Hercule Poirot murmured: “A man might be excused such a folly – she is beautiful, Mademoiselle.”
“Yes, there’s no doubt of that. There was another scandal about three years ago. Old Sir Roger Erskine left her every penny of his money. I should have thought that would have opened Ken’s eyes if anything would.”
“And did it not?”
Rosamund Darnley shrugged her shoulders.
“I tell you I’ve seen nothing of him for years. People say, though, that he took it with absolute equanimity. Why I should like to know? Has he got an absolutely blind belief in her?’”
“There might be other reasons.”
“Yes. Pride! Keeping a stiff upper lip! I don’t know what he really feels about her. Nobody does.”
“And she? What does she feel about him?”
Rosamund stared at him.
She said: “She? She’s the world’s first gold-digger. And a man eater as well! If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena! She’s that kind.”
Poirot nodded his head slowly in complete agreement.
“Yes,” he said. “That is true what you say… Her eyes look for one thing only – men.”
Rosamund said: “She’s got her eye on Patrick Redfern now. He’s a good-looking man – and rather the simple kind – you know, fond of his wife, and not a philanderer. That’s the kind that’s meat and drink to Arlena. I like little Mrs Redfern – she’s nice-looking in her fair washed-out way – but I don’t think she’ll stand a dog’s chance against the man-eating tiger, Arlena.”
Poirot said: “No, it is as you say.”
He looked distressed.
Rosamund said: “Christine Redfern was a school teacher, I believe. She’s the kind that thinks that mind has a pull over matter. She’s got a rude shock coming to her.”
Poirot shook his head vexedly.
Rosamund got up.
She said: “It’s a shame, you know.” She added vaguely: “Somebody ought to do something about it.”
Linda Marshall was examining her face dispassionately in her bedroom mirror. She disliked her face very much. At this minute it seemed to her to be mostly bones and freckles. She noted with distaste her heavy bush of red-brown hair (mouse, she called it in her own mind), her greenish-grey eyes, her high cheekbones and the long aggressive line of the chin. Her mouth and teeth weren’t perhaps quite so bad – but what were teeth after all? And was that a spot coming on the side of her nose? She decided with relief that it wasn’t a spot. She thought to herself:
“It’s awful to be sixteen – simply awful.”
