Sleeping Murder - Christie Agatha - Страница 44

‘Goodness,’ said Giles. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You believed what he said. It really is very dangerous to believe people.I never have for years.’

‘And the brandy?’

‘He did that the day he came to Hillside with Helen’s letter and talked to me in the garden. He was waiting in the house while Mrs Cocker came out and told me he was there. It would only take a minute.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Giles. ‘And he urged me to take Gwenda home andgive her brandy after we were at the police station when Lily Kimble was killed. How did he arrange to meet her earlier?’

‘That was very simple. The original letter he sent her asked her to meet him at Woodleigh Camp and come to Matchings Halt by the two-five train from Dillmouth Junction. He came out of the copse of trees, probably, and accosted her as she was going up the lane-and strangled her. Then he simply substituted the letter you all saw for the letter she had with her (and which he had asked her to bring because of the directions in it) and went home to prepare for you and play out the little comedy of waiting for Lily.’

‘And Lily really was threatening him? Her letter didn’t sound as though she was. Her letter sounded as though she suspected Afflick.’

‘Perhaps she did. But Leonie, the Swiss girl, had talked to Lily, and Leonie was the one danger to Kennedy. Because she looked out of the nursery window and saw him digging in the garden. In the morning he talked to her, told her bluntly that Major Halliday had killed his wife-that Major Halliday was insane, and that he, Kennedy, was hushing up the matter for the child’s sake. If, however, Leonie felt she ought to go to the police, she must do so, but it would be very unpleasant for her-and so on.

‘Leonie took immediate fright at the mention of the police. She adored you and had implicit faith in whatM. le docteur thought best. Kennedy paid her a handsome sum of money and hustled her back to Switzerland. But before she went, she hinted something to Lily as to your father’s having killed his wife and that she had seen the body buried. That fitted in with Lily’s ideas at the time. She took it for granted that it was Kelvin Halliday Leonie had seen digging the grave.’

‘But Kennedy didn’t know that, of course,’ said Gwenda.

‘Of course not. When he got Lily’s letter the words in it that frightened him were that Leonie had told Lily what she had seenout of the window and the mention of the car outside.’

‘The car? Jackie Afflick’s car?’

‘Another misunderstanding. Lily remembered, or thought she remembered, a car like Jackie Afflick’s being outside in the road. Already her imagination had got to work on the Mystery Man who came over to see Mrs Halliday. With the hospital next door, no doubt a good many cars did park along this road. But you must remember that thedoctor’s car was actually standing outside the hospital that night-he probably leaped to the conclusion that she meanthis car. The adjective posh was meaningless to him.’

‘I see,’ said Giles. ‘Yes, to a guilty conscience that letter of Lily’s might look like blackmail. But how do you know all about Leonie?’

Her lips pursed close together, Miss Marple said: ‘He went-right over the edge, you know. As soon as the men Inspector Primer had left rushed in and seized him, he went over the whole crime again and again-everything he’d done. Leonie died, it seems, very shortly after her return to Switzerland. Overdose of some sleeping tablets…Oh no, he wasn’t taking any chances.’

‘Like trying to poison me with the brandy.’

‘You were very dangerous to him, you and Giles. Fortunately you never told him about your memory of seeing Helen dead in the hall. He never knew there had been an eye-witness.’

‘Those telephone calls to Fane and Afflick,’ said Giles. ‘Did he put those through?’

‘Yes. If there was an enquiry as to who could have tampered with the brandy, either of them would make an admirable suspect, and if Jackie Afflick drove over in his car alone, it might tie him in with Lily Kimble’s murder. Fane would most likely have an alibi.’

‘And he seemed fond of me,’ said Gwenda. ‘Little Gwennie.’

‘He had to play his part,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Imagine what it meant to him. After eighteen years, you and Giles come along, asking questions, burrowing into the past, disturbing a murder that had seemed dead but was only sleeping…Murder in retrospect…A horribly dangerous thing to do, my dears. I have been sadly worried.’

‘Poor Mrs Cocker,’ said Gwenda. ‘She had a terribly near escape. I’m glad she’s going to be all right. Do you think she’ll come back to us, Giles? After all this?’

‘She will if there’s a nursery,’ said Giles gravely, and Gwenda blushed, and Miss Marple smiled a little and looked out across Torbay.

‘How very odd it was that it should happen the way it did,’ mused Gwenda. ‘My having those rubber gloves on, and looking at them, and then his coming into the hall and saying those words that sounded so like the others. “Face”…and then: “Eyes dazzled”-’

She shuddered.

‘Cover her face…Mine eyes dazzle…she died young…that might have been me…if Miss Marple hadn’t been there.’

She paused and said softly, ‘Poor Helen…Poor lovely Helen, who died young…You know, Giles, she isn’t there any more-in the house-in the hall. I could feel that yesterday before we left. There’s just the house. And the house is fond of us. We can go back if we like…’