Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple 13)

“Old people can be rather a nuisance, my dear. Newly married young couples should be left to themselves.” She smiled at Gwenda’s protest. “I’m sure you’d have made me very welcome. And how are you both? And are you progressing with your mystery?”

“We’re hot on the trail,” Gwenda said, sitting beside her.

She detailed their various investigations up to date.

“And now,” she ended, “we’ve put an advertisement in lots of papers—local ones and The Times and the other big dailies. We’ve just said will anyone with any knowledge of Helen Spenlove Halliday, née Kennedy, communicate etc. I should think, don’t you, that we’re bound to get some answers.”

“I should think so, my dear—yes, I should think so.”

Miss Marple’s tone was placid as ever, but her eyes looked troubled. They flashed a quick appraising glance at the girl sitting beside her. That tone of determined heartiness did not ring quite true. Gwenda, Miss Marple thought, looked worried. What Dr. Haydock had called “the implications” were, perhaps, beginning to occur to her. Yes, but now it was too late to go back….

Miss Marple said gently and apologetically, “I have really become most interested in all this. My life, you know, has so few excitements. I hope you won’t think me very inquisitive if I ask you to let me know how you progress?”

“Of course we’ll let you know,” said Gwenda warmly. “You shall be in on everything. Why, but for you, I should be urging doctors to shut me up in a loony bin. Tell me your address here, and then you must come and have a drink—I mean, have tea with us, and see the house. You’ve got to see the scene of the crime, haven’t you?”

She laughed, but there was a slightly nervy edge to her laugh.

When she had gone on her way Miss Marple shook her head very gently and frowned.

II

Giles and Gwenda scanned the mail eagerly every day, but at first their hopes were disappointed. All they got was two letters from private enquiry agents who pronounced themselves willing and skilled to undertake investigations on their behalf.

“Time enough for them later,” said Giles. “And if we do have to employ some agency, it will be a thoroughly first-class firm, not one that touts through the mail. But I don’t really see what they could do that we aren’t doing.”

His optimism (or self-esteem) was justified a few days later. A letter arrived, written in one of those clear and yet somewhat illegible handwritings that stamp the professional man.

Galls Hill

Woodleigh Bolton.

Dear Sir,

In answer to your advertisement in The Times, Helen Spenlove Kennedy is my sister. I have lost touch with her for many years and should be glad to have news of her.

Yours faithfully,

James Kennedy, MD

“Woodleigh Bolton,” said Giles. “That’s not too far away. Woodleigh Camp is where they go for picnics. Up on the moorland. About thirty miles from here. We’ll write and ask Dr. Kennedy if we may come and see him, or if he would prefer to come to us.”

A reply was received that Dr. Kennedy would be prepared to receive them on the following Wednesday; and on that day they set off.

Woodleigh Bolton was a straggling village set along the side of a hill. Galls Hill was the highest house just at the top of the rise, with a view over Woodleigh Camp and the moors towards the sea.

“Rather a bleak spot,” said Gwenda shivering.

The house itself was bleak and obviously Dr. Kennedy scorned such modern innovations as central heating. The woman who opened the door was dark and rather forbidding. She led them across the rather bare hall, and into a study where Dr. Kennedy rose to receive them. It was a long, rather high room, lined with well-filled bookshelves.

Dr. Kennedy was a grey-haired elderly man with shrewd eyes under tufted brows. His gaze went sharply from one to the other of them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Reed? Sit here, Mrs. Reed, it’s probably the most comfortable chair. Now, what’s all this about?”

Giles went fluently into their prearranged story.

He and his wife had been recently married in New Zealand. They had come to England, where his wife had lived for a short time as a child, and she was trying to trace old family friends and connections.

Dr. Kennedy remained stiff and unbending. He was polite but obviously irritated by Colonial insistence on sentimental family ties.

“And you think my sister—my half-sister—and possibly myself—are connections of yours?” he asked Gwenda, civilly, but with slight hostility.

“She was my stepmother,” said Gwenda. “My father’s second wife. I can’t really remember her properly, of course. I was so small. My maiden name was Halliday.”

He stared at her—and then suddenly a smile illuminated his face. He became a different person, no longer aloof.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you’re Gwennie!”

Gwenda nodded eagerly. The pet name, long forgotten, sounded in her ears with reassuring familiarity.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Gwennie.”

“God bless my soul. Grown-up and married. How time flies! It must be—what—fifteen years—no, of course, much longer than that. You don’t remember me, I suppose?”

Gwenda shook her head.

“I don’t even remember my father. I mean, it’s all a vague kind of blur.”

“Of course—Halliday’s first wife came from New Zealand—I remember his telling me so. A fine country, I should think.”

“It’s the loveliest country in the world—but I’m quite fond of England, too.”

“On a visit—or settling down here?” He rang the bell. “We must have tea.”

When the tall woman came, he said, “Tea, please—and—er—hot buttered toast, or—or cake, or something.”

The respectable housekeeper looked venomous, but said, “Yes, sir,” and went out.

“I don’t usually go in for tea,” said Dr. Kennedy vaguely. “But we must celebrate.”

“It’s very nice of you,” said Gwenda. “No, we’re not on a visit. We’ve bought a house.” She paused and added, “Hillside.”

Dr. Kennedy said vaguely, “Oh yes. In Dillmouth. You wrote from there.”

“It’s the most extraordinary coincidence,” said Gwenda. “Isn’t it, Giles?”

“I should say so,” said Giles. “Really quite staggering.”

“It was for sale, you see,” said Gwenda, and added in face of Dr. Kennedy’s apparent non-comprehension, “It’s the same house where we used to live long ago.”

Dr. Kennedy frowned. “Hillside? But surely—Oh yes, I did hear they’d changed the name. Used to be St. Something or other—if I’m thinking of the right house—on the Leahampton road, coming down into the town, on the right-hand side?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the one. Funny how names go out of your head. Wait a minute. St. Catherine’s—that’s what it used to be called.”

“And I did live there, didn’t I?” Gwenda said.

“Yes, of course you did.” He stared at her, amused. “Why did you want to come back there? You can’t remember much about it, surely?”

“No. But somehow—it felt like home.”

“It felt like home,” the doctor repeated. There was no expression in the words, but Giles wondered what he was thinking about.

“So you see,” said Gwenda, “I hoped you’d tell me about it all—about my father and Helen and—” she ended lamely—“and everyth

ing….”

He looked at her reflectively.

“I suppose they didn’t know very much—out in New Zealand. Why should they? Well, there isn’t much to tell. Helen—my sister—was coming back from India on the same boat with your father. He was a widower with a small daughter. Helen was sorry for him or fell in love with him. He was lonely, or fell in love with her. Difficult to know just the way things happen. They were married in London on arrival, and came down to Dillmouth to me. I was in practice there, then. Kelvin Halliday seemed a nice chap, rather nervy and run-down—but they seemed happy enough together—then.”

He was silent for a moment before he said, “However, in less than a year, she ran away with someone else. You probably know that?”

“Who did she run away with?” asked Gwenda.

He bent his shrewd eyes upon her.

“She didn’t tell me,” he said. “I wasn’t in her confidence. I’d seen—couldn’t help seeing—that there was friction between her and Kelvin. I didn’t know why. I was always a strait-laced sort of fellow—a believer in marital fidelity. Helen wouldn’t have wanted me to know what was going on. I’d heard rumours—one does—but there was no mention of any particular name. They often had guests staying with them who came from London, or from other parts of England. I imagined it was one of them.”

“There wasn’t a divorce, then?”

“Helen didn’t want a divorce. Kelvin told me that. That’s why I imagined, perhaps wrongly, that it was a case of some married man. Someone whose wife was an RC perhaps.”