Rosamund stopped dead. Her body did not tremble - on the contrary it stiffened. She stood for a minute or two, then she disengaged her arm from Linda's.
She said: "What is it that you know, Linda?"
The girl gazed at her.
Then she shook her head. She muttered: "Nothing."
Rosamund caught her by the arm. The grip hurt and Linda winced slightly. Rosamund said:
"Be careful, Linda.
Be damned careful."
Linda had gone dead white.
She said: "I am very careful - all the time."
Rosamund said urgently: "Listen, Linda, what I said a minute or two ago applies just the same - only a hundred times more so.
Put the whole business out of your mind. Never think about it.
Forget - forget...
You can if you try!
Arlena is dead and nothing can bring her back to life...
Forget everything and live in the future.
And above all, hold your tongue."
Linda shrank a little.
She said: "You - you seem to know all about it?"
Rosamund said energetically: "I don't know anything!
In my opinion a wandering maniac got onto the island and killed Arlena.
That's much the most probable solution. I'm fairly sure that the police will have to accept that in the end.
That's what must have happened! That's what did happen!"
Linda said: "If Father -"
Rosamund interrupted her. "Don't talk about it."
Linda said: "I've got to say one thing.
My Mother -"
"Well, what about her?"
"She - she was tried for murder, wasn't she?"
"Yes."
Linda said slowly: "And then Father married her.
That looks, doesn't it, as though Father didn't really think murder was very wrong - not always, that is."
Rosamund said sharply: "Don't say things like that - even to me! The police haven't got anything against your father.
He's got an alibi - an alibi that they can't break.
He's perfectly safe."
Linda whispered: "Did they think at first that Father -?"
Rosamund cried: "I don't know what they thought!
But they know now that he couldn't have done it.
Do you understand?
He couldn't have done it."
She spoke with authority, her eyes commanded Linda's acquiescence. The girl uttered a long fluttering sigh.
Rosamund said: "You'll be able to leave here soon. You'll forget everything - everything!"
Linda said with sudden unexpected violence:
"I shall never forget."
She turned abruptly and ran back to the hotel.
Rosamund stared after her.
"There is something I want to know, Madame?"
Christine Redfern glanced up at Poirot in a slightly abstracted manner.
She said: "Yes?"
Hercule Poirot took very little notice of her abstraction.
He had noted the way her eyes followed her husband's figure where he was pacing up and down on the terrace outside the bar, but for the moment he had no interest in purely conjugal problems.