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 towards 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.
V
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 am 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 suntanned. 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.
CHAPTER 2
When Rosamund Darnley came and sat down by him, Hercule Poirot made no attempt to disguise his pleasure.
As he has since admitted, he admired Rosamund Darnley as much as any woman he had ever met. He liked her distinction, the graceful lines of her figure, the alert proud carriage of her head. He liked the neat sleek waves of her dark hair and the ironic quality of her smile.
She was wearing a dress of some navy blue material with touches of white. It looked very simple owing to the expensive severity of its line. Rosamund Darnley as Rose Mond Ltd was one of London’s best-known dressmakers.
She said:
‘I don’t think I like this place. I’m wondering why I came here!’
‘You have been here before, have you not?’
‘Yes, two years ago, at Easter. There weren’t so many people then.’
Hercule Poirot looked at her. He said gently:
‘Something has occurred to worry you. That is right, is it not?’
She nodded. Her foot swung to and fro. She stared down at it. She said:
‘I’ve met a ghost. That’s what it is.’
‘A ghost, Mademoiselle?’
‘Yes.’
‘The ghost of what? Or of whom?’
‘Oh, the ghost of myself.’
Poirot asked gently:
‘Was it a painful ghost?’
‘Unexpectedly painful. It took me back, you know …’
She paused, musing. Then she said.
‘Imagine my childhood. No, you can’t! You’re not English!’
Poirot asked:
‘Was it a very English childhood?’
‘Oh, incredibly so! The country—a big shabby house—horses, dogs—walks in the rain—wood fires—apples in the orchard—lack of money—old tweeds—evening dresses that went on from year to year—a neglected garden—with Michaelmas daisies coming out like great banners in the autumn …’
Poirot asked gently:
‘And you want to go back?’
Rosamund Darnley shook her head. She said:
‘One can’t go back, can one? That—never. But I’d like to have gone on—a different way.’
Poirot said:
‘I wonder.’
Rosamund Darnley laughed.
‘So do I, really!’
Poirot said:
‘When I was young (and that, Mademoiselle, is indeed a long time ago) there was a game entitled, “If not yourself, who would you be?” One wrote the answer in young ladies’ albums. They had gold edges and were bound in blue leather. The answer, Mademoiselle, is not really very easy to find.’
Rosamund said:
‘No—I suppose not. It would be a big risk. One wouldn’t like to take on being Mussolini or Princess Elizabeth. As for one’s friends, one knows too much about them. I remember once meeting a charming husband and wife. They were so courteous and delightful to one another and seemed on such good terms after years of marriage that I envied the woman. I’d have changed places with her willingly. Somebody told me afterwards that in private they’d never spoken to each other for eleven years!’
She laughed.
‘That shows, doesn’t it, that you never know?’
After a moment or two Poirot said:
‘Many people, Mademoiselle, must envy you.’
Rosamund Darnley said coolly:
‘Oh, yes. Naturally.’
She thought about it, her lips curved upward in their ironic smile.
‘Yes, I’m really the perfect type of the successful woman! I enjoy the artistic satisfaction of the successful creative artist (I really do like designing clothes) and the financial satisfaction of the successful business woman. I’m very well off, I’ve a good figure, a passable face, and a not too malicious tongue.’
She paused. Her smiled widened.
‘Of course—I haven’t got a husband! I’ve failed there, haven’t I, M. Poirot?’
Poirot said gallantly:
‘Mademoiselle, if you are not married, it is because none of my sex have been sufficiently eloquent. It is from choice, not necessity, that you remain single.’
Rosamund Darnley said:
‘And yet, like all men, I’m sure you believe in your heart that no woman is content unless she is married and has children.’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘To marry and have children, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred—more, in a thousand, can make for herself a name and a position as you have done.’
Rosamund grinned at him.
‘And yet, all the same, I’m nothing but a wretched old maid! That’s what I feel today, at any rate. I’d be happier with twopence a year and a big silent brute of a husband and a brood of brats running after me. That’s true, isn’t it?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘Since you say so, then, yes, Mademoiselle.’
Rosamund laughed, her equilibrium suddenly restored. She took out a cigarette and lit it.
She said:
‘You certainly know how to deal with women, M. Poirot. I now feel like taking the opposite point of view and arguing with you in favour of careers for women. Of course I’m damned well off as I am—and I know it!’
‘Then everything in the garden—or shall we say at the seaside? is lovely, Mademoiselle.’
‘Quite right.’
Poirot, in his turn, extracted his cigarette case and lit one of those tiny cigarettes which it was his affection to smoke.
Regarding the ascending haze with a quizzical eye, he murmured:
‘So Mr—no, Captain Marshall is an old friend of yours, Mademoiselle?’
Rosamund sat up. She said:
‘Now how do you know that? Oh, I suppose Ken told you.’
Poirot shook his head.
‘Nobody has told me anything. After all, Mademoiselle, I am a detective. It was the obvious conclusion to draw.’
Rosamund Darnley said: ‘I don’t see it.’
‘But consider!’ The little man’s hands were eloquent. ‘You have been here a week. You are lively, gay, without a care. Today, suddenly, you speak of ghosts, of old times. What has happened? For several days there have been no new arrivals until last night when Captain Marshall and his wife and daughter arrive. Today the change! It is obvious!’
Rosamund Darnley said:
‘Well, it’s true enough. Kenneth Marshall and I were more or less children together. The Marshalls lived next door to us. Ken was always nice to me—although condescending, of course, since he was four years older. I’ve not seen anything of him for a long time. It must be—fifteen years at least.’
Poirot said thoughtfully:
‘A long time.’
Rosamund nodded.
There was a pause and then Hercule Poirot said:
‘He is sympathetic, yes?’
Rosamund said warmly:
‘Ken’s a dear. One of the best. Frightfully quiet and reserved. I’d say his only fault is a penchant for making unfortunate marriages.’
Poirot said in a tone of great understanding: ‘Ah—’
Rosamund Darnley went on.
‘Kenneth’s a fool—an utter fool where women are concerned! Do you remember the Martingdale case?’
Poirot frowned.
‘Martingdale? Martingdale? Arsenic, was it not?’
‘Yes. Seventeen or eighteen years ago. The woman was tried for the murder of her husband.’
‘And he was proved to have been an arsenic eater and she was acquitted?’
‘That’s right. Well, after her acquittal, Ken married her. That’s the sort of damn silly thing he does.’
Hercule Poirot murmured:
‘But if she was innocent?’
Rosamund Darnley said impatiently:
‘Oh, I dare say she was innocent. Nobody really knows! But there are plenty of women to marry in the world without going out of your way to marry one who’s stood her trial for murder.’
Poirot said nothing. Perhaps he knew that if he kept silence Rosamund Darnley would go on. She did so.
‘He was very young, of course, only just twenty-one. He was crazy about her. She died when Linda was born—a year after their marriage. I believe Ken was terribly cut up by her death. Afterwards he racketed around a lot—trying to forget, I suppose.’
She paused.
‘And then came this business of Arlena Stuart. She was in Revue at the time. There was the Codrington divorce case. Lady Codrington divorced Codrington, citing Arlena Stuart. They say Lord Codrington was absolutely infatuated with her. It was understood they were to be married as soon as the decree was made absolute. Actually, when it came to it, he didn’t marry her. Turned her down flat. I believe she actually sued him for breach of promise. Anyway, the thing made a big stir at the time. The next thing that happens is that Ken goes and marries her. The fool—the complete fool!’
Hercule Poirot murmured:
‘A man might be excused such a folly—she is beautiful, Mademoiselle.’
‘Yes, there’s no doubt of that. There was another scandal about three years ago. Old Sir Roger Erskine left her every penny of his money. I should have thought that would have opened Ken’s eyes if anything would.’
‘And did it not?’
Rosamund Darnley shrugged her shoulders.
‘I tell you I’ve seen nothing of him for years. People say, though, that he took it with absolute equanimity. Why, I should like to know? Has he got an absolutely blind belief in her?’
There might be other reasons.’
‘Yes. Pride! Keeping a stiff upper lip! I don’t know what he really feels about her. Nobody does.’
‘And she? What does she feel about him?’
Rosamund stared at him.
She said:
‘She? She’s the world’s first gold-digger. And a man-eater as well! If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena! She’s that kind.’
Poirot nodded his head slowly in complete agreement.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is true what you say … Her eyes look for one thing only—men.’
Rosamund said:
‘She’s got her eye on Patrick Redfern now. He’s a good-looking man—and rather the simple kind—you know, fond of his wife, and not a philanderer. That’s the kind that’s meat and drink to Arlena. I like little Mrs Redfern—she’s nice-looking in her fair washed-out way—but I don’t think she’ll stand a dog’s chance against that man-eating tiger, Arlena.’
Poirot said:
‘No, it is as you say.’
He looked distressed.
Rosamund said:
‘Christine Redfern was a school teacher, I believe. She’s the kind that thinks that mind has a pull over matter. She’s got a rude shock coming to her.’
Poirot shook his head vexedly.
Rosamund got up. She said:
‘It’s a shame, you know.’ She added vaguely: ‘Somebody ought to do something about it.’
II
Linda Marshall was examining her face dispassionately in her bedroom mirror. She disliked her face very much. At this minute it seemed to her to be mostly bones and freckles. She noted with distaste her heavy bush of soft brown hair (mouse, she called it in her own mind), her greenish-grey eyes, her high cheekbones and the long aggressive line of the chin. Her mouth and teeth weren’t perhaps quite so bad—but what were teeth after all? And was that a spot coming on the side of her nose?
She decided with relief that it wasn’t a spot. She thought to herself:
‘It’s awful to be sixteen—simply awful.’
One didn’t, somehow, know where one was. Linda was as awkward as a young colt and as prickly as a hedgehog. She was conscious the whole time of her ungainliness and of the fact that she was neither one thing nor the other. It hadn’t been so bad at school. But now she had left school. Nobody seemed to know quite what she was going to do next. Her father talked vaguely of sending her to Paris next winter. Linda didn’t want to go to Paris—but then she didn’t want to be at home either. She’d never realized properly, somehow, until now, how very much she disliked Arlena.
Linda’s young face grew tense, her green eyes hardened.
Arlena …
She thought to herself:
‘She’s a beast—a beast…’
Stepmothers! It was rotten to have a stepmother, everybody said so. And it was true! Not that Arlena was unkind to her. Most of the time she hardly noticed the girl. But when she did, there was a contemptuous amusement in her glance, in her words. The finished grace and poise of Arlena’s movements emphasized Linda’s own adolescent clumsiness. With Arlena about, one felt, shamingly, just how immature and crude one was.
But it wasn’t that only. No, it wasn’t only that.
Linda groped haltingly in the recesses of her mind. She wasn’t very good at sorting out her emotions and labelling them. It was something that Arlena did to people—to the house—
‘She’s bad,’ thought Linda with decision. ‘She’s quite, quite bad.’
But you couldn’t even leave it at that. You couldn’t just elevate your nose with a sniff of moral superiority and dismiss her from your mind.
It was something she did to people. Father, now, Father was quite different …
She puzzled over it. Father coming down to take her out from school. Father taking her once for a cruise. And Father at home—with Arlena there. All—all sort of bottled up and not—and not there.
Linda thought:
‘And it’ll go on like this. Day after day—month after month. I can’t bear it.’
Life stretched before her—endless—in a series of days darkened and poisoned by Arlena’s presence. She was childish enough still to have little sense of proportion. A year, to Linda, seemed like an eternity.
A big dark burning wave of hatred against Arlena surged up in her mind. She thought:
‘I’d like to kill her. Oh! I wish she’d die …’
She looked out above the mirror onto the sea below.
This place was really rather fun. Or it could be fun. All those beaches and coves and queer little paths. Lots to explore. And places where one could go off by oneself and muck about. There were caves, too, so the Cowan boys had told her.
Linda thought:
‘If only Arlena would go away, I could enjoy myself.’
Her mind went back to the evening of their arrival. It had been exciting coming from the mainland. The tide had been up over the causeway. They had come in a boat. The hotel had looked exciting, unusual. And then on the terrace a tall dark woman had jumped up and said:
‘Why, Kenneth!’
And her father, looking frightfully surprised, had exclaimed:
‘Rosamund!’
Linda considered Rosamund Darnley severely and critically in the manner of youth.
She decided that she approved of Rosamund. Rosamund, she thought, was sensible. And her hair grew nicely—as though it fitted her—most people’s hair didn’t fit them. And her clothes were nice. And she had a kind of funny amused face—as though it were amused at herself, not at you. Rosamund had been nice to her, Linda. She hadn’t been gushing or said things. (Under the term of ‘saying things’ Linda grouped a mass of miscellaneous dislikes.) And Rosamund hadn’t looked as though she thought Linda a fool. In fact she’d treated Linda as though she was a real human being. Linda so seldom felt like a real human being that she was deeply grateful when anyone appeared to consider her one.
Father, too, had seemed pleased to see Miss Darnley.
Funny—he’d looked quite different, all of a sudden. He’d looked—he’d looked—Linda puzzled it out—why, young, that was it! He’d laughed—a queer boyish laugh. Now Linda came to think of it, she’d very seldom heard him laugh.
She felt puzzled. It was as though she’d got a glimpse of quite a different person. She thought:
‘I wonder what Father was like when he was my age …’
But that was too difficult. She gave it up.
An idea flashed across her mind.
What fun it would have been if they’d come here and found Miss Darnley here—just she and Father.
A vista opened out just for a minute. Father, boyish and laughing, Miss Darnley, herself—and all the fun one could have on the island—bathing—caves—
The blackness shut down again.
Arlena. One couldn’t enjoy oneself with Arlena about. Why not? Well, she, Linda, couldn’t anyway. You couldn’t be happy when there was a person there you—hated. Yes, hated. She hated Arlena.
Very slowly that black burning wave of hatred rose up again.
Linda’s face went very white. Her lips parted a little. The pupils of her eyes contracted. And her fingers stiffened and clenched themselves …
III
Kenneth Marshall tapped on his wife’s door. When her voice answered, he opened the door and went in.
Arlena was just putting the finishing touches to her toilet. She was dressed in glittering green and looked a little like a mermaid. She was standing in front of the glass applying mascara to her eyelashes. She said:
‘Oh, it’s you, Ken.’
‘Yes. I wondered if you were ready.’
‘Just a minute.’
Kenneth Marshall strolled to the window. He looked out on the sea. His face, as usual, displayed no emotion of any kind. It was pleasant and ordinary.
Turning round, he said:
‘Arlena?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ve met Redfern before, I gather?’
Arlena said easily:
‘Oh yes, darling. At a cocktail party somewhere. I thought he was rather a pet.’
‘So I gather. Did you know that he and his wife were coming down here?’
Arlena opened her eyes very wide.
‘Oh no, darling. It was the greatest surprise!’
Kenneth Marshall said quietly:
‘I thought, perhaps, that that was what put the idea of this place into your head. You were very keen we should come here.’
Arlena put down the mascara. She turned towards him. She smiled—a soft seductive smile. She said:
‘Somebody told me about this place. I think it was the Rylands. They said it was simply too marvellous—so unspoilt! Don’t you like it?’
Kenneth Marshall said:
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Oh, darling, but you adore bathing and lazing about. I’m sure you’ll simply adore it here.’
‘I can see that you mean to enjoy yourself.’
Her eyes widened a little. She looked at him uncertainly.
Kenneth Marshall said:
‘I suppose the truth of it is that you told young Redfern that you were coming here?’
Arlena said:
‘Kenneth darling, you’re not going to be horrid, are you?’
Kenneth Marshall said:
‘Look here, Arlena. I know what you’re like. They’re rather a nice young couple. That boy’s fond of his wife, really. Must you upset the whole blinking show?’
Arlena said:
