沉睡的谋杀案18
时间：2026-01-29 07:41:29
（单词翻译:单击）
Ten
A CASE HISTORY
I
Saltmarsh House was set pleasantly about six miles inland from the coast.
It had a good train service to London from the five-miles-distant town of
South Benham.
Giles and Gwenda were shown into a large airy sitting room with cre-
tonne covers patterned with flowers. A very charming-looking old lady
with white hair came into the room holding a glass of milk. She nodded to
them and sat down near the fireplace. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on
Gwenda and presently she leaned forward towards her and spoke in what
was almost a whisper.
“Is it your poor child, my dear?”
Gwenda looked slightly taken aback. She said doubtfully: “No—no. It
isn’t.”
“Ah, I wondered.” The old lady nodded her head and sipped her milk.
Then she said conversationally, “Half past ten—that’s the time. It’s always
at half past ten. Most remarkable.” She lowered her voice and leaned for-
ward again.
“Behind the fireplace,” she breathed. “But don’t say I told you.”
At this moment, a white uniformed maid came into the room and re-
quested Giles and Gwenda to follow her.
They were shown into Dr. Penrose’s study, and Dr. Penrose rose to greet
them.
Dr. Penrose, Gwenda could not help thinking, looked a little mad him-
self. He looked, for instance, much madder than the nice old lady in the
drawing room—but perhaps psychiatrists always looked a little mad.
“I had your letter, and Dr. Kennedy’s,” said Dr. Penrose. “And I’ve been
looking up your father’s case history, Mrs. Reed. I remembered his case
quite well, of course, but I wanted to refresh my memory so that I should
be in a position to tell you everything you wanted to know. I understand
that you have only recently become aware of the facts?”
Gwenda explained that she had been brought up in New 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 makeup 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 experi-
ence. 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, per-
haps, to attach some blame to us on that account. I admit that proper vigil-
ance would have prevented it. But frankly I saw no sign of Major Halli-
day’s being a suicidal type. He showed no tendency to melancholia—no
brooding or despondency. He complained of sleeplessness and my col-
league allowed him a certain amount of sleeping tablets. Whilst pretend-
ing to take them, he actually kept them until he had accumulated a suffi-
cient 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 de-
sire for a penalty to be exacted. He had insisted at first, you know, on call-
ing 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 even-
ing 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 con-
necting 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 in-
stance, 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 con-
fusion 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 occurred was that he went into the drawing
room, read the note his wife left saying she was leaving him, and that his
way of eluding this fact was to prefer to ‘kill’ her. Hence the hallucina-
tion.”
“You mean he cared for her very much?” asked Gwenda.
“Obviously, Mrs. Reed.”
“And he never—recognized—that it was a hallucination?”
“He had to acknowledge that it must be—but his inner belief remained
unshaken. The obsession was too strong to yield to reason. If we could
have uncovered the underlying childish fixation—”
Gwenda interrupted. She was uninterested in childish fixations.
“But you’re quite sure, you say, that he—that he didn’t do it?”
“Oh, if that is what is worrying you, Mrs. Reed, you can put it right out of
your head. Kelvin Halliday, however jealous he may have been of his wife,
was emphatically not a killer.”
Dr. Penrose coughed and picked up a small shabby black book.
“If you would like this, Mrs. Reed, you are the proper person to have it.
It contains various jottings set down by your father during the time he
was here. When we turned over his effects to his executor (actually a firm
of solicitors), Dr. McGuire, who was then Superintendent, retained this as
part of the case history. Your father’s case, you know, appears in Dr.
McGuire’s book—only under initials, of course. Mr. K.H. If you would like
this diary—”
Gwenda stretched out her hand eagerly.
“Thank you,” she said. “I should like it very much.”
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