Young Mrs Redfern had taken off her rubber cap and was shaking out her hair.
She was an ash blonde and her skin was of that dead fairness that goes with that colouring. Her legs and arms were very white.
With a hoarse chuckle, Major Barry said: "Looks a bit uncooked among the others, doesn't she?"
Wrapping herself in a long bathrobe Christine Redfern came up the beach and mounted the steps towards them.
She had a fair serious face, pretty in a negative way, and small dainty hands and feet.
She smiled at them and dropped down beside them, tucking her bath-wrap round her.
Miss Brewster said: "You have earned M. Poirot's good opinion.
He doesn't like the sun-tanning crowd.
Says they're like joints of butcher's meat or words to that effect."
Christine Redfern smiled ruefully.
She said: "I wish I could sunbathe! But I don't brown.
I only blister and get the most frightful freckles all over my arms."
"Better than getting hair all over them like Mrs Gardener's Irene," said Miss Brewster.
In answer to Christine's inquiring glance she went on: "Mrs Gardener's been in grand form this morning. Absolutely non stop.
'Isn't that so, Odell?'
'Yes, darling.'" She paused and then said:
"I wish, though, M. Poirot, that you'd played up to her a bit.
Why didn't you tell her that you were down here investigating a particularly gruesome murder, and that the murderer, an homicidal maniac, was certainly to be found among the guests of the hotel?"
Hercule Poirot sighed. He said: "I very much fear she would have believed me."
Major Barry gave a wheezy chuckle. He said: "She certainly would."
Emily Brewster said: "No, I don't believe even Mrs Gardener would have believed in a crime staged here.
This isn't the sort of place you'd get a body!"
Hercule Poirot stirred a little in his chair.
He protested. He said: "But why not, Mademoiselle?
Why should there not be what you call a 'body' here on Smugglers' Island?"
Emily Brewster said: "I don't know.
I suppose some places are more unlikely than others.
This isn't the kind of spot -" She broke off, finding it difficult to explain her meaning.
"It is romantic, yes," agreed Hercule Poirot.
"It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue.
But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun."
The clergyman stirred in his chair. He leaned forward. His intensely blue eyes lighted up.
Miss Brewster shrugged her shoulders. "Oh! of course I realize that, but all the same -"
"But all the same this still seems to you an unlikely setting for crime?
You forget one thing, Mademoiselle."
"Human nature, I suppose?"
"That, yes.
That, always.
But that was not what I was going to say.
I was going to point out to you that here every one is on holiday."
Emily Brewster turned a puzzled face to him. "I don't understand."
Hercule Poirot beamed kindly at her. He made dabs in the air with an emphatic forefinger.
"Let us say, you have an enemy.
If you seek him out in his flat, in his office, in the street - eh bien, you must have a reason - you must account for yourself.
But here at the seaside it is necessary for no one to account for himself.
You are at Leathercombe Bay, why?
Parbleu! it is August - one goes to the seaside in August - one is on one's holiday.
It is quite natural, you see, for you to be here and for Mr Lane to be here and for Major Barry to be here and for Mrs Redfern and her husband to be here.
Because it is the custom in England to go to the seaside in August."
"Well," admitted Miss Brewster, "that's certainly a very ingenious idea.