They were standing in the bedroom that had been Arlena Marshall’s.

Two big bay windows gave on to a balcony that overlooked the bathing beach and the sea beyond. Sunshine poured into the room, flashing over the bewildering array of bottles and jars on Arlena’s dressing-table.

Here there was every kind of cosmetic and unguent known to beauty parlours. Amongst this panoply of woman’s affairs three men moved purposefully. Inspector Colgate went about shutting and opening drawers.

Presently he gave a grunt. He had come upon a packet of folded letters. He and Weston ran through them together.

Hercule Poirot had moved to the wardrobe. He opened the door of the hanging cupboard and looked at the multiplicity of gowns and sports suits that hung there. He opened the other side. Foamy lingerie lay in piles. On a wide shelf were hats. Two more beach cardboard hats in lacquer red and pale yellow-a Big Hawaiian straw hat-another of drooping dark-blue linen and three or four little absurdities for which, no doubt, several guiness had been paid apiece-a kind of beret in dark blue-a tuft, no more, of black velvet-a pale grey turban.

Hercule Poirot stood scanning them-a faintly indulgent smile came to his lips. He murmured:

‘Les femmes!’

Colonel Weston was refolding the letters.

‘Three from young Redfern,’ he said. ‘Damned young ass. He’ll learn not to write letters to women in a few more years. Women always keep letters and then swear they’ve burnt them. There’s one other letter here. Same line of country.’

He held it out and Poirot took it.

Darling Arlena,-God, I feel blue. To be going out to China-and perhaps not seeing you again for years and years. I didn’t know any man could go on feeling crazy about a woman like I feel about you. Thanks for the cheque. They won’t prosecute now. It was a near shave, though, and all because I wanted to make big money for you. Can you forgive me? I wanted to set diamonds in your ears-your lovely ears-and clasp great milk-white pearls round your throat, only they say pearls are no good nowadays. A fabulous emerald, then? Yes, that’s the thing. A great emerald, cool and green and full of hidden fire. Don’t forget me-but you won’t, I know. You’re mine-always.

Goodbye-goodbye-goodbye.

J.N.

Inspector Colgate said:

‘Might be worth while to find out if J.N. really did go to China. Otherwise-well, he might be the person we’re looking for. Crazy about the woman, idealizing her, suddenly finding out he’d been played for a sucker. It sounds to me as though this is the boy Miss Brewster mentioned. Yes, I think this might be useful.’

Hercule Poirot nodded. He said: ‘Yes, that letter is important. I find it very important.’

He turned round and stared at the room-at the bottles on the dressing-table-at the open wardrobe and at a big Pierrot doll that lolled insolently on the bed.

They went into Kenneth Marshall’s room.

It was next door to his wife’s but with no communicating door and no balcony. It faced the same way and had two windows, but it was much smaller. Between the two windows a gilt mirror hung on the wall. In the corner beyond the right-hand window was the dressing-table. On it were two ivory brushes, a clothes brush and a bottle of hair lotion. In the corner by the left-hand window was a writing-table. An open typewriter stood on it and papers were ranged in a stack beside it.

Colgate went through them rapidly.

He said:

‘All seems straightforward enough. Ah, here’s the letter he mentioned this morning. Dated the 24th-that’s yesterday. And here’s the envelope postmarked Leathercombe Bay this morning. Seems all square. Now we’ll have an idea if he could have prepared that answer of his beforehand.

He sat down.

Colonel Weston said:

‘We’ll leave you to it, for a moment. We’ll just glance through the rest of the rooms. Everyone’s been kept out of this corridor until now, and they’re getting a bit restive about it.’

They went next into Linda Marshall’s room. It faced east, looking out over the rocks down to the sea below.

Weston gave a glance round. He murmured:

‘Don’t suppose there’s anything to see here. But it’s possible Marshall might have put something in his daughter’s room that he didn’t want us to find. Not likely, though. It isn’t as though there had been a weapon or anything to get rid of.’ 

He went out again.

Hercule Poirot stayed behind. He found something that interested him in the grate. Something had been burnt there recently. He knelt down, working patiently. He laid out his finds on a sheet of paper. A large irregular blob of candle grease-some fragments of green paper or cardboard, possibly a pull-off calendar for with it was an unburnt fragment bearing a large figure 5 and a scrap of printing…noble deeds…There was also an ordinary pin and some burnt animal matter which might have been hair.

Poirot arranged them neatly in a row and stared at them.

He murmured:

‘Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long. C’est possible. But what is one to make of this collection?C’est fantastique! ’

And then he picked up the pin and his eyes grew sharp and green.

He murmured:

‘Pour l’amour de Dieu!Is it possible?’

Hercule Poirot got up from where he had been kneeling by the grate.

Slowly he looked round the room and this time there was an entirely new expression on his face. It was grave and almost stern.

To the left of the mantelpiece there were some shelves with a row of books. Hercule Poirot looked thoughtfully along the titles.

A Bible, a battered copy of Shakespeare’s plays,The Marriage of William Ashe, by Mrs Humphry Ward.The Young Stepmother, by Charlotte Yonge.The Shropshire Lad. Eliot’sMurder in the Cathedral. Bernard Shaw’sSt Joan. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.The Burning Court, by Dickson Carr.

Poirot took out two books.The Young Stepmother andWilliam Ashe, and glanced inside at the blurred stamp affixed to the title page. As he was about to replace them, his eye caught sight of a book that had been shoved behind the other books. It was a small dumpy volume bound in brown calf.

He took it out and opened it. Very slowly he nodded his head.

He murmured:

‘So I was right…Yes, I was right. But for the other-is that possible too? No, it is not possible, unless…’

He stayed there, motionless, stroking his moustaches whilst his mind ranged busily over the problem.

He said again, softly:

‘Unless-’

Colonel Weston looked in at the door.

‘Hullo, Poirot, still there?’

‘I arrive. I arrive,’ cried Poirot.

He hurried out into the corridor.

The room next to Linda’s was that of the Redferns.

Poirot looked into it, noting automatically the trace of two different individualities-a neatness and tidiness which he associated with Christine, and a picturesque disorder which was characteristic of Patrick. Apart from these sidelights on personality the room did not interest him.

Next to it again was Rosamund Darnley’s room, and here he lingered for a moment in the sheer pleasure of the owner’s personality.

He noted the few books that lay on the table next to the bed, the expensive simplicity of the toilet set on the dressing-table. And there came gently to his nostrils the elusive expensive perfume that Rosamund Darnley used.

Next to Rosamund Darnley’s room at the northern end of the corridor was an open window leading to a balcony from which an outside stair led down to the rocks below.

Weston said: 

‘That’s the way people go down to bathe before breakfast-that is, if they bathe off the rocks as most of them do.’

Interest came into Hercule Poirot’s eyes. He stepped outside and looked down.

Below, a path led to steps cut zigzag leading down the rocks to the sea. There was also a path that led round the hotel to the left. He said:

‘One could go down these stairs, go to the left round the hotel and join the main path up from the causeway.’

Weston nodded. He amplified Poirot’s statement.

‘One could go right across the island without going through the hotel at all.’ He added: ‘But one might still be seen from a window.’

‘What window?’

‘Two of the public bathrooms look out that way-north-and the staff bathroom, and the cloakrooms on the ground floor. Also the billiard room.’

Poirot nodded. He said:

‘And all the former have frosted glass windows, and one does not play billiards on a fine morning.’

‘Exactly.’

Weston paused and said:

‘If he did it, that’s the way he went.’

‘You mean Captain Marshall?’

‘Yes. Blackmail, or no blackmail. I still feel it points to him. And his manner-well, his manner is unfortunate.’

Hercule Poirot said dryly:

‘Perhaps-but a manner does not make a murderer!’

Weston said:

‘Then you think he’s out of it?’

Poirot shook his head. He said:

‘No, I would not say that.’

Weston said:

‘We’ll see what Colgate can make out of the typewriting alibi. In the meantime I’ve got the chambermaid of this floor waiting to be interviewed. A good deal may depend on her evidence.’

The chambermaid was a woman of thirty, brisk, efficient and intelligent. Her answers came readily.

Captain Marshall had come up to his room not long after ten-thirty. She was then finishing the room. He had asked her to be as quick as possible. She had not seen him come back but she had heard the sound of the typewriter a little later. She put it at about five minutes to eleven. She was then in Mr and Mrs Redfern’s room. After she had done that she moved on to Miss Darnley’s room at the end of the corridor. She could not hear the typewriter from there. She went to Miss Darnley’s room, as near as she could say, at just after eleven o’clock. She remembered hearing Leathercombe Church strike the hour as she went in. At a quarter-past eleven she had gone downstairs for her eleven o’clock cup of tea and ‘snack’. Afterwards she had gone to do the rooms in the other wing of the hotel. In answer to the Chief Constable’s question she explained that she had done the rooms in this corridor in the following order: