Evil Under the Sun

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’sMurder in the Cathedral. Bernard Shaw’sSt Joan. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.The Burning Court, by Dickson Carr.

Poirot took out two books.The Young Stepmother andWilliam 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.

Next to it again was Rosamund Darnley’s room, and here he lingered for a moment in the sheer pleasure of the owner’s personality.

He noted the few books that lay on the table next to the bed, the expensive simplicity of the toilet set on the dressing-table. And there came gently to his nostrils the elusive expensive perfume that Rosamund Darnley used.

Next to Rosamund Darnley’s room at the northern end of the corridor was an open window leading to a balcony from which an outside stair led down to the rocks below.

Weston said: 

‘That’s the way people go down to bathe before breakfast-that is, if they bathe off the rocks as most of them do.’

Interest came into Hercule Poirot’s eyes. He stepped outside and looked down.

Below, a path led to steps cut zigzag leading down the rocks to the sea. There was also a path that led round the hotel to the left. He said:

‘One could go down these stairs, go to the left round the hotel and join the main path up from the causeway.’

Weston nodded. He amplified Poirot’s statement.

‘One could go right across the island without going through the hotel at all.’ He added: ‘But one might still be seen from a window.’

‘What window?’

‘Two of the public bathrooms look out that way-north-and the staff bathroom, and the cloakrooms on the ground floor. Also the billiard room.’

Poirot nodded. He said:

‘And all the former have frosted glass windows, and one does not play billiards on a fine morning.’

‘Exactly.’

Weston paused and said:

‘If he did it, that’s the way he went.’

‘You mean Captain Marshall?’

‘Yes. Blackmail, or no blackmail. I still feel it points to him. And his manner-well, his manner is unfortunate.’

Hercule Poirot said dryly:

‘Perhaps-but a manner does not make a murderer!’

Weston said:

‘Then you think he’s out of it?’

Poirot shook his head. He said:

‘No, I would not say that.’

Weston said:

‘We’ll see what Colgate can make out of the typewriting alibi. In the meantime I’ve got the chambermaid of this floor waiting to be interviewed. A good deal may depend on her evidence.’

The chambermaid was a woman of thirty, brisk, efficient and intelligent. Her answers came readily.