The March Hare Murders (13 page)

After an instant, Sam gave a brief nod.

Upjohn folded his arms on the table. “Mr. Fortis,” he said, “what do you know about Professor Verinder’s traffic in first editions?”

A twitch of the eyelids preceded the blankness that almost immediately appeared on Sam’s face. Then he raised his eyebrows again, and an eddy of wrinkles slid up his high forehead.

“What am I supposed to know?” he asked.

“Come, Mr. Fortis, how can I tell that?” Upjohn said.

“You can tell me why you asked that question.”

“No, I’m afraid that’s something I can’t do.”

Sam’s hard stare met Upjohn’s steadily. “Professor Verinder has bought one or two first editions from me. What he may have done with them after they passed out of my possession is naturally no business of mine,” he said. “And is there anything illegal about a traffic, as you call it, in first editions? Are first editions now in the same category as dangerous drugs? Is that what we’re coming to in our contempt for culture?”

“It is illegal to take valuables out of the country without declaring them,” Upjohn said. “But you say you know nothing of this?”

“Nothing at all.”

“And nothing at all of the reason that made Mrs. Masson want to see you so suddenly to-day?”

“Nothing.”

“Mrs. Masson is a good deal concerned with books, isn’t she?”

“She binds them.”

“Has she ever bound any books for you?”

“On occasion.”

“Has she ever bound any for Professor Verinder?”

“I have not the faintest idea.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Fortis?”

Sam’s features suddenly tightened angrily. The red blotches on his neck flamed. “I am trying to help you, Inspector,” he said. “I am trying to be of assistance. But my laudable intention is not likely to be strengthened by pointless and impertinent questions. I know nothing whatever of any private dealings between Professor Verinder and Mrs. Masson, whether of a commercial or a more personal nature. If you will make inquiries amongst my acquaintances, you will learn that I am not a man who invites unnecessary confidences. I do not try to make my friends open their bosoms to me, or even encourage them when they become embarrassingly anxious to do so. I believe there is nothing more destructive of comfortable social intercourse, which at my age I have come to value far more highly than intensive intimacies, than a too exhaustive knowledge of other people’s business. In the words of our excellent charwoman, Mrs. Scales, ‘I keeps myself to myself and——’” He broke the sentence off short, because Upjohn had just got up and gone quietly out of the room.

But after a minute he returned.

“I’m sorry—something I forgot,” he said. “A few minutes

before your call was received at the police station, a call had come in from a Mrs. Pratt. She asked us to send someone out here immediately as she believed an accident had happened. Do you know anything of that?”

Sam Fortis seemed startled. “Mrs. Pratt? Stella Pratt?”

“That’s right.”

“No, I don’t know anything about that,” Sam said. “Certainly she hasn’t been here while I’ve been here.”

“I’ll be going along to see her in a moment,” Upjohn said. “I should like you to come with me.” He went out again.

•   •   •   •   •

When Upjohn pushed open the gate in the wooden palings that surrounded the Pratts’ garden and stepped through, followed by Sam and the big man whom Upjohn called Tom, they found the door of the house facing them wide open, and at the sound of their feet on the gravel Stella Pratt came running out and greeted them in the doorway.

“What happened?” she cried excitedly. Her eyes were reddened by tears. “
Has
something happened?”

Her husband appeared behind her. He put an arm round her.

“Nothing’s happened,” has it, Inspector?’ he said. “It’s all nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you see, they wouldn’t be here if nothing had happened,” Stella said. “Something has happened.”

“Yes. I’m afraid something has happened,” Upjohn said.

“But nothing serious,” Ferdie Pratt insisted with a kind of defiance. “My wife has told me a perfectly extraordinary story. I simply can’t believe it.”

“I’d like to hear that story,” Upjohn said.

“But what’s happened?” Stella repeated. She drew back from the doorway to let Upjohn and the other two come in. “I heard it, you know; I heard the shots.”

“Wait, Stella,” Ferdie said. “Come into the sitting-room. The Inspector will want to know it from the beginning.”

“Yes, but who was shot?” Stella said. “I want to know that. I want to know that first.”

“Professor Verinder was shot,” Upjohn answered.

A new voice asked, “Is he dead?”

Turning his head, Upjohn saw a tall, dark-haired woman in the doorway of the sitting-room. She was dressed in a light cotton dress. She seemed calm. The question had been asked in a level voice.

Upjohn answered, “Yes—I’m afraid he’s dead.”

Ingrid Verinder’s dark eyes turned blank. She began to tremble. Then suddenly she began to scream at the top of her voice.

They got her into the sitting-room. They managed to quieten her. But the blank look stayed in her tearless eyes, and her body went on trembling, so that Upjohn, standing at the end of the couch on which they had induced her to lie down, could feel it shaking against him. Her brother sat on the edge of the couch beside her. She held on to one of his arms with both hands and let him hold a glass of whisky to her lips. But when she had taken a couple of sips, she shook her head, turning it aside.

Upjohn looked at Stella. She was standing at the other end of the couch, looking down at Ingrid Verinder with a startled, incredulous expression, as if she could not believe in this emotion. Her husband stood beside her.

“You say you heard the shots?” Upjohn said.

Stella nodded.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“Here.”

“Here?”

“I heard them on the telephone.”

He glanced across the room to the telephone on the table in the corner. “How did that happen?”

“I was telephoning to Mrs. Masson,” Stella said, “I wanted to tell her—something. And then I heard the shots. … And then I couldn’t get any answer, so I tried ringing up again, but I couldn’t get through. So then I rang up the police.”

“Did you know that Professor Verinder was there?”

“Yes—that is—yes.”

“How did you know?” Upjohn asked.

“I was told he was there.” Her face was greyish; her mouth was trembling. “Besides, I spoke to him.”

“On the telephone?”

“Yes. I was speaking to him when I heard the shots.”

“I thought you said you were speaking to Mrs. Masson.”

“Yes—no. It was her telephone. But I was speaking to Professor Verinder.”

“And then you heard the shots?”

She nodded again, swallowing noisily.

Ferdie interrupted. “What happened to Mrs. Masson, Inspector? Is she dead too?”

“No,” Upjohn said. “She was injured, I can’t tell you yet how severely. Mrs. Pratt, who told you that Professor Verinder was at Mrs. Masson’s house?”

“Mrs. Verinder,” Stella said. “Or Giles. Or my … No, it was Ingrid. Ingrid, it was you, wasn’t it?”

But Ingrid Verinder made no effort to answer. She lay with her face turned away from them in the cushions. Her shivering was ceasing, but now and again she was shaken by a convulsive tremor.

Giles Clay, softly stroking her hands, said, “I think it was my sister who told Mrs. Pratt. We knew that my brother-in-law had gone over to lunch with Mrs. Masson. I’d driven him over.”

“I see.” It was a moment before Upjohn spoke again, and when he did, it was to Ferdie. “I think, Mr. Pratt, I should like to question you all one by one, and since Mr. Clay seems to have been the last of you here to see Professor Verinder, I should like to begin with him. Have you another room you can let me use?”

With a kind of eagerness, Ferdie replied, “Yes, of course. My study’s in a terrible mess, I’m afraid, but still …” He hurried out. He seemed relieved at being able to help in making some practical arrangement.

Gently disengaging his arm from his sister’s hand, Giles Clay gave a glance at Stella, who nodded and took his place on the edge of the couch. With a nervous touch to the silk scarf round his neck, Giles followed Upjohn into the small room next door. Ferdie left them there and came out, closing the door with an unexpected abrupt bang. Immediately opening it again, he put his head in and apologised, and then, as if his hands had quite lost control, repeated the bang as he closed the door a second time.

Inside the small, exceedingly tidy room, Upjohn sat down at the writing-table and motioned the young man to sit down, facing him across it. Though the rain was still beating against the window-panes, the light seemed better in this room than it had in the other. Upjohn noticed that Giles Clay’s face was twitching with nervousness. Plainly he was attempting to look calm and helpful, yet he was on his guard, determined to go carefully.

“Well,” Upjohn said, “go ahead and tell me everything you can, and then we’ll see if there are any questions I want to ask. Tell me about this lunch first. Tell me when and how it was arranged and what time you went.”

Giles twisted his neck about inside the pretty silk scarf. “It was arranged yesterday, so far as I know,” he said. “Anyway it was yesterday Professor Verinder told me about it. I think they met by chance somewhere. I was a bit surprised.”

“Surprised?”

“No, I didn’t mean that—I wasn’t surprised exactly,” Giles said.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Well, I
was
surprised in a way, because I thought—I mean, I didn’t think——”

Upjohn picked up a pencil from the writing-table and began a soft tapping with it. Giles swallowed two or three times.

“Well, I didn’t think Mrs. Masson liked Professor Verinder much,” he said. “He liked her—he admired her—an awful lot, but she didn’t seem to care about him.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you thought there was some special reason behind the invitation?” Upjohn asked. “I mean, something other than the usual social reasons.”

“Oh no, nothing like that at all,” Giles said. “I only meant I was a bit surprised—but not really surprised.”

“I see,” Upjohn said. “You make it very clear. Well, and so you drove the Professor over to Mrs. Masson’s house?”

“Yes,” Giles said, with sudden emphasis, as if delighted to have something about which he could be entirely decisive.

“Did you usually drive him about?”

“Oh yes.”

“And what time did you get there?”

“Round about half-past twelve, I should think. Or perhaps a little earlier. Perhaps it was a little earlier. But I think it was just about half-past twelve.”

“Weren’t you invited to lunch yourself?”

“No.”

“Was any one else there?”

“No. Only Mrs. Masson.”

“Was any one else expected?”

“Not that I know of. There were only two sherry glasses on the tray. I was going to drive straight off, but Mrs. Masson asked me in for a glass of sherry, and I remember she had to go and fetch an extra glass—that’s how I noticed. So she can’t have been expecting any one else, unless of course it was someone who she thought wouldn’t drink anything. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“So that when you left, there were three glasses in the room?” Upjohn said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure. I’ve just said so, haven’t I?”

“M’mm.” Upjohn tapped the pencil on the edge of the desk. “And how did things seem between Professor Verinder and Mrs. Masson? What did they talk about?”

“Oh, things seemed quite ordinary. I forget what they talked about.”

“Try and remember.”

Giles wrinkled his forehead. “They talked about the sherry, I think—about the price of something reasonably drinkable and so on. And they talked about the rain. I can’t remember much else. You see, I didn’t stay long.”

“When did you leave?”

“I don’t quite know. I mean I don’t know the exact time. It was just around one o’clock, I should think, but I really can’t tell you for certain. I didn’t happen to look at my watch, or anything.”

“Where did you go when you left?”

“Straight back to the cottage.”

“Along the main road, past the Three Huntsmen?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you see any one on the road?”

Breathing a little faster, Giles ran the tip of his tongue along his lips. “Look, Inspector, do I have to answer a question like that?” he asked. “I don’t mean I don’t want to; it’s just that I don’t like the idea. I don’t like the idea of talking about another person, I mean unless it’s important. If it’s important, of course, I’ll tell you what I can.”

“It could be important,” Upjohn said.

“Well, then”—Giles swallowed—“I saw David Obeney.”

“Obeney?”

“Mrs. Pratt’s brother. He’s staying here. He was injured or something in the war and had a breakdown of some sort, and he’s been staying here to recuperate. Oh, but look here, it couldn’t be anything to do with Obeney.”

“Where did you see him?”

“On the road just beyond the Three Huntsmen crossroads. But look here, Inspector, I know Obeney—as a matter of fact, I know him well; we’ve been seeing a lot of each other, and he isn’t the sort of person——”

“Have I said that he was?”

Giles swallowed again.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m completely in a muddle. I can’t think. This thing’s been a shock.”

Upjohn gave a nod. “But let me get this quite clear,” he said. “You saw this man Obeney on the stretch of the road between the crossroads and Mrs. Masson’s house, not on this side of the crossroads?”

“Yes,” Giles said.

“As I remember that bit of road,” Upjohn said, “there are no turnings off it for some way.”

“No, I don’t think there are.”

“So that he may quite well have been headed for Mrs. Masson’s house.”

“Unless he was just going for a walk.”

“Scarcely the weather for a walk, is it?”

“Well, you can’t be sure, can you? Some people like walking in the rain. I knew a man once who liked going ten or twelve mile walks in the rain, and without even a hat. He said it was good for the health to get really wet. As a matter of fact, he was my uncle—a Rumanian, incidentally. We’re partly Rumanian, you know. I was sent to school there. Actually, he was a count, quite an important person in one of those out of the way sort of villages——”