Evil Under the Sun

‘I’m coming.’

He went a little way along the beach to retrieve the towel he had left there.

It was then that a woman came down past them from the hotel to the beach.

Her arrival had all the importance of a stage entrance.

Moreover, she walked as though she knew it. There was no self-consciousness apparent. It would seem that she was too used to the invariable effect her presence produced.

She was tall and slender. She wore a simple backless white bathing dress and every inch of her exposed body was tanned a beautiful even shade of bronze. She was as perfect as a statue. Her hair was a rich flaming auburn curling richly and intimately into her neck. Her face had that slight hardness which is seen when thirty years have come and gone, but the whole effect of her was one of youth—of superb and triumphant vitality. There was a Chinese immobility about her face, and an upward slant of the dark blue eyes. On her head she wore a fantastic Chinese hat of jade green cardboard.

There was that about her which made every other woman on the beach seem faded and insignificant. And with equal inevitability, the eye of every male present was drawn and riveted on her.

The eyes of Hercule Poirot opened, his moustache quivered appreciatively, Major Barry sat up and his protuberant eyes bulged even farther with excitement; on Poirot’s left the Reverend Stephen Lane drew in his breath with a little hiss and his figure stiffened.

Major Barry said in a hoarse whisper:

‘Arlena Stuart (that’s who she was before she married Marshall)—I saw her in Come and Go before she left the stage. Something worth looking at, eh?’

Christine Redfern said slowly and her voice was cold: ‘She’s handsome—yes. I think—she looks rather a beast!’

Emily Brewster said abruptly:

‘You talked about evil just now, M. Poirot. Now to my mind that woman’s a personification of evil! She’s a bad lot through and through. I happen to know a good deal about her.’

Major Barry said reminiscently:

‘I remember a gal out in Simla. She had red hair too. Wife of a subaltern. Did she set the place by the ears? I’ll say she did! Men went mad about her! All the women, of course, would have liked to gouge her eyes out! She upset the apple cart in more homes than one.’

He chuckled reminiscently.

‘Husband was a nice quiet fellow. Worshipped the ground she walked on. Never saw a thing—or made out he didn’t.’

Stephen Lane said in a low voice full of intense feeling:

‘Such women are a menace—a menace to—’

He stopped.

Arlena Stuart had come to the water’s edge. Two young men, little more than boys, had sprung up and come eagerly towards her. She stood smiling at them.

Her eyes slid past them to where Patrick Redfern was coming along the beach.

It was, Hercule Poirot thought, like watching the needle of a compass. Patrick Redfern was deflected, his feet changed their direction. The needle, do what it will, must obey the law of magnetism and turn to the north. Patrick Redfern’s feet brought him to Arlena Stuart.

She stood smiling at him. Then she moved slowly along the beach by the side of the waves. Patrick Redfern went with her. She stretched herself out by a rock. Redfern dropped to the shingle beside her.

Abruptly, Christine Redfern got up and went into the hotel.

V

There was an uncomfortable little silence after she had left.

Then Emily Brewster said:

‘It’s rather too bad. She’s a nice little thing. They’ve only been married a year or two.’

‘Gal I was speaking of,’ said Major Barry, ‘the one in Simla. She upset a couple of really happy marriages. Seemed a pity, what?’

‘There’s a type of woman,’ said Miss Brewster, ‘who likes smashing up homes.’ She added after a minute or two, ‘Patrick Redfern’s a fool!’

Hercule Poirot said nothing. He was gazing down the beach, but he was not looking at Patrick Redfern and Arlena Stuart.

Miss Brewster said:

‘Well, I’d better go and get hold of my boat.’

She left them.

Major Barry turned his boiled gooseberry eyes with mild curiosity on Poirot.

‘Well, Poirot,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about? You’ve not opened your mouth. What do you think of the siren? Pretty hot?’

Poirot said:

‘C’est possible.’

‘Now then, you old dog. I know you Frenchmen!’

Poirot said coldly:

‘I am not a Frenchman!’

‘Well, don’t tell me you haven’t got an eye for a pretty girl! What do you think of her, eh?’

Hercule Poirot said:

‘She is not young.’

‘What does that matter? A woman’s as old as she looks! Her looks are all right.’

Hercule Poirot nodded. He said:

‘Yes, she is beautiful. But it is not beauty that counts in the end. It is not beauty that makes every head (except one) turn on the beach to look at her.’

‘It’s IT, my boy,’ said the Major. ‘That’s what it is—IT.’

Then he said with sudden curiosity.