Free Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie Page A

sister's child. No, Kennedy wouldn't connive at concealing murder. If he did, there's only one possible way he could have set about it, and that would be deliberately to give a death certificate that she had died of heart failure or something. I suppose he might have got away with that—but we know definitely that he didn't do that. Because there's no record of her death in the Parish registers, and if he had done it, he would have told us that his sister had died. So go on from there and explain, if you can, what happened to the body.'
    'Perhaps my father buried it somewhere—in the garden?'
    'And then went to Kennedy and told him he'd murdered his wife? Why? Why not rely on the story that she'd “left him”?'
    Gwenda pushed back her hair from her forehead. She was less stiff and rigid now, and the patches of sharp colour were fading.
    'I don't know,' she admitted. 'It does seem a bit screwy now you've put it that way. Do you think Dr Kennedy was telling us the truth?'
    'Oh yes—I'm pretty sure of it. From his point of view it's a perfectly reasonable story. Dreams, hallucinations—finally a major hallucination. He's got no doubt that it was a hallucination because, as we've just said, you can't have a murder without a body. That's where we're in a different position from him. We know that there was a body.'
    He paused and went on: 'From his point of view, everything fits in. Missing clothes and suitcase, the farewell note. And later, two letters from his sister.'
    Gwenda stirred.
    'Those letters. How do we explain those?'
    'We don't—but we've got to. If we assume that Kennedy was telling us the truth (and as I say, I'm pretty sure that he was), we've got to explain those letters.'
    'I suppose they really were in his sister's handwriting? He recognized it?'
    'You know, Gwenda, I don't believe that point would arise. It's not like a signature on a doubtful cheque. If those letters were written in a reasonably close imitation of his sister's writing, it wouldn't occur to him to doubt them. He's already got the preconceived idea that she's gone away with someone. The letters just confirmed that belief. If he had never heard from her at all—why, then he might have got suspicious. All the same, there are certain curious points about those letters that wouldn't strike him, perhaps, but do strike me. They're strangely anonymous. No address except a poste restante. No indication of who the man in the case was. A clearly stated determination to make a clean break with all old ties. What I mean is, they're exactly the kind of letters a murderer would devise if he wanted to allay any suspicions on the part of his victim's family. It's the old Crippen touch again. To get the letters posted from abroad would be easy.'
    'You think my father—'
    'No—that's just it—I don't. Take a man who's deliberately decided to get rid of his wife. He spreads rumours about her possible unfaithfulness. He stages her departure—note left behind, clothes packed and taken. Letters will be received from her at carefully spaced intervals from somewhere abroad. Actually he has murdered her quietly and put her, say, under the cellar floor. That's one pattern of murder—and it's often been done. But what that type of murderer doesn't do is to rush to his brother-in-law and say he's murdered his wife and hadn't they better go to the police? On the other hand, if your father was the emotional type of killer, and was terribly in love with his wife and strangled her in a fit of frenzied jealousy—Othello fashion—(and that fits in with the words you heard) he certainly doesn't pack clothes and arrange for letters to come, before he rushes off to broadcast his crime to a man who isn't the type likely to hush it up. It's all wrong, Gwenda. The whole pattern is wrong.'
    'Then what are you trying to get at, Giles?'
    'I don't know... It's just that throughout it all, there seems to be an unknown factor—call him X. Someone who hasn't appeared as yet.