Bexhill beach is both the place where Betty Barnard’s body was discovered and a crime scene that Hercule Poirot revisits to reconstruct how she was approached and killed. Its shifting shingle makes the ground seem an uncertain record, but Poirot’s attention to the beach and the routes leading away from it turns the location into a practical line of inquiry and a key to understanding the crime.

The crime scene

After questioning Mr and Mrs Barnard about when Alexander Bonaparte Cust had visited and what he had said, and obtaining an account of Cust’s departure from his hotel, Poirot went to the place on the beach where Betty’s body had been discovered. He walked in circles for several minutes, studying the shingle. Arthur Hastings could see little purpose in this: the tide covered the spot twice a day, seemingly erasing the surface evidence. Poirot, however, appeared satisfied with his examination, although Hastings could not yet discern what it had yielded.

Routes and reconstruction

Poirot did not confine his investigation to the discovery site. From the beach he walked to the nearest point where a car could have been parked, then continued to the place where buses waited before leaving Bexhill. This sequence connects the beach with possible means of arrival and departure. The evidence does not establish what Poirot concluded from each stop, but his movement from the shingle to transport points shows that he was testing the scene against the practical geography around it.

What the beach reveals

Later, Poirot used the circumstances of Betty’s death to infer the nature of her encounter with her killer. Betty had been strangled with her own belt; Poirot reasoned that this strongly suggested a person with whom she was on friendly or affectionate terms. His account also drew on her flirtatious character: he believed the killer would have needed to attract her company. In Poirot’s reconstruction, the belt had first been part of a playful interaction before the killer used it to kill her. Donald Fraser reacted angrily as Poirot set out this interpretation, making the beach not only a place examined for physical clues but also the setting of an explanation with immediate emotional force.

Narrative significance

The beach’s significance lies in the contrast between its apparent instability and Poirot’s methodical attention. Hastings sees a shoreline repeatedly covered by the tide and doubts that circling the site can help; Poirot’s actions, guided by an idea Hastings does not yet understand, treat even a transient surface as worth examining. The investigation then widens from the exact place of discovery to the nearby car-parking point and bus departure area. In this way, the beach anchors both the physical reconstruction of Betty’s final movements and Poirot’s interpretation of the personal approach that made the murder possible.