Sleeping Murder (6 page)

“We don't know,” said Gwenda, “that she went away….”

She looked again at the plainly written name:

Helen Spenlove Kennedy.

Helen….

I

A
few days later Gwenda, walking along the Esplanade in a sharp wind, stopped suddenly beside one of the glass shelters which a thoughtful Corporation had provided for the use of its visitors.

“Miss Marple?” she exclaimed in lively surprise.

For indeed Miss Marple it was, nicely wrapped up in a thick fleecy coat and well wound round with scarves.

“Quite a surprise to you, I'm sure, to find me here,” said Miss Marple briskly. “But my doctor ordered me away to the seaside for a little change, and your description of Dillmouth sounded so attractive that I decided to come here—especially as the cook and butler of a friend of mine take in boarders.”

“But why didn't you come and see us?” demanded Gwenda.

“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.

“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 everything….”

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.”

“And my father?”

“He didn't want a divorce, either.”

Dr. Kennedy spoke rather shortly.

“Tell me about my father,” said Gwenda. “Why did he decide suddenly to send me out to New Zealand?”

Kennedy paused a moment before saying, “I gather your people out there had been pressing him. After the breakup of his second marriage, he probably thought it was the best thing.”

“Why didn't he take me out there himself?”

Dr. Kennedy looked along the mantelpiece searching vaguely for a pipe cleaner.

“Oh, I don't know … He was in rather poor health.”

“What was the matter with him? What did he die of?”

The door opened and the scornful housekeeper appeared with a laden tray.

There was buttered toast and some jam, but no cake. With a vague gesture Dr. Kennedy motioned Gwenda to pour out. She did so. When the cups were filled and handed round and Gwenda had taken a piece of toast, Dr. Kennedy said with rather forced cheerfulness: “Tell me what you've done to the house? I don't suppose I'd recognize it now—after you two have finished with it.”

“We're having a little fun with bathrooms,” admitted Giles.

Gwenda, her eyes on the doctor, said: “What did my father die of?”

“I couldn't really tell, my dear. As I say, he was in rather poor health for a while, and he finally went into a Sanatorium—somewhere on the east coast. He died about two years later.”

“Where was this Sanatorium exactly?”

“I'm sorry. I can't remember now. As I say, I have an impression it was on the east coast.”

There was definite evasion now in his manner. Giles and Gwenda looked at each other for a brief second.

Giles said, “At least, sir, you can tell us where he's buried? Gwenda is—naturally—very anxious to visit his grave.”

Dr. Kennedy bent over the fireplace, scraping in the bowl of his pipe with a penknife.

“Do you know,” he said, rather indistinctly, “I don't really think
I should dwell too much on the past. All this ancestor worship—it's a mistake. The future is what matters. Here you are, you two, young and healthy with the world in front of you. Think forward. No use going about putting flowers on the grave of someone whom, for all practical purposes, you hardly knew.”

Gwenda said mutinously: “I should like to see my father's grave.”

“I'm afraid I can't help you.” Dr. Kennedy's tones were pleasant but cold. “It's a long time ago, and my memory isn't what it was. I lost touch with your father after he left Dillmouth. I think he wrote to me once from the Sanatorium and, as I say, I have an impression it was on the east coast—but I couldn't really be sure even of that. And I've no idea at all of where he is buried.”

“How very odd,” said Giles.

“Not really. The link between us, you see, was Helen. I was always very fond of Helen. She's my half sister and very many years younger than I am, but I tried to bring her up as well as I could. The right schools and all that. But there's no gainsaying that Helen—well, that she never had a stable character. There was trouble when she was quite young with a very undesirable young man. I got her out of that safely. Then she elected to go out to India and marry Walter Fane. Well, that was all right, nice lad, son of Dillmouth's leading solicitor, but frankly, dull as ditchwater. He'd always adored her, but she never looked at him. Still, she changed her mind and went out to India to marry him. When she saw him again, it was all off. She wired to me for money for her passage home. I sent it. On the way back, she met Kelvin. They were married before I knew about it. I've felt, shall we say, apologetic for that sister of mine. It explains why Kelvin and I didn't keep up the relationship after she
went away.” He added suddenly: “Where's Helen now? Can you tell me? I'd like to get in touch with her.”

“But we don't know,” said Gwenda. “We don't know at all.”

“Oh! I thought from your advertisement—” He looked at them with sudden curiosity. “Tell me, why did you advertise?”