Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot 24)

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.”

III

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 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 everyone 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 got to look at Rosamund Darnley to see she’s just frantic with brains. She could plan and carry out any moral 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?”