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Evil Under the Sun (published in 1941) is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie featuring Hercule Poirot. The plot is close to, although not exactly the same as, the short story “Triangle at Rhodes” that was published in Murder in the Mews.
Plot introductionA quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Cornwall is all that Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband’s feeling, revels in the attention of another woman’s husband. The scene is set for murder, but can the field of suspects really be as narrow as it first appears? Plot summarySpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details about the murderer’s identity follow.
On the morning of the murder, Arlena goes off on her own for what appears to be a tryst on the side of the island that is comparatively unvisited. Poirot assumes that her assignation is with Patrick, but this seems not to be the case when Patrick arrives shortly afterwards and seems to be looking for her. Patrick starts to push out a boat to go meet Arlena when another guest, Emily Brewster, asks if she may join him. When they reach the secluded beach, they see the Arlena on the sand, and Patrick clambers ashore, revealing that Arlena is dead. Emily goes to fetch help while he waits with the dead Arlena. The investigation throws up a number of confusing details. Among them are a bottle which has been thrown from a hotel window, a bath taken at an odd time that no one will admit to have taken, and a pair of scissors which were discovered on the beach near the corpse.
The discovery of a jewel in a cave adjoining the beach draws into the list of suspects a keen yachtsman Horace Blatt. Moreover, Christine Redfern admits to overhearing Arlena talking to a man who was blackmailing her; when it is discovered that much of her enormous fortune has been eaten up in untraceable payments, another potential motive becomes clear. Moreover, Poirot starts to inquire regarding recent cases of strangulation, throwing up suspicions of a serial killer. Is the religiously zealous Reverend Lane secretly a homicidal maniac? Kenneth’s daughter, Linda, has behaved oddly on the morning of the murder, returning early with a package of candles. Poirot finds remains of wax, hair and coloured paper in her fireplace. When she attempts to commit suicide, leaving a note that claims responsibility for the murder, it seems that the case is solved. Linda’s guilt has attached, however, to a little experiment with sympathetic magic and a wax doll. The real nature of the murder is far more complex. For Arlena was not the seductress that she first appeared: she was just a woman of strong superficial attractiveness of whom men quickly tired. She was an obvious victim for a manipulative swindler such as Patrick Redfern. The murder depends on the fact that it is Christine Redfern whose body is discovered on the beach by Patrick and Emily. She has used temporary self-tan to match Arlena’s skin colour before throwing the bottle into the sea. Then, taking with her the scissors and a cardboard hat prepared with a lock of red hair similar to Arlena’s, she has climbed down a steel ladder to the beach. Arlena, startled by the approach of Patrick’s wife down the ladder and following her previous instructions from Patrick, hid in the cave. Christine took her place lying on the beach, wearing the hat, and was “discovered” by Patrick. Immediately she cut the hat up and took the pieces with her to burn in Linda’s fire, and returned to the hotel, forgetting the scissors. There she took a bath to remove the self-tan. Now, Patrick could kill Arlena at his leisure. It was at least the second such murder that he had committed; the pair had been responsible for an earlier murder using a similar trick to establish his alibi. His motive was to kill Arlena before it could be revealed that he had swindled her out of much of her fortune. The only happy ending is for Kenneth and Rosamund, who plan their eventual wedding while reflecting on the fact that each had provided a fake alibi for the other, believing the other to be the actual murderer. Characters in “Evil under the Sun”
Similarities to “Triangle at Rhodes”Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details about the murderer’s identity in “Triangle at Rhodes” follow.
In “Triangle at Rhodes”, a short story by Christie first published in February 1936 in U.S. periodical "This Week", Poirot again witnesses an apparent liaison between two married people. Again everyone believes that the responsible party is a beautiful and magnetic woman, Valentine Chantry, who is murdered. In “Triangle at Rhodes” the murder is by poison and it is thought that she and her lover have attempted to murder her husband and that the plot has gone wrong, but Poirot reveals that the murder was committed by her husband in cahoots with her apparent lover’s wife, Mrs. Gold. In both stories, the key twist is that the appearance of the seductress’s power deflects attention from the reality of the situation. In “Triangle at Rhodes”, Mrs. Gold says of Valentine Chantry “in spite of her money and her good looks and all […] she’s not the sort of woman men really stick to. She’s the sort of woman, I think, that men would get tired of very easily.” In Evil under the Sun, Poirot says of Arlena Marshall “She was the type of woman whom men care for easily and of whom they easily tire.” Spoilers end here.
TriviaThe character of Colonel Weston had originally appeared in Peril at End House and makes reference to that case upon his first appearance, in Chapter 5. Although this novel is not counted amongst the novels featuring him, Hastings makes a cameo appearance in about ten lines of chapter 2, discussing the case with Poirot at a later date. Minor character Mrs. Gardener is herself a Poirot fan, and refers to the case retold in Death on the Nile in Chapter 1. In the 1982 film, the setting is moved to a secluded resort frequented by the rich and famous in the Adriatic Sea (the action was in fact filmed in Majorca, Spain). The book is read by the character Sawyer on the ABC TV Series Lost in the episode titled "Expose". A PC game based on the book is coming to stores in October 2007. Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
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