阳光下的罪恶18

IV

Hercule Poirot breakfasted in his room as usual off coffee and rolls.

The beauty of the morning, however, tempted¹ him to leave the hotel earlier than usual. It wasten o’clock, at least half an hour before his usual appearance, when he descended² to the bathingbeach. 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 awhite wooden float. Poirot came gallantly³ to the rescue, completely immersing a pair of whitesuède 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 one will follow meabout so. I just want for once to be alone.”

She paddled off vigorously.

Poirot walked up the beach. He murmured to himself:

“Ah ?a, jamais! That, par⁴ 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 arendezvous, 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, PatrickRedfern 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 andprepared 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 sketching⁵. She’s rather keen on art just now.”

He spoke⁶ impatiently, his mind clearly elsewhere. As time passed he displayed his impatiencefor Arlena’s arrival only too crudely. At every footstep he turned an eager head to see who it wascoming down from the hotel.

Disappointment followed disappointment.

First Mr. and Mrs. Gardener complete with knitting and book and then Miss Brewster arrived.

Mrs. Gardener, industrious⁷ as ever, settled herself in her chair, and began to knit vigorously andtalk at the same time.

“Well. M. Poirot. The beach seems very deserted⁸ this morning. Where is 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 callingout. 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. Mustgo and get on with it.”

“Why, if that isn’t too bad, Captain Marshall. On a beautiful day like this, too. My, wasn’tyesterday too terrible? I said to Mr. Gardener that if the weather was going to continue like thatwe’d just have to leave. It’s the melancholy⁹, you know, with the mist right up around the island.

Gives you a kind of ghostly feeling, but then I’ve always been very susceptible¹⁰ to atmosphere eversince I was a child. Sometimes, you know, I’d feel I just had to scream and scream. And that, ofcourse, was very trying to my parents. But my mother was a lovely woman and she said to myfather, ‘Sinclair, if the child feels like that, we must let her do it. Screaming is her way ofexpressing herself.’ And of course, my father agreed. He was devoted¹¹ to my mother and just dideverything she said. They were a perfectly¹² lovely couple, as I’m sure Mr. Gardener will agree.

They were a very remarkable¹³ 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 andvery very sympathetic treatment.”

Kenneth Marshall said curtly¹⁴:

“Linda’s all right.”

He went up to the hotel.

Patrick Redfern did not go into the water. He sat about, frankly¹⁵ looking up towards the hotel.

He was beginning to look a shade sulky.

Miss Brewster was brisk and cheerful when she arrived.

The conversation was much as it had been on a previous morning. Gentle yapping from Mrs.

Gardener and short staccato barks from Miss Brewster.

She remarked at last: “Beach seems a bit empty. Everyone off on excursions?”

Mrs. Gardener said:

“I was saying to Mr. Gardener only this morning that we simply must make an excursion toDartmoor. It’s quite near and the associations are all so romantic. And I’d like to see that convictprison—Princetown, isn’t it? I think we’d better fix up right away and go there tomorrow, Odell.”

Mr. Gardener said:

“Yes, darling.”

Hercule Poirot said to Miss Brewster.

“You are going to bathe, Mademoiselle?”

“Oh I’ve had my morning dip before breakfast. Somebody nearly brained me with a bottle, too.

Chucked it out of one of the hotel windows.”

“Now that’s a very dangerous thing to do,” said Mrs. Gardener. “I had a very dear friend whogot concussion¹⁶ by a toothpaste tin falling on him in the street—thrown out of a thirty-fifth storeywindow it was. A most dangerous thing to do. He got very substantial damages.” She began tohunt among her skeins of wool. “Why, Odell, I don’t believe I’ve got that second shade of purplewool. It’s in the second drawer of the bureau in our bedroom or it might be the third.”

“Yes, darling.”

Mr. Gardener rose obediently and departed on his search.

Mrs. Gardener went on:

“Sometimes, you know, I do think that maybe we’re going a little too far nowadays. What withall our great discoveries and all the electrical waves there must be in the atmosphere, I do think itleads to a great deal of mental unrest, and I just feel that maybe the time has come for a newmessage to humanity. I don’t know, M. Poirot, if you’ve ever interested yourself in the propheciesfrom the Pyramids.”

“I have not,” said Poirot.

“Well, I do assure you that they’re very, very interesting. What with Moscow being exactly athousand miles due north of—now what was it?—would it be Nineveh?—but anyway you take acircle and it just shows the most surprising things—and one can just see that there must have beenspecial guidance, and that those ancient Egyptians couldn’t have thought of what they did all bythemselves. And when you’ve gone into the theory of the numbers and their repetition, why it’s alljust so clear that I can’t see how anyone can doubt the truth of it for a moment.”

Mrs. Gardener paused triumphantly¹⁷ but neither Poirot nor Miss Emily Brewster felt moved toargue the point.

Poirot studied his white suède shoes ruefully.

Emily Brewster said:

“You been paddling with your shoes on, M. Poirot?”

Poirot murmured:

“Alas! I was precipitate¹⁸.”

Emily Brewster lowered her voice. She said:

“Where’s our vamp this morning? She’s late.”

Mrs. Gardener, raising her eyes from her knitting to study Patrick Redfern, murmured:

“He looks just like a thundercloud. Oh dear, I do feel the whole thing is such a pity. I wonderwhat Captain Marshall thinks about it all. He’s such a nice quiet man — very British andunassuming. You just never know what he’s thinking about things.”

Patrick Redfern rose and began to pace up and down the beach.

Mrs. Gardener murmured:

“Just like a tiger.”

Three pairs of eyes watched his pacing. Their scrutiny¹⁹ seemed to make Patrick Redfernuncomfortable. He looked more than sulky now. He looked in a flaming temper.

In the stillness a faint chime from the mainland came to their ears.

Emily Brewster murmured:

“Wind’s from the east again. That’s a good sign when you can hear the church clock strike.”

Nobody said any more until Mr. Gardener returned with a skein of brilliant magenta²⁰ wool.

“Why, Odell, what a long time you have been?”

“Sorry darling, but you see it wasn’t in your bureau at all. I found it on your wardrobe shelf.”

“Why, isn’t that too extraordinary? I could have declared I put it in that bureau drawer. I dothink it’s fortunate that I’ve never had to give evidence in a court case. I’d just worry myself todeath in case I wasn’t remembering a thing just right.”

Mr. Gardener said:

“Mrs. Gardener is very conscientious²¹.”

 

分享到：