Evil Under the Sun (12 page)

Colonel Weston said sharply:

“Well?”

Gladys Narracott said slowly:

“I did think sometimes that Mrs. Marshall was frightened of her husband knowing.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It wasn't anything definite, sir. It was only I felt—that some
times she was—afraid of him. He was a very quiet gentleman but he wasn't—he wasn't
easy.
”

Weston said:

“But you've nothing definite to go on? Nothing either of them ever said to each other.”

Slowly Gladys Narracott shook her head.

Weston sighed. He went on.

“Now, as to letters received by Mrs. Marshall this morning. Can you tell us anything about those?”

“There were about six or seven, sir. I couldn't say exactly.”

“Did you take them up to her?”

“Yes, sir. I got them from the office as usual and put them on her breakfast tray.”

“Do you remember anything about the look of them?”

The girl shook her head.

“They were just ordinary-looking letters. Some of them were bills and circulars, I think, because they were torn up on the tray.”

“What happened to them?”

“They went into the dustbin, sir. One of the police gentlemen is going through that now.”

Weston nodded.

“And the contents of the wastepaper baskets, where are they?”

“They'll be in the dustbin too.”

Weston said: “H'm—well, I think that is all at present.” He looked inquiringly at Poirot.

Poirot leaned forward.

“When you did Miss Linda Marshall's room this morning, did you do the fireplace?”

“There wasn't anything to do, sir. There had been no fire lit.”

“And there was nothing in the fireplace itself?”

“No sir, it was perfectly all right.”

“What time did you do her room?”

“About a quarter past nine, sir, when she'd gone down to breakfast.”

“Did she come up to her room after breakfast, do you know?”

“Yes, sir. She came up about a quarter to ten.”

“Did she stay in her room?”

“I think so, sir. She came out, hurrying rather, just before half past ten.”

“You didn't go into her room again?”

“No, sir. I had finished with it.”

Poirot nodded. He said:

“There is another thing I want to know. What people bathed before breakfast this morning?”

“I couldn't say about the other wing and the floor above. Only about this one.”

“That is all I want to know.”

“Well, sir, Captain Marshall and Mr. Redfern were the only ones this morning, I think. They always go down for an early dip.”

“Did you see them?”

“No, sir, but their wet bathing things were hanging over the balcony rail as usual.”

“Miss Linda Marshall did not bathe this morning?”

“No, sir. All her bathing dresses were quite dry.”

“Ah,” said Poirot. “That is what I wanted to know.”

Gladys Narracott volunteered:

“She does most mornings, sir.”

“And the other three, Miss Darnley, Mrs. Redfern and Mrs. Marshall?”

“Mrs. Marshall never, sir. Miss Darnley has once or twice, I think. Mrs. Redfern doesn't often bathe before breakfast—only when it's very hot, but she didn't this morning.”

Again Poirot nodded. Then he asked:

“I wonder if you have noticed whether a bottle is missing from any of the rooms you look after in this wing?”

“A bottle, sir? What kind of a bottle?”

“Unfortunately I do not know. But have you noticed—or would you be likely to notice—if one had gone?”

Gladys said frankly:

“I shouldn't from Mrs. Marshall's room, sir, and that's a fact. She has ever so many.”

“And the other rooms?”

“Well, I'm not sure about Miss Darnley. She has a good many creams and lotions. But from the other rooms, yes, I would, sir. I mean if I were to look special. If I were noticing, so to speak.”

“But you haven't actually noticed?”

“No, because I wasn't looking special, as I say.”

“Perhaps you would go and look now, then.”

“Certainly, sir.”

She left the room, her print dress rustling. Weston looked at Poirot. He said: “What's all this?”

Poirot murmured:

“My orderly mind, that is vexed by trifles! Miss Brewster, this morning, was bathing off the rocks before breakfast, and she says that a bottle was thrown from above and nearly hit her.
Eh bien,
I want to know who threw that bottle and why?”

“My dear man, any one may have chucked a bottle away.”

“Not at all. To begin with, it could only have been thrown from a window on the east side of the hotel—that is, one of the windows of the rooms we have just examined. Now I ask you, if you have an empty bottle on your dressing table or in your bathroom what do you do with it? I will tell you, you drop it into the wastepaper basket. You do not take the trouble to go out on your balcony and hurl it into the sea! For one thing you might hit someone, for another it would be too much trouble. No, you would only do that
if you did not want anyone to see that particular bottle.
”

Weston stared at him.

Weston said:

“I know that Chief Inspector Japp, whom I met over a case not long ago, always says you have a damned tortuous mind. You're not going to tell me now that Arlena Marshall wasn't strangled at all, but poisoned out of some mysterious bottle with a mysterious drug?”

“No, no, I do not think there was poison in that bottle.”

“Then what was there?”

“I do not know at all. That's why I am interested.”

Gladys Narracott came back. She was a little breathless. She said:

“I'm sorry, sir, but I can't find anything missing. I'm sure there's nothing gone from Captain Marshall's room, or Miss Linda Marshall's room, or Mr. and Mrs. Redfern's room, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing gone from Miss Darnley's either. But I couldn't say about Mrs. Marshall's. As I say, she's got such a lot.”

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

He said:

“No matter. We will leave it.”

Gladys Narracott said:

“Is there anything more, sir?”

She looked from one to the other of them.

Weston said:

“Don't think so. Thank you.”

Poirot said:

“I thank you, no. You are sure, are you not, that there is nothing—nothing at all, that you have forgotten to tell us?”

“About Mrs. Marshall, sir?”

“About anything at all. Anything unusual, out of the way, unexplained, slightly peculiar, rather curious—
enfin,
something that has made you say to yourself or to one of your colleagues: ‘That's funny!'?”

Gladys said doubtfully:

“Well, not the sort of thing that you would mean, sir.”

Hercule Poirot said:

“Never mind what I mean. You do not know what I mean. It is true, then, that you have said to yourself or to a colleague today, ‘that is funny!'?”

He brought out the three words with ironic detachment.

Gladys said:

“It was nothing really. Just a bath being run. And I did pass the remark to Elsie, downstairs, that it was funny somebody having a bath round about twelve o'clock.”

“Whose bath, who had a bath?”

“That I couldn't say, sir. We heard it going down the waste from this wing, that's all, and that's when I said what I did to Elsie.”

“You're sure it was a bath? Not one of the handbasins?”

“Oh! quite sure, sir. You can't mistake bathwater running away.”

Poirot displaying no further desire to keep her, Gladys Narracott was permitted to depart.

Weston said:

“You don't think this bath question is important, do you, Poirot? I mean, there's no point to it. No bloodstains or anything like that to wash off. That's the—” He hesitated.

Poirot cut in:

“That, you would say, is the advantage of strangulation! No bloodstains, no weapon—nothing to get rid of or conceal! Nothing is needed but physical strength—
and the soul of a killer!
”

His voice was so fierce, so charged with feeling, that Weston recoiled a little.

Hercule Poirot smiled at him apologetically.

“No one,” he said, “the bath is probably of no importance. Anyone may have had a bath. Mrs. Redfern before she went to play tennis, Captain Marshall, Miss Darnley. As I say, anyone. There is nothing in that.”

A police constable knocked at the door, and put in his head.

“It's Miss Darnley, sir. She says she'd like to see you again for a minute. There's something she forgot to tell you, she says.”

Weston said:

“We're coming down—now.”

III

The first person they saw was Colgate. His face was gloomy.

“Just a minute, sir.”

Weston and Poirot followed him into Mrs. Castle's office.

Colgate said:

“I've been checking up with Heald on this typewriting business. Not a doubt of it, it couldn't be done under an hour. Longer, if you had to stop and think here and there. That seems to me pretty well to settle it. And look at this letter.”

He held it out.

“My dear Marshall—Sorry to worry you on your holiday but an entirely unforseen situation has arisen over the Burley and Tender contracts…”

“Etcetera, etcetera,” said Colgate. “Dated the 24th—that's yesterday. Envelope postmarked yesterday evening E.C.1. and Leathercombe Bay this morning. Same typewriter used on envelope and in letter. And by the contents it was clearly impossible for Marshall to prepare his answer beforehand. The figures arise out of the ones in the letter—the whole thing is quite intricate.”

“H'm,” said Weston gloomily. “That seems to let Marshall out. We'll have to look elsewhere.” He added: “I've got to see Miss Darnley again. She's waiting now.”

Rosamund came in crisply. Her smile held an apologetic
nuance.

She said:

“I'm frightfully sorry. Probably it isn't worth bothering about. But one does forget things so.”

“Yes, Miss Darnley?”

The Chief Constable indicated a chair.

She shook her shapely black head.

“Oh, it isn't worth sitting down. It's simply this. I told you that I spent the morning lying out on Sunny Ledge. That isn't quite accurate. I forgot that once during the morning I went back to the hotel and out again.”

“What time was that, Miss Darnley?”

“It must have been about a quarter past eleven.”

“You went back to the hotel, you said?”

“Yes, I'd forgotten my glare glasses. At first I thought I wouldn't bother and then my eyes got tired and I decided to go in and get them.”

“You went straight to your room and out again?”

“Yes. At least, as a matter of fact, I just looked in on Ken—Captain Marshall. I heard his machine going and I thought it was so stupid of him to stay indoors typing on such a lovely day. I thought I'd tell him to come out.”

“And what did Captain Marshall say?”

Rosamund smiled rather shamefacedly.

“Well, when I opened the door he was typing so vigorously, and frowning and looking so concentrated, that I just went away quietly. I don't think he even saw me come in.”

“And that was—at what time, Miss Darnley?”

“Just about twenty past eleven. I noticed the clock in the hall as I went out again.”

IV

“And that puts the lid on it finally,” said Inspector Colgate. “The chambermaid heard him typing up till five minutes to eleven. Miss Darnley saw him at twenty minutes past, and the woman was dead at a quarter to twelve. He says he spent that hour typing in his room, and it seems quite clear that he
was
typing in his room. That washes Captain Marshall right out.”

He stopped, then looking at Poirot with some curiosity, he asked:

“M. Poirot's looking very serious over something.”

Poirot said thoughtfully:

“I was wondering why Miss Darnley suddenly volunteered this extra evidence.”

Inspector Colgate cocked his head alertly.

“Think there's something fishy about it? That it isn't just a question of ‘forgetting?'”

He considered for a minute or two, then he said slowly:

“Look here, sir, let's look at it this way. Supposing Miss Darnley wasn't on Sunny Ledge this morning as she says. That story's a lie. Now suppose that
after
telling us her story, she finds that somebody saw her somewhere else or alternatively that someone went to the Ledge and didn't find her there. Then she thinks up this story quick and comes and tells it to us to account for her absence. You'll notice that she was careful to say Captain Marshall didn't
see
her when she looked into his room.”

Poirot murmured:

“Yes, I noticed that.”

Weston said incredulously:

“Are you suggesting that Miss Darnley's mixed up in this? Nonsense, seems absurd to me. Why should she be?”

Inspector Colgate coughed.

He said:

“You'll remember what the American lady, Mrs. Gardener, said. She sort of hinted that Miss Darnley was sweet on Captain Marshall. There'd be a motive there, sir.”

Weston said impatiently:

“Arlena Marshall wasn't killed by a woman. It's a man we've got to look for. We've got to stick to the men in the case.”

Inspector Colgate sighed. He said:

“Yes, that's true, sir. We always come back to that, don't we?”

Weston went on:

“Better put a constable on to timing one or two things. From the hotel across the island to the top of the ladder. Let him do it running and walking. Same thing with the ladder itself. And somebody had better check the time it takes to go on a float from the bathing beach to the cove.”