Sleeping Murder (2)

Gwenda Reed is the young bride at the centre of this one, and the manor she has moved into keeps giving her back a childhood she cannot quite account for. Repressed memories of witnessing a murder have come to the surface, and the more she and Miss Marple work through them, the closer they get to a crime that was supposed to be perfect.

That is the real puzzle, and it is a good one. But a perfect crime is not the same as an unpunished one; it is a crime with no loose ends, and this one held together for years. The two women pick at it the way you would pick at a knot, and every small thread they free makes the whole thing looser. Gwenda and Miss Marple are closer than ever to understanding a seemingly perfect crime from many years before.

Geraldine Alexander plays Gwenda Reed, with John Moulder-Brown as her husband Giles, and the pair keep the story human. It would be easy for a mystery this psychological to float off into abstraction; their reactions stop it. Joan Hickson's Miss Marple is the quiet engine of the whole business, as ever. Agatha Christie wrote it, and the episode was first shown on 11 January 1987, the same night as the first part. No director is credited in the records.

The story is about memory as much as murder. Gwenda cannot trust what she half-remembers, and the plot makes the point that memory lies to us in the kindest possible way, smoothing over the parts we cannot face. Miss Marple's job is to be the one person who does not smooth anything over. And that is the quiet thrill of it: watching a woman remember what she was not supposed to remember.

It is a satisfying watch, and the pacing suits the material. It is slow and careful, and it gives the characters room to breathe. Some crimes take years to come apart. This one just needed enough time and the right company.