Sleeping Murder
The owner of a seaside villa is plagued by strange feelings about its past…Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernise 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. Between them, they were to solve a ‘perfect’ crime committed many years before.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by
Collins, The Crime Club 1976
Sleeping Murder⢠is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie® Marple® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. Copyright © 1976 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
Cover by www.designedbydavid.co.uk © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2016
Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008196639
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422814
Version: 2017-04-11
Contents
Gwenda Reed stood, shivering a little, on the quayside.
The docks and the custom sheds and all of England that she could see, were gently waving up and down.
And it was in that moment that she made her decisionâthe decision that was to lead to such very momentous events.
She wouldnât go by the boat train to London as she had planned.
After all, why should she? No one was waiting for her, nobody expected her. She had only just got off that heaving creaking boat (it had been an exceptionally rough three days through the Bay and up to Plymouth) and the last thing she wanted was to get into a heaving swaying train. She would go to a hotel, a nice firm steady hotel standing on good solid ground. And she would get into a nice steady bed that didnât creak and roll. And she would go to sleep, and the next morningâwhy, of courseâwhat a splendid idea! She would hire a car and she would drive slowly and without hurrying herself all through the South of England looking about for a houseâa nice houseâthe house that she and Giles had planned she should find. Yes, that was a splendid idea.
In that way she would see something of Englandâof the England that Giles had told her about and which she had never seen; although, like most New Zealanders, she called it Home. At the moment, England was not looking particularly attractive. It was a grey day with rain imminent and a sharp irritating wind blowing. Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queue for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England.
On the following morning, however, her feelings were entirely different. The sun was shining. The view from her window was attractive. And the universe in general was no longer waving and wobbling. It had steadied down. This was England at last and here she was, Gwenda Reed, young married woman of twenty-one, on her travels. Gilesâs return to England was uncertain. He might follow her in a few weeks. It might be as long as six months. His suggestion had been that Gwenda should precede him to England and should look about for a suitable house. They both thought it would be nice to have, somewhere, a permanency. Gilesâs job would always entail a certain amount of travelling. Sometimes Gwenda would come too, sometimes the conditions would not be suitable. But they both liked the idea of having a homeâsome place of their own. Giles had inherited some furniture from an aunt recently, so that everything combined to make the idea a sensible and practical one.
Since Gwenda and Giles were reasonably well off the prospect presented no difficulties.
Gwenda had demurred at first at choosing a house on her own. âWe ought to do it together,â she had said. But Giles had said laughingly: âIâm not much of a hand at houses. If you like it, I shall. A bit of a garden, of course, and not some brand-new horrorâand not too big. Somewhere on the south coast was my idea. At any rate, not too far inland.â
