Her character will jog readers’ memories towards Carla Lemarchant ( Five Little Pigs). Unbeknown to Gweena Reed, she bought the house where the murder took place and where she used to live as a child. It concerns a young woman who was the sole witness to a premeditated murder. Published posthumously, Sleeping Murder is Miss Marple’s last case. But someone does not like their raking up the past: someone who says the same words as Gweena heard in the theatre. As a result, Gweena and Giles Reed then embark on a journey to find who killed this woman despite warnings to leave well alone.ĭangers lurk as the newly-married couple talk to people about what happened eighteen years ago. Such fills Gweena with terror that the next day she leaves Hillside to stay with her husband’s cousin in London.Īs she recounts her experience to Miss Marple, it is clear to the elderly woman what Gweena has told her are recollections of a murder. A pair of strong hands are around the woman’ neck her face becomes blue and contorted. One night, as she looks down the stairs in the dark, she sees the image of a woman. Beforehand, a series of peculiar occurences happen in the house she recently bought on the south coast of England. Some words in the scene awaken a memory deep in her mind.

Gweena Reed suddenly screams as The Duchess of Malfi draws to a close. Miss Marple's interest is piqued when, at a performance of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Gwenda screams and flees the theatre… You can listen online to free English audiobook “Sleeping Murder” by Agatha Christie on our website.The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster was first staged in 1614. Becoming increasingly uneasy, she accepts an invitation to stay for a few days in London with Miss Marple's somewhat pretentious nephew Raymond West and his wife Joan. After moving in, Gwenda begins to believe that she must be psychic, as she seems to know things about the house which she could not possibly know: the location of a connecting door that had been walled over, the pattern of a previous wallpaper, a set of steps in the garden that are not where they should be, and so on. She finds an old house in the small seaside resort of Dillmouth, in Devon, which instantly appeals to her, and she buys it. While her husband Giles is still abroad on business, she drives around the countryside looking for a suitable house. She believes that her father took her directly from India to New Zealand when she was a two-year-old girl and that she has never been in England before. Twenty-one year old New Zealander Gwenda Reed has recently married and now comes to England to settle down there. Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.

Marple sleeping murders