Linda said, rather shyly:
“Come too.”
Rosamund shook her head.
She said:
“Not this morning. I’ve other fish to fry.”
Christine Redfern came down the stairs.
She was wearing beach pyjamas of a loose floppy pattern with long sleeves and
wide legs. They were made of some green material with a yellow design. Rosamund’s tongue itched to tell her that yellow and green were the most unbecoming colours possible for her fair, slightly anaemic complexion. It always annoyed Rosamund when people had no clothes sense.
She thought: “If I dressed that girl, I’d soon make her husband sit up and take notice. However much of a fool Arlena is, she does know how to dress. This wretched girl looks just like a wilting lettuce.”
Aloud she said:
“Have a nice time. I’m going to Sunny Ledge with a book.”
IV
Hercule Poirot breakfasted in his room as usual off coffee and rolls.
The beauty of the morning, however, tempted him to leave the hotel earlier than usual. It was ten o’clock, at least half an hour before his usual appearance, when he descended to the bathing beach. 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 a white wooden float. Poirot came gallantly to the rescue, completely immersing a pair of white suède 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 me about so. I just want for once to be alone.”
She paddled off vigorously.
Poirot walked up the beach. He murmured to himself:
“Ah ça, jamais! That, par 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.