Evil Under the Sun - Christie Agatha (лучшие книги читать онлайн бесплатно .txt) 📗

Inspector Colgate was reporting to the Chief Constable.

‘I’ve got on to one thing, sir, and something pretty sensational. It’s about Mrs Marshall’s money. I’ve been into it with her lawyers. I’d say it’s a bit of a shock to them. I’ve got proof of the blackmail story. You remember she was left fifty thousand pounds by old Erskine? Well, all that’s left of that is about fifteen thousand.’

The Chief Constable whistled.

‘Whew, what’s become of the rest?’

‘That’s the interesting point, sir. She’s sold out stuff from time to time, and each time she’s handled it in cash or negotiable securities-that’s to say she’s handed out money to someone that she didn’t want traced. Blackmail all right.’

The Chief Constable nodded. 

‘Certainly looks like it. And the blackmailer is here in this hotel. That means it must be one of those three men. Got anything fresh on any of them?’

‘Can’t say I’ve got anything definite, sir. Major Barry’s a retired Army man, as he says. Lives in a small flat, has a pension and a small income from stocks.But he’s paid in pretty considerable sums into his account in the last year.’

‘That sounds promising. What’s his explanation?’

‘Says they’re betting gains. It’s perfectly true that he goes to all the large race meetings. Places his bets on the course too, doesn’t run an account.’

The Chief Constable nodded.

‘Hard to disprove that,’ he said. ‘But it’s suggestive.’

Colgate went on.

‘Next, the Reverend Stephen Lane. He’sbona fide all right-had a living at St Helen’s, Whiteridge, Surrey-resigned his living just over a year ago owing to ill-health. His ill-health amounted to his going into a nursing home for mental patients. He was there for over a year.’

‘Interesting,’ said Weston.

‘Yes, sir. I tried to get as much as I could out of the doctor in charge but you know what these medicos are-it’s difficult to pin them down to anything you can get hold of. But as far as I can make out, his reverence’s trouble was an obsession about the devil-especially the devil in the guise of a woman-scarlet woman-whore of Babylon.’

‘H’m,’ said Weston. ‘There have been precedents for murder there.’

‘Yes, sir. It seems to me that Stephen Lane is at least a possibility. The late Mrs Marshall was a pretty good example of what a clergyman would call a Scarlet Woman-hair and goings on and all. Seems to me it’s not impossible he may have felt it his appointed task to dispose of her. That is if he is really batty.’

‘Nothing to fit in with the blackmail theory?’

‘No, sir, I think we can wash him out as far as that’s concerned. Has some private means of his own, but not very much, and no sudden increase lately.’

‘What about his story of his movements on the day of the crime?’

‘Can’t get any confirmation of them. Nobody remembers meeting a parson in the lanes. As to the book at the church, the last entry was three days before and nobody had looked at it for about a fortnight. He could have quite easily gone over the day before, say, or even a couple of days before, and dated his entry the 25th.’

Weston nodded. He said:

‘And the third man?’

‘Horace Blatt? It’s my opinion, sir, that there’s definitely something fishy there. Pays income-tax on a sum far exceeding what he makes out of his hardware business. And mind you, he’s a slippery customer. He could probably cook up a reasonable statement-he gambles a bit on the Stock Exchange, and he’s in with one or two shady deals. Oh, yes, there may be plausible explanations, but there’s no getting away from it that he’s been making pretty big sums from unexplained sources for some years now.’

‘In fact,’ said Weston, ‘the idea is that Mr Horace Blatt is a successful blackmailer by profession?’

‘Either that, sir, or it’s dope. I saw Chief Inspector Ridgeway who’s in charge of the dope business, and he was no end keen. Seems there’s been a good bit of heroin coming in lately. They’re on to the small distributors, and they know more or less who’s running it the other end, but it’s the way it’s coming into the country that’s baffled them so far.’

Weston said:

‘If the Marshall woman’s death is the result of her getting mixed up, innocently or otherwise, with the dope-running stunt, then we’d better hand the whole thing over to Scotland Yard. It’s their pigeon. Eh? What do you say?’

Inspector Colgate said rather regretfully:

‘I’m afraid you’re right, sir. If it’s dope, then it’s a case for the Yard.’

Weston said after a moment or two’s thought: 

‘It really seems the most likely explanation.’

Colgate nodded gloomily.

‘Yes, it does. Marshall’s right out of it-though I did get some information that might have been useful if his alibi hadn’t been so good. Seems his firm is very near the rocks. Not his fault or his partner’s, just the general result of the crisis last year and the general state of trade and finance. And as far as he knew, he’d come into fifty thousand pounds if his wife died. And fifty thousand would have been a very useful sum.’

He sighed.

‘Seems a pity when a man’s got two perfectly good motives for murder, that he can be proved to have had nothing to do with it!’

Weston smiled.

‘Cheer up, Colgate. There’s still a chance we may distinguish ourselves. There’s the blackmail angle still and there’s the batty parson, but, personally, I think the dope solution is far the most likely.’ He added: ‘And if it was one of the dope gang who put her out we’ll have been instrumental in helping Scotland Yard to solve the dope problem. In fact, take it all round, one way or another, we’ve done pretty well.’

An unwilling smile showed on Colgate’s face.

He said:

‘Well, that’s the lot, sir. By the way, I checked up on the writer of that letter we found in her room. The one signed J.N. Nothing doing. He’s in China safe enough. Same chap as Miss Brewster was telling us about. Bit of a young scallywag. I’ve checked up on the rest of Mrs Marshall’s friends. No leads there. Everything there is to get, we’ve got, sir.’

Weston said:

‘So now it’s up to us.’ He paused and then added: ‘Seen anything of our Belgian colleague? Does he know all you’ve told me?’

Colgate said with a grin:

‘He’s a queer little cuss, isn’t he? D’you know what he asked me day before yesterday? He wanted particulars of any cases of strangulation in the last three years.’

Colonel Weston sat up.

‘He did, did he? Now I wonder-’ he paused a minute. ‘When did you say the Reverend Stephen Lane went into that mental home?’

‘A year ago last Easter, sir.’

Colonel Weston was thinking deeply. He said:

‘There was a case-body of a young woman found somewhere near Bagshot. Going to meet her husband somewhere and never turned up. And there was what the papers called the Lonely Copse Mystery. Both in Surrey if I remember rightly.’

His eyes met those of his Inspector. Colgate said:

‘Surrey? My word, sir, it fits, doesn’t it? I wonder…’

Hercule Poirot sat on the turf on the summit of the island.

A little to his left was the beginning of the steel ladder that led down to Pixy Cove. There were several rough boulders near the head of the ladder, he noted, forming easy concealment for anyone who proposed to descend to the beach below. Of the beach itself little could be seen from the top owing to the overhang of the cliff.

Hercule Poirot nodded his head gravely.

The pieces of his jig-saw were fitting into position.

Mentally he went over those pieces, considering each as a detached item.

A morning on the bathing beach some few days before Arlena Marshall’s death.

One, two, three, four, five separate remarks uttered on that morning.

The evening of a bridge game. He, Patrick Redfern and Rosamund Darnley had been at the table. Christine had wandered out while dummy and had overheard a certain conversation. Who else had been in the lounge at that time? Who had been absent?

The evening before the crime. The conversation he had had with Christine on the cliff and the scene he had witnessed on his way back to the hotel. 

Gabrielle No 8.

A pair of scissors.

A broken pipe stem.

A bottle thrown from a window.

A green calendar.

A packet of candles.

A mirror and a typewriter.

A skein of magenta wool.

A girl’s wristwatch.

Bathwater rushing down the waste-pipe.

Each of these unrelated facts must fit into its appointed place. There must be no loose ends.

And then, with each concrete fact fitted into position, on to the next stop: his own belief in the presence of evil on the island.

Evil…

He looked down at a typewritten paper in his hands.

Nellie Parsons-found strangled in a lonely copse near Chobham. No clue to her murderer ever discovered.

Nellie Parsons?

Alice Corrigan.

He read very carefully the details of Alice Corrigan’s death.

To Hercule Poirot, sitting on the ledge overlooking the sea, came Inspector Colgate.

Poirot liked Inspector Colgate. He liked his rugged face, his shrewd eyes, and his slow unhurried manner.

Inspector Colgate sat down. He said, glancing down at the typewritten sheets in Poirot’s hand:

‘Done anything with those cases, sir?’

‘I have studied them-yes.’

Colgate got up, he walked along and peered into the next niche. He came back, saying:

‘One can’t be too careful. Don’t want to be overheard.’

Poirot said:

‘You are wise.’

Colgate said:

‘I don’t mind telling you, M. Poirot, that I’ve been interested in those cases myself-though perhaps I shouldn’t have thought about them if you hadn’t asked for them.’ He paused: ‘I’ve been interested in one case in particular.’

‘Alice Corrigan?’

‘Alice Corrigan.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been on to the Surrey police about that case-wanted to get all the ins and outs of it.’