Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [21]
“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