Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun

‘Ah! but that, it is not strictly true.’ He pointed downward. ‘Regard them there, lying out in rows. What are they? They are not men and women. There is nothing personal about them. They are just-bodies!’

Major Barry said appreciatively:

‘Good-looking fillies, some of ’em. Bit on the thin side, perhaps.’

Poirot cried:

‘Yes, but what appeal is there? What mystery? I, I am old, of the old school. When I was young, one saw barely the ankle. The glimpse of a foamy petticoat, how alluring! The gentle swelling of the calf-a knee-a beribboned garter-’

‘Naughty, naughty!’ said Major Barry hoarsely.

‘Much more sensible-the things we wear nowadays,’ said Miss Brewster.

‘Why, yes, M. Poirot,’ said Mrs Gardener. ‘I do think, you know, that our girls and boys nowadays lead a much more natural healthy life. They just romp about together and they-well, they-’ Mrs Gardener blushed slightly for she had a nice mind-‘they think nothing of it, if you know what I mean?’

‘I do know,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘It is deplorable!’

‘Deplorable?’ squeaked Mrs Gardener.

‘To remove all the romance-all the mystery! Today everything is standardized!’ He waved a hand towards the recumbent figures. ‘That reminds me very much of the Morgue in Paris.’

‘M. Poirot!’ Mrs Gardener was scandalized.

‘Bodies-arranged on slabs-like butcher’s meat!’

‘But M. Poirot, isn’t that too far-fetched for words?’

Hercule Poirot admitted:

‘It may be, yes.’

‘All the same,’ Mrs Gardener knitted with energy, ‘I’m inclined to agree with you on one point. These girls that lie out like that in the sun will grow hair on their legs and arms. I’ve said so to Irene-that’s my daughter, M. Poirot. Irene, I said to her, if you lie out like that in the sun, you’ll have hair all over you, hair on your arms and hair on your legs and hair on your bosom, and what will you look like then? I said to her. Didn’t I, Odell?’

‘Yes, darling,’ said Mr Gardener.

Everyone was silent, perhaps making a mental picture of Irene when the worst had happened.

Mrs Gardener rolled up her knitting and said:

‘I wonder now-’

Mr Gardener said:

‘Yes, darling?’

He struggled out of the hammock chair and took Mrs Gardener’s knitting and her book. He asked:

‘What about joining us for a drink, Miss Brewster?’

‘Not just now, thanks.’

The Gardeners went up to the hotel.

Miss Brewster said:

‘American husbands are wonderful!’

Mrs Gardener’s place was taken by the Reverend Stephen Lane.

Mr Lane was a tall vigorous clergyman of fifty odd. His face was tanned and his dark grey flannel trousers were holidayfied and disreputable.

He said with enthusiasm:

‘Marvellous country! I’ve been from Leathercombe Bay to Harford and back over the cliffs.’

‘Warm work walking today,’ said Major Barry who never walked.

‘Good exercise,’ said Miss Brewster. ‘I haven’t been for my row yet. Nothing like rowing for your stomach muscles.’

The eyes of Hercule Poirot dropped somewhat ruefully to a certain protuberance in his middle.

Miss Brewster, noting the glance, said kindly:

‘You’d soon get that off, M. Poirot, if you took a rowing-boat out every day.’

‘Merci, Mademoiselle. I detest boats!’

‘You mean small boats?’

‘Boats of all sizes!’ He closed his eyes and shuddered. ‘The movement of the sea, it is not pleasant.’

‘Bless the man, the sea is as calm as a mill pond today.’

Poirot replied with conviction:

‘There is no such thing as a really calm sea. Always, always, there is motion.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Major Barry, ‘seasickness is nine-tenths nerves.’

‘There,’ said the clergyman, smiling a little, ‘speaks the good sailor-eh, Major?’

‘Only been ill once-and that was crossing the Channel! Don’t think about it, that’s my motto.’

‘Seasickness is really a very odd thing,’ mused Miss Brewster. ‘Why should some people be subject to it and not others? It seems so unfair. And nothing to do with one’s ordinary health. Quite sickly people are good sailors. Someone told me once it was something to do with one’s spine. Then there’s the way some people can’t stand heights. I’m not very good myself, but Mrs Redfern is far worse. The other day, on the cliff path to Harford, she turned quite giddy and simply clung to me. She told me she once got stuck halfway down that outside staircase on Milan Cathedral. She’d gone up without thinking but coming down did for her.’

‘She’d better not go down the ladder to Pixy Cove, then,’ observed Lane.

Miss Brewster made a face.

‘I funk that myself. It’s all right for the young. The Cowan boys and the young Mastermans, they run up and down and enjoy it.’

Lane said.

‘Here comes Mrs Redfern now, coming up from her bathe.’

Miss Brewster remarked:

‘M. Poirot ought to approve of her. She’s no sun-bather.’

Young Mrs Redfern had taken off her rubber cap and was shaking out her hair. She was an ash blonde and her skin was of that dead fairness that goes with that colouring. Her legs and arms were very white.

With a hoarse chuckle, Major Barry said:

‘Looks a bit uncooked among the others, doesn’t she?’

Wrapping herself in a long bath-robe Christine Redfern came up the beach and mounted the steps towards them.

She had a fair serious face, pretty in a negative way and small dainty hands and feet.

She smiled at them and dropped down beside them, tucking her bath-wrap round her.

Miss Brewster said:

‘You have earned M. Poirot’s good opinion. He doesn’t like the sun-tanning crowd. Says they’re like joints of butcher’s meat, or words to that effect.’

Christine Redfern smiled ruefully. She said:

‘I wish I could sun-bathe! But I don’t go brown. I only blister and get the most frightful freckles all over my arms.’

‘Better than getting hair all over them like Mrs Gardener’s Irene,’ said Miss Brewster. In answer to Christine’s inquiring glance she went on: ‘Mrs Gardener’s been in grand form this morning. Absolutely non-stop. “Isn’t that so, Odell?” “Yes, darling.” ’ She paused and then said: ‘I wish, though, M. Poirot, that you’d played up to her a bit. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you tell her that you were down here investigating a particularly gruesome murder, and that the murderer, a homicidal maniac, was certainly to be found among the guests of the hotel?’

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said:

‘I very much fear she would have believed me.’

Major Barry gave a wheezy chuckle. He said:

‘She certainly would.’

Emily Brewster said:

‘No, I don’t believe even Mrs Gardener would have believed in a crime staged here. This isn’t the sort of place you’d get a body!’

Hercule Poirot stirred a little in his chair. He protested. He said:

‘But why not, Mademoiselle? Why should there not be what you call a “body” here on Smugglers’ Island?’

Emily Brewster said:

‘I don’t know. I suppose some places are more unlikely than others. This isn’t the kind of spot-’ She broke off, finding it difficult to explain her meaning.

‘It is romantic, yes,’ agreed Hercule Poirot. ‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun.’

The clergyman stirred in his chair. He leaned forward. His intensely blue eyes lighted up.

Miss Brewster shrugged her shoulders.

‘Oh! of course I realize that, but all the same-’

‘But all the same this still seems to you an unlikely setting for crime? You forget one thing, Mademoiselle.’