Sleeping Murder - Christie Agatha (читаем книги онлайн без регистрации .txt) 📗

‘But, of course, dear Gwenda, I should never have dreamed of going away and leaving you alone in the house,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I knew there was a very dangerous person at large, and I was keeping an unobtrusive watch from the garden.’

‘Did you know it was-him-all along?’ asked Gwenda.

They were all three, Miss Marple, Gwenda and Giles, sitting on the terrace of the Imperial Hotel at Torquay.

‘A change of scene,’ Miss Marple had said, and Giles had agreed, would be the best thing for Gwenda. So Inspector Primer had concurred and they had driven to Torquay forthwith.

Miss Marple said in answer to Gwenda’s question, ‘Well, he did seem indicated, my dear. Although unfortunately there was nothing in the way of evidence to go upon. Just indications, nothing more.’ 

Looking at her curiously, Giles said, ‘But I can’t see any indications even.’

‘Oh dear, Giles, think. He wason the spot, to begin with.’

‘On the spot?’

‘But certainly. When Kelvin Halliday came to him that night hehad just come back from the hospital. And the hospital, at that time, as several people told us, was actually next door to Hillside, or St Catherine’s as it was then called. So that, as you see, puts him inthe right place at the right time. And then there were a hundred and one little significant facts. Helen Halliday told Richard Erskine she had gone out to marry Walter Fane becauseshe wasn’t happy at home. Not happy, that is, living with her brother. Yet her brother was by all accounts devoted to her. So why wasn’t she happy? Mr Afflick told you that “he was sorry for the poor kid”. I think that he was absolutely truthful when he said that. Hewas sorry for her. Why did she have to go and meet young Afflick in that clandestine way? Admittedly she was not wildly in love with him. Was it because she couldn’t meet young men in the ordinary normal way? Her brother was “strict” and “old-fashioned”. It is vaguely reminiscent, is it not, of Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street?’

Gwenda shivered.

‘He was mad,’ she said. ‘Mad.’ 

‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘He wasn’t normal. He adored his half-sister, and that affection became possessive and unwholesome. That kind of thing happens oftener than you’d think. Fathers who don’t want their daughters to marry-or even to meet young men. Like Mr Barrett. I thought of that when I heard about the tennis net.’

‘The tennis net?’

‘Yes, that seemed to me very significant. Think of that girl, young Helen, coming home from school, and eager for all a young girl wants out of life, anxious to meet young men-to flirt with them-’

‘A little sex-crazy.’

‘No,’ said Miss Marple with emphasis. ‘Thatis one of the wickedest things about this crime. Dr Kennedy didn’t only kill her physically. If you think back carefully, you’ll see that the only evidence for Helen Kennedy’s having been man mad or practically-what is the word you used, dear? oh yes, a nymphomaniac-came actually fromDr Kennedy himself. I think, myself, that she was a perfectly normal young girl who wanted to have fun and a good time and flirt a little and finally settle down with the man of her choice-no more than that. And see what steps her brother took. First he was strict and old-fashioned about allowing her liberty. Then, when she wanted to give tennis parties-a most normal and harmless desire -he pretended to agree and then one night secretly cut the tennis net to ribbons-a very significant and sadistic action. Then, since she could still go out to play tennis or to dances, he took advantage of a grazed foot which he treated, to infect it so that it wouldn’t heal. Oh yes, I think he did that…in fact, I’m sure of it.

‘Mind you. I don’t think Helen realized any of all this. She knew her brother had a deep affection for her and I don’t think she knewwhy she felt uneasy and unhappy at home. But she did feel like that and at last she decided to go out to India and marry young Fane simply in order to get away. To get away fromwhat? She didn’t know. She was too young and guileless to know. So she went off to India and on the way she met Richard Erskine and fell in love with him. There again, she behaved not like a sex-crazy girl, but like a decent and honourable girl. She didn’t urge him to leave his wife. She urged him not to do so. But when she saw Walter Fane she knew that she couldn’t marry him, and because she didn’t know what else to do, she wired her brother for money to go home.

‘On the way home she met your father-and another way of escape showed itself. This time it was one with good prospect of happiness.

‘She didn’t marry your father under false pretences, Gwenda. He was recovering from the death of a dearly loved wife. She was getting over an unhappy love-affair. They could both help each other. I think it is significant that she and Kelvin Halliday were married in London and then went down to Dillmouth to break the news to Dr Kennedy. She must have had some instinct that that would be a wiser thing to do than to go down and be married in Dillmouth, which ordinarily would have been the normal thing to do. I still think she didn’t know what she was up against-but she was uneasy, and she felt safer in presenting her brother with the marriage as afait accompli.

‘Kelvin Halliday was very friendly to Kennedy and liked him. Kennedy seems to have gone out of his way to appear pleased about the marriage. The couple took a furnished house there.

‘And now we come to that very significant fact-the suggestion that Kelvin was being drugged by his wife. There are only two possible explanations of that-because there are only two people who could have had the opportunity of doing such a thing. Either Helen Hallidaywas drugging her husband, and if so, why? Or else the drugs were being administered by Dr Kennedy. Kennedy was Halliday’s physician as is clear by Halliday’s consulting him. He had confidence in Kennedy’s medical knowledge-and the suggestion that his wife was drugging him was very cleverly put to him by Kennedy.’ 

‘But could any drug make a man have the hallucination that he was strangling his wife?’ asked Giles. ‘I mean there isn’t any drug, is there, that has thatparticular effect?’

‘My dear Giles, you’ve fallen into the trap again-the trap of believingwhat is said to you. There is only Dr Kennedy’s word for it that Halliday ever hadthat hallucination. He himself never says so in his diary. He had hallucinations, yes, but he does not mention their nature. But I dare say Kennedy talked to him about men who had strangled their wives after passing through a phase such as Kelvin Halliday was experiencing.’

‘Dr Kennedy was really wicked,’ said Gwenda.

‘I think,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that he’d definitely passed the borderline between sanity and madness by that time. And Helen, poor girl, began to realize it. It was to her brother she must have been speaking that day when she was overheard by Lily. ‘I think I’ve always been afraid of you.’ That was one of the things she said. And that always was very significant. And so she determined to leave Dillmouth. She persuaded her husband to buy a house in Norfolk, she persuaded him not to tell anyone about it. The secrecy about it was very illuminating. She was clearly very afraid ofsomeone knowing about it-but that did not fit in with the Walter Fane theory or the Jackie Afflick theory-and certainly not with Richard Erskine’s being concerned. No, it pointed to somewhere much nearer home.

‘And in the end, Kelvin Halliday, whom doubtless the secrecy irked and who felt it to be pointless, told his brother-in-law.

‘And in so doing, sealed his own fate and that of his wife. For Kennedy was not going to let Helen go and live happily with her husband. I think perhaps his idea was simply to break down Halliday’s health with drugs. But at the revelation that his victim and Helen were going to escape him, he became completely unhinged. From the hospital he went through into the garden of St Catherine’s and he took with him a pair of surgical gloves. He caught Helen in the hall, and he strangled her. Nobody saw him, there was no one there to see him, or so he thought, and so, racked with love and frenzy, he quoted those tragic lines that were so apposite.’

Miss Marple sighed and clucked her tongue.

‘I was stupid-very stupid. We were all stupid. We should have seen at once. Those lines fromThe Duchess of Malfi were really the clue to the whole thing. They are said, are they not, by abrother who has just contrived his sister’s death to avenge her marriage to the man she loved. Yes, we were stupid-’

‘And then?’ asked Giles.

‘And then he went through with the whole devilish plan. The body carried upstairs. The clothes packed in a suitcase. A note, written and thrown in the wastepaper basket to convince Halliday later.’

‘But I should have thought,’ said Gwenda, ‘that it would have been better from his point of view for my father actually to have been convicted of the murder.’

Miss Marple shook her head.

‘Oh no, he couldn’t risk that. He had a lot of shrewd Scottish common sense, you know. He had a wholesome respect for the police. The police take a lot of convincing before they believe a man guilty of murder. The police might have asked a lot of awkward questions and made a lot of awkward enquiries as to times and places. No, his plan was simpler and, I think, more devilish. He only had Halliday to convince. First, that he had killed his wife. Secondly that he was mad. He persuaded Halliday to go into a mental home, but I don’t think he really wanted to convince him that it was all a delusion. Your father accepted that theory, Gwennie, mainly, I should imagine, for your sake. He continued to believe that he had killed Helen. He died believing that.’

‘Wicked,’ said Gwenda. ‘Wicked-wicked-wicked.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘There isn’t really any other word. And I think, Gwenda, that that is why your childish impression of what you saw remained so strong. It was real evil that was in the air that night.’

‘But the letters,’ said Giles. ‘Helen’s letters? Theywere in her handwriting, so they couldn’t be forgeries.’

‘Of course they were forgeries! But that is where he overreached himself. He was so anxious, you see, to stop you and Giles making investigations. He could probably imitate Helen’s handwriting quite nicely-but it wouldn’t fool an expert. So the sample of Helen’s handwriting he sent you with the letter wasn’t her handwriting either. He wrote it himself. So naturally it tallied.’