Evil Under the Sun - Agatha Christie [75]
“Yes, you make one see it all. But that’s the story from the other side. You haven’t told us how you came to get at the truth?”
Hercule Poirot said:
“I told you once that I had a very simple mind. Always, from the beginning, it seemed to me that the most likely person had killed Arlena Marshall. And the most likely person was Patrick Redfern. He was the type, par excellence—the type of man who exploits women like her—and the type of the killer—the kind of man who will take a woman’s savings and cut her throat into the bargain. Who was Arlena going to meet that morning? By the evidence of her face, her smile, her manner, her words to me—Patrick Redfern. And therefore, in the very nature of things, it should be Patrick who killed her.
“But at once I came up, as I told you, against impossibility. Patrick Redfern could not have killed her since he was on the beach and in Miss Brewster’s company until the actual discovery of the body. So I looked about for other solutions—and there were several. She could have been killed by her husband—with Miss Darnley’s connivance. (They too had both lied as to one point which looked suspicious.) She could have been killed as a result of her having stumbled on the secret of the dope smuggling. She could have been killed, as I said, by a religious maniac, and she could have been killed by her stepdaughter. The latter seemed to me at one time to be the real solution. Linda’s manner in her very first interview with the police was significant. An interview that I had with her later assured me of one point. Linda considered herself guilty.”
“You mean she imagined that she had actually killed Arlena?”
Rosamund’s voice was incredulous.
Hercule Poirot nodded.
“Yes. Remember—she is really little more than a child. She read that book on witchcraft and she half-believed it. She hated Arlena. She deliberately made the wax doll, cast her spell, pierced it to the heart, melted it away—and that very day Arlena dies. Older and wiser people than Linda have believed fervently in magic. Naturally, she believed that it was all true—that by using magic she had killed her stepmother.”
Rosamund cried:
“Oh, poor child, poor child. And I thought—I imagined—something quite different—that she knew something which would—”
Rosamund stopped. Poirot said:
“I know what it was you thought. Actually your manner frightened Linda still further. She believed that her action had really brought about Arlena’s death and that you knew it. Christine Redfern worked on her too, introducing the idea of the sleeping tablets to her mind, showing her the way to a speedy and painless expiation of her crime. You see, once Captain Marshall was proved to have an alibi, it was vital for a new suspect to be found. Neither she nor her husband knew about the dope smuggling. They fixed on Linda to be the scapegoat.”
Rosamund said:
“What a devil!”
Poirot nodded.
“Yes, you are right. A cold-blooded and cruel woman. For me, I was in great difficulty. Was Linda guilty only of the childish attempt at witchcraft, or had her hate carried her still further—to the actual act? I tried to get her to confess to me. But it was no good. At that moment I was in grave uncertainty. The Chief Constable was inclined to accept the dope smuggling explanation. I couldn’t let it go at that. I went over the facts again very carefully. I had, you see, a collection of jig-saw puzzle pieces, isolated happenings—plain facts. The whole must fit into a complete and harmonious pattern. There were the scissors found on the beach—a bottle thrown from a window—a bath that no one would admit to having taken—all perfectly harmless occurrences in themselves, but rendered significant by the fact that no one would admit to them. Therefore, they must be of significance. Nothing about them fitted in with the theories of either Captain Marshall’s or Linda’s, or of a dope gang’s being responsible. And yet they must have meaning. I went back again to my first solution—that Patrick Redfern had committed the murder. Was there anything in support of that? Yes, the fact