‘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.’
Chapter 10. A Case History
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 conversationally, ‘Half past ten-that’s the time. It’s always at half past ten. Most remarkable.’ She lowered her voice and leaned forward again.
‘Behind the fireplace,’ she breathed. ‘But don’t say I told you.’
At this moment, a white uniformed maid came into the room and requested Giles and Gwenda to follow her.
They were shown into Dr Penrose’s study, and Dr Penrose rose to greet them.
Dr Penrose, Gwenda could not help thinking, looked a little mad himself. He looked, for instance, much madder than the nice old lady in the drawing-room-but perhaps psychiatrists always looked a little mad.
‘I had your letter, and Dr Kennedy’s,’ said Dr Penrose. ‘And I’ve been looking up your father’s case history, Mrs Reed. I remembered his case quite well, of course, but I wanted to refresh my memory so that I should be in a position to tell you everything you wanted to know. I understand that you have only recently become aware of the facts?’
Gwenda explained that she had been brought up in New Zealand by her mother’s relations and that all she had known about her father was that he had died in a nursing home in England.
Dr Penrose nodded. ‘Quite so. Your father’s case, Mrs Reed, presented certain rather peculiar features.’
‘Such as?’ Giles asked.
‘Well, the obsession-or delusion-was very strong. Major Halliday, though clearly in a very nervous state, was most emphatic and categorical in his assertion that he had strangled his second wife in a fit of jealous rage. A great many of the usual signs in these cases were absent, and I don’t mind telling you frankly, Mrs Reed, that had it not been for Dr Kennedy’s assurance that Mrs Halliday was actually alive, I should have been prepared, at that time, to take your father’s assertion at its face value.’
‘You formed the impression that he had actually killed her?’ Giles asked.
‘I said “at that time”. Later, I had cause to revise my opinion, as Major Halliday’s character and mental make-up became more familiar to me. Your father, Mrs Reed, was most definitely not a paranoiac type. He had no delusions of persecution, no impulses of violence. He was a gentle, kindly, and well- controlled individual. He was neither what the world calls mad, nor was he dangerous to others. But he did have this obstinate fixation about Mrs Halliday’s death and to account for its origin I am quite convinced we have to go back a long way-to some childish experience. But I admit that all methods of analysis failed to give us the right clue. Breaking down a patient’s resistance to analysis is sometimes a very long business. It may take several years. In your father’s case, the time was insufficient.’
He paused, and then, looking up sharply, said: ‘You know, I presume, that Major Halliday committed suicide.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Gwenda.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Reed. I thought you knew that. You are entitled, perhaps, to attach some blame to us on that account. I admit that proper vigilance would have prevented it. But frankly I saw no sign of Major Halliday’s being a suicidal type. He showed no tendency to melancholia-no brooding or despondency. He complained of sleeplessness and my colleague allowed him a certain amount of sleeping tablets. Whilst pretending to take them, he actually kept them until he had accumulated a sufficient amount and-’
He spread out his hands.
‘Was he so dreadfully unhappy?’
‘No. I do not think so. It was more, I should judge, a guilt complex, a desire for a penalty to be exacted. He had insisted at first, you know, on calling in the police, and though persuaded out of that, and assured that he had actually committed no crime at all, he obstinately refused to be wholly convinced. Yet it was proved to him over and over again, and he had to admit, that he had no recollection of committing the actual act.’ Dr Penrose ruffled over the papers in front of him. ‘His account of the evening in question never varied. He came into the house, he said, and it was dark. The servants were out. He went into the dining-room, as he usually did, poured himself out a drink and drank it, then went through the connecting door into the drawing-room. After that he remembered nothing-nothing at all, until he was standing in his bedroom looking down at his wife who was dead-strangled. He knew he had done it-’
Giles interrupted. ‘Excuse me, Dr Penrose, but why did he know he had done it?’
