Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs.
In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Have the two of them dredged up a perfect crime committed many years before?
MY THOUGHTS:
21-year-old Gwenda Reed purchases a quaint home to live in with her new hubby, Giles. 'Hillside' is a small, white Victorian villa in the seaside town of Dillmouth. Gwenda claims it as hers in an instinctive, emotional way. It's love at first sight.
However, something creepy begins happening. Any changes or renovations she commences turn out to be peeling back the past. Gwenda's bright ideas have all been done before. She fancies a door in a particular wall, and one already existed at some point, now boarded over. Old garden steps are excavated precisely where she desires a new path. Even her ideal wallpaper pattern turns out to be an old feature, long covered over.
Things come to a head during a night out at the theatre with distant relatives, Raymond and Joan West. A startling line is delivered in 'The Duchess of Malfi'. 'Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young.' Gwenda gets a vivid flashback of a young woman named Helen being murdered at the foot of her very own stairs. It turns out Gwenda had actually lived at Hillside briefly during her very early childhood.
The 'sleeping murder' of the title doesn't refer to the victim, but rather the hidden crime itself. It would seem that eighteen years earlier, somebody got away with murder. Now there is only the hazy memory of a three-year-old as a springboard for investigation, unless Gwenda dreamed or imagined the whole thing. (Unsurprisingly she didn't, or there would be no story.) Or perhaps Helen simply disappeared with a lover, as people assumed. (Ditto. I wondered briefly if this might be the big twist. A Christie murder mystery without an actual murder, but no.)
Luckily Raymond West's Aunt Jane, who was there at the theatre, takes Gwenda seriously. Miss Marple establishes herself as a friendly guardian angel to be sure young Gwenda and Giles don't get carried away in their eagerness to excavate answers. She's seen enough of human nature to suspect that the murderer may be lurking in the shadows, alarmed to have light shone on the scene after such a long time. Miss Marple knows that for this person, the effect must be like peeling the top off a long un-prodded wound.
Sadly, this is not one of Agatha Christie's best stories. I guessed who the murderer was instantly. As soon as this person came on the scene, I thought, 'Aha, I'll bet's you. Stands out a mile.' My instincts were sound. And the murderer's motive was based more on their own defective, twisted personality than on anything specifically juicy or interesting.
But the story is not devoid of appeal. The premise is suitably chilling, Gwenda and Giles have an eager Tommy and Tuppence vibe, from their most youthful stories, and Helen Halliday's trio of former male admirers under investigation are all quite intriguing.
Then of course there's Miss Marple, a perfect period piece, according to her nephew, Raymond. Victorian to her core. She's adept at using pleasant small talk to disguise the fact that she's digging for information, and takes advantage of her appearance for all she's worth, because, 'old ladies are supposed to be inquisitive.'
The cover declares this to be 'Miss Marple's Final Case, ' so I left it until last. But chronologically, it is nothing of the sort. That honor belongs to Nemesis. Miss Marple is far less frail than she is in some of the other later stories, she's out weeding in her garden and Dr Haydock pronounces her in remarkably fine fettle for a woman her age. And her friend Colonel Arthur Bantry is still alive and well. What's with these false cover claims? It turns out this was, in fact, the last Marple mystery published, which was done posthumously as a treat for her fans.
Anyway, for me it's farewell to the fluffy little old lady sleuth who claims to have lived such an uneventful life, but understands human nature all so well.
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Do check out my entire Agatha Christie page.
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