Sleeping Murder Read Online Free

madam,” said Mrs. Cocker as she brought in the delicately fried sole, the mashed potatoes and the creamed carrots.
    â€œOh good,” said Gwenda.
    She was hungry and enjoyed her lunch. After having coffee in the drawing room, she went upstairs to her bedroom. Crossing the room she pulled open the door of the corner cupboard.
    Then she uttered a sudden frightened little cry and stood staring.
    The inside of the cupboard revealed the original papering of the wall, which elsewhere had been done over in the yellowish wall paint. The room had once been gaily papered in a floral design, a design of little bunches of scarlet poppies alternating with bunches of blue cornflowers….
    II
    Gwenda stood there staring a long time, then she went shakily over to the bed and sat down on it.
    Here she was in a house she had never been in before, in a country she had never visited—and only two days ago she had lain in bed imagining a paper for this very room—and the paper she had imagined corresponded exactly with the paper that had once hung on the walls.
    Wild fragments of explanation whirled round in her head. Dunne, Experiment with Time—seeing forward instead of back….
    She could explain the garden path and the connecting door as coincidence—but there couldn’t be coincidence about this. You couldn’t conceivably imagine a wallpaper of such a distinctive design and then find one exactly as you had imagined it … No, there was some explanation that eluded her and that—yes, frightened her. Every now and then she was seeing, not forward, but back—back to some former state of the house. Any moment she might see something more—something she didn’t want to see … The house frightened her … But was it the house or herself? She didn’t want to be one of those people who saw things….
    She drew a long breath, put on her hat and coat and slippedquickly out of the house. At the post office she sent the following telegram:
    West, 19 Addway Square Chelsea London. May I change my mind and come to you tomorrow Gwenda.
    She sent it reply paid.

Three
“C OVER H ER F ACE …”
    R aymond West and his wife did all they could to make young Giles’s wife feel welcome. It was not their fault that Gwenda found them secretly rather alarming. Raymond, with his odd appearance, rather like a pouncing raven, his sweep of hair and his sudden crescendos of quite incomprehensible conversation, left Gwenda round-eyed and nervous. Both he and Joan seemed to talk a language of their own. Gwenda had never been plunged in a highbrow atmosphere before and practically all its terms were strange.
    â€œWe’ve planned to take you to a show or two,” said Raymond whilst Gwenda was drinking gin and rather wishing she could have had a cup of tea after her journey.
    Gwenda brightened up immediately.
    â€œThe Ballet tonight at Sadler’s Wells, and tomorrow we’ve got a birthday party on for my quite incredible Aunt Jane—the Duchess of Malfi with Gielgud, and on Friday you simply must see They Walked without Feet. Translated from the Russian—absolutely themost significent piece of drama for the last twenty years. It’s at the little Witmore Theatre.”
    Gwenda expressed herself grateful for these plans for her entertainment. After all, when Giles came home, they would go together to the musical shows and all that. She flinched slightly at the prospect of They Walked without Feet, but supposed she might enjoy it—only the point about “significant” plays was that you usually didn’t.
    â€œYou’ll adore my Aunt Jane,” said Raymond. “She’s what I should describe as a perfect Period Piece. Victorian to the core. All her dressing tables have their legs swathed in chintz. She lives in a village, the kind of village where nothing ever happens, exactly like a stagnant pond.”
    â€œSomething did happen there