Evil Under the Sun Read online

  “What really happened? It was said that Edward Corrigan arrived at the Pine Ridge, found his wife not there, and went out and walked up and down. Actually, of course, he ran full speed to the rendezvous, Caesar’s Grove (which you will remember was quite nearby), killed her and returned to the café. The girl hiker who reported the crime was a most respectable young lady, games mistress in a well-known girls’ school. Apparently she had no connection with Edward Corrigan. She had to walk some way to report the death. The police surgeon only examined the body at a quarter to six. As in this case the time of death was accepted without question.

  “I made one final test. I must know definitely if Mrs. Redfern was a liar. I arranged our little excursion to Dartmoor. If anyone has a bad head for heights, they are never comfortable crossing a narrow bridge over running water. Miss Brewster, a genuine sufferer, showed giddiness. But Christine Redfern, unconcerned, ran across without a qualm. It was a small point, but it was a definite test. If she had told one unnecessary lie—then all the other lies were possible. In the meantime Colgate had got the photograph identified by the Surrey Police. I played my hand in the only way I thought likely to succeed. Having lulled Patrick Redfern into security, I turned on him and did my utmost to make him lose his self-control. The knowledge that he had been identified with Corrigan caused him to lose his head completely.”

  Hercule Poirot stroked his throat reminiscently.

  “What I did,” he said with importance, “was exceedingly dangerous—but I do not regret it. I succeeded! I did not suffer in vain.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Mrs. Gardener gave a deep sigh.

  “Why, M. Poirot,” she said. “It’s just been too wonderful—hearing just exactly how you got your results. It’s every bit as fascinating as a lecture on criminology—in fact it is a lecture on criminology. And to think my magenta wool and that sunbathing conversation actually had something to do with it? That really makes me too excited for words, and I’m sure Mr. Gardener feels the same, don’t you, Odell?”

  “Yes, darling,” said Mr. Gardener.

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “Mr. Gardener too was of assistance to me. I wanted the opinion of a sensible man about Mrs. Marshall. I asked Mr. Gardener what he thought of her.”

  “Is that so,” said Mrs. Gardener. “And what did you say about her, Odell?”

  Mr. Gardener coughed. He said:

  “Well, darling, I never did think very much of her, you know.”

  “That’s the kind of thing men always say to their wives,” said Mrs. Gardener. “And if you ask me, even M. Poirot here is what I should call a shade on the indulgent side about her, calling her a natural victim and all that. Of course it’s true that she wasn’t a cultured woman at all, and as Captain Marshall isn’t here I don’t mind saying that she always did seem to me kind of dumb. I said so to Mr. Gardener, didn’t I, Odell?”

  “Yes, darling,” said Mr. Gardener.

  II

  Linda Marshall sat with Hercule Poirot on Gull Cove.

  She said:

  “Of course I’m glad I didn’t die after all. But you know, M. Poirot, it’s just the same as if I’d killed her, isn’t it? I meant to.”

  Hercule Poirot said energetically:

  “It is not at all the same thing. The wish to kill and the action of killing are two different things. If in your bedroom instead of a little wax figure you had had your stepmother bound and helpless and a dagger in your hand instead of a pin, you would not have pushed it into her heart! Something within you would have said ‘no.’ It is the same with me. I enrage myself at an imbecile. I say, ‘I would like to kick him.’ Instead, I kick the table. I say, ‘This table, it is the imbecile, I kick him so.’ And then, if I have not hurt my toe too much, I feel much better and the table it is not usually damaged. But if the imbecile himself was there I should not kick him. To make the wax figures and stick in the pins, it is silly, yes, it is childish, yes—but it does something useful too. You took the hate out of yourself and put it into that little figure. And with the pin and the fire you destroyed—not your stepmother—but the hate you bore her. Afterwards, even before you heard of her death, you felt cleansed, did you not—you felt lighter—happier?”

  Linda nodded. She said:

  “How did you know? That’s just how I did feel.”

  Poirot said:

  “Then do not repeat to yourself the imbecilities. Just make up your mind not to hate your next stepmother.”

  Linda said startled:

  “Do you think I’m going to have another? Oh, I see, you mean Rosamund. I don’t mind her.” She hesitated a minute. “She’s sensible.”

  It was not the adjective that Poirot himself would have selected for Rosamund Darnley, but he realized that it was Linda’s idea of high praise.

  III

  Kenneth Marshall said:

  “Rosamund, did you get some extraordinary idea into your head that I’d killed Arlena.”

  Rosamund looked rather shamefaced. She said:

  “I suppose I was a damned fool.”

  “Of course you were.”

  “Yes, but Ken, you are such an oyster. I never knew what you really felt about Arlena. I didn’t know if you accepted her as she was and were just frightfully decent about her, or whether you—well, just believed in her blindly. And I thought if it was that, and you suddenly found out that she was letting you down you might go mad with rage. I’ve heard stories about you. You’re always very quiet but you’re rather frightening sometimes.”

  “So you thought I just took her by the throat and throttled the life out of her?”

  “Well—yes—that’s just exactly what I did think. And your alibi seemed a bit on the light side. That’s when I suddenly decided to take a hand, and made up that silly story about seeing you typing in your room. And when I heard that you said you’d seen me look in—well, that made me quite sure you’d done it. That, and Linda’s queerness.”

  Kenneth Marshall said with a sigh:

  “Don’t you realize that I said I’d seen you in the mirror in order to back up your story. I—I thought you needed it corroborated.”

  Rosamund stared at him.

  “You don’t mean you thought that I killed your wife?”

  Kenneth Marshall shifted uneasily. He mumbled:

  “Dash it all, Rosamund, don’t you remember how you nearly killed that boy about that dog once? How you hung on to his throat and wouldn’t let go.”

  “But that was years ago.”

  “Yes, I know—”

  Rosamund said sharply:

  “What earthly motive do you think I had to kill Arlena?”

  His glance shifted. He mumbled something again.

  Rosamund cried:

  “Ken, you mass of conceit! You thought I killed her out of altruism on your behalf, did you? Or—did you think I killed her because I wanted you myself?”

  “Not at all,” said Kenneth Marshall indignantly. “But you know what you said that day—about Linda and everything—and—and you seemed to care what happened to me.”

  Rosamund said:

  “I’ve always cared about that.”

  “I believe you have. You know, Rosamund—I can’t usually talk about things—I’m not good at talking—but I’d like to get this clear. I didn’t care for Arlena—only just a little at first—and living with her day after day was a pretty nerve-racking business. In fact it was absolute hell, but I was awfully sorry for her. She was such a damned fool—crazy about men—she just couldn’t help it—and they always let her down and treated her rottenly. I simply felt I couldn’t be the one to give her the final push. I’d married her and it was up to me to look after her as best I could. I think she knew that and was grateful to me really. She was—she was a pathetic sort of creature really.”

  Rosamund said gently:

  “It’s all right, Ken. I understand now.”

  Without looking at her Kenneth Marshall carefully filled a pipe. He mum
bled:

  “You’re—pretty good at understanding, Rosamund.”

  A faint smile curved Rosamund’s ironic mouth. She said:

  “Are you going to ask me to marry you now, Ken, or are you determined to wait six months?”

  Kenneth Marshall’s pipe dropped from his lips and crashed on the rocks below.

  He said:

  “Damn, that’s the second pipe I’ve lost down here. And I haven’t got another with me. How the devil did you know I’d fixed six months as the proper time?”

  “I suppose because it is the proper time. But I’d rather have something definite now, please. Because in the intervening months you may come across some other persecuted female and rush to the rescue in chivalrous fashion again.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re going to be the persecuted female this time, Rosamund. You’re going to give up that damned dress-making business of yours and we’re going to live in the country.”

  “Don’t you know that I make a very handsome income out of my business? Don’t you realize that it’s my business—that I created it and worked it up, and that I’m proud of it! And you’ve got the damned nerve to come along and say, ‘Give it all up, dear.’”

  “I’ve got the damned nerve to say it, yes.”

  “And you think I care enough for you to do it?”

  “If you don’t,” said Kenneth Marshall, “you’d be no good to me.”

  Rosamund said softly:

  “Oh, my dear, I’ve wanted to live in the country with you all my life. Now—it’s going to come true….”

  * * *

  The

  Agatha Christie

  Collection

  THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES

  Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective.

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The A.B.C. Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil Under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labors of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  The Underdog and Other Stories

  Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

  * * *

  * * *

  The

  Agatha Christie

  Collection

  THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES

  Join the legendary spinster sleuth from

  St. Mary Mead in solving murders far and wide.

  The Murder at the Vicarag

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4:50 From Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories

  THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES

  Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving

  couple from Young Adventurers Ltd.

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  N or M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

  * * *

  * * *

  The

  Agatha Christie

  Collection

  Don’t miss a single one of Agatha Christie’s

  stand-alone novels and short-story collections.

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr. Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Murder Is Easy

  The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

  Crooked House

  Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Ordeal by Innocence

  Double Sin and Other Stories

  The Pale Horse

  Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

  Endless Night

  Passenger to Frankfurt

  The Golden Ball and Other Stories

  The Mousetrap and Other Plays

  The Harlequin Tea Set

  Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

  * * *

  About the Author

  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.

  She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

  Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

  Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

  www.AgathaChristie.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr. Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Murder Is Easy

  The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

  And Then
There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  The Witness for the Prosecution and

  Other Stories

  Crooked House

  Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Ordeal by Innocence

  Double Sin and Other Stories

  The Pale Horse

  Star over Bethlehem: Poems and

  Holiday Stories

  Endless Night

  Passenger to Frankfurt

  The Golden Ball and Other Stories

  The Mousetrap and Other Plays

  The Harlequin Tea Set

  The Hercule Poirot Mysteries

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The A.B.C. Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil Under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labors of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  The Underdog and Other Stories

  Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  The Miss Marple Mysteries

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4:50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery