Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot 24)

Hercule Poirot looked towards Rosamund Darnley. He said:

“Miss Darnley states that she left Sunny Ledge at ten minutes past eleven and saw you typing in your room. But just about that time Mr. Gardener went up to the hotel to fetch a skein of wool for his wife. He did not meet Miss Darnley or see her. That is rather remarkable. It looks as though either Miss Darnley never left Sunny Ledge, or else she had left it much earlier and was in your room typing industriously. Another point, you stated that when Miss Darnley looked into your room at a quarter past eleven you saw her in the mirror. But on the day of the murder your typewriter and papers were all on the writing desk across the corner of the room, whereas the mirror was between the windows. So that statement was a deliberate lie. Later, you moved your typewriter to the table under the mirror so as to substantiate your story—but it was too late. I was aware that both you and Miss Darnley had lied.”

Rosamund Darnley spoke. Her voice was low and clear.

She said:

“How devilishly ingenious you are!”

Hercule Poirot said, raising his voice:

“But not so devilish and so ingenious as the man who killed Arlena Marshall! Think back for a moment. Who did I think—who did everybody think—that Arlena Marshall had gone to meet that morning? We all jumped to the same conclusion. Patrick Redfern. It was not to meet a blackmailer that she went. Her face alone would have told me that. Oh no, it was a lover she was going to meet—or thought she was going to meet.

“Yes, I was quite sure of that. Arlena Marshall was going to meet Patrick Redfern. But a minute later Patrick Redfern appeared on the beach and was obviously looking for her. So what then?”

Patrick Redfern said with subdued anger:

“Some devil used my name.”

Poirot said:

“You were very obviously upset and surprised by her nonappearance. Almost too obviously, perhaps. It is my theory, Mr. Redfern, that she went to Pixy Cove to meet you, and that she did meet you, and that you killed her there as you had planned to do.”

Patrick Redfern stared. He said in his high good-humoured Irish voice:

“Is it daft you are? I was with you on the beach until I went round in the boat with Miss Brewster and found her dead.”

Hercule Poirot said:

“You killed her after Miss Brewster had gone off in the boat to fetch the police. Arlena Marshall was not dead when you got to the beach. She was waiting hidden in the cave until the coast could be clear.”

“But the body! Miss Brewster and I both saw the body.”

“A body—yes. But not a dead body. The live body of the woman who helped you, her arms and legs stained with tan, her face hidden by a green cardboard hat. Christine, your wife (or possibly not your wife—but still your partner), helping you to commit this crime as she helped you to commit that crime in the past when she “discovered” the body of Alice Corrigan at least twenty minutes before Alice Corrigan died—killed by her husband Edward Corrigan—you!”

Christine spoke. Her voice was sharp—cold. She said:

“Be careful, Patrick, don’t lose your temper.”

Poirot said:

“You will be interested to hear that both you and your wife Christine were easily recognized and picked out by the Surrey police from a group of people photographed here. They identified you both at once as Edward Corrigan and Christine Deverill, the young woman who found the body.”

Patrick Redfern had risen. His handsome face was transformed, suffused with blood, blind with rage. It was the face of a killer—of a tiger. He yelled:

“You damned interfering murdering lousy little worm!”

He hurled himself forward, his fingers stretching and curling, his voice raving curses, as he fastened his fingers round Hercule Poirot’s throat….

Thirteen

Poirot said reflectively:

“It was on a morning when we were sitting out here that we talked of suntanned bodies lying like meat upon a slab, and it was then that I reflected how little difference there was between one body and another. If one looked closely and appraisingly—yes—but to the casual glance? One moderately well-made young woman is very like another. Two brown legs, two brown arms, a little piece of bathing suit in between—just a body lying out in the sun. When a woman walks, when she speaks, laughs, turns her head, moves a hand—then, yes then, there is personality—individuality. But in the sun ritual—no.

“It was that day that we spoke of evil—evil under the sun as Mr. Lane put it. Mr. Lane is a very sensitive person—evil affects him—he perceives its presence—but though he is a good recording instrument, he did not really know exactly where the evil was. To him, evil was focused in the person of Arlena Marshall, and practically everyone present agreed with him.