Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [29]
Giles interrupted. “Excuse me, Dr. Penrose, but why did he know he had done it?”
“There was no doubt in his mind. For some months past he had found himself entertaining wild and melodramatic suspicions. He told me, for instance, that he had been convinced his wife was administering drugs to him. He had, of course, lived in India, and the practice of wives driving their husbands insane by datura poisoning often comes up there in the native courts. He had suffered fairly often from hallucinations, with confusion of time and place. He denied strenuously that he suspected his wife of infidelity, but nevertheless I think that that was the motivating power. It seems that what actually occurred was that he went into the drawing room, read the note his wife left saying she was leaving him, and that his way of eluding this fact was to prefer to ‘kill’ her. Hence the hallucination.”
“You mean he cared for her very much?” asked Gwenda.
“Obviously, Mrs. Reed.”
“And he never—recognized—that it was a hallucination?”
“He had to acknowledge that it must be—but his inner belief remained unshaken. The obsession was too strong to yield to reason. If we could have uncovered the underlying childish fixation—”
Gwenda interrupted. She was uninterested in childish fixations.
“But you’re quite sure, you say, that he—that he didn’t do it?”
“Oh, if that is what is worrying you, Mrs. Reed, you can put it right out of your head. Kelvin Halliday, however jealous he may have been of his wife, was emphatically not a killer.”
Dr. Penrose coughed and picked up a small shabby black book.
“If you would like this, Mrs. Reed, you are the proper person to have it. It contains various jottings set down by your father during the time he was here. When we turned over his effects to his executor (actually a firm of solicitors), Dr. McGuire, who was then Superintendent, retained this as part of the case history. Your father’s case, you know, appears in Dr. McGuire’s book—only under initials, of course. Mr. K.H. If you would like this diary—”
Gwenda stretched out her hand eagerly.
“Thank you,” she said. “I should like it very much.”
II
In the train on the way back to London, Gwenda took out the shabby little black book and began to read.
She opened it at random.
Kelvin Halliday had written:
I suppose these doctor wallahs know their business … It all sounds such poppycock. Was I in love with my mother? Did I hate my father? I don’t believe a word of it … I can’t help feeling this is a simple police case—criminal court—not a crazy loonybin matter. And yet—some of these people here—so natural, so reasonable—just like everyone else—except when you suddenly come across the kink. Very well, then, it seems that I, too, have a kink….
I’ve written to James … urged him to communicate with Helen … Let her come and see me in the flesh if she’s alive … He says he doesn’t know where she is … that’s because he knows that she’s dead and that I killed her … he’s a good fellow, but I’m not deceived … Helen is dead….
When did I begin to suspect her? A long time ago … Soon after we came to Dillmouth … Her manner changed … She was concealing something … I used to watch her … Yes, and she used to watch me….
Did she give me drugs in my food? Those queer awful nightmares. Not ordinary dreams … living nightmares … I know it was drugs … Only she could have done that … Why?… There’s some man … Some man she was afraid of….
Let me be honest. I suspected, didn’t I, that she had a lover? There was someone—I know there was someone—She said as much to me on the boat … Someone she loved and couldn’t marry … It was the same for both of us … I couldn’t forget Megan … How like Megan little Gwennie looks sometimes. Helen played with Gwennie so sweetly on the boat … Helen … You are so lovely, Helen….
Is Helen alive? Or did I put my hands round her throat and choke the life