季威，他对这事兴趣大极了。好像近来有大量的海洛因进来，他们能抓得到的都是些中小盘。他们也多少知道主使的人可能是谁，可是他们搞不清楚的是这些毒品到底是怎么偷运进国内来的。”
　　温斯顿说：“要是马歇尔太太的死是因为她跟这事扯上了关系，不管她本人是不是清白的，我们都最好把这个案子交给苏格兰警场。那就是他的事了，对吧？你怎么说呢？”
　　柯根德巡官有点懊恼地说：“我怕你说得不错，局长，如果跟贩毒有关的话，那就是苏格兰场的案子了。”
　　温斯顿想了一阵子之后，说道：“看起来这是最可能的解释。”
　　柯根德郁郁地点了点头，“是的，不错，马歇尔跟这事已没有关系了——虽然我这里又有了点关于他的情报，如果他的不在场证明不是那么好的话，倒真有点用呢。他的公司好像正摇摇欲坠，不是他和他合伙人的错，只是去年不景气，以及目前贸易与财务一般的状况影响下的结果。就他所知，如果他太太死亡的话，他可以得到五万镑，而五万镑对他来说可是一笔很有用的数目哩。”他叹了口气，“实在可惜呀，这个人有两个非常好的谋杀动机，却证明了他根本没有关系！”
　　温斯顿微笑道：“开心点吧，柯根德，我们照样还是有可以破案的机会。还有勒索的那件事，也还有那个疯子牧师的事。不过就我个人看来，恐怕还是贩毒的事最说得通。”他又说：“如果真是个贩毒的走私贩子把她杀了的话，那我们也算是有助于苏格兰警场解决了他们缉毒方面的难题，所以，归根结底，不管怎么样，我们都干得不错。”
　　柯根德很勉强地笑了笑，他说：“哎，就这么回事，局长。对了，我还查过在她房间里发现的那封信的寄信人，就是署名J·N·的，没有问题，他的确在中国。就是布雷斯特小、姐跟我们说起过的那个小伙子。是个年轻的窝囊废，我也查过了马歇尔太太的其他朋友，毫无线索，我们能得到的资料，都早已经得到了。”
　　温斯顿说：“那现在全靠我们了。”他顿了一顿，又说道：“有没有看到我们那位比利时籍的同事？你告诉我的这些，他都知道了吗？”
　　柯根德咧嘴一笑，答道：“他是个小怪人，是不是？你可知道他前天问我要什么吗？他要三年来所有关于扼杀案件的资料。”
　　温斯顿上校一下子坐直了身子，“真的吗？我倒不懂——”他停了一分钟，“你说史蒂文·蓝恩牧师是什么时候进精神病院的？”
　　“一年前的复活节，局长。”
　　温斯顿上校深深地沉思着。他说：“当年有一个案子——一个年轻女子的尸体，在贝格夏附近发现的，她本来要去和她丈夫见面的，却始终没到。另外还有一宗报纸上称那是‘荒树林神秘艳尸案’的，两件案子我记得都在苏瑞郡。”
　　他望着他手下的巡官，柯根德说：“苏瑞郡？我的天，局长，那就对了，我想……”
　　赫邱里·白罗坐在岛上的小丘顶上，他左边过去一点的地方就是那道通往小妖湾的直梯。在梯顶有几块大石头，他注意到如果有人想从梯子下到海滩去的话，很可以先藏身在大石堆里。而由于突出的悬崖，所以从上面不大看得到下面的海滩。
　　赫邱里郁郁地点了点头，他那张镶嵌画的碎片已经渐渐放在定位，他在脑筋里再把所有这些零碎资料想过一遍：
　　艾莲娜·马歇尔遇害前几天早晨在海水浴场的时候。一、二、三、四、五句在那天早上说出来，互不相干的话。
　　那天夜里的桥牌戏。他，派屈克·雷德方，还有罗莎梦·戴礼在牌桌上，克莉丝汀·雷德方正好是空位，就走了出去，听到了某一段谈话，当时在休息室的还有哪些人？不在的又是哪些人？
　　凶案发生的前夜，他在崖上和克莉丝汀的那番谈话，还有他在回旅馆路上目睹的一幕。

　　佳百丽八号香水。
　　一把剪刀。
　　一块碎了的烟斗碎片。
　　一个从窗口丢下去的瓶子。
　　一份绿色的日历。
　　一包蜡烛。
　　一面镜子和一架打字机。
　　一束毛线。
　　一个女孩子的手表。
　　从废水管排出去的洗澡水。

　　这些互不相关的事实都必须各个安放在适当的位置，一定不能有凑不起来的地方，然后，等每一件确实的事实都归到定位之后，就要到下一步！他自己相信在岛上有着邪恶……邪恶……他低头看看手里的一张以打字机打好的资料，“妮莉·帕森丝——被发现勒毙于近查布汉的杂树林内。至今尚未查出与凶手有关之任何线索。”妮莉·帕森丝？“艾莉丝·柯瑞甘。”他很仔细地看过关于艾莉丝·柯瑞甘一案的细节。
　　柯根德巡官朝坐在崖顶的白罗走来。白罗很喜欢柯根德巡官，他喜欢这位巡官那张棱角分明的脸，他那对精明的眼睛，和他那从容不迫的举止。柯根德巡官坐了下来，他低头看了看白罗手里的那张纸，说道：“这几个案子都研究过了吗？”
　　“不错——我仔细地看过了。”
　　柯根德站了起来，走过去看看隔壁的凹洞，说道：“做人还是小心点好，不希望有人偷听到我们的谈话。”
　　白罗说：“你很聪明。”
　　柯根德说：“我可以告诉你。白罗先生，我本人对这几个案子也很感兴趣——虽然也许你没向我要这些资料的话，我也不会想起来。”他顿了顿，“我尤其对其中的某一个案子感到兴趣。”
　　“艾莉丝·柯瑞甘？”
　　“艾莉丝·柯瑞甘。”他说：“我曾向苏瑞郡的警方查问这个案子——希望能把所有的资料收集齐全。”
　　“告诉我吧，老兄，我对这案子有兴趣——非常有兴趣。”
　　“我想你也会有兴趣的。艾莉丝·柯瑞甘被人发现给扼死在黑山荒地的凯撒林里——距离妮莉·帕森丝陈尸的马连杂树林不到十哩——而这两个地方距离蓝恩先生当牧师的白崖镇都不到十二哩。”
　　白罗说：“把艾莉丝·柯瑞甘的案子跟我说一下。”
　　柯根德说：“苏瑞郡警方起先并没有把她的死和妮莉·帕森丝的案子连在一起。因为他们认为死者的丈夫是嫌犯。原因不详，只知道他是个报上所谓的‘神秘人物’——对他所知不多——不知道他是什么人，是哪里人。她当初不顾亲友反对嫁给了他，她自己有点钱——保了寿险，也是以他为受益人——这一切都会引起人怀疑的，我想你同意吧？”白罗点了点头。
　　“可是真正调查下来，那个做丈夫的却完全洗脱了嫌疑。尸体是由一个在健行的女子发现的——是一个穿着短裤的年轻女子。她是一个非常可靠的证人——是兰开夏一所学校里的体育老师，她注意到发现尸体的时间——是四点十五分整——也向警方表示她的意见，说那个女人刚过世不久——不超过十分钟。这和警方的法医在五点四十五分时检查尸体所得到的推论相同。她当时保留了现场，赶到贝格夏的警局去报案，而从三点到四点十分，爱德华·柯瑞甘却正坐在从伦敦开来的火车上，他那天去伦敦办事。有四个人和他坐在同一节车厢里，他由车站搭乘当地的公共汽车。同时上车的还有和他一起坐火车来的两个人，他在松岩茶屋门口下车，因为他说好要在那里等他太太来一起喝茶。当时是四点二十五分，他叫了两杯茶，可薀拓照等她来了之后再送来。然后他到店外走来走去等她。到了五点钟，她还没有到，他就觉得不对劲了——以为她大概是扭伤了足踝，他们本来约定她从那头他们住的村子穿过沼泽地到松岩茶屋来，再和他一起乘公共汽车回去。凯撒林离茶屋不远，大家认为她因为时间还早，所以在那里坐下来看看风景再走，不想正好碰到什么流氓或疯子，出其不意地杀了她。等做丈夫的证明和这事毫无关系之后，警方当然就把这件案子和妮莉·帕森丝的案子连想到一起了——妮莉是个小女佣人，给扼死在马连杂树林里，他们认为这两个案子是同一个人干的，可是始终没抓到凶手——而且连一点线索也没有，到处是一片空白！”
　　他停了一下，然后慢慢地说道：“现在——是第三个被扼死的女人——而一个我们暂时不说他名字的先生又正好在场。”他停了下来，那对精明的小眼睛转到白罗的脸上，充满期盼地等他说话。
　　白罗的嘴唇蠕动着，柯根德巡官俯过身去，白罗正喃喃地说道：“——真难知道哪几块是长毛地毯的一部分，哪些又是猫的尾巴。”
　　“对不起，你说什么？”柯根德巡官吃惊地问道。
　　白罗很快地说道：“对不起，我还在想我自己的心事。”
　　“长毛地毯和猫是怎么回事？”
　　“没什么——根本没什么。”他停了一下，“告诉我，柯根德巡官，如果你怀疑什么人说了谎——很多很多的谎话，可是你又没有证据，那你怎么办呢？”
　　柯根德巡官考虑了一下，“这很困难。可是我以为，要是一个人谎话说多了，最后一定会出差错的。”
　　白罗点了点头，“不错，这话很对。你知道，我只是心里明白某些人说的某些话是谎话，我想那是些谎话，可是我不能确知哪些是谎话。不过我可以做个小小的测验——试一试一个很小、又不为人注意的谎言。如果能证明哪是谎话——哎，那就知道其余的也都是谎话了！”
　　柯根德巡官奇怪地望着他，“你的想法真奇怪，是不是？可是我敢说最后一定有好结果，如果你许我请教一下，你究竟是为什么想起问到一般扼杀案的？”
　　白罗慢吞吞地说：“你们的话里有一个形容词——滑溜。这件案子在我看来是一件很滑溜的罪案！让我想起也许这不是第一次这样做法。”
　　柯根德巡官说：“哦。”
　　白罗继续说道：“我对自己说，我们来查查过去和这相似的案子吧，如果有和这件案子非常相似的——那我们可就有很有价值的线索了。”
　　“你是说同样的谋杀方法？”
　　“不是，不是，我的意思绝不止这一点，比方说，妮莉·帕森丝的案子就让我得不到什么。可是艾莉丝·柯瑞甘之死——我说，柯根德巡官，你有没有注意到这两件案子之间有一点非常相似之处呢？”
　　柯根德巡官在心里把这个问题好好地想了想，最后开口说道：“没有，我想并没有真正看出什么来，除非是，这两个案子里，做丈夫的都有牢不可破的不在场证明。”
　　白罗柔和地说：“啊，原来你注意到了这一点？”
　　“嗨，白罗，你好呀，请进。我正要找你。”赫邱里·白罗接受了邀请，警察局长推过来一包香烟，自己取了一支点上，一面吸，一面说道：“我已经大致决定了行动的方向，不过在我采取实际行动之前，我想听听你的意见。”
　　赫邱里·白罗说：“你跟我说说看，朋友。”
　　温斯顿说：“我决定找苏格兰警场来，把这个案子交给他，在我看起来，虽然我们有些证据怀疑一两个人，但是整个案子的关键却还是在毒品走私上，我觉得那个地方，就是小妖湾，很明显的就是他们走私见面交货的地点。”
　　白罗点了点头，“我同意。”
　　“好人。而且我也知道我们这里贩毒的人是谁，就是贺雷士·卜拉特。”
　　白罗又表示同意说：“这一点也很清楚。”
　　“我看我们两个人的想法一致，卜拉特常常乘他那艘小帆船，有时请人和他一起去玩，但绝大多数的时候，他都是一个人出去，他在船上用一张很怪异的红色大帆，可是我们发现他也有些白色的帆藏在船上。我想他会在说好的那天航行到某个地方，和另一艘船碰头——帆船或是摩托快艇——这一类的，东西就这样转了手，然后卜拉特顺着岛的岸边到小妖湾，当然要找个适当的时间——”
　　赫邱里·白罗微微一笑道：“对，对，在下午一点半，那时候是英国人的午餐时间，每个人大概都会在餐厅里。这个岛是外人不上来的，也没有外面的人到这里来野餐，有时候有旅馆的客人把下午茶由旅馆改到小妖湾去吃，也是要等那里有太阳的时候，要是他们要吃野餐，他们就会到对面好几哩路远的野地去。”
　　警察局长点了点头，“一点也不错，

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[table=500,#ffffff,#000000,1][tr][td]Chapter 13

Poirot said reflectively: "It was on a morning when we were sitting out here that we talked of suntanned bodies lying like meat upon a slab and it was then that I reflected how little difference there was between one body and another. If one looked closely and appraisingly - yes - but to the casual glance? One moderately well-made young woman is very like another. Two brown legs, two brown arms, a little piece of bathing suit in between - just a body lying out in the sun. When a woman walks, when she speaks, laughs, turns her head, moves a hand - then, yes, then, there is personality - individuality. But in the sun ritual - no.

"It was that day we spoke of evil - evil under the sun, as Mr Lane put it. Mr Lane is a very sensitive person - evil affects him - he perceives its presence - but though he is a good recording instrument, he did not really know exactly where the evil was. To him, evil was focussed in the person of Arlena Marshall and practically every one present agreed with him.

"But to my mind, though evil was present, it was not centralized in Arlena Marshall at all. It was connected with her, yes - but in a totally different way. I saw her, first, last and all the time, as an eternal and predestined victim. Because she was beautiful, because she had glamour, because men turned their heads to look at her, it was assumed that she was the type of woman who wrecked lives and destroyed souls. But I saw her very differently. It was not she who fatally attracted men - it was men who fatally attracted her. She was the type of woman whom men care for easily and of whom they as easily tire. And everything that I was told or found out about her strengthened my conviction on this point. The first thing that was mentioned about her was how the man in whose divorce case she had been cited refused to marry her. It was then that Captain Marshall, one of those incurably chivalrous men, stepped in and asked her to marry him. To a shy retiring man of Captain Marshall's type, a public ordeal of any kind would be the worst torture - hence his love and pity for his first wife who was publicly accused and tried for a murder she had not committed. He married her and found himself amply justified in his estimate of her character. After her death another beautiful woman, perhaps something of the same type (since Linda has red hair which she probably inherited from her mother) is held up to public ignominy. Again Marshall performs a rescue act. But this time he finds little to sustain his infatuation. Arlena is stupid, unworthy of his sympathy and protection, mindless. Nevertheless I think he always had a fairly true vision of her. Long after he ceased to love her and was irked by her presence, he remained sorry for her. She was to him like a child who cannot get farther than a certain page in the book of life.

"I saw in Arlena Marshall with her passion for men, a predestined prey for an unscrupulous man of a certain type. In Patrick Redfern, with his good looks, his easy assurance, his undeniable charm for women, I recognized at once that type. The adventurer who makes his living, one way or another, out of women. Looking on from my place on the beach I was quite certain that Arlena was Patrick's victim, not the other way about. And I associated that focus of evil with Patrick Redfern not with Arlena Marshall.

"Arlena had recently come into a large sum of money, left her by an elderly admirer who had not had time to grow tired of her. She was the type of woman who is invariably defrauded of money by some man or other. Miss Brewster mentioned a young man who had been 'ruined' by Arlena, but a letter from him which was found in her room, though it expressed a wish (which cost nothing) to cover her with jewels, in actual fact acknowledged a cheque from her by means of which he hoped to escape prosecution. A clear case of a young waster sponging on her. I have no doubt that Patrick Redfern found it easy to induce her to hand him large sums from time to time 'for investment.' He probably dazzled her with stories of great opportunities - how he would make her fortune and his own. Unprotected women, living alone, are easy preys to that type of man - and he usually escapes scot-free with the booty. If, however, there is a husband, or a brother, or a father about, things are apt to take an unpleasant turn for the swindler. Once Captain Marshall was to find out what had happened to his wife's fortune, Patrick Redfern might expect short shrift. That did not worry him, however, because he contemplated quite calmly doing away with her when he judged it necessary - encouraged by having already got away with one murder - that of a young woman whom he had married in the name of Corrigan and whom he had persuaded to insure her life for a large sum.

"In his plans he was aided and abetted by the young woman who down here passed as his wife and to whom he was genuinely attached. A young woman as unlike the type of his victims as could well be imagined - cool, calm, passionless, but steadfastly loyal to him and an actress of no mean ability. From the time of her arrival here Christine Redfern played the part, the part of the 'poor little wife' - frail, helpless, an intellectual rather than athletic. Think of the points she made one after another. Her tendency to blister in the sun and her consequent white skin, her giddiness at heights - stories of getting stuck on Milan Cathedral, etc. An emphasis on her frailty and delicacy - nearly every one spoke of her as a 'little woman.' She was actually as tall as Arlena Marshall but with very small hands and feet. She spoke of herself as a former schoolteacher and thereby emphasized an impression of book learning and lack of athletic prowess. Actually it is quite true that she had worked in a school, but the position she held there was that of games mistress and she was an extremely active young woman who could climb like a cat and run like an athlete.

"The crime itself was perfectly planned and timed. It was, as I mentioned before, a very slick crime. The timing was a work of genius. First of all there were certain preliminary scenes - one played on the cliff ledge when they knew me to be occupying the next recess - a conventional jealous wife dialogue between her and her husband. Later she played the same part in a scene with me. At the time I remember a vague feeling of having read all this in a book. It did not seem real. Because, of course, it was not real. Then came the day of the crime. It was a fine day - an essential. Redfern's first act was to slip out very early - by the balcony door which he unlocked from the inside (if found open it would only be thought some one had gone for an early bathe). Under his bathingwrap he concealed a green Chinese hat, the duplicate of the one Arlena was in the habit of wearing. He slipped across the island, down the ladder and stowed it away in an appointed place behind some rocks. Part I.

"On the previous evening he had arranged a rendezvous with Arlena. They were exercising a good deal of caution about meeting as Arlena was slightly afraid of her husband. She agreed to go round to Pixy Cove early. Nobody went there in the morning. Redfern was to join her there, taking a chance to slip away unobtrusively. If she heard any one descending the ladder or a boat came in sight she was to slip inside the Pixy's Cave, the secret of which he had told her, and wait there until the coast was clear. Part II.

"In the meantime Christine went to Linda's room at a time when she judged Linda would have gone for her early morning dip. She would then alter Linda's watch, putting it on twenty minutes. There was, of course, a risk that Linda might notice her watch was wrong, but it did not much matter if she did. Christine's real alibi was the size of her hands which made it a physical impossibility for her to have committed the crime. Nevertheless an additional alibi would be desirable. When in Linda's room she noticed the book on witchcraft and magic, open at a certain page. She read it and when Linda came in and dropped a parcel of candles she realized what was in Linda's mind. It opened up some new ideas to her. The original idea of the guilty pair had been to cast a reasonable amount of suspicion on Kenneth Marshall, hence the abstracted pipe, a fragment of which was to be planted at the cove underneath the ladder. On Linda's return Christine easily arranged an outing together to Gull Cove. She then returned to her own room, took out from a locked suitcase a bottle of artificial suntan, applied it carefully and threw the empty bottle out of the window where it narrowly escaped hitting Emily Brewster who was bathing. Part III successfully accomplished.

"Christine then dressed herself in a white bathing-suit and over it a pair of beach trousers and coat with long floppy sleeves which effectually concealed her newly browned arms and legs. At 10.15 Arlena departed for her rendezvous, a minute or two later Patrick Redfern came down and registered surprise, annoyance, etc. Christine's task was easy enough. Keeping her own watch concealed she asked Linda at twenty-five past eleven what time it was. Linda looked at her watch and replied that it was a quarter to twelve. She then starts down to the sea and Christine packs up her sketching things. As soon as Linda's back is turned Christine picks up the girl's watch which she had necessarily discarded before going into the sea and alters it back to the correct time. Then she hurries up the cliff path, runs across the narrow neck of land to the top of the ladder, strips off her pyjamas and shoves them and her sketching box behind a rock and swarms rapidly down the ladder in her best gymnastic fashion.

"Arlena is on the beach below wondering why Patrick is so long in coming. She sees or hears some one on the ladder, takes a cautious observation and to her annoyance sees that inconvenient person - the wife! She hurries along the beach and into the Pixy's Cave.

"Christine takes the hat from its hiding-place, a false red curl pinned underneath the brim at the back, and disposes herself in a sprawling attitude with the hat and curl shielding her face and neck. The timing is perfect. A minute or two later the boat containing Patrick and Emily Brewster comes round the point. Remember it is Patrick who bends down and examines the body, Patrick who is stunned - shocked - broken down by the death of his lady love! His witness has been carefully chosen. Miss Brewster has not got a good head, she will not attempt to go up the ladder. She will leave the cove by boat, Patrick naturally being the one to remain with the body - 'in case the murderer may still be about.' Miss Brewster rows off to fetch the police. Christine, as soon as the boat has disappeared, springs up, cuts the hat into pieces with the scissors Patrick has carefully brought, stuffs them into her bathing suit and swarms up the ladder in double-quick time, slips into her beach pyjamas and runs back to the hotel. Just time to have a quick bath, washing off the brown suntan application, and into her tennis dress. One other thing she does. She burns the pieces of the green cardboard hat and the hair in Linda's grate, adding a leaf of a calendar so that it may be associated with the cardboard. Not a Hat but a Calendar has been burnt. As she suspected Linda has been experimenting in magic - the blob of wax and the pin show that.

"Then, down to the tennis court, arriving the last, but showing no sign of flurry or haste.

"And meanwhile Patrick has gone to the Cave. Arlena has seen nothing and heard very little - a boat - voices - she has prudently remained hidden. But now it is Patrick calling. 'All clear, darling,' and she comes out and his hands fasten round her neck - and that is the end of poor foolish beautiful Arlena Marshall..."

His voice died away. For a moment there was silence, then Rosamund Darnley said with a little shiver: "Yes, you make one see it all. But that's the story from the other side. You haven't told us how you came to get at the truth?"

Hercule Poirot said: "I told you once that I had a very simple mind. Always, from the beginning, it seemed to me that the most likely person had killed Arlena Marshall. And the most likely person was Patrick Redfern. He was the type, par excellence - the type of man who exploits women like her - and the type of the killer - the kind of man who will take a woman's savings and cut her throat into the bargain. Who was Arlena going to meet that morning? By the evidence of her face, her smile, her manner, her words to me - Patrick Redfern. And therefore, in the very nature of things, it should be Patrick Redfern who killed her.

"But at once I came up, as I told you, against impossibility. Patrick Redfern could not have killed her since he was on the beach and in Miss Brewster's company until the actual discovery of the body. So I looked about for other solutions - and there were several. She could have been killed by her husband - with Miss Darnley's connivance. (They too had both lied as to one point which looked suspicious.) She could have been killed as a result of her having stumbled on the secret of the dope smuggling. She could have been killed, as I said, by a religious maniac, and she could have been killed by her stepdaughter. The latter seemed to me at one time to be the real solution. Linda's manner in her very first interview with the police was significant. An interview that I had with her later assured me of one point. Linda considered herself guilty."

"You mean she imagined that she had actually killed Arlena?" Rosamund's voice was incredulous.

Hercule nodded. "Yes. Remember - she is really little more than a child. She read that book on witchcraft and she half believed it. She hated Arlena. She deliberately made the wax doll, cast her spell, pierced it to the heart, melted it away - and that very day Arlena dies. Older and wiser people than Linda have believed fervently in magic. Naturally she believed that it was all true - that by using magic she had killed her stepmother."

Rosamund cried: "Oh, poor child, poor child. And I thought - I imagined - something quite different - that she knew something which would -"

Rosamund stopped. Poirot said: "I know what it was you thought. Actually your manner frightened Linda still further. She believed that her action had really brought about Arlena's death and that you knew it. Christine Redfern worked on her too, introducing the idea of the sleeping tablets to her mind, showing her the way to a speedy and painless expiation of her crime. You see, once Captain Marshall was proved to have an alibi, it was vital for a new suspect to be found. Neither she nor her husband knew about the dope smuggling. They fixed on Linda to be the scapegoat."

Rosamund said: "What a devil!"

Poirot nodded. "Yes, you are right. A cold-blooded and cruel woman. For me, I was in great difficulty. Was Linda guilty only of the childish attempt at witchcraft, or had her hate carried her still further - to the actual act? I tried to get her to confess to me. But it was no good. At that moment I was in grave uncertainty. The Chief Constable was inclined to accept the dope smuggling explanation. I could let it go at that. I went over the facts again very carefully. I had, you see, a collection of jig saw puzzle pieces, isolated happenings - plain facts. The whole must fit into a complete and harmonious pattern. There were the scissors found on the beach - a bottle thrown from a window - a bath that no one would admit to having taken - all perfectly harmless occurrences in themselves, but rendered significant by the fact that no one would admit to them. Therefore, they must be of significance. Nothing about them fitted in with the theories of either Captain Marshall's or Linda's or of a dope gang's being responsible. And yet they must having meaning. I went back again to my first solution - that Patrick Redfern had committed the murder. Was there anything in support of that? Yes, the fact that a very large sum of money was missing from Arlena's account. Who had got that money? Patrick Redfern, of course. She was the type of woman easily swindled by a handsome young man - but she was not at all the type of woman to be blackmailed. She was far too transparent, not good enough at keeping a secret. The blackmailer story had never rung true to my mind. And yet there had been that conversation overheard - ah, but overheard by whom? Patrick Redfern's wife. It was her story - unsupported by any outside evidence. Why was it invented? The answer came to me like lightning. To account for the absence of Arlena's money!

"Patrick and Christine Redfern. The two of them were in it together. Christine hadn't got the physical strength to strangle her or the mental make-up. No, it was Patrick who had done it - but that was impossible! Every minute of his time was accounted for until the body was found. Body - the word body stirred something in my mind - bodies lying on the beach - all alike. Patrick Redfern and Emily Brewster had got to the cove and seen a body lying there. A body - suppose it was not Arlena's body but somebody else's? The face was hidden by the great Chinese hat.

"But there was only one dead body - Arlena's. Then, could it be - a live body - some one pretending to be dead? Could it be Arlena herself, inspired by Patrick to play some kind of a joke. I shook my head - no, too risky. A live body - whose? Was there any woman who would help Redfern? Of course - his wife. But she was a white-skinned delicate creature - Ah, yes, but suntan can be applied out of bottles - bottles - a bottle - I had one of my jig saw pieces. Yes, and afterwards, of course, a bath - to wash the tell-tale stain off before she went out to play tennis. And the scissors? Why, to cut up the duplicate cardboard hat - an unwieldy thing that must be got out of the way, and in the haste the scissors were left behind - the one thing that the pair of murderers forgot.

"But where was Arlena all the time? That again was perfectly clear. Either Rosamund Darnley or Arlena Marshall had been in the Pixy's Cave, the scent they both used told me that. It was certainly not Rosamund Darnley. Then it was Arlena, hiding till the coast should clear.

"When Emily Brewster went off in the boat, Patrick had the beach to himself and full opportunity to commit the crime. Arlena Marshall was killed after a quarter to twelve but the medical evidence was only concerned with the earliest possible time the crime could have been committed. That Arlena was dead at a quarter to twelve was what was told to the doctor, not what he told the police.

"Two more points had to be settled. Linda Marshall's evidence gave Christine Redfern an alibi. Yes, but that evidence depended on Linda Marshall's wrist-watch. All that was needed was to prove that Christine had had two opportunities of tampering with the watch. I found those easily enough. She had been alone in Linda's room that morning - and there was an indirect proof. Linda was heard to say that she was 'afraid she was going to be late,' but when she got down it was only twenty-five past ten by the lounge clock. The second opportunity was easy - she could alter the watch back again as soon as Linda turned her back and went down to bathe. Then there was the question of the ladder. Christine had always declared she had no head for heights. Another carefully prepared lie.

"I had my mosaic now - each piece beautifully fitted into its place. But unfortunately I had no definite proof. It was all in my mind. It was then that an idea came to me. There was an assurance - a slickness about the crime. I had no doubt that in the future Patrick Redfern would repeat his crime. What about the past? It was remotely possible that this was not his first killing. The method employed, strangulation, was in harmony with his nature - a killer for pleasure as well as for profit. If he was already a murderer I was sure that he would have used the same means. I asked Inspector Colgate for a list of women victims of strangulation. The result filled me with joy. The death of Nellie Parsons found strangled in a lonely copse might or might not be Patrick Redfern's work - it might merely have suggested choice of locality to him, but in Alice Corrigan's death I found exactly what I was looking for. In essence the same method. Juggling with time - a murder committed not, as is the usual way, before it is supposed to have happened, but afterwards. A body supposedly discovered at a quarter past four. A husband with an alibi up to twenty-five past four.

"What really happened? It was said that Edward Corrigan arrived at the Pine Ridge, found his wife was not there and went out and walked up and down. Actually of course he ran full speed to the rendezvous, Caesar's Grove (which you will remember was quite near by), killed her and returned to the café. The girl hiker who reported the crime was a most respectable young lady, games mistress in a well-known girls' school. Apparently she had no connection with Edward Corrigan. She had to walk some way to report the death. The police surgeon only examined the body at a quarter to six. As in this case the time of death was accepted without question.

"I made one final test. I must know definitely if Mrs Redfern was a liar. I arranged our little excursion to Dartmoor. If any one had a bad head for heights, they are never comfortable crossing a narrow bridge over running water. Miss Brewster, a genuine sufferer, showed giddiness, but Christine Redfern, unconcerned, ran across without a qualm. It was a small point, but it was a definite test. If she had told one unnecessary lie - then all the other lies were possible. In the meantime Colgate had got the photograph identified by the Surrey police. I played my hand in the only way I thought likely to succeed. Having lulled Patrick Redfern into security, I turned on him and did my utmost to make him lose his self-control. The knowledge that he had been identified with Corrigan caused him to lose his head completely."

Hercule Poirot stroked his throat reminiscently. "What I did," he said with importance, "was exceedingly dangerous - but I do not regret it. I succeeded! I did not suffer in vain."

There was a moment's silence. Then Mrs Gardener gave a deep sigh. "Why, M. Poirot," she said. "It's just been too wonderful - hearing just exactly how you got your results. It's every bit as fascinating as a lecture on criminology - in fact it is a lecture on criminology. And to think my magenta wool and that sunbathing conversation actually had something to do with it! That really makes me too excited for words and I'm sure Mr Gardener feels the same, don't you, Odell?"

"Yes, darling," said Mr Gardener.

Hercule Poirot said: "Mr Gardener too was of assistance to me. I wanted the opinion of a sensible man about Mrs Marshall. I asked Mr Gardener what he thought of her."

"Is that so," said Mrs Gardener. "And what did you say about her, Odell?"

Mr Gardener coughed. He said: "Well, darling, I never did think very much of her, you know."

"That's the kind of thing men always say to their wives," said Mrs Gardener. "And if you ask me, even M. Poirot here is what I should call a shade on the indulgent side about her, calling her a natural victim and all that. Of course it's true that she wasn't a cultured woman at all, and as Captain Marshall isn't here I don't mind saying that she always did seem to me kind of dumb. I said so to Mr Gardener, didn't I, Odell?"

"Yes, darling," said Mr Gardener.

Linda Marshall sat with Hercule Poirot on Gull Cove. She said: "Of course I'm glad I didn't die after all. But you know, M. Poirot, it's just the same as if I'd killed her, isn't it? I meant to."

Hercule Poirot said energetically: "It is not at all the same thing. The wish to kill and the action of killing are two different things. If in your bedroom instead of a little wax figure you had had your stepmother bound and helpless and a dagger in your hand instead of a pin, you would not have pushed it into her heart! Something within you would have said 'no.' It is the same with me. I enrage myself at an imbecile. I say, 'I would like to kick him.' Instead I kick the table. I say. This table, it is the imbecile, I kick him so.' And then, if I have not hurt my toe too much, I feel much better and the table it is not usually damaged. But if the imbecile himself was there I should not kick him. To make the wax figure and stick in the pins it is silly, yes, it is childish, yes - but it does something useful too. You took the hate out of yourself and put it into that little figure. And with the pin and the fire you destroyed - not your stepmother - but the hate you bore her. Afterwards, even before you heard of her death, you felt cleansed, did you not - you felt lighter - happier?"

Linda nodded. She said: "How did you know? That's just how I did feel."

Poirot said: "Then do not repeat to yourself the imbecilities. Just make up your mind not to hate your next stepmother."

Linda said, startled: "Do you think I'm going to have another? Oh, I see, you mean Rosamund. I don't mind her." She hesitated a minute. "She's sensible."

It was not the adjective that Poirot himself would have selected for Rosamund Darnley, but he realized that it was Linda's idea of high praise.

Kenneth Marshall said: "Rosamund, did you get some extraordinary idea into your head that I'd killed Arlena?"

Rosamund looked rather shamefaced. She said: "I suppose I was a damned fool."

"Or course you were."

"Yes, but, Ken, you are such an oyster. I never knew what you really felt about Arlena. I didn't know if you accepted her as she was and were just frightfully decent about her, or whether you - well, just believed in her blindly. And I thought if it was that and you suddenly found out that she was letting you down you might go mad with rage. I've heard stories about you. You're always very quiet but you're rather frightening sometimes."

"So you thought I just took her by the throat and throttled the life out of her?"

"Well - yes - that's just exactly what I did think. And your alibi seemed a bit on the light side. That's when I suddenly decided to take a hand and make up that silly story about seeing you typing in your room. And when I heard that you said you'd seen me look in - well, that made me quite sure you'd done it. That, and Linda's queerness."

Kenneth Marshall said with a sigh: "Don't you realize that I said I'd seen you in the mirror in order to back up your story. I - I thought you needed it corroborated."

Rosamund stared at him. "You don't mean you thought that I killed your wife?"

Kenneth Marshall shifted uneasily. He mumbled: "Dash it all, Rosamund, don't you remember how you nearly killed that boy about that dog once? How you hung on to my throat and wouldn't let go."

"But that was years ago."

"Yes, I know -"

Rosamund said sharply: "What earthly motive do you think I had to kill Arlena?"

His glance shifted. He mumbled something again. Rosamund cried: "Ken, you mass of conceit! You thought I killed her out of altruism on your behalf, did you? Or - or did you think I killed her because I wanted you myself?"

"Not at all," said Kenneth Marshall indignantly. "But you know what you said that day - about Linda and everything - and - and you seemed to care what happened to me."

Rosamund said: "I've always cared about that."

"I believe you have. You know, Rosamund - I can't usually talk about things - I'm not good at talking - but I'd like to get this clear. I didn't care for Arlena - only just a little at first - and living with her day after day was a pretty nerve-racking business. In fact it was absolute hell, but I was awfully sorry for her. She was such a damned fool - crazy about men - she just couldn't help it - and they always let her down and treated her rottenly. I simply felt I couldn't be the one to give her the final push. I'd married her and it was up to me to look after her as best I could. I think she knew that and was grateful to me really. She was - she was a pathetic sort of creature really."

Rosamund said gently: "It's all right, Ken. I understand now."

Without looking at her Kenneth Marshall carefully filled a pipe. He mumbled:

"You're - pretty good at understanding, Rosamund."

A faint smile curved Rosamund's ironic mouth. She said: "Are you going to ask me to marry you now, Ken, or are you determined to wait six months?"

Kenneth Marshall's pipe dropped from his lips and crashed on the rocks below. He said: "Damn, that's the second pipe I've lost down here. And I haven't got another with me. How the devil did you know I'd fixed six months as the proper time?"

"I suppose because it is the proper time. But I'd rather have something definite now, please. Because in the intervening months you may come across some other persecuted female and rush to the rescue in chivalrous fashion again."

He laughed. "You're going to be the persecuted female this time, Rosamund. You're going to give up that damned dressmaking business of yours and we're going to live in the country."

"Don't you know that I make a very handsome income out of my business? Don't you realize that it's my business - that I created it and worked it up and that I'm proud of it! And you've got the damned nerve to come along and say, 'Give it all up, dear.'"

"I've got the damned nerve to say it, yes."

"And you think I care enough for you to do it?"

"If you don't," said Kenneth Marshall, "you'd be no good to me."

Rosamund said softly: "Oh, my dear, I've wanted to live in the country with you all my life. Now - it's going to come true..."

第十三章



　　白罗沉吟地说道：“那天早上我们坐在这里的时候，谈到那些给太阳晒黑的身子躺在底下，就好像是砧板上的肉，那时候我也说到这些身体之间没有多少差别，如果仔细去观察的话——当然是有区别的——可是若只是一眼扫过呢？每个身材较好的年轻女子彼此都很相象的，两条棕色的腿，两条棕色的手臂，中间是一件小小的泳装——只不过是躺在阳光下的一个人体而已。一个女人如果在走路、说话、发笑、转头、抬手——那时候，不错，到那时候，就看得出她的个性来——有她独特的地方。可是在晒日光浴的时候——个性都没有了。
　　“那天我们也谈到邪恶——蓝恩牧师说过，艳阳下的邪行恶事。蓝恩先生是个很敏感的人——邪恶对他很有影响——他能察觉邪恶的存在——可是他虽然是个很好的记录工具，却并不能真正了解邪恶在什么地方。在他说来，邪恶的化身就是艾莲娜·马歇尔，而几乎每个人都同意他的看法。
　　“然而在我的心里，虽然我也认为有邪恶存在，但并不是集中于艾莲娜·马歇尔一个人的身上。和她有关系，不错——但完全是另外一回事。从头到尾，我一直认为她其实是一个受害者，因为她很美，因为她有魅力，因为男人都会转过头来看她，大家就假定她是那种会毁了别人的生活，腐蚀别人灵魂的女人。可是我对她的看法完全不同。不是她到处吸引男人——而是到处有男人吸引她。她是那种男人很容易就看上，却也很容易就感到厌倦的女人。而所有别人告诉我的，和我查到的一切，也都更证实了我的这种看法。第一件提到她的事，就是那个因为牵涉到她而闹出离婚案的男人拒绝娶她为妻，就在那件事情之后，马歇尔先生，这位有着非凡豪侠骑士精神的人，来向她求婚。对像马歇尔这样一个腼腆内向的人来说，当众遭到羞辱是最难忍受的折磨——所以他才会对他第一任妻子有爱情和怜悯，因为她为了不会犯过的谋杀罪而遭到控诉与审判。他娶了她，发现自己对她的看法完全没有错，在她死了之后，另外一个美丽的女子，也许还是同一类型的人(因为琳达也有一头红头发，大约是由她母亲那