Evil Under the Sun

‘Horace Blatt? It’s my opinion, sir, that there’s definitely something fishy there. Pays income-tax on a sum far exceeding what he makes out of his hardware business. And mind you, he’s a slippery customer. He could probably cook up a reasonable statement-he gambles a bit on the Stock Exchange, and he’s in with one or two shady deals. Oh, yes, there may be plausible explanations, but there’s no getting away from it that he’s been making pretty big sums from unexplained sources for some years now.’

‘In fact,’ said Weston, ‘the idea is that Mr Horace Blatt is a successful blackmailer by profession?’

‘Either that, sir, or it’s dope. I saw Chief Inspector Ridgeway who’s in charge of the dope business, and he was no end keen. Seems there’s been a good bit of heroin coming in lately. They’re on to the small distributors, and they know more or less who’s running it the other end, but it’s the way it’s coming into the country that’s baffled them so far.’

Weston said:

‘If the Marshall woman’s death is the result of her getting mixed up, innocently or otherwise, with the dope-running stunt, then we’d better hand the whole thing over to Scotland Yard. It’s their pigeon. Eh? What do you say?’

Inspector Colgate said rather regretfully:

‘I’m afraid you’re right, sir. If it’s dope, then it’s a case for the Yard.’

Weston said after a moment or two’s thought: 

‘It really seems the most likely explanation.’

Colgate nodded gloomily.

‘Yes, it does. Marshall’s right out of it-though I did get some information that might have been useful if his alibi hadn’t been so good. Seems his firm is very near the rocks. Not his fault or his partner’s, just the general result of the crisis last year and the general state of trade and finance. And as far as he knew, he’d come into fifty thousand pounds if his wife died. And fifty thousand would have been a very useful sum.’

He sighed.

‘Seems a pity when a man’s got two perfectly good motives for murder, that he can be proved to have had nothing to do with it!’

Weston smiled.

‘Cheer up, Colgate. There’s still a chance we may distinguish ourselves. There’s the blackmail angle still and there’s the batty parson, but, personally, I think the dope solution is far the most likely.’ He added: ‘And if it was one of the dope gang who put her out we’ll have been instrumental in helping Scotland Yard to solve the dope problem. In fact, take it all round, one way or another, we’ve done pretty well.’

An unwilling smile showed on Colgate’s face.

He said:

‘Well, that’s the lot, sir. By the way, I checked up on the writer of that letter we found in her room. The one signed J.N. Nothing doing. He’s in China safe enough. Same chap as Miss Brewster was telling us about. Bit of a young scallywag. I’ve checked up on the rest of Mrs Marshall’s friends. No leads there. Everything there is to get, we’ve got, sir.’

Weston said:

‘So now it’s up to us.’ He paused and then added: ‘Seen anything of our Belgian colleague? Does he know all you’ve told me?’

Colgate said with a grin:

‘He’s a queer little cuss, isn’t he? D’you know what he asked me day before yesterday? He wanted particulars of any cases of strangulation in the last three years.’

Colonel Weston sat up.

‘He did, did he? Now I wonder-’ he paused a minute. ‘When did you say the Reverend Stephen Lane went into that mental home?’

‘A year ago last Easter, sir.’

Colonel Weston was thinking deeply. He said:

‘There was a case-body of a young woman found somewhere near Bagshot. Going to meet her husband somewhere and never turned up. And there was what the papers called the Lonely Copse Mystery. Both in Surrey if I remember rightly.’

His eyes met those of his Inspector. Colgate said:

‘Surrey? My word, sir, it fits, doesn’t it? I wonder…’

II

Hercule Poirot sat on the turf on the summit of the island.

A little to his left was the beginning of the steel ladder that led down to Pixy Cove. There were several rough boulders near the head of the ladder, he noted, forming easy concealment for anyone who proposed to descend to the beach below. Of the beach itself little could be seen from the top owing to the overhang of the cliff.

Hercule Poirot nodded his head gravely.

The pieces of his jig-saw were fitting into position.

Mentally he went over those pieces, considering each as a detached item.

A morning on the bathing beach some few days before Arlena Marshall’s death.

One, two, three, four, five separate remarks uttered on that morning.

The evening of a bridge game. He, Patrick Redfern and Rosamund Darnley had been at the table. Christine had wandered out while dummy and had overheard a certain conversation. Who else had been in the lounge at that time? Who had been absent?

The evening before the crime. The conversation he had had with Christine on the cliff and the scene he had witnessed on his way back to the hotel. 

Gabrielle No 8.

A pair of scissors.

A broken pipe stem.

A bottle thrown from a window.

A green calendar.

A packet of candles.

A mirror and a typewriter.

A skein of magenta wool.

A girl’s wristwatch.