Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [27]
“One feels so much less of an outsider, if you know what I mean, my dear, if one gets to know some of the people who have been established here for years. For instance, I am going to tea with Mrs. Fane—she is the widow of the senior partner in the best firm of solicitors here. Quite an old-fashioned family firm. Her son is carrying it on now.”
The gentle gossiping voice went on. Her landlady was so kind—and made her so comfortable—“and really delicious cooking. She was for some years with my old friend Mrs. Bantry—although she does not come from this part of the world herself—her aunt lived here for many years and she and her husband used to come here for holidays—so she knows a great deal of the local gossip. Do you find your gardener satisfactory, by the way? I hear that he is considered locally as rather a scrimshanker—more talk than work.”
“Talk and tea is his speciality,” said Giles. “He has about five cups of tea a day. But he works splendidly when we are looking.”
“Come out and see the garden,” said Gwenda.
They showed her the house and the garden, and Miss Marple made the proper comments. If Gwenda had feared her shrewd observation of something amiss, then Gwenda was wrong. For Miss Marple showed no cognizance of anything unusual.
Yet, strangely enough, it was Gwenda who acted in an unpredictable manner. She interrupted Miss Marple in the midst of a little anecdote about a child and a seashell to say breathlessly to Giles:
“I don’t care—I’m going to tell her….”
Miss Marple turned her head attentively. Giles started to speak, then stopped. Finally he said, “Well, it’s your funeral, Gwenda.”
And so Gwenda poured it all out. Their call on Dr. Kennedy and his subsequent call on them and what he had told them.
“That was what you meant in London, wasn’t it?” Gwenda asked breathlessly. “You thought, then, that—that my father might be involved?”
Miss Marple said gently, “It occurred to me as a possibility—yes. ‘Helen’ might very well be a young stepmother—and in a case of—er—strangling, it is so often a husband who is involved.”
Miss Marple spoke as one who observes natural phenomena without surprise or emotion.
“I do see why you urged us to leave it alone,” said Gwenda. “Oh, and I wish now we had. But one can’t go back.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “one can’t go back.”
“And now you’d better listen to Giles. He’s been making objections and suggestions.”
“All I say is,” said Giles, “that it doesn’t fit.”
And lucidly, clearly, he went over the points as he had previously outlined them to Gwenda.
Then he particularized his final theory.
“If you’ll only convince Gwenda that that’s the only way it could have been.”
Miss Marple’s eyes went from him to Gwenda and back again.
“It is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis,” she said. “But there is always, as you yourself pointed out, Mr. Reed, the possibility of X.”
“X!” said Gwenda.
“The unknown factor,” said Miss Marple. “Someone, shall we say, who hasn’t appeared yet—but whose presence, behind the obvious facts, can be deduced.”
“We’re going to the Sanatorium in Norfolk where my father died,” said Gwenda. “Perhaps we’ll find out something there.”
Ten
A CASE HISTORY
I
Saltmarsh House was set pleasantly about six miles inland from the coast. It had a good train service to London from the five-miles-distant town of South Benham.
Giles and Gwenda were shown into a large airy sitting room with cretonne covers patterned with flowers. A very charming-looking old lady with white hair came into the room holding a glass of milk. She nodded to them and sat down near the fireplace. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Gwenda and presently she leaned forward towards her and spoke in what was almost a whisper.
“Is it your poor child, my dear?”
Gwenda looked slightly taken aback. She said doubtfully: “No—no. It isn’t.”
“Ah, I wondered.” The old lady nodded her head and sipped her milk. Then she said