Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie Page A

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?'
    'There was no doubt in his mind. For some months past he had found himself entertaining wild and melodramatic suspicions. He told me, for instance, that he had been convinced his wife was administering drugs to him. He had, of course, lived in India, and the practice of wives driving their husbands insane by datura poisoning often comes up there in the native courts. He had suffered fairly often from hallucinations, with confusion of time and place. He denied strenuously that he suspected his wife of infidelity, but nevertheless I think that that was the motivating power. It seems that what actually