Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot 24)

“She spent a good deal on clothes?”

“She must have done. 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 sceptical, 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 someone 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.