Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie Page A

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.”
    â€œYou think my father—”
    â€œ 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 hiswife 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.”
    â€œThen what are you trying to get at, Giles?”
    â€œI 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. But one gets glimpses of his technique.”
    â€œX?” said Gwenda wonderingly. Then her eyes darkened. “You’re making that up, Giles. To comfort me.”
    â€œI swear I’m not. Don’t you see yourself that you can’t make a satisfactory outline to fit all the facts? We know that Helen Halliday was strangled because you saw—”
    He stopped.
    â€œGood Lord! I’ve been a fool. I see it now. It covers everything. You’re right. And Kennedy’s right, too. Listen, Gwenda. Helen’s preparing to go away with a lover—who that is we don’t know.”
    â€œX?”
    Giles brushed her interpolation aside impatiently.
    â€œShe’s written her note to her husband—but at that moment he comes in, reads what she’s writing and goes haywire. He crumples up the note, slings it into the wastebasket, and goes for her. She’s terrified, rushes out into the hall—he catches up with her, throttles her—she goes limp and he drops her. And then, standing a little way from her, he quotes those words from The Duchess of Malfi just as the child upstairs has reached the banisters and is peering down.”
    â€œAnd after that?”
    â€œThe point is, that she isn’t dead. He may have thought she was dead—but she’s merely semisuffocated. Perhaps her lover comes round—after the frantic husband has started for the doctor’s house on the other side of the town, or perhaps she regains consciousness by herself. Anyway, as soon as she has come to, she beats it. Beats it quickly. And that explains everything. Kelvin’s belief that he has killed her. The disappearance of the clothes; packed and taken away earlier in the day. And the subsequent letters which are perfectly genuine. There you are—that explains everything.”
    Gwenda said slowly, “It doesn’t explain why