“Were you surprised not to find Mrs. Marshall there this morning?”
“Yes, I was. Very surprised. I couldn’t understand it at all.”
“What did you think?”
“Well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, all the time I thought she would be coming.”
“If she were keeping an appointment elsewhere you had no idea with whom that appointment might be?”
Patrick Redfern merely stared and shook his head.
“When you had a rendezvous with Mrs. Marshall, where did you meet?”
“Well, sometimes I’d meet her in the afternoon down at Gull Cove. You see the sun is off Gull Cove in the afternoon and so there aren’t usually many people there. We met there once or twice.”
“Never on the other cove?” Pixy Cove?”
“No. You see Pixy Cove faces west and people go round there in boats or on floats in the afternoon. We never tried to meet in the morning. It would have been too noticeable. In the afternoon people go and have a sleep or mouch around and nobody knows much where any one else is.”
Weston nodded:
Patrick Redfern went on:
“After dinner, of course, on the fine nights, we used to go off for a stroll together to different parts of the island.”
Hercule Poirot murmured:
“Ah, yes!” and Patrick Redfern shot him an inquiring glance.
Weston said:
“Then you can give us no help whatsoever as to the cause that took Mrs. Marshall to Pixy Cove this morning?”
Redfern shook his head. He said, and his voice sounded honestly bewildered:
“I haven’t the faintest idea! It wasn’t like Arlena.”
Weston said:
“Had she any friends down here staying in the neighbourhood?”
“Not that I know of. Oh, I’m sure she hadn’t.”
“Now, Mr. Redfern, I want you to think very carefully. You knew Mrs. Marshall in London. You must be acquainted with various members of her circle. Is there anyone you know of who could have had a grudge against her? Someone, for instance, whom you may have supplanted in her fancy?”
Patrick Redfern thought for some minutes. Then he shook his head.
“Honestly,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone.”
Colonel Weston drummed with his fingers on the table.
He said at last:
“Well, that’s that. We seem to be left with three possibilities. That of an unknown killer—some monomaniac—who happened to be in the neighbourhood—and that’s a pretty tall order—”
Redfern said, interrupting:
“And yet surely, it’s by far the most likely explanation.”