II

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 wereseveral rough boulders near the head of the ladder, he noted, forming easy concealment for anyonewho proposed to descend to the beach below. Of the beach itself little could be seen from the topowing 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 thetable. Christine had wandered out while dummy and had overheard a certain conversation. Whoelse 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 thescene 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 thepresence 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 murdererever discovered.

Nellie Parsons?

Alice Corrigan.

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