Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [26]
“You think my father—”
“No—that’s just it—I don’t. Take a man who’s deliberately decided to get rid of his wife. He spreads rumours about her possible unfaithfulness. He stages her departure—note left behind, clothes packed and taken. Letters will be received from her at carefully spaced intervals from somewhere abroad. Actually he has murdered her quietly and put her, say, under the cellar floor. That’s one pattern of murder—and it’s often been done. But what that type of murderer doesn’t do is to rush to his brother-in-law and say he’s murdered his wife and hadn’t they better go to the police? On the other hand, if your father was the emotional type of killer, and was terribly in love with his wife and strangled her in a fit of frenzied jealousy—Othello fashion—(and that fits in with the words you heard) he certainly doesn’t pack clothes and arrange for letters to come, before he rushes off to broadcast his crime to a man who isn’t the type likely to hush it up. It’s all wrong, Gwenda. The whole pattern is wrong.”
“Then what are you trying to get at, Giles?”
“I don’t know … It’s just that throughout it all, there seems to be an unknown factor—call him X. Someone who hasn’t appeared as yet. But one gets glimpses of his technique.”
“X?” said Gwenda wonderingly. Then her eyes darkened. “You’re making that up, Giles. To comfort me.”
“I swear I’m not. Don’t you see yourself that you can’t make a satisfactory outline to fit all the facts? We know that Helen Halliday was strangled because you saw—”
He stopped.
“Good Lord! I’ve been a fool. I see it now. It covers everything. You’re right. And Kennedy’s right, too. Listen, Gwenda. Helen’s preparing to go away with a lover—who that is we don’t know.”
“X?”
Giles brushed her interpolation aside impatiently.
“She’s written her note to her husband—but at that moment he comes in, reads what she’s writing and goes haywire. He crumples up the note, slings it into the wastebasket, and goes for her. She’s terrified, rushes out into the hall—he catches up with her, throttles her—she goes limp and he drops her. And then, standing a little way from her, he quotes those words from The Duchess of Malfi just as the child upstairs has reached the banisters and is peering down.”
“And after that?”
“The point is, that she isn’t dead. He may have thought she was dead—but she’s merely semisuffocated. Perhaps her lover comes round—after the frantic husband has started for the doctor’s house on the other side of the town, or perhaps she regains consciousness by herself. Anyway, as soon as she has come to, she beats it. Beats it quickly. And that explains everything. Kelvin’s belief that he has killed her. The disappearance of the clothes; packed and taken away earlier in the day. And the subsequent letters which are perfectly genuine. There you are—that explains everything.”
Gwenda said slowly, “It doesn’t explain why Kelvin said he had strangled her in the bedroom.”
“He was so het up, he couldn’t quite remember where it had all happened.”
Gwenda said: “I’d like to believe you. I want to believe … But I go on feeling sure—quite sure—that when I looked down she was dead—quite dead.”
“But how could you possibly tell? A child of barely three.”
She looked at him queerly.
“I think one can tell—better than if one was older. It’s like dogs—they know death and throw back their heads and howl. I think children—know death….”
“That’s nonsense—that’s fantastic.”
The ring of the frontdoor bell interrupted him. He said, “Who’s that, I wonder?”
Gwenda looked dismayed.
“I quite forgot. It’s Miss Marple. I asked her to tea today. Don’t let’s go saying anything about all this to her.”
II
Gwenda was afraid that tea might prove a difficult meal—but Miss Marple fortunately seemed not to notice that her hostess talked a little too fast and too feverishly, and that her gaiety was somewhat forced. Miss Marple herself was gently garrulous—she was enjoying her stay in Dillmouth so much and—wasn’t it exciting?