Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie * * * *
There is also something a little sad about reading Sleeping Murder because it was the final Miss Marple novel to be published. It came out posthumously in 1976, although Christie had actually written it decades earlier, during the Second World War, and deliberately kept it back for later publication. So it is not really an elderly Christie saying goodbye to Miss Marple. Still, knowing that this was the last Miss Marple novel readers received gives it a strange sense of finality, particularly when the book itself contains some lovely references to her earlier cases.
The story begins with Gwenda Reed, a young woman who has recently arrived in England from New Zealand. She and her husband Giles are both orphans who spent much of their childhoods being passed around between relatives, so they have never really had a proper home of their own. Now that they are married, they want to create one together. Giles is still abroad when Gwenda begins looking at houses in southern England, but nothing feels quite right until she sees a particular house in the seaside town of Dillmouth.
From the moment she walks inside, the house feels like home.
At first, this seems wonderful. Gwenda knows almost immediately that this is the house she wants. But gradually that feeling of familiarity becomes unsettling because she starts having very specific ideas about how the house ought to look. She thinks there should be a door in a particular wall. Later, when the wallpaper is removed, they discover that there really was once a door there and it had been blocked up. She remembers the placement of things she should never have seen. The house is not merely comfortable or strangely familiar. Somehow, Gwenda knows it.
Eventually she discovers the reason. Although Gwenda believed that she had gone directly from India, where she was born, to New Zealand after her mother died, there is a missing period in her childhood memories. Her father remarried on the journey back to England, and for a short time Gwenda actually lived with him and her new stepmother, in this exact house.
And something happened there.
Gwenda has fragments of memories from that time, and some of them are distinctly unpleasant. Gradually she becomes convinced that as a very young child she saw a woman lying dead in the house. If that memory is real, then she may have witnessed a murder that was never solved.
I really liked this premise. Instead of beginning with a fresh murder and following the clues forward, Sleeping Murder is about digging backwards through memories that have been buried for nearly twenty years. Gwenda remembers pieces of her childhood without understanding what they mean, while she and Giles have to reconstruct the lives of people who have scattered across the country and who all remember the past differently. It is a particularly good setup for Christie because it gives her an almost ridiculous number of opportunities for red herrings.
And there are so many red herrings.
Almost everyone connected to the victim becomes suspicious at some point. Christie keeps introducing another possibility, another relationship, another man who might have had a reason to kill her. Because so much time has passed, memories are unreliable and people have their own reasons for presenting the past in a particular way. Even though I already knew the identity of the murderer, I still enjoyed watching Christie construct all these different possibilities and seeing how she could make each one seem plausible for a while.
Unfortunately, I had seen an adaptation of Sleeping Murder years ago and remembered who the murderer was. I did not remember all the details or exactly how the murder had happened, but I remembered the culprit. That obviously changed my experience of the mystery because I could never really be fooled by all those red herrings. Instead, I was watching Christie build the mystery while already knowing where it was going.
What surprised me was that the actual reveal still felt slightly disappointing. After such a carefully constructed investigation, with so many possibilities and so much gradual excavation of the past, the final breakthrough happens incredibly quickly. Something happens and suddenly the last piece of Gwenda’s memory clicks into place. She remembers exactly what she saw on the night of the murder, and that gives them the answer. Considering how much time Christie spends carefully assembling the puzzle, I wanted the final solution to have a little more room to breathe.
I was also strangely invested in whether Gwenda and Giles were actually going to continue living in the house afterwards. They bought their perfect home, discovered that Gwenda had lived there as a child, uncovered a decades old murder connected to her family, and nearly got themselves killed investigating it. Are they still going to live there? Because I need to know. Christie apparently did not consider this nearly as important a question as I did.
Gwenda and Giles themselves were probably my favourite part of the book. I really liked them as a couple. There is a wonderful confidence between them, and they genuinely behave like partners. Giles believes Gwenda without treating her memories as ridiculous, and Gwenda trusts him in return. They investigate together, discuss possibilities together, and generally seem to actually enjoy being married to each other. Relationship goals, honestly.
Miss Marple is also particularly lovely in this one. She initially warns Gwenda and Giles against disturbing a crime that has been buried for so long, essentially suggesting that perhaps a sleeping murder should be allowed to remain asleep. Of course, once it becomes obvious that these two young people are absolutely going to investigate anyway, Miss Marple quietly makes herself part of the investigation. There is something almost protective about the way she treats them. She is not merely interested in solving the puzzle. She becomes genuinely fond of this young couple and wants to keep them safe while they insist on poking around in something potentially very dangerous.
There is also a wonderful little moment when Inspector Primer recognizes Miss Marple by reputation. He knows that she has been involved in several previous cases and mentions some of them, including the murder of a churchwarden in a vicar’s study and the poison pen case at Lymstock. I particularly loved the first reference because The Murder at the Vicarage was the first Agatha Christie novel I ever read. So I was sitting there going, “Oh! I remember that one!” It felt especially appropriate in the final published Miss Marple novel to have this small acknowledgement of just how many murders this seemingly harmless elderly lady has helped solve over the years.
Overall, Sleeping Murder was a very enjoyable Miss Marple mystery. The central idea of a woman accidentally buying the house she lived in as a child and slowly uncovering memories of a murder is wonderfully eerie, and the cold case structure allows Christie to pile suspicion onto almost everyone involved. I do wish the final reveal had been given more space after such an elaborate buildup, and knowing the murderer beforehand inevitably took away some of the mystery for me. Still, I had a lot of fun with it, and Gwenda, Giles, and Miss Marple made for such an endearing combination that I enjoyed spending time with them even when I already knew where the investigation was going.
And as the last Miss Marple novel ever published, it feels strangely fitting that Sleeping Murder looks backwards. The mystery is about memories resurfacing, old secrets being disturbed, and a crime from the past finally demanding an answer. Miss Marple may be solving one final sleeping murder, but by this point, even the police know exactly who she is.
Comments
Post a Comment