沉睡的谋杀案10
时间：2026-01-29 07:37:19
（单词翻译:单击）
Six
EXERCISE IN DETECTION
I
“Where do you think the body was? About here?” asked Giles.
He and Gwenda were standing in the front hall of Hillside. They had ar-
rived back the night before, and Giles was now in full cry. He was as
pleased as a small boy with his new toy.
“Just about,” said Gwenda. She retreated up the stairs and peered down
critically. “Yes—I think that’s about it.”
“Crouch down,” said Giles. “You’re only about three years old, you
know.”
Gwenda crouched obligingly.
“You couldn’t actually see the man who said the words?”
“I can’t remember seeing him. He must have been just a bit further back
—yes, there. I could only see his paws.”
“Paws.” Giles frowned.
“They were paws. Grey paws—not human.”
“But look here, Gwenda. This isn’t a kind of Murder in the Rue Morgue.
A man doesn’t have paws.”
“Well, he had paws.”
Giles looked doubtfully at her.
“You must have imagined that bit afterwards.”
Gwenda said slowly, “Don’t you think I may have imagined the whole
thing? You know, Giles, I’ve been thinking. It seems to me far more prob-
able that the whole thing was a dream. It might have been. It was the sort
of dream a child might have, and be terribly frightened, and go on remem-
bering about. Don’t you think really that’s the proper explanation? Be-
cause nobody in Dillmouth seems to have the faintest idea that there was
ever a murder, or a sudden death, or a disappearance or anything odd
about this house.”
Giles looked like a different kind of little boy—a little boy who has had
his nice new toy taken away from him.
“I suppose it might have been a nightmare,” he admitted grudgingly.
Then his face cleared suddenly.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it. You could have dreamt about monkeys’
paws and someone dead—but I’m damned if you could have dreamt that
quotation from The Duchess of Malfi.”
“I could have heard someone say it and then dreamt about it after-
wards.”
“I don’t think any child could do that. Not unless you heard it in condi-
tions of great stress—and if that was the case we’re back again where we
were—hold on, I’ve got it. It was the paws you dreamt. You saw the body
and heard the words and you were scared stiff and then you had a night-
mare about it, and there were waving monkeys’ paws too—probably you
were frightened of monkeys.”
Gwenda looked slightly dubious—she said slowly: “I suppose that might
be it….”
“I wish you could remember a bit more … Come down here in the hall.
Shut your eyes. Think … Doesn’t anything more come back to you?”
“No, it doesn’t, Giles … The more I think, the further it all goes away … I
mean, I’m beginning to doubt now if I ever really saw anything at all. Per-
haps the other night I just had a brainstorm in the theatre.”
“No. There was something. Miss Marple thinks so, too. What about
‘Helen’? Surely you must remember something about Helen?”
“I don’t remember anything at all. It’s just a name.”
“It mightn’t even be the right name.”
“Yes, it was. It was Helen.”
Gwenda looked obstinate and convinced.
“Then if you’re so sure it was Helen, you must know something about
her,” said Giles reasonably. “Did you know her well? Was she living here?
Or just staying here?”
“I tell you I don’t know.” Gwenda was beginning to look strained and
nervy.
Giles tried another tack.
“Who else can you remember? Your father?”
“No. I mean, I can’t tell. There was always his photograph, you see. Aunt
Alison used to say: ‘That’s your Daddy.’ I don’t remember him here, in this
house….”
“And no servants—nurses—anything like that?”
“No—no. The more I try to remember, the more it’s all a blank. The
things I know are all underneath—like walking to that door automatically.
I didn’t remember a door there. Perhaps if you wouldn’t worry me so
much, Giles, things would come back more. Anyway, trying to find out
about it all is hopeless. It’s so long ago.”
“Of course it’s not hopeless—even old Miss Marple admitted that.”
“She didn’t help us with any ideas of how to set about it,” said Gwenda.
“And yet I feel, from the glint in her eye, that she had a few. I wonder how
she would have gone about it.”
“I don’t suppose she would be likely to think of ways that we wouldn’t,”
said Giles positively. “We must stop speculating, Gwenda, and set about
things in a systematic way. We’ve made a beginning—I’ve looked through
the Parish registers of deaths. There’s no ‘Helen’ of the right age amongst
them. In fact there doesn’t seem to be a Helen at all in the period I covered
—Ellen Pugg, ninety-four, was the nearest. Now we must think of the next
profitable approach. If your father, and presumably your stepmother,
lived in this house, they must either have bought it or rented it.”
“According to Foster, the gardener, some people called Elworthy had it
before the Hengraves and before them Mrs. Findeyson. Nobody else.”
“Your father might have bought it and lived in it for a very short time—
and then sold it again. But I think that it’s much more likely that he rented
it—probably rented it furnished. If so, our best bet is to go round the
house agents.”
Going round the house agents was not a prolonged labour. There were
only two house agents in Dillmouth. Messrs. Wilkinson were a comparat-
ively new arrival. They had only opened their premises eleven years ago.
They dealt mostly with the small bungalows and new houses at the far end
of the town. The other agents, Messrs. Galbraith and Penderley, were the
ones from whom Gwenda had bought the house. Calling upon them, Giles
plunged into his story. He and his wife were delighted with Hillside and
with Dillmouth generally. Mrs. Reed had only just discovered that she had
actually lived in Dillmouth as a small child. She had some very faint
memories of the place, and had an idea that Hillside was actually the
house in which she had lived but could not be quite certain about it. Had
they any record of the house being let to a Major Halliday? It would be
about eighteen or nineteen years ago….
Mr. Penderley stretched out apologetic hands.
“I’m afraid it’s not possible to tell you, Mr. Reed. Our records do not go
back that far—not, that is, of furnished or short-period lets. Very sorry I
can’t help you, Mr. Reed. As a matter of fact if our old head clerk, Mr. Nar-
racott, had still been alive—he died last winter—he might have been able
to assist you. A most remarkable memory, really quite remarkable. He had
been with the firm for nearly thirty years.”
“There’s no one else who would possibly remember?”
“Our staff is all on the comparatively young side. Of course there is old
Mr. Galbraith himself. He retired some years ago.”
“Perhaps I could ask him?” said Gwenda.
“Well, I hardly know about that …” Mr. Penderley was dubious. “He had
a stroke last year. His faculties are sadly impaired. He’s over eighty, you
know.”
“Does he live in Dillmouth?”
“Oh yes. At Calcutta Lodge. A very nice little property on the Seaton
road. But I really don’t think—”
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