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Triangle at Rhodes

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       Triangle at Rhodes

      ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ was first published in the USA in This Week, 2 February 1936, then as ‘Poirot and the Triangle at Rhodes’ in The Strand, May 1936.

      Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.

      Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood beside her.

      On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.

      ‘I’m so patchy still,’ she murmured regretfully. ‘M. Poirot – would you mind? Just below the right shoulder-blade – I can’t reach to rub it in properly.’

      M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.

      ‘I was right about that woman – the one in the Chanel model – it is Valentine Dacres – Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.’

      ‘Honeymooners?’ murmured Sarah in a stifled voice.

      Miss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner.

      ‘Oh, no – her clothes aren’t new enough. You can always tell brides! Don’t you think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?’

      ‘Not just looking, darling,’ said Sarah sweetly. ‘You ask a lot of questions, too.’

      ‘I haven’t even spoken to the Golds yet,’ said Miss Lyall with dignity. ‘And anyway I don’t see why one shouldn’t be interested in one’s fellow-creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?’

      This time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply.

      Without taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied:

      ‘Ça depend.’

      Pamela was shocked.

      ‘Oh, M. Poirot! I don’t think anything’s so interesting – so incalculable as a human being!’

      ‘Incalculable? That, no.’

      ‘Oh, but they are. Just as you think you’ve got them beautifully taped – they do something completely unexpected.’

      Hercule Poirot shook his head.

      ‘No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caractère. It is in the end monotonous.’

      ‘I don’t agree with you at all!’ said Miss Pamela Lyall.

      She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.

      ‘As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them – what they’re like – what relations they are to each other – what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s – oh, it’s quite thrilling.’

      ‘Hardly that,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘has infinitely more variety.’

      Sarah turned her head sideways and asked:

      ‘You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?’

      ‘Précisément,’ said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.

      ‘What’s that you’re drawing?’ asked Pamela curiously.

      ‘A triangle,’ said Poirot.

      But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.

      ‘Here are the Chantrys,’ she said.

      A woman was coming down the beach – a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half-nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing-dress.

      Pamela sighed.

      ‘Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?’

      But Poirot was looking at her face – the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.

      He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things – for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time – a commander in the navy.

      He it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark – with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him.

      She said:

      ‘Tony darling – my cigarette case …’

      He