скачать книгу бесплатно
‘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.
‘What are you looking at so steadily?’
Hercule Poirot replied: ‘I am looking at the exception. At the one man who did not look up when she passed.’
Major Barry followed his gaze to where it rested on a man of about forty, fair-haired and sun-tanned. He had a quiet pleasant face and was sitting on the beach smoking a pipe and reading The Times.
‘Oh, that!’ said Major Barry. ‘That’s the husband, my boy. That’s Marshall.’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘Yes, I know.’
Major Barry chuckled. He himself was a bachelor. He was accustomed to think of The Husband in three lights only—as ‘the Obstacle’, ‘the Inconvenience’ or ‘the Safeguard’.
He said:
‘Seems a nice fellow. Quiet. Wonder if my Times has come?’
He got up and went up towards the hotel.
Poirot’s glance shifted slowly to the face of Stephen Lane.
Stephen Lane was watching Arlena Marshall and Patrick Redfern. He turned suddenly to Poirot. There was a stern fanatical light in his eyes.
He said:
‘That woman is evil through and through. Do you doubt it?’
Poirot said slowly:
‘It is difficult to be sure.’
Stephen Lane said:
‘But, man alive, don’t you feel it in the air? All round you? The presence of Evil.’
Slowly, Hercule Poirot nodded his head.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_decaae8b-f03e-5fe6-b58e-935765dd0234)
When Rosamund Darnley came and sat down by him, Hercule Poirot made no attempt to disguise his pleasure.
As he has since admitted, he admired Rosamund Darnley as much as any woman he had ever met. He liked her distinction, the graceful lines of her figure, the alert proud carriage of her head. He liked the neat sleek waves of her dark hair and the ironic quality of her smile.
She was wearing a dress of some navy blue material with touches of white. It looked very simple owing to the expensive severity of its line. Rosamund Darnley as Rose Mond Ltd was one of London’s best-known dressmakers.
She said:
‘I don’t think I like this place. I’m wondering why I came here!’
‘You have been here before, have you not?’
‘Yes, two years ago, at Easter. There weren’t so many people then.’
Hercule Poirot looked at her. He said gently:
‘Something has occurred to worry you. That is right, is it not?’
She nodded. Her foot swung to and fro. She stared down at it. She said:
‘I’ve met a ghost. That’s what it is.’
‘A ghost, Mademoiselle?’
‘Yes.’
‘The ghost of what? Or of whom?’
‘Oh, the ghost of myself.’
Poirot asked gently:
‘Was it a painful ghost?’
‘Unexpectedly painful. It took me back, you know…’
She paused, musing. Then she said.
‘Imagine my childhood. No, you can’t! You’re not English!’
Poirot asked:
‘Was it a very English childhood?’
‘Oh, incredibly so! The country—a big shabby house—horses, dogs—walks in the rain—wood fires—apples in the orchard—lack of money—old tweeds—evening dresses that went on from year to year—a neglected garden—with Michaelmas daisies coming out like great banners in the autumn…’
Poirot asked gently:
‘And you want to go back?’
Rosamund Darnley shook her head. She said:
‘One can’t go back, can one? That—never. But I’d like to have gone on—a different way.’
Poirot said:
‘I wonder.’
Rosamund Darnley laughed.
