"It was crude, childish, superstitious, but it revealed one thing: the desire to kill. Was there any possibility that there had been more than a desire? Could Linda Marshall have actually killed her stepmother? At first sight it seemed as though she had a perfect alibi - but in actuality, as I have just pointed out, the time evidence was supplied by Linda herself. She could easily have declared the time to be a quarter of an hour later than it really was.
"It was quite possible once Mrs Redfern had left the beach for Linda to follow her up and then strike across the narrow neck of land to the ladder, hurry down it, meet her stepmother there, strangle her and return up the ladder before the boat containing Miss Brewster and Patrick Redfern came in sight. She could then return to Gull Cove, take her bathe and return to the hotel at her leisure.
"But that entailed two things. She must have definite knowledge that Arlena Marshall would be at Pixy Cove and she must be physically capable of the deed. Well, the first was quite possible - if Linda Marshall had written a note to Arlena herself in some one else's name. As to the second, Linda has very large strong hands. They are as large as a man's. As to the strength she is at the age when one is prone to be mentally unbalanced. Mental derangement often is accompanied by unusual strength. There was one other small point. Linda Marshall's mother had actually been accused and tried for murder."
Kenneth Marshall lifted his head. He said fiercely: "She was also acquitted."
"She was acquitted," Poirot agreed. Marshall said: "And I'll tell you this, M. Poirot. Ruth - my wife - was innocent. That I know with complete and absolute certainty. In the intimacy of our life I could not have been deceived. She was an innocent victim of circumstance." He paused: "And I don't believe that Linda killed Arlena. It's ridiculous - absurd!"
Poirot said: "Do you believe that letter, then, to be a forgery?"
Marshall held out his hand for it and Weston gave it to him. Marshall studied it attentively. "No," he said unwillingly. "I believe Linda did write this."
Poirot said: "Then if she wrote it, there are only two explanations. Either she wrote it in all good faith, knowing herself to be the murderess or - or, I say - she wrote it deliberately to shield some one else, some one whom she feared was suspected."
Kenneth Marshall said: "You mean me?"
"It is possible, is it not?"
Marshall considered for a moment or two, then he said quietly: "No, I think this idea is absurd. Linda may have realized that I was regarded with suspicion at first. But she knew definitely by now that that was over and done with - that the police had accepted my alibi and turned their attention elsewhere."
Poirot said: "And supposing that it was not so much that she thought that you were suspected as that she knew you were guilty."
Marshall started at him. He gave a short laugh. "That's absurd."
Poirot said: "I wonder. There are, you know, several possibilities about Mrs Marshall's death. There is the theory that she was being blackmailed, that she went that morning to meet the blackmailer and that the blackmailer killed her. There is the theory that Pixy Cove and Cave were being used for drug-running and that she was killed because she accidentally learned something about that. The is a third possibility - that she was killed by a religious maniac. And there is a fourth possibility - you stood to gain a lot of money by your wife's death, Captain Marshall?"
"I've just told you -"
"Yes, yes - I agree that it is impossible that you could have killed your wife - if you were acting alone. But supposing someone helped you?"
"What the devil do you mean?" The quiet man was roused at last. He half rose from his chair. His voice was menacing. There was a hard angry light in his eyes.
Poirot said: "I mean that this is not a crime that was committed single-handed. Two people were in it. It is quite true that you could not have typed that letter and at the same time gone to the cove - but there would have been time for you to have jotted down that letter in shorthand - and for some one else to have typed it in your room while you yourself were absent on your murderous errand."
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 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 obviously upset and surprised by her non-appearance. 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 should 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...
Chapter 13
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 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 focussed in the person of Arlena Marshall and practically every one present agreed with him.
"But to my mind, though evil was present, it was not centralized in Arlena Marshall at all. It was connected with her, yes - but in a totally different way. I saw her, first, last and all the time, as an eternal and predestined victim. Because she was beautiful, because she had glamour, because men turned their heads to look at her, it was assumed that she was the type of woman who wrecked lives and destroyed souls. But I saw her very differently. It was not she who fatally attracted men - it was men who fatally attracted her. She was the type of woman whom men care for easily and of whom they as easily tire. And everything that I was told or found out about her strengthened my conviction on this point. The first thing that was mentioned about her was how the man in whose divorce case she had been cited refused to marry her. It was then that Captain Marshall, one of those incurably chivalrous men, stepped in and asked her to marry him. To a shy retiring man of Captain Marshall's type, a public ordeal of any kind would be the worst torture - hence his love and pity for his first wife who was publicly accused and tried for a murder she had not committed. He married her and found himself amply justified in his estimate of her character. After her death another beautiful woman, perhaps something of the same type (since Linda has red hair which she probably inherited from her mother) is held up to public ignominy. Again Marshall performs a rescue act. But this time he finds little to sustain his infatuation. Arlena is stupid, unworthy of his sympathy and protection, mindless. Nevertheless I think he always had a fairly true vision of her. Long after he ceased to love her and was irked by her presence, he remained sorry for her. She was to him like a child who cannot get farther than a certain page in the book of life.
"I saw in Arlena Marshall with her passion for men, a predestined prey for an unscrupulous man of a certain type. In Patrick Redfern, with his good looks, his easy assurance, his undeniable charm for women, I recognized at once that type. The adventurer who makes his living, one way or another, out of women. Looking on from my place on the beach I was quite certain that Arlena was Patrick's victim, not the other way about. And I associated that focus of evil with Patrick Redfern not with Arlena Marshall.
"Arlena had recently come into a large sum of money, left her by an elderly admirer who had not had time to grow tired of her. She was the type of woman who is invariably defrauded of money by some man or other. Miss Brewster mentioned a young man who had been 'ruined' by Arlena, but a letter from him which was found in her room, though it expressed a wish (which cost nothing) to cover her with jewels, in actual fact acknowledged a cheque from her by means of which he hoped to escape prosecution. A clear case of a young waster sponging on her. I have no doubt that Patrick Redfern found it easy to induce her to hand him large sums from time to time 'for investment.' He probably dazzled her with stories of great opportunities - how he would make her fortune and his own. Unprotected women, living alone, are easy preys to that type of man - and he usually escapes scot-free with the booty. If, however, there is a husband, or a brother, or a father about, things are apt to take an unpleasant turn for the swindler. Once Captain Marshall was to find out what had happened to his wife's fortune, Patrick Redfern might expect short shrift. That did not worry him, however, because he contemplated quite calmly doing away with her when he judged it necessary - encouraged by having already got away with one murder - that of a young woman whom he had married in the name of Corrigan and whom he had persuaded to insure her life for a large sum.
"In his plans he was aided and abetted by the young woman who down here passed as his wife and to whom he was genuinely attached. A young woman as unlike the type of his victims as could well be imagined - cool, calm, passionless, but steadfastly loyal to him and an actress of no mean ability. From the time of her arrival here Christine Redfern played the part, the part of the 'poor little wife' - frail, helpless, an intellectual rather than athletic. Think of the points she made one after another. Her tendency to blister in the sun and her consequent white skin, her giddiness at heights - stories of getting stuck on Milan Cathedral, etc. An emphasis on her frailty and delicacy - nearly every one spoke of her as a 'little woman.' She was actually as tall as Arlena Marshall but with very small hands and feet. She spoke of herself as a former schoolteacher and thereby emphasized an impression of book learning and lack of athletic prowess. Actually it is quite true that she had worked in a school, but the position she held there was that of games mistress and she was an extremely active young woman who could climb like a cat and run like an athlete.
"The crime itself was perfectly planned and timed. It was, as I mentioned before, a very slick crime. The timing was a work of genius. First of all there were certain preliminary scenes - one played on the cliff ledge when they knew me to be occupying the next recess - a conventional jealous wife dialogue between her and her husband. Later she played the same part in a scene with me. At the time I remember a vague feeling of having read all this in a book. It did not seem real. Because, of course, it was not real. Then came the day of the crime. It was a fine day - an essential. Redfern's first act was to slip out very early - by the balcony door which he unlocked from the inside (if found open it would only be thought some one had gone for an early bathe). Under his bathingwrap he concealed a green Chinese hat, the duplicate of the one Arlena was in the habit of wearing. He slipped across the island, down the ladder and stowed it away in an appointed place behind some rocks. Part I.
