Evil Under the Sun

‘Kenneth’s a fool—an utter fool where women are concerned! Do you remember the Martingdale case?’

Poirot frowned.

‘Martingdale? Martingdale? Arsenic, was it not?’

‘Yes. Seventeen or eighteen years ago. The woman was tried for the murder of her husband.’

‘And he was proved to have been an arsenic eater and she was acquitted?’

‘That’s right. Well, after her acquittal, Ken married her. That’s the sort of damn silly thing he does.’

Hercule Poirot murmured:

‘But if she was innocent?’

Rosamund Darnley said impatiently:

‘Oh, I dare say she was innocent. Nobody really knows! But there are plenty of women to marry in the world without going out of your way to marry one who’s stood her trial for murder.’

Poirot said nothing. Perhaps he knew that if he kept silence Rosamund Darnley would go on. She did so.

‘He was very young, of course, only just twenty-one. He was crazy about her. She died when Linda was born—a year after their marriage. I believe Ken was terribly cut up by her death. Afterwards he racketed around a lot—trying to forget, I suppose.’

She paused.

‘And then came this business of Arlena Stuart. She was in Revue at the time. There was the Codrington divorce case. Lady Codrington divorced Codrington, citing Arlena Stuart. They say Lord Codrington was absolutely infatuated with her. It was understood they were to be married as soon as the decree was made absolute. Actually, when it came to it, he didn’t marry her. Turned her down flat. I believe she actually sued him for breach of promise. Anyway, the thing made a big stir at the time. The next thing that happens is that Ken goes and marries her. The fool—the complete fool!’

Hercule Poirot murmured:

‘A man might be excused such a folly—she is beautiful, Mademoiselle.’

‘Yes, there’s no doubt of that. There was another scandal about three years ago. Old Sir Roger Erskine left her every penny of his money. I should have thought that would have opened Ken’s eyes if anything would.’

‘And did it not?’

Rosamund Darnley shrugged her shoulders.

‘I tell you I’ve seen nothing of him for years. People say, though, that he took it with absolute equanimity. Why, I should like to know? Has he got an absolutely blind belief in her?’

There might be other reasons.’

‘Yes. Pride! Keeping a stiff upper lip! I don’t know what he really feels about her. Nobody does.’

‘And she? What does she feel about him?’

Rosamund stared at him.

She said:

‘She? She’s the world’s first gold-digger. And a man-eater as well! If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena! She’s that kind.’

Poirot nodded his head slowly in complete agreement.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is true what you say…Her eyes look for one thing only—men.’

Rosamund said:

‘She’s got her eye on Patrick Redfern now. He’s a good-looking man—and rather the simple kind—you know, fond of his wife, and not a philanderer. That’s the kind that’s meat and drink to Arlena. I like little Mrs Redfern—she’s nice-looking in her fair washed-out way—but I don’t think she’ll stand a dog’s chance against that man-eating tiger, Arlena.’

Poirot said:

‘No, it is as you say.’

He looked distressed.

Rosamund said:

‘Christine Redfern was a school teacher, I believe. She’s the kind that thinks that mind has a pull over matter. She’s got a rude shock coming to her.’

Poirot shook his head vexedly.

Rosamund got up. She said:

‘It’s a shame, you know.’ She added vaguely: ‘Somebody ought to do something about it.’

II

Linda Marshall was examining her face dispassionately in her bedroom mirror. She disliked her face very much. At this minute it seemed to her to be mostly bones and freckles. She noted with distaste her heavy bush of soft brown hair (mouse, she called it in her own mind), her greenish-grey eyes, her high cheek-bones and the long aggressive line of the chin. Her mouth and teeth weren’t perhaps quite so bad—but what were teeth after all? And was that a spot coming on the side of her nose?

She decided with relief that it wasn’t a spot. She thought to herself:

‘It’s awful to be sixteen—simply awful.’

One didn’t, somehow, know where one was. Linda was as awkward as a young colt and as prickly as a hedgehog. She was conscious the whole time of her ungainliness and of the fact that she was neither one thing nor the other. It hadn’t been so bad at school. But now she had left school. Nobody seemed to know quite what she was going to do next. Her father talked vaguely of sending her to Paris next winter. Linda didn’t want to go to Paris—but then she didn’t want to be at home either. She’d never realized properly, somehow, until now, how very much she disliked Arlena.

Linda’s young face grew tense, her green eyes hardened.

Arlena…

She thought to herself:

‘She’s a beast—a beast…’

Stepmothers! It was rotten to have a stepmother, everybody said so. And it was true! Not that Arlena was unkind to her. Most of the time she hardly noticed the girl. But when she did, there was a contemptuous amusement in her glance, in her words. The finished grace and poise of Arlena’s movements emphasized Linda’s own adolescent clumsiness. With Arlena about, one felt, shamingly, just how immature and crude one was.

But it wasn’t that only. No, it wasn’t only that.

Linda groped haltingly in the recesses of her mind. She wasn’t very good at sorting out her emotions and labelling them. It was something that Arlena did to people—to the house—