Sleeping Murder mm-14

by Agatha Christie

  Yours truly,

  James Kennedy.

  ‘There was no question of her coming by an earlier train?’

  ‘An earlier train?’ Dr Kennedy looked astonished.

  ‘Because that’s what she did. She left Coombeleigh, not at three-thirty but at one-thirty-caught the two-five from Dillmouth Junction and got out, not at Woodleigh Bolton, but at Matchings Halt, the station before it.’

  ‘But that’s extraordinary!’

  ‘Was she consulting you professionally, Doctor?’

  ‘No. I retired from practice some years ago.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. You knew her well?’

  Kennedy shook his head.

  ‘I hadn’t seen her for nearly twenty years.’

  ‘But you-er-recognized her just now?’

  Gwenda shivered, but dead bodies did not affect a doctor and Kennedy replied thoughtfully: ‘Under the circumstances it is hard to say if I recognized her or not. She was strangled, I presume?’

  ‘She was strangled. The body was found in a copse a short way along the track leading from Matchings Halt to Woodleigh Camp. It was found by a hiker coming down from the Camp at about ten minutes to four. Our police surgeon puts the time of death at between two-fifteen and three o’clock. Presumably she was killed shortly after she left the station. No other passenger got out at Matchings Halt. She was the only person to get out of the train there.

  ‘Now why did she get out at Matchings Halt? Did she mistake the station? I hardly think so. In any case she was two hours early for her appointment with you, and had not come by the train you suggested, although she had your letter with her.

  ‘Now just what was her business with you, Doctor?’

  Dr Kennedy felt in his pocket and brought out Lily’s letter.

  ‘I brought this with me. The enclosed cutting and the insertion put in the local paper by Mr and Mrs Reed here.’

  Inspector Last read Lily Kimble’s letter and the enclosure. Then he looked from Dr Kennedy to Giles and Gwenda.

  ‘Can I have the story behind all this? It goes back a long way, I gather?’

  ‘Eighteen years,’ said Gwenda.

  Piecemeal, with additions, and parentheses, the story came out. Inspector Last was a good listener. He let the three people in front of him tell things in their own way. Kennedy was dry, and factual, Gwenda was slightly incoherent, but her narrative had imaginative power. Giles gave, perhaps, the most valuable contribution. He was clear and to the point, with less reserve than Kennedy, and with more coherence than Gwenda. It took a long time.

  Then Inspector Last sighed and summed up.

  ‘Mrs Halliday was Dr Kennedy’s sister and your stepmother, Mrs Reed. She disappeared from the house you are at present living in eighteen years ago. Lily Kimble (whose maiden name was Abbott) was a servant (house-parlourmaid) in the house at the time. For some reason Lily Kimble inclines (after the passage of years) to the theory that there was foul play. At the time it was assumed that Mrs Halliday had gone away with a man (identity unknown). Major Halliday died in a mental establishment fifteen years ago still under the delusion that he had strangled his wife-if it was a delusion-’

  He paused.

  ‘These are all interesting but somewhat unrelated facts. The crucial point seems to be, is Mrs Halliday alive or dead? If dead, when did she die? And what did Lily Kimble know?’

  ‘It seems, on the face of it, that she must have known something rather important. So important that she was killed in order to prevent her talking about it.’

  Gwenda cried, ‘But how could anyone possibly know she was going to talk about it-except us?’

  Inspector Last turned his thoughtful eyes on her.

  ‘It is a signifiant point, Mrs Reed, that she took the two-five instead of the four-five train from Dillmouth Junction. There must be some reason for that. Also, she got out at the station before Woodleigh Bolton. Why? It seems possible to me that, after writing to the doctor, she wrote tosomeone else, suggesting a rendezvous at Woodleigh Camp, perhaps, and that she proposed after that rendezvous, if it was unsatisfactory, to go on to Dr Kennedy and ask his advice. It is possible that she had suspicions of some definite person, and she may have written to that person hinting at her knowledge and suggesting a rendezvous.’

  ‘Blackmail,’ said Giles bluntly.

  ‘I don’t suppose she thought of it that way,’ said Inspector Last. ‘She was just greedy and hopeful-and a little muddled about what she could get out of it all. We’ll see. Maybe the husband can tell us more.’

  ***

  ‘Warned her, I did,’ said Mr Kimble heavily. ‘ “Don’t have nought to do with it,” them were my words. Went behind my back, she did. Thought as she knew best. That were Lily all over. Too smart by half.’

  Questioning revealed that Mr Kimble had little to contribute.

  Lily had been in service at St Catherine’s before he met her and started walking out with her. Fond of the pictures, she was, and told him that likely as not, she’d been in a house where there’d been a murder.

  ‘Didn’t pay much account, I didn’t. All imagination, I thought. Never content with plain fact, Lily wasn’t. Long rigmarole she told me, about the master doing in the missus and maybe putting the body in the cellar-and something about a French girl what had looked out of the window and seen something or somebody. “Don’t you pay no attention to foreigners, my girl,” I said. “One and all they’re liars. Not like us.” And when she run on about it, I didn’t listen because, mark you, she was working it all up out of nothing. Liked a bit of crime, Lily did. Used to take the Sunday News what was running a series about Famous Murderers. Full of it, she was, and if she liked to think she’d been in a house where there was a murder, well, thinking don’t hurt nobody. But when she was on at me about answering this advertisement-“You leave it alone,” I says to her. “It’s no good stirring up trouble.” And if she’d done as I telled her, she’d be alive today.’

  He thought for a moment or two.

  ‘Ar,’ he said. ‘She’d be alive right now. Too smart by half, that was Lily.’

  Chapter 23. Which of Them?

  Giles and Gwenda had not gone with Inspector Last and Dr Kennedy to interview Mr Kimble. They arrived home about seven o’clock. Gwenda looked white and ill. Dr Kennedy had said to Giles: ‘Give her some brandy and make her eat something, then get her to bed. She’s had a bad shock.’

  ‘It’s so awful, Giles,’ Gwenda kept saying. ‘So awful. That silly woman, making an appointment with the murderer, and going along so confidently-to be killed. Like a sheep to the slaughter.’

  ‘Well, don’t think about it, darling. After all, we did know there was someone-a killer.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. Not a killer now. I mean, it was then - eighteen years ago. It wasn’t, somehow, quite real…It might all have been a mistake.’

  ‘Well, this proves that it wasn’t a mistake. You were right all the time, Gwenda.’

  Giles was glad to find Miss Marple at Hillside. She and Mrs Cocker between them fussed over Gwenda who refused brandy because she said it always reminded her of Channel steamers, but accepted some hot whisky and lemon, and then, coaxed by Mrs Cocker, sat down and ate an omelette.

  Giles would have talked determinedly of other things, but Miss Marple, with what Giles admitted to be superior tactics, discussed the crime in a gentle aloof manner.

  ‘Very dreadful, my dear,’ she said. ‘And of course a great shock, but interesting, one must admit. And of course I am so old that death doesn’t shock me as much as it does you-only something lingering and painful like cancer really distresses me. The really vital thing is that this proves definitely and beyond any possible doubt that poor young Helen Halliday was killed. We’ve thought so all along and now we know.’

  ‘And according to you we ought to know where the body is,’ said Giles. ‘The cellar, I suppose.’

  ‘No, no, Mr Reed. You remember Edith Pagett said she went down there on the morn
ing after because she was disturbed by what Lily had said, and she found no signs of anything of the kind-and there would be signs, you know, if somebody was really looking for them.’

  ‘Then what happened to it? Taken away in a car and thrown over a cliff into the sea?’

  ‘No. Come now, my dears, what struck you first of all when you came here-struck you, Gwenda, I should say. The fact that from the drawing-room window, you had no view down to the sea. Where you felt, very properly, that steps should lead down to the lawn-there was instead a plantation of shrubs. The steps, you found subsequently, had been there originally, but had at some time been transferred to the end of the terrace. Why were they moved?’

  Gwenda stared at her with dawning comprehension.

  ‘You mean that that’s where-’

  ‘There must have been a reason for making the change, and there doesn’t really seem to be a sensible one. It is, frankly, a stupid place to have steps down to the lawn. But that end of the terrace is a very quiet place-it’s not overlooked from the house except by one window-the window of the nursery, on the first floor. Don’t you see, that if you want to bury a body the earth will be disturbed and there must be a reason for its being disturbed. The reason was that it had been decided to move the steps from in front of the drawing-room to the end of the terrace. I’ve learnt already from Dr Kennedy that Helen Halliday and her husband were very keen on the garden, and did a lot of work in it. The daily gardener they employed used merely to carry out their orders, and if he arrived to find that this change was in progress and some of the flags had already been moved, he would only have thought that the Hallidays had started on the work when he wasn’t there. The body, of course, could have been buried at either place, but we can be quite certain, I think, that it is actually buried at the end of the terrace and not in front of the drawing-room window.’

  ‘Why can we be sure?’ asked Gwenda.

  ‘Because of what poor Lily Kimble said in her letter-that she changed her mind about the body being in the cellar because of what Leonie saw when she looked out of the window. That makes it very clear, doesn’t it? The Swiss girl looked out of the nursery window at some time during the night and saw the grave being dug. Perhaps she actually saw who it was digging it.’

  ‘And never said anything to the police?’

  ‘My dear, there was no question at the time of a crime having occurred. Mrs Halliday had run away with a lover-that was all that Leonie would grasp. She probably couldn’t speak much English anyway. She did mention to Lily, perhaps not at the time, but later, a curious thing she had observed from her window that night, and that stimulated Lily’s belief in a crime having occurred. But I’ve no doubt that Edith Pagett told Lily off for talking nonsense, and the Swiss girl would accept her point of view and would certainly not wish to be mixed up with the police. Foreigners always seem to be particularly nervous about the police when they are in a strange country. So she went back to Switzerland and very likely never thought of it again.’

  Giles said: ‘If she’s alive now-if she can be traced-’

  Miss Marple nodded her head. ‘Perhaps.’

  Giles demanded: ‘How can we set about it?’

  Miss Marple said: ‘The police will be able to do that much better than you can.’

  ‘Inspector Last is coming over here tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Then I think I should tell him-about the steps.’

  ‘And about what I saw-or think I saw-in the hall?’ asked Gwenda nervously.

  ‘Yes, dear. You’ve been very wise to say nothing of that until now. Very wise. But I think the time has come.’

  Giles said slowly: ‘She was strangled in the hall, and then the murderer carried her upstairs and put her on the bed. Kelvin Halliday came in, passed out with doped whisky, and in his turn was carried upstairs to the bedroom. He came to, and thought he had killed her. The murderer must have been watching somewhere near at hand. When Kelvin went off to Dr Kennedy’s, the murderer took away the body, probably hid it in the shrubbery at the end of the terrace and waited until everybody had gone to bed and was presumably asleep, before he dug the grave and buried the body. That means he must have been here, hanging about the house, pretty well all that night?’

  Miss Marple nodded.

  ‘He had to be on the spot. I remember your saying that that was important. We’ve got to see which of our three suspects fits in best with the requirements. We’ll take Erskine first. Now he definitely was on the spot. By his own admission he walked up here with Helen Kennedy from the beach at round about nine o’clock. He said goodbye to her. But did he say goodbye to her? Let’s say instead that he strangled her.’

  ‘But it was all over between them,’ cried Gwenda. ‘Long ago. He said himself that he was hardly ever alone with Helen.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Gwenda, that the way we must look at it now, we can’t depend on anything anyone says.’

  ‘Now I’m so glad to hear you say that,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Because I’ve been a little worried, you know, by the way you two have seemed willing to accept, as actual fact, all the things that people have told you. I’m afraid I have a sadly distrustful nature, but, especially in a matter of murder, I make it a rule to take nothing that is told to me as true, unless it is checked. For instance, it does seem quite certain that Lily Kimble mentioned the clothes packed and taken away in a suitcase were not the ones Helen Halliday would herself have taken, because not only did Edith Pagett tell us that Lily said so to her, but Lily herself mentioned the fact in her letter to Dr Kennedy. So that is one fact. Dr Kennedy told us that Kelvin Halliday believed that his wife was secretly drugging him, and Kelvin Halliday in his diary confirms that-so there is another fact-and a very curious fact it is, don’t you think? However, we will not go into that now.

  ‘But I would like to point out that a great many of the assumptions you have made have been based upon what has been told you-possibly told you very plausibly.’

  Giles stared hard at her.

  Gwenda, her colour restored, sipped coffee, and leaned across the table.

  Giles said: ‘Let’s check up now on what three people have said to us. Take Erskine first. He says-’

  ‘You’ve got a down on him,’ said Gwenda. ‘It’s waste of time going on about him, because now he’s definitely out of it. He couldn’t have killed Lily Kimble.’

  Giles went on imperturbly: ‘He says that he met Helen on the boat going out to India and they fell in love, but that he couldn’t bring himself to leave his wife and children, and that they agreed they must say goodbye. Suppose it wasn’t quite like that. Suppose he fell desperately in love with Helen, and that it was she who wouldn’t run off with him. Supposing he threatened that if she married anyone else he would kill her.’

  ‘Most improbable,’ said Gwenda.

  ‘Things like that do happen. Remember what you overheard his wife say to him. You put it all down to jealousy, but it may have been true. Perhaps she has had a terrible time with him where women are concerned-he may be a little bit of a sex maniac.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘No, because he’s attractive to women. I think, myself, that there is something a little queer about Erskine. However, let’s go on with my case against him. Helen breaks off her engagement to Fane and comes home and marries your father and settles down here. And then suddenly, Erskine turns up. He comes down ostensibly on a summer holiday with his wife. That’s an odd thing to do, really. He admits he came here to see Helen again. Now let’s take it thatErskine was the man in the drawing-room with her that day when Lily overheard her say she was afraid of him. “I’m afraid of you-I’ve always been afraid of you-I think you’re mad.”

  ‘And, because she’s afraid, she makes plans to go and live in Norfolk, but she’s very secretive about it. No one is to know. No one is to know, that is, until the Erskines have left Dillmouth. So far that fits. Now we come to the fatal night. What the Hallidays were doing earlier that evening we don’t
know-’

  Miss Marple coughed.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I saw Edith Pagett again. She remembers that there was early supper that night-seven o’clock-because Major Halliday was going to some meeting-Golf Club, she thinks it was, or some Parish meeting. Mrs Halliday went out after supper.’

  ‘Right. Helen meets Erskine, by appointment, perhaps, on the beach. He is leaving the following day. Perhaps he refuses to go. He urges Helen to go away with him. She comes back here and he comes with her. Finally, in a fit of frenzy he strangles her. The next bit is as we have already agreed. He’s slightly mad, he wants Kelvin Halliday to believe it is he who has killed her. Later, Erskine buries the body. You remember, he told Gwenda that he didn’t go back to the hotel until very late because he was walking about Dillmouth.’

  ‘One wonders,’ said Miss Marple, ‘what his wife was doing?’

  ‘Probably frenzied with jealousy,’ said Gwenda. ‘And gave him hell when he did get in.’

  ‘That’s my reconstruction,’ said Giles. ‘And it’s possible.’

  ‘But he couldn’t have killed Lily Kimble,’ said Gwenda, ‘because he lives in Northumberland. So thinking about him is just waste of time. Let’s take Walter Fane.’

  ‘Right. Walter Fane is the repressed type. He seems gentle and mild and easily pushed around. But Miss Marple has brought us one valuable bit of testimony. Walter Fane was once in such a rage that he nearly killed his brother. Admittedly he was a child at the time, but it was startling because he had always seemed of such a gentle forgiving nature. Anyway, Walter Fane falls in love with Helen Halliday. Not merely in love, he’s crazy about her. She won’t have him and he goes off to India. Later she writes him that she will come out and marry him. She starts. Then comes the second blow. She arrives and promptly jilts him. She has “met someone on the boat”. She goes home and marries Kelvin Halliday. Possibly Walter Fane thinks that Kelvin Halliday was the original cause of her turning him down. He broods, nurses a crazy jealous hate and comes home. He behaves in a most forgiving, friendly manner, is often at this house, has become apparently a tame cat around the house, the faithful Dobbin. But perhaps Helen realizes that this isn’t true. She gets a glimpse of what is going on below the surface. Perhaps, long ago, she sensed something disturbing in quiet young Walter Fane. She says to him, “I think I’ve always been afraid of you.” She makes plans, secretly, to go right away from Dillmouth and live in Norfolk. Why? Because she’s afraid of Walter Fane.