“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 recess 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 on to 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 again 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:
“It’s so unfair blaming me. I haven’t done anything—anything at all. I can’t help it if—”
He prompted her.
“If what?”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Well, of course. I know people do go crazy about me. But it’s not my doing. They just get like that.”
“So you do admit that young Redfern is crazy about you?”
Arlena murmured:
“It’s really rather stupid of him.”
She moved a step towards her husband.
“But you know, don’t you, Ken, that I don’t really care for anyone but you?”
She looked up at him through her darkened lashes.
It was a marvellous look—a look that few men could have resisted.
Kenneth Marshall looked down at her gravely. His face was composed. His voice quiet. He said:
“I think I know you pretty well, Arlena….”
IV
When you came out of the hotel on the south side the terraces and the bathing beach were immediately below you. There was also a path that led off round the cliff on the southwest side of the island. A little way along it, a few steps led down to a series of recesses cut into the cliff and labelled on the hotel map of the island as Sunny Ledge. Here cut out of the cliff were niches with seats in them.
To one of these, immediately after dinner, came Patrick Redfern and his wife. It was a lovely clear night with a bright moon.
The Redferns sat down. For a while they were silent
At last Patrick Redfern said:
“It’s a glorious evening, isn’t it, Christine?”
“Yes.”
Something in her voice may have made him uneasy. He sat without looking at her.
Christine Redfern asked in her quiet voice:
“Did you know that woman was going to be here?”
He turned sharply. He said:
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
“Look here, Christine. I don’t know what has come over you—”
She interrupted. Her voice held feeling now. It trembled.
“Over me? It’s what has come over you!”
“Nothing’s come over me.”
“Oh! Patrick! it has! You insisted so on coming here. You were quite vehement. I wanted to go to Tintagel again where—where we had our honeymoon. You were bent on coming here.”
“Well, why not? It’s a fascinating spot.”
“Perhaps. But you wanted to come here because she was going to be here.”
“She? Who is she?”
“Mrs. Marshall. You—you’re infatuated with her.”
“For God’s sake, Christine, don’t make a fool of yourself. It’s not like you to be jealous.”
His bluster was a little uncertain. He exaggerated it.
She said:
“We’ve been so happy.”
“Happy? Of course we’ve been happy! We are happy. But we shan’t go on being happy if I can’t even speak to another woman without you kicking up a row.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yes, it is. In marriage one has got to have—well—friendships with other people. This suspicious attitude is all wrong. I—I can’t speak to a pretty woman without your jumping to the conclusion that I’m in love with her—”
He stopped. He shrugged his shoulders.
Christine Redfern said:
“You are in love with her….”
“Oh, don’t be a fool, Christine! I’ve—I’ve barely spoken to her.”
“That’s not true.”
“Don’t for goodness” sake get into the habit of being jealous of every pretty woman we come across.”
Christine Redfern said:
“She’s not just any pretty woman! She’s—she’s different! She’s a bad lot! Yes, she is. She’ll do you harm, Patrick, please, give it up. Let’s go away from here.”
Patrick Redfern stuck out his chin mutinously. He looked, somehow, very young as he said defiantly:
“Don’t be ridiculous, Christine. And—and don’t let’s quarrel about it.”
“I don’t want to quarrel.”
“Then behave like a reasonable human being. Come on, let’s go back to the hotel.”
He got up. There was a pause, then Christine Redfern got up too.
She said:
“Very well….”
In the recess adjoining, on the seat there, Hercule Poirot sat and shook his head sorrowfully.
Some people might have scrupulously removed themselves from earshot of a private conversation. But not Hercule Poirot. He had no scruples of that kind.
“Besides,” as he explained to his friend Hastings at a later date, “it was a question of murder.”
Hastings said, staring:
“But the murder hadn’t happened, then.”
Hercule Poirot sighed. He said:
“But already, mon cher, it was very clearly indicated.”
“Then why didn’t you stop it?”
And Hercule Poirot, with a sigh, said as he had said once before in Egypt, that if a person is determined to commit murder it is not easy to prevent them. He does not blame himself for what happened. It was, according to him, inevitable.
Three
Rosamund Darnley and Kenneth Marshall sat on the short springy turf 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:
“M—m, yes.”
He rolled over, sniffing at the short turf.
“Smells good. Remember the downs at Shipley?”
“Rather.”
“Pretty good, those days.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve 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 turf.
“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 dare say I could.”
Evil Under the Sun Page 3
