Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page B

goes away … I mean, I’m beginning to doubt now if I ever really saw anything at all. Perhaps the other night I just had a brainstorm in the theatre.”
    â€œNo. There was something. Miss Marple thinks so, too. What about ‘Helen’? Surely you must remember something about Helen?”
    â€œI don’t remember anything at all. It’s just a name. ”
    â€œIt mightn’t even be the right name.”
    â€œYes, it was. It was Helen.”
    Gwenda looked obstinate and convinced.
    â€œThen if you’re so sure it was Helen, you must know something about her,” said Giles reasonably. “Did you know her well? Was she living here? Or just staying here?”
    â€œI tell you I don’t know. ” Gwenda was beginning to look strained and nervy.
    Giles tried another tack.
    â€œWho else can you remember? Your father?”
    â€œNo. I mean, I can’t tell. There was always his photograph, you see. Aunt Alison used to say: ‘That’s your Daddy.’ I don’t remember him here, in this house….”
    â€œAnd no servants—nurses—anything like that?”
    â€œNo—no. The more I try to remember, the more it’s all a blank. The things I know are all underneath—like walking to that door automatically. I didn’t remember a door there. Perhaps if you wouldn’tworry me so much, Giles, things would come back more. Anyway, trying to find out about it all is hopeless. It’s so long ago.”
    â€œOf course it’s not hopeless—even old Miss Marple admitted that.”
    â€œShe didn’t help us with any ideas of how to set about it,” said Gwenda. “And yet I feel, from the glint in her eye, that she had a few. I wonder how she would have gone about it.”
    â€œI don’t suppose she would be likely to think of ways that we wouldn’t,” said Giles positively. “We must stop speculating, Gwenda, and set about things in a systematic way. We’ve made a beginning—I’ve looked through the Parish registers of deaths. There’s no ‘Helen’ of the right age amongst them. In fact there doesn’t seem to be a Helen at all in the period I covered—Ellen Pugg, ninety-four, was the nearest. Now we must think of the next profitable approach. If your father, and presumably your stepmother, lived in this house, they must either have bought it or rented it.”
    â€œAccording to Foster, the gardener, some people called Elworthy had it before the Hengraves and before them Mrs. Findeyson. Nobody else.”
    â€œYour father might have bought it and lived in it for a very short time—and then sold it again. But I think that it’s much more likely that he rented it—probably rented it furnished. If so, our best bet is to go round the house agents.”
    Going round the house agents was not a prolonged labour. There were only two house agents in Dillmouth. Messrs. Wilkinson were a comparatively new arrival. They had only opened their premises eleven years ago. They dealt mostly with the small bungalows and new houses at the far end of the town. The other agents, Messrs. Galbraith and Penderley, were the ones from whom Gwendahad bought the house. Calling upon them, Giles plunged into his story. He and his wife were delighted with Hillside and with Dillmouth generally. Mrs. Reed had only just discovered that she had actually lived in Dillmouth as a small child. She had some very faint memories of the place, and had an idea that Hillside was actually the house in which she had lived but could not be quite certain about it. Had they any record of the house being let to a Major Halliday? It would be about eighteen or nineteen years ago….
    Mr. Penderley stretched out apologetic hands.
    â€œI’m afraid it’s not possible to tell you, Mr. Reed. Our records do not go back that far—not, that is, of furnished or short-period lets. Very sorry I can’t