What Dr. Haydock had called “the implications” were, perhaps, beginning to occur to her. Yes, but now it was too late to go back.
Miss Marple said gently and apologetically, cc! have really become most interested in all this. My life, you know, has so few excitements. I hope you won’t think me very inquisitive if I ask you to let me know how you progress?” “Of course we’ll let you know,” said Gwenda warmly. “You shall be in on everything. Why, but for you, I should be urging doctors to shut me up in a loony bin. Tell me your address here, and then you must come and have a drink — I mean, have tea with us, and see the house. You’ve got to see the scene of the crime, haven’t you?” She laughed, but there was a slightly nervy edge to her laugh.
When she had gone on her way Miss Marple shook her head very gently and frowned.
II
Giles and Gwenda scanned the mail eagerly every day, but at first their hopes were disappointed. All they got was two letters from private inquiry agents who pronounced themselves willing and skilled to undertake investigations on their behalf.
“Time enough for them later,” said Giles. “And if we do have to employ some agency, it will be a thoroughly first-class firm, not one that touts through the mail. But I don’t really see what they could do that we aren’t doing.” His optimism (or self-esteem) was justified a few days later. A letter arrived, written in one of those clear and yet somewhat illegible handwritings that stamp the professional man.
Galls Hill Woodleigh Bolton.
Dear Sir, In answer to your advertisement in The Times, Helen Spenlove Kennedy is my sister. I have lost touch with her for many years and should be glad to have news of her.
Yours faithfully, James Kennedy, MD “Woodleigh Bolton,” said Giles. “That’s not too far away. Woodleigh Camp is where they go for picnics. Up on the moorland.
About thirty miles from here. We’ll write and ask Dr. Kennedy if we may come and see him, or if he would prefer to come to us.” A reply was received that Dr. Kennedy would be prepared to receive them on the following Wednesday; and on that day they set off.
Woodleigh Bolton was a straggling village set along the side of a hill. Galls Hill was the highest house just at the top of the rise, with a view over Woodleigh Camp and the moors towards the sea.
“Rather a bleak spot,” said Gwenda shivering.
The house itself was bleak and obviously Dr. Kennedy scorned such modem innovations as central heating. The woman who opened the door was dark and rather forbidding. She led them across the rather bare hall, and into a study where Dr.
Kennedy rose to receive them. It was a long, rather high room, lined with wellfilled bookshelves.
Dr. Kennedy was a grey-haired elderly man with shrewd eyes under tufted brows.
His gaze went sharply from one to the other of them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Reed? Sit here, Mrs.
Reed, it’s probably the most comfortable chair. Now, what’s all this about?” Giles went fluently into their prearranged story.
He and his wife had been recently married in New Zealand. They had come to England, where his wife had lived for a short time as a child, and she was trying to trace old family friends and connections.
Dr. Kennedy remained stiff and unbending.
He was polite but obviously irritated by Colonial insistence on sentimental family ties.
“And you think my sister — my halfsister–and possibly myself–are connections of yours?” he asked Gwenda, civilly, but with slight hostility.
“She was my stepmother,” said Gwenda.
“My father’s second wife. I can’t really remember her properly, of course. I was so small. My maiden name was Halliday.” He stared at her — and then suddenly a smile illuminated his face. He became a different person, no longer aloof.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you’re Gwennie!” Gwenda nodded eagerly. The pet name, long forgotten, sounded in her ears with reassuring familiarity.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Gwennie.” “God bless my soul. Grown up and married. How time flies! It must be– what — fifteen years — no, of course, much longer than that. You don’t remember me, I suppose?” Gwenda shook her head.