Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot 24)

“We’ll leave you to it, for a moment. We’ll just glance through the rest of the rooms. Everyone’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 then 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—”

II

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 trace 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.