Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [25]
“What difference does that make?”
“Well, it’s queer, isn’t it? Why should Halliday say he strangled his wife in the bedroom if he actually strangled her in the hall?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That’s just a minor detail.”
“I’m not so sure. Pull your socks up, darling. There are some very funny points about the whole setup. We’ll take it, if you like, that your father did strangle Helen. In the hall. What happened next?”
“He went off to Dr. Kennedy.”
“And told him he had strangled his wife in the bedroom, brought him back with him and there was no body in the hall—or in the bedroom. Dash it all, there can’t be a murder without a body. What had he done with the body?”
“Perhaps there was one and Dr. Kennedy helped him and hushed it all up—only of course he couldn’t tell us that.”
Giles shook his head.
“No, Gwenda—I don’t see Kennedy acting that way. He’s a hardheaded, shrewd, unemotional Scotsman. You’re suggesting that he’d be willing to put himself in jeopardy as an accessory after the fact. I don’t believe he would. He’d do his best for Halliday by giving evidence as to his mental state—that, yes. But why should he stick his neck out to hush the whole thing up? Kelvin Halliday wasn’t any relation to him, nor a close friend. It was his own sister who had been killed and he was clearly fond of her—even if he did show slight Victorian disapproval of her gay ways. It’s not, even, as though you were his sister’s child. No, Kennedy wouldn’t connive at concealing murder. If he did, there’s only one possible way he could have set about it, and that would be deliberately to give a death certificate that she had died of heart failure or something. I suppose he might have got away with that—but we know definitely that he didn’t do that. Because there’s no record of her death in the Parish registers, and if he had done it, he would have told us that his sister had died. So go on from there and explain, if you can, what happened to the body.”
“Perhaps my father buried it somewhere—in the garden?”
“And then went to Kennedy and told him he’d murdered his wife? Why? Why not rely on the story that she’d ‘left him’?”
Gwenda pushed back her hair from her forehead. She was less stiff and rigid now, and the patches of sharp colour were fading.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It does seem a bit screwy now you’ve put it that way. Do you think Dr. Kennedy was telling us the truth?”
“Oh yes—I’m pretty sure of it. From his point of view it’s a perfectly reasonable story. Dreams, hallucinations—finally a major hallucination. He’s got no doubt that it was a hallucination because, as we’ve just said, you can’t have a murder without a body. That’s where we’re in a different position from him. We know that there was a body.”
He paused and went on: “From his point of view, everything fits in. Missing clothes and suitcase, the farewell note. And later, two letters from his sister.
Gwenda stirred.
“Those letters. How do we explain those?”
“We don’t—but we’ve got to. If we assume that Kennedy was telling us the truth (and as I say, I’m pretty sure that he was), we’ve got to explain those letters.”
“I suppose they really were in his sister’s handwriting? He recognized it?”
“You know, Gwenda, I don’t believe that point would arise. It’s not like a signature on a doubtful cheque. If those letters were written in a reasonably close imitation of his sister’s writing, it wouldn’t occur to him to doubt them. He’s already got the preconceived idea that she’s gone away with someone. The letters just confirmed that belief. If he had never heard from her at all—why, then he might have got suspicious. All the same, there are certain curious points about those letters that wouldn’t strike him, perhaps, but do strike me. They’re strangely anonymous. No address except a poste restante. No indication of who the man in the case was. A clearly stated determination to make a clean break with all old ties. What I mean is, they’re exactly the kind of letters a murderer would devise if he wanted to allay any suspicions on the part of his victim’s