Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot 24)

“That wasn’t so bad, was it, Ken?”

He did not answer at once. Perhaps he was conscious of the staring eyes of the villagers, the fingers that nearly pointed to him and only just did not quite do so!

“That’s ’im, my dear.” “See, that’s ’er ’usband.” “That be the ’usband.” “Look, there ’e goes….”

The murmurs were not loud enough to reach his ears, but he was none the less sensitive to them. This was the modern-day pillory. The Press he had already encountered—self-confident, persuasive young men, adept at battering down his wall of silence of “Nothing to say” that he had endeavoured to erect. Even the curt monosyllables that he had uttered, thinking that they at least could not lead to misapprehension, had reappeared in his morning’s papers in a totally different guise. “Asked whether he agreed that the mystery of his wife’s death could only be explained on the assumption that a homicidal murderer had found his way on to the island, Captain Marshall declared that—” and so on and so forth.

Cameras had clicked ceaselessly. Now, at this minute, the well-known sound caught his ear. He half-turned—a smiling young man was nodding cheerfully, his purpose accomplished.

Rosamund murmured:

“Captain Marshall and a friend leaving the Red Bull after the inquest.”

Marshall winced.

Rosamund said:

“It’s no use, Ken! You’ve got to face it! I don’t mean just the fact of Arlena’s death—I mean all the attendant beastliness. The staring eyes and gossiping tongues, the fatuous interviews in the papers—and the best way to meet it is to find it funny! Come out with all the old inane cliches and curl a sardonic lip at them.”

He said:

“Is that your way?”

“Yes.” She paused. “It isn’t yours, I know. Protective colouring is your line. Remain rigidly nonactive and fade into the background! But you can’t do that here—you’ve no background to fade into. You s

tand out clear for all to see—like a striped tiger against a white backcloth. The husband of the murdered woman!”

“For God’s sake, Rosamund—”

She said gently:

“My dear, I’m trying to be good for you!”

They walked for a few steps in silence. Then Marshall said in a different voice:

“I know you are. I’m not really ungrateful, Rosamund.”

They had progressed beyond the limits of the village. Eyes followed them but there was no one very near. Rosamund Darnley’s voice dropped as she repeated a variant of her first remark.

“It didn’t really go so badly, did it?”

He was silent for a moment, then he said:

“I don’t know.”

“What do the police think?”

“They’re noncommittal.”

After a minute Rosamund said:

“That little man—Poirot—is he really taking an active interest!”

Kenneth Marshall said:

“Seemed to be sitting in the Chief Constable’s pocket all right the other day.”

“I know—but is he doing anything?”