Chapter 4
I
The morning of the 25th of August dawned bright and cloudless. It was a morning to tempt even an inveterate sluggard to rise early.
Several people rose early that morning at the Jolly Roger.
It was eight o’clock when Linda, sitting at her dressing-table, turned a little thick calf bound volume face downwards, sprawling it open and looked at her own face in the mirror.
Her lips were set tight together and the pupils of her eyes contracted.
She said below her breath:
‘I’ll do it…’
She slipped out of her pyjamas and into her bathing-dress. Over it she flung on a bath-robe and laced espadrilles on her feet.
II
Christine Redfern was standing in Linda’s room when the girl returned.
‘Oh, there you are,’ Christine exclaimed. ‘I thought you couldn’t be really up yet.’
Linda said:
‘No, I’ve been bathing.’
Noticing the parcel in her hand, Christine said with surprise:
‘The post has come early today.’
Linda flushed. With her habitual nervous clumsiness the parcel slipped from her hand. The flimsy string broke and some of the contents rolled over the floor.
Christine exclaimed:
‘What have you been buyingcandles for?’
But to Linda’s relief she did not wait for an answer, but went on, as she helped to pick the things up from the floor.
III
Rosamund Darnley, strolling out of the dining-room after a very late breakfast, was cannoned into by Linda as the latter came tearing down the stairs.
IV
Hercule Poirot breakfasted in his room as usual off coffee and rolls.
The beauty of the morning, however, tempted him to leave the hotel earlier than usual. It was ten o’clock, at least half an hour before his usual appearance, when he descended to the bathing beach. The beach itself was empty save for one person.
That person was Arlena Marshall.
Clad in her white bathing-dress, the green Chinese hat on her head, she was trying to launch a white wooden float. Poirot came gallantly to the rescue, completely immersing a pair of white suede shoes in doing so.
She thanked him with one of those sideways glances of hers.
Just as she was pushing off, she called him.
‘M. Poirot?’
Poirot leaped to the water’s edge.
‘Madame.’
Arlena Marshall said:
‘Do something for me, will you?’
‘Anything.’
She smiled at him. She murmured:
‘Don’t tell any one where I am.’ She made her glance appealing. ‘Every onewill follow me about so. I just want for once to bealone.’
She paddled off vigorously.
Poirot walked up the beach. He murmured to himself:
‘Ah ca, jamais!That,par exemple, I do not believe.’
He doubted if Arlena Stuart, to give her her stage name, had ever wanted to be alone in her life.
Hercule Poirot, that man of the world, knew better. Arlena Marshall was doubtless keeping a rendezvous, and Poirot had a very good idea with whom.
Or thought he had, but there he found himself proved wrong.
For just as she floated rounded the point of the bay and disappeared out of sight, Patrick Redfern closely followed by Kenneth Marshall, came striding down the beach from the hotel.
Marshall nodded to Poirot, ‘ ’Morning, Poirot. Seen my wife anywhere about?’
Poirot’s answer was diplomatic.
‘Has Madame then risen so early?’
Marshall said:
‘She’s not in her room.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Lovely day. I shall have a bathe right away. Got a lot of typing to do this morning.’
Patrick Redfern, less openly, was looking up and down the beach. He sat down near Poirot and prepared to wait for the arrival of his lady.
Poirot said:
‘And Madame Redfern? Has she too risen early?’
Patrick Redfern said:
‘Christine? Oh, she’s going off sketching. She’s rather keen on art just now.’
He spoke impatiently, his mind clearly elsewhere. As time passed he displayed his impatience for Arlena’s arrival only too crudely. At every footstep he turned an eager head to see who it was coming down from the hotel.
Disappointment followed disappointment.
First Mr and Mrs Gardener complete with knitting and book and then Miss Brewster arrived.
Mrs Gardener, industrious as ever, settled herself in her chair, and began to knit vigorously and talk at the same time.
‘Well. M. Poirot. The beach seems very deserted this morning. Whereis everybody?’
Poirot replied that the Mastermans and the Cowans, two families with young people in them, had gone off on an all-day sailing excursion.
‘Why that certainly does make all the difference, not having them about laughing and calling out. And only one person bathing, Captain Marshall.’
Marshall had just finished his swim. He came up the beach swinging his towel.
‘Pretty good in the sea this morning,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately I’ve got a lot of work to do. Must go and get on with it.’
‘Why, if that isn’t too bad, Captain Marshall. On a beautiful day like this, too. My, wasn’t yesterday too terrible? I said to Mr Gardener that if the weather was going to continue like that we’d just have to leave. It’s the melancholy, you know, with the mist right up around the island. Gives you a kind of ghostly feeling, but then I’ve always been very susceptible to atmosphere ever since I was a child. Sometimes, you know, I’d feel I just had to scream and scream. And that, of course, was very trying to my parents. But my mother was a lovely woman and she said to my father, “Sinclair, if the child feels like that, we must let her do it. Screaming is her way of expressing herself.” And of course, my father agreed. He was devoted to my mother and just did everything she said. They were a perfectly lovely couple, as I’m sure Mr Gardener will agree. They were a very remarkable couple, weren’t they, Odell?’
‘Yes, darling,’ said Mr Gardener.
‘And where’s your girl this morning, Captain Marshall?’
‘Linda? I don’t know. I expect she’s mooning round the island somewhere.’
‘You know, Captain Marshall, that girl looks kind of peaky to me. She needs feeding up and very very sympathetic treatment.’
Kenneth Marshall said curtly:
‘Linda’s all right.’
He went up to the hotel.
Patrick Redfern did not go into the water. He sat about, frankly looking up towards the hotel. He was beginning to look a shade sulky.
Miss Brewster was brisk and cheerful when she arrived.
V
It was some five minutes later that Patrick Redfern said:
‘Going for your row this morning, Miss Brewster? Mind if I come with you?’
Miss Brewster said heartily:
‘Delighted.’
‘Let’s row right round the island,’ proposed Redfern.
Miss Brewster consulted her watch.
‘Shall we have time? Oh yes, it’s not half-past eleven yet. Come on, then, let’s start.’
VI
It was one of those moments when time stands still.
With an odd feeling of unreality Emily Brewster heard herself saying:
‘We musn’t touch anything…Not until the police come.’