 Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition | |
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Not known |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
Publication date | October 1976 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 224 first edition, hardback |
| ISBN | 0-00-231785-0 |
| OCLC | 2904600 |
| 823/.9/12 | |
| LC Class | PZ3.C4637 Sm PR6005.H66 |
| Preceded by | Curtain |
| Followed by | An Autobiography |
Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work ofdetective fiction byAgatha Christie, first published in the UK by theCollins Crime Club in October 1976[1] and in the US byDodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.[2][3] The UK edition retailed for£3.50[1] and the US edition for$7.95.[3]
The book featuresMiss Marple. Released posthumously, it was the last published Christie novel, although not the last Miss Marple novel in order of writing. The story is explicitly set in 1944, but the first draft of the novel was possibly written during the Blitz in 1940. Miss Marple aids a young couple who choose to uncover events in the wife's past life, and not let sleeping murder lie.
Newlywed Gwenda Reed travels ahead of her husband to find a home for them on the south coast of England. In a short time, she finds and buys Hillside, a large old house that feels just like home. She supervises workers in a renovation, staying in a one-time nursery room while the work progresses. She forms a definite idea for the little nursery. When the workmen open a long-sealed door, she sees the very wallpaper that was in her mind. Furthermore, a place that seems logical to her for a doorway between two rooms proves to have been such a doorway years earlier. She goes to London for a visit with relatives: the author Raymond West, his wife, and his aunt, Miss Jane Marple. During a performance of the playThe Duchess of Malfi, when the line "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young" is spoken, Gwenda screams out. She saw an image of herself viewing a man saying those words strangling a blonde-haired woman she thinks of as Helen.
Gwenda was born in India where her father was stationed; then from a toddler's age, once her mother died, she was raised in New Zealand by her mother's sister. Her father died a few years after her mother. She has memories of being on a ship, but it is clearly two ships. Miss Marple suggests that Gwenda lived in England with her father and his second wife, which proves to be the case. Her stepmother, Helen Halliday (née Kennedy), met her father travelling from India back to England, where their shipboard romance led to marriage upon arrival in England.
They rented a house in Dillmouth, where Helen had lived for some time. The coincidences prove to be memories from Gwenda's stay in that house 18 years ago as a very young child. Now Gwenda ponders her frightening image and the closing words of the play: are they real memories as well? Her husband Giles arrives from New Zealand, and the couple decide to pursue this mystery.
Helen was raised mainly by her half-brother, Dr Kennedy, now retired from practice and moved to another village. He replies to an advertisement placed by Giles seeking information about Helen. Miss Marple arranges to visit friends in Dillmouth. She finds the man who once gardened for the Kennedy family, sister and brother, who supplies several useful descriptions of events. Miss Marple finds the cook from the Halliday household, Edith, who remembers that time well. The Hallidays were soon to move to a house in Norfolk before Helen disappeared. Apparently, Helen wanted to get away from someone, and the servants presumed it was from her husband.
The Reeds advertise, seeking the Hallidays' former maid Lily. She writes first to Dr Kennedy, seeking his advice. She says that she does not believe that Helen ran off, as the clothes packed in her suitcase made no sense – taking an evening gown but not the shoes and belt that go with it. The Reeds and Dr Kennedy agree he should write back to her to arrange a meeting at his present home. Lily never arrives.
The police find Lily's body, strangled, in a copse near the train station. She came by an earlier train than expected, but had with her Dr Kennedy's letter indicating the later arrival time. Miss Marple advises Gwenda to tell the police everything she knows. Soon they are digging up the garden at the end of the terrace, where they find Helen's body.
While Gwenda is in the house alone, Dr Kennedy approaches her, ready to strangle her when his attempt to poison her fails. Miss Marple arrives with a container of soapy solution, which she sprays in his eyes to stop the murder attempt. Dr Kennedy was the one Helen wanted to get away from; she dearly loved Halliday and his daughter. He had strangled his sister, saying the closing words from that play, unaware of young Gwenda at the stair railing above. After burying Helen in the garden, he set up her husband to think he had strangled her. He previously had given Halliday drugs to make him paranoid and then drugged his drink so he could pose Halliday next to the strangled Helen. Since no body was found, Halliday's insistence that he'd killed Helen led him to be diagnosed as insane, and he died in a nursing home. His diary from that time showed him to be quite sane, but he could not explain what he had seen, his strangled wife next to him.
The letter found with Lily was not the one she received from Kennedy; he had switched it after he killed her. He knew the police would see through his scheme. He also had sent the nanny Leonie home to Switzerland with medicines that killed her. Miss Marple explains all this to the Reeds, the full confession from Kennedy and how they should have seen it from the start from those words in the play – spoken by a brother who had just killed his sister.
Sleeping Murder, likeCurtain (Hercule Poirot's last mystery, which concludes the sleuth's career and life), was written by Christie during theSecond World War, apparently sometime duringthe Blitz, which took place between September 1940 and May 1941. Agatha Christie's literary correspondence files indicate that the initial draft of the novel was written early in 1940.[4][5]
Christie's notebooks are open to interpretation in hindsight; John Curran argues thatSleeping Murder was still being planned at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s.[6] His basis is the many changes to the title of the novel, since other authors had used her first title ideas: one of Christie's notebooks contain references toCover Her Face (second title) under "Plans for Sept. 1947" and "Plans for Nov. 1948", suggesting she was planning to re-read and revise the manuscript.
Previous biographers, who did not have access to the Notebooks, state thatSleeping Murder was written in 1940.[7][8]
Nevertheless, support for the story being first written in 1940 is found in the correspondence files of Christie's literary agents: Christie's royalty statement for 15 March 1940 states that the secretarial agency hired by Edmund Cork to type upMurder in Retrospect (the first title of the manuscript) charged £19 13s. 9d.[4] On 7 June 1940, Edmund Cork wrote to Christie advising her that he would have the necessary 'deed of gift' drawn up so her husband Max would become the owner of the unpublished Miss Marple novel. Christie eventually visited Edmund Cork's offices at 40 Fleet Street, London, on 14 October 1940 and signed the document transferring ownership of the copyright ofMurder in Retrospect to her husband in consideration of what was termed her "natural love and affection for him".[4]
Christie refers inher autobiography to the last Poirot and Miss Marple novels that she penned during the Second World War. She writes that she had written an extra two books during the first years of the war in anticipation of being killed in the raids, for at the time she was working in London. One, which she wrote first, was for her daughter,Rosalind Hicks – a book with Hercule Poirot in it – and the other, with Miss Marple in it, was for Max. She adds that these two books, after being composed, were put in the vaults of a bank, and were made over formally by deed of gift to her daughter and husband.[9]
The last Marple novel Christie wrote,Nemesis, was published in 1971, followed by the last Poirot novel Christie wroteElephants Can Remember in 1972 and then, in 1973, her very last novelPostern of Fate. Aware that she would write no more novels, Christie authorised the publication ofCurtain in 1975 to send off Poirot. She then arranged to haveSleeping Murder published in 1976, but she died before its publication in October of that year.
By contrast to Poirot, who dies in the final novel, Miss Marple lives on. This last published novel is set in 1944, but follows novels set in later years, which show Miss Marple to have aged. InNemesis, Miss Marple does no gardening on the advice of her doctor, showing her to be in more fragile health. InSleeping Murder, she is frequently pullingbindweed from the neglected garden at the Reeds' home, but that may be a cover for searching for the site of the victim's burial. There is a reference to awireless set as a desired purchase by Lily, were she to receive money by responding to the newspaper notice seeking her; this reinforces the story's setting being in the 1930s, as the author intended in her final revisions (done in 1950).[7]
Christie's original manuscript ofSleeping Murder was entitledMurder in Retrospect after one of the chapters in the book. When the Hercule Poirot novelFive Little Pigs was later serialised in the US inCollier's Weekly from September to November 1941, the magazine's editing board retitled itMurder in Retrospect. This was also the title used by Christie's American publisher Dodd Mead and Company, presumably in order to capitalise on the recent US serialisation. Christie's original manuscript ofSleeping Murder was duly retitledCover Her Face.
Following the publication ofP.D. James's début crime novelCover Her Face in 1962, Christie became aware of the need to think up yet another title for the last Miss Marple book. She wrote to Edmund Cork on 17 July 1972, asking him to send her a copy of the unpublished Miss Marple manuscript and a copy of Max's deed of gift. So much time had passed that she was unable to remember if the manuscript was still calledCover Her Face orShe Died Young.
George Thaw in theDaily Mirror of 22 October 1976 said: "Agatha Christie's last novel is very good.Sleeping Murder is the last of Miss Marple's excursions into detection. But perhaps it is her best. Agatha Christie wrote it years ago but if I was going to pick a swansong book this is certainly the one that I would choose. It's her best for years."[10]
Gavin Lambert in theNew York Times Book Review of 19 September 1976 said: "Displays Agatha Christie's personal sense of what she calls 'evil,' of murder as an affront and a violation and an act of unique cruelty... When Marple tells us here that 'it was real evil that was in the air that night,' Christie makes us feel her curious primitive shiver. It is certainly the most interesting aspect of her personality and probably accounts for her extraordinary success."[11]
Robert Barnard: "Slightly somniferous mystery, written in the 'forties but published after Christie's death. Concerns a house where murder has been committed, bought (by the merest coincidence) by someone who as a child saw the body. Sounds likeRoss Macdonald, and certainly doesn't read like vintage Christie. But why should an astute businesswoman hold back one of her better performances for posthumous publication?"[12]H. R. F. Keating included the novel in his list of "100 Best Crime and Mystery Books".[13] It was one of the bestselling books of1976.
Sleeping Murder was filmed by theBBC as a 100-minute film in the sixth adaptation (of twelve) in the seriesMiss Marple starringJoan Hickson asMiss Marple. It was transmitted in two 50-minute parts on Sunday, 11 January and Sunday, 18 January 1987. This adaptation is fairly true to the plot of the novel.
Adapter:Ken TaylorDirector: John Davies
Cast:
The novel was adapted as a Syrian drama series, "جريمة في الذاكرة" (Crime in the Memory), which was broadcast in 1992.[14]
The novel was adapted as a set of four episodes of the Japanese animated television seriesAgatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, airing in 2005.[citation needed]
A second British television adaptation, set in 1951, was transmitted on 5 February 2006 as part ofITV'sAgatha Christie's Marple, starringGeraldine McEwan andSophia Myles as Miss Marple and Gwenda, respectively. This adaptation had numerous plot changes.
Adapter:Stephen ChurchettDirector:Edward HallCast:
The tenth episode of the French television seriesLes Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie was an adaptation of this novel. It aired in 2012.
The novel was adapted as a 90-minute play forBBC Radio 4 and transmitted as part of theSaturday Play strand on 8 December 2001.June Whitfield reprised her role as Miss Marple (she played Miss Marple in several radio adaptations in the 20th century). It was recorded on 10 October 2001.
Adapter:Michael BakewellProducer: Enyd Williams
Cast:
In the US the novel was serialised inLadies' Home Journal in two abridged instalments from July (Volume XCIII, Number 7) to August 1976 (Volume XCIII, Number 8) with an illustration byFred Otnes.
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