Chapter 4. Helen?
For a moment Gwenda stared at Miss Marple, then she pushed back the hair from her forehead.
‘Why did I say that?’ she said. ‘Why did I say Helen? I don’t know any Helen!’
She dropped her hands with a gesture of despair.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘I’m mad! I imagine things! I go about seeing things that aren’t there. First it was only wallpapers-but now it’s dead bodies. So I’m getting worse.’
‘Now don’t rush to conclusions, my dear-’
‘Or else it’s the house. The house is haunted-or bewitched or something…I see things that have happened there-or else I see things that are going to happen there-and that would be worse. Perhaps a woman called Helen is going to be murdered there…Only I don’t see if it’s the house that’s haunted why I should see these awful things when I am away from it. So I think really that it must be me that’s going queer. And I’d better go and see a psychiatristat once -this morning.’
‘Well, of course, Gwenda dear, you can always do that when you’ve exhausted every other line of approach, but I always think myself that it’s better to examine the simplest and most commonplace explanations first. Let me get the facts quite clear. There were three definite incidents that upset you. A path in the garden that had been planted over but that you felt was there, a door that had been bricked up, and a wallpaper which you imagined correctly and in detail without having seen it? Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, the easiest, the most natural explanation would be that you had seen them before.’
‘In another life, you mean?’
‘Well no, dear. I meant in this life. I mean that they might be actual memories.’
‘But I’ve never been in England until a month ago, Miss Marple.’
‘You are quite sure of that, my dear?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve lived near Christchurch in New Zealand all my life.’
‘Were you born there?’
‘No, I was born in India. My father was a British Army officer. My mother died a year or two after I was born and he sent me back to her people in New Zealand to bring up. Then he himself died a few years later.’
‘You don’t remember coming from India to New Zealand?’
‘Not really. I do remember, frightfully vaguely, being on a boat. A round window thing-a porthole, I suppose. And a man in white uniform with a red face and blue eyes, and a mark on his chin-a scar, I suppose. He used to toss me up in the air and I remember being half frightened and half loving it. But it’s all very fragmentary.’
‘Do you remember a nurse-or an ayah?’
‘Not an ayah-Nannie. I remember Nannie because she stayed for some time-until I was five years old. She cut ducks out of paper. Yes, she was on the boat. She scolded me when I cried because the Captain kissed me and I didn’t like his beard.’
‘Now that’s very interesting, dear, because you see you are mixing up two different voyages. In one, the Captain had a beard and in the other he had a red face and a scar on his chin.’
‘Yes,’ Gwenda considered, ‘I suppose I must be.’
‘It seems possible to me,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that when your mother died, your father brought you to England with him first, and that you actually lived at this house, Hillside. You’ve told me, you know, that the house felt like home to you as soon as you got inside it. And that room you chose to sleep in, it was probably your nursery-’
‘It was a nursery. There were bars on the windows.’
‘You see? It had this pretty gay paper of cornflowers and poppies. Children remember their nursery walls very well. I’ve always remembered the mauve irises on my nursery walls and yet I believe it was repapered when I was only three.’
‘And that’s why I thought at once of the toys, the dolls’ house and the toy cupboards?’
‘Yes. And the bathroom. The bath with the mahogany surround. You told me that you thought of sailing ducks in it as soon as you saw it.’
Gwenda said thoughtfully. ‘It’s true that I seemed to know right away just where everything was-the kitchen and the linen cupboard. And that I kept thinking there was a door through from the drawing-room to the dining- room. But surely it’s quite impossible that I should come to England and actually buy the identical house I’d lived in long ago?’
‘It’s not impossible, my dear. It’s just a very remarkable coincidence-and remarkable coincidences do happen. Your husband wanted a house on the south coast, you were looking for one, and you passed a house that stirred memories, and attracted you. It was the right size and a reasonable price and so you bought it. No, it’s not too wildly improbable. Had the house been merely what is called (perhaps rightly) a haunted house, you would have reacted differently, I think. But you had no feeling of violence or repulsion except, so you have told me, at one very definite moment, and that was when you were just starting to come down the staircase and looking down into the hall.’
Some of the scared expression came back into Gwenda’s eyes.
She said: ‘You mean-that-that Helen-that that’s true too?’
Miss Marple said very gently: ‘Well, I think so, my dear…I think we must face the position that if the other things are memories, that is a memory too…’
‘That I really saw someone killed-strangled-and lying there dead?’
‘I don’t suppose you knew consciously that she was strangled, that was suggested by the play last night and fits in with your adult recognition of what a blue convulsed face must mean. I think a very young child, creeping down the stairs, would realize violence and death and evil and associate them with a certain series of words-for I think there’s no doubt that the murderer actuallysaid those words. It would be a very severe shock to a child. Children are odd little creatures. If they are badly frightened, especially by something they don’t understand, they don’t talk about it. They bottle it up. Seemingly, perhaps, they forget it. But the memory is still there deep down.’
Gwenda drew a deep breath.
‘And you think that’s what happened to me? But why don’t I remember it all now? ’
‘One can’t remember to order. And often when one tries to, the memory goes further away. But I think there are one or two indications that that is what did happen. For instance when you told me just now about your experience in the theatre last night you used a very revealing turn of words. You said you seemed to be looking “through the banisters”-but normally, you know, one doesn’t look down into a hall through the banisters but over them. Only a child would look through.’
‘That’s clever of you,’ said Gwenda appreciatively.
‘These little things are very significant.’
‘But who was Helen?’ asked Gwenda in a bewildered way.
‘Tell me, my dear, are you still quite sure it was Helen?’
‘Yes…It’s frightfully odd, because I don’t know who “Helen” is-but at the same time I do know-I mean I know that it was “Helen” lying there…How am I going to find out more?’
‘Well, I think the obvious thing to do is to find out definitely if you ever were in England as a child, or if you could have been. Your relatives-’
Gwenda interrupted. ‘Aunt Alison. She would know, I’m sure.’
‘Then I should write to her by air mail. Tell her circumstances have arisen which make it imperative for you to know if you have ever been in England. You would probably get an answer by air mail by the time your husband arrives.’
‘Oh, thank you, Miss Marple. You’ve been frightfully kind. And I do hope what you’ve suggested is true. Because if so, well, it’s quite all right. I mean, it won’t be anything supernatural.’
Miss Marple smiled.
