Average Literature Trivia: Evil Under the Sun | 10 Questions

Answer: Ecclesiastes

In the first chapter of the novel, Poirot comments to Emily Brewster that, even in such a carefree setting as the Jolly Roger, "...there is evil everywhere under the sun." The rather fanatical Reverend Stephen Lane is struck by this statement, as it is quite similar to the quotation from Ecclesiastes. He is pleased to hear that Poirot believes in the existance of evil, something he says few people take seriously in the present age.

Shortly after this, Arlena Marshall makes her spectacular appearance. To the others, she appears to be the very incarnation of the evil they have just been discussing. Poirot is also conscious of the presence of evil, but his attention is directed elsewhere.

Answer: To bodies at the morgue.

Poirot holds a low opinion of the habit of sunbathing; to him, the rows of bronzed torsos basking in the sun resemble bodies on a slab at the Paris Morgue, or to slabs of meat at the butchers (recent medical research concerning skin cancer proves that he had a point!).

This observation has particular resonance later in the novel, when Emily Brewster is tricked into believing that she had seen the dead body of Arlena Marshall, when in fact it was the live body of Christine Redfern. When sunbathing, as Poirot points out, one moderately well-made woman is very like another.

Answer: Patrick and Christine Redfern

Poirot overhears (not entirely by accident) an argument between an angry, jealous Christine Redfern and her indignant, defensive husband regarding Patrick's excessive attentions to Arlena Marshall. Here, the author flashes forward to a later conversation between Poirot and Hastings, in which Poirot admits that he deliberately listened in on the argument, and knew at that point that a murder had been planned.

The argument was, in fact, staged for Poirot's benefit by the Redferns with the intention that he should overhear. The Redferns were deliberately playing the parts of jealous wife and philandering husband to avert any suspicion that they might be collaborating on the murder of Arlena Marshall. Poirot is not fooled; the argument (as well as Christine's subsequent lamentations about her husband's philandering) is so conventional that it might have come from a book. Poirot realizes that they are planning something but, as he points out to Hastings, if someone is determined to commit a murder, it is not easy to prevent them.

Answer: Her hands were too small for her to have strangled Arlena.

As Patrick Redfern's accomplice, Christine plays to the hilt the role of the "poor little wife", who suffers on the sidelines while her husband shamelessly consorts with the beautiful Arlena. A self-described schoolteacher, she accents her fair complexion by wearing unbecoming clothes in colors that make her appear even more sallow, talks incessantly about her tendency to sunburn and her giddiness in high elevations (to reinforce the latter, she fabricates a story about having a particularly severe attack of vertigo descending the outside staircase at Milan cathedral).

In fact, Christine has planned and carried out at least one other murder with Patrick, in which she provided him with an alibi. Although she feigns extreme (and understandable) jealousy over Patrick's attentions to Arlena, they both know that his infatuation is an act; he intends to murder her as soon as he has bilked her out of her money. Her description of herself as a schoolteacher is true as far as it goes; actually she is the games mistress at a girls school. She is nearly as tall as Arlena Marshall (a fact that she, unwisely, points out to Poirot), in perfect health, and quite attractive in her own right, though she takes pains to appear otherwise. Poirot manages to expose the fact that her alleged spells of vertigo are only an act. Christine does, however, have extremely small and delicate hands, which make it impossible for her to have physically strangled Arlena; in fact, the size of her hands is actually her alibi (although she contrives another one, with Linda's unwitting assistance).

Answer: False

Their original plan was to pin the murder on Kenneth Marshall; the motive would be jealousy over Arlena's affair with Patrick. Christine intended only to use Linda to corroborate her alibi for the time of the murder; however, when she spotted the books on black magic in Linda's room and saw that the girl had bought a bundle of candles, she realized that Linda would make a much better scapegoat.

Linda hated and resented her stepmother, and went so far as to make a wax effigy of her, stick it with a pin, and melt it in her fireplace. After the murder, Linda was consumed by guilt, a fact that Christine cleverly played upon. Realizing Linda's anguished state of mind, Christine mentioned to her that she had sleeping pills in her room; Linda subsequently took six of these pills from Christine's room and overdosed on them. Luckily, she recovered.

Answer: Rosamund Darnley or Arlena Marshall

Although they are not at all alike personally (and don't like each other), both Rosamund Darnley and Arlena Marshall are women of considerable style and taste. Poirot notes that they both wear the same subtle, elusive perfume, a scent that he notices in the narrow Pixie's Cave, meaning that one or the other (or both) women had been in the cave recently.

It turns out to have been Arlena who had taken refuge in the cave from Christine, whom she saw descending by the ladder. She stayed in the cave for a considerable period of time until Patrick arrived to tell her that the coast was clear...after which he strangled her. During her time in the cave, Patrick and Christine arranged for her "body" to be found murdered, in the presence of Emily Brewster.

Answer: No one would admit to them.

On the day of the murder, Emily Brewster narrowly escaped being struck by a bottle (she was bathing at the time), which someone had thrown from the terrace of one of the hotel rooms. Poirot is struck first by the fact that someone would hurl an emptied bottle from the terrace (why not drop it in the wastebasket?) and also by the fact that no one will admit to having thrown it.

Also, at 12:00 on the afternoon of the murder, one of the maids heard the distinctive sound of water emptying from a bathtub in one of the hotel rooms. An innocent enough occurence, apparently, but again, no one will admit to having bathed or showered that afternoon.

Poirot eventually deduces that the discarded bottle had contained liquid suntan, which the pallid Christine Redfern had used to tan her arms and legs, enabling her to impersonate the "corpse" of Arlena Marshall (Christine's customary long-sleeved, ankle-length outfit, which she claimed to wear out of fear of sunburn, concealed her newly tanned limbs). The bottle was thrown from the terrace to the rocks below, where it shattered, so that it would never be found and no one would guess that Christine had used it. After the discovery of the "body", Christine returned to the Jolly Roger and shed the bogus "suntan" under the shower.

Answer: "...Pretty much of a darned fool." (Odell Gardiner)

Arlena Marshall strikes nearly everyone as being a ruthless maneater and homewrecker, with an almost fatal power over men. Poirot, however, sees her as a preordained victim - foolish, suggestible, and with a self-destructive need for masculine admiration. He also notes that her power over men is fleeting; a man whose wife named her in their divorce suit afterward refused to marry her, and Poirot notes in the first chapter that every man's eyes turn to her upon her entrance...except her husband's. A chivalrous man, Marshall had married Arlena during the divorce scandal out of sympathy for the public ordeal she had become embroiled in, but he soon found that she was a shallow and insipid person, despite her beauty. Her subsequent infidelities consequently had little effect upon him; he knew that she was really incapable of helping herself.

Having heard everyone else express their (pretty much unanimous) opinion of Arlena, Poirot asks the reserved Odell Gardiner (who is largely content to reply "Yes darling" to his wife's unceasing flow of conversation) for his opinion. Mr. Gardiner bluntly states his candid opinion that the late Mrs. Marshall was "...pretty much of a darned fool." Although he acts as his wife's echo throughout much of the novel, Poirot regards Mr. Gardiner as "...a man of the world- a man, I think, of considerable acumen", and regards his opinion with great respect.

Answer: That Christine Redfern does not suffer from vertigo.

Poirot noted that Christine, who had made a point of stressing repeatedly her fear of heights, was able to cross a narrow footbridge which crossed a stream far below without becoming giddy or faint. On the other hand Emily Brewster, who genuinely suffered from vertigo, was forced to stop halfway across the bridge and had to be helped the rest of the way.

Poirot realized that Christine had lied about her fear of heights, and would have had no problem climbing the ladder at Pixy Cove. He also realized that Patrick Redfern had deliberately chosen Emily Brewster as a witness, knowing that she would not be able to climb the ladder to get help after the discovery of the "body". Instead, she rowed back, leaving Patrick alone with the "corpse", which enabled Christine to escape unseen, and Patrick to commit the actual murder of Arlena.

Answer: Money

Although Arlena Marshall had certainly inspired a great deal of jealousy, resentment, and passion, in the end she was murdered simply (and quite cold-bloodedly) for monetary gain. Patrick, a ruthless fortune hunter, had bilked her out of nearly all of the money she had inherited from a wealthy, elderly admirer by persuading her to hand him over large sums for "investment". Realizing that there would be hell to pay when Arlena's husband discovered the swindle, he coldly planned to murder her before she would have a chance to tell Kenneth where the money had gone. To explain the disappearance of the money, Christine fabricated a story about having overheard someone blackmailing Arlena. Poirot found this story hard to swallow (Rosamund Darnley also found it "incongruous"); Arlena simply wasn't the type to be successfully blackmailed. Moreover, it was she who had been murdered; why would the blackmailer kill the source of his money?

The murder of Arlena Marshall was the second (possibly the third) murder which Patrick had committed for financial gain. Previously, under the name Edward Corrigan, he had murdered his wife Alice Corrigan in order to collect on her insurance policy. In this crime, he had been provided with an alibi by a woman named Christine Deverill (Christine Redfern), who claimed to have "found" the body before the murder had actually been committed. Strangulation was the modus operandi in both cases; Poirot believed that Patrick employed this method because he enjoyed the act of killing; it was he, not Arlena Marshall, in whom Poirot instinctively (and correctly) sensed the presence of evil at the beginning of the novel.