Eastbourne is the setting of the Whitecross Hotel alibi that seems to place Cust far from the Bexhill beach when Betty Barnard was murdered. Its importance lies in the apparent precision of that account—and in Poirot’s eventual explanation that the date recorded at the hotel was wrong.

The Whitecross Hotel Alibi

Strange, a guest at the Whitecross Hotel, said that he met Cust in Eastbourne on the evening of July 24. Lonely and looking for someone to talk to, Strange found Cust an attentive companion who did not interrupt. After dinner they played dominoes: Strange was a strong player, and Cust proved unexpectedly good too. Strange insisted on continuing until at least midnight, though Cust wanted to go to bed. They parted at twelve ten.

That account seemed to provide Cust with a decisive alibi. If he was still in Eastbourne at twelve ten on the morning of July 25, he could hardly have been strangling Betty Barnard on the beach at Bexhill between midnight and one. The distance—about fourteen miles—made it harder to suppose that he had slipped away unseen, reached the beach, and returned or otherwise escaped detection in the short interval.

A Convincing Account, a Troubling Case

Strange was described as positive and obstinate, a man who would not readily admit a mistake or be shaken from his story. The hotel register appeared to support him: the handwriting was Cust’s. The police therefore faced a contradiction that did not yield to an ordinary challenge. If Strange had mistaken Cust for someone else, it was unclear why that man would have given Cust’s name; and the account offered no obvious accomplice who could explain the mismatch.

The difficulty did not formally undo the other evidence against Cust. Japp noted that the bloodstained coat and knife connected him to the Doncaster murder, and regarded the evidence in that case as strong enough to secure a conviction. The Eastbourne account instead damaged the coherence of the larger prosecution theory: if Cust had committed the Andover and Churston murders and the Doncaster killing, the pattern pointed toward him as Betty Barnard’s killer too—but Strange’s testimony seemed to make that conclusion impossible.

Poirot’s Explanation

When Cust protested his innocence, he returned to the Eastbourne domino game as his strongest argument. Poirot accepted that the account mattered, but proposed that Strange had confused one day with another. Because Strange was so certain and so unwilling to reconsider his recollection, he would persist in the mistaken date; the hotel register could preserve the same error if Cust had entered the wrong date when signing in.

Eastbourne thus becomes the hinge between an apparently exculpatory scene and the case against Cust. The details that make the alibi persuasive—the named hotel, the register, the late game, and the exact time of separation—do not disappear. Poirot’s solution changes their meaning: the account can be true about the meeting and the dominoes while being wrong about the date.