The March Hare Murders (16 page)

“Are you sure about that?”

“Oh yes. A lot of people take me for a calm, solid person they can talk to. David did. He couldn’t talk to his sister; she’s too obviously unstable and mixed up about things herself, and too involved with him, if you know what I mean. So he talked to me. … I’m telling you this because I think someone may tell you sooner or later that he was in love with me. My brother thought so, for instance. But it isn’t true.”

“I see. And so you don’t believe that David Obeney would shoot a woman he was in love with?”

“Of course not.”

“Even out of jealousy?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Jealousy? Because of my husband, you mean? But my husband and Mrs. Masson didn’t like each other. That’s to say …Well, Mark liked Mrs. Masson at first; he was very attracted by her, but she was always so unpleasant to him, he decided she was vain and self-centred and not worth troubling about.”

“In that case, what about this luncheon invitation?”

“It was something to do with books, I think. Otherwise I’d have been invited too. Mrs. Masson’s that kind of person.”

“You weren’t invited?”

“No.”

“Do you know, by any chance, if any third person was invited?”

“No, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Your brother told us that there were only two sherry glasses on the tray when he arrived and that Mrs. Masson fetched a third for him. But when we arrived there, there were four glasses on the tray. Mr. Fortis says there were four when he arrived. So it looks as if someone joined Mrs. Masson and your husband before the murder.”

She sat considering this, but did not appear to feel called upon to make any comment. Upjohn let her go after that.

A few minutes later, while he still sat at the desk, thinking over what he had been told, a shadow fell across the desk, and looking up, he thought for a moment that it was a man whom he saw standing outside the window. Then he recognised the cropped dark head of Winnfrieda Fortis. She was strolling past the window, smoking a cigarette, and looking in at him intently. When she saw him looking at her, she stood still, and motioned to him to open the window between them.

He got up and pushed it open.

“I’m spying,” she announced in her clear, clipped voice.

“So I see,” he said.

“There’s something I want to tell you.”

“Hadn’t you better come inside?”

“No, thank you. They think I came out here for some air.” She tapped the ash off her cigarette into the flower-bed. “I don’t want them to know I’ve been talking to you. I want to tell you that about a fortnight ago, Professor Verinder’s summer-house suddenly burst into flames in the middle of the night. Until only a few nights before it happened, Professor Verinder had been sleeping in the summer-house. A petrol-tin was found in the hedge nearby. For some reason best known to himself, Professor Verinder refrained from telling the police anything about it.”

“I think you’d better come inside,” Upjohn said.

“There’s no need,” she said. “And if you want to know why I’ve obtruded this fact on your notice at this moment, the reason is simply that that particular night my husband and I have a perfect alibi. A friend of ours from London was visiting us, and we all sat up, carousing deplorably with some rum he’d brought us, until an hour considerably later than that of the fire. I shall be delighted to furnish you with his name and address.”

“Thank you, I shall be glad——”

But at that moment there was the sound of some disturbance in the hall. A man’s voice was heard. Then, in shrill excitement, came a woman’s. Then the door of the study was thrust open.

“I’m David Obeney,” said the man who stood there. “I’m told you think I murdered Professor Verinder.”

•   •   •   •   •

“That’s going a little fast, Mr. Obeney,” Upjohn said. “Won’t you come in?”

Through the window, Winnfrieda Fortis said, “I don’t suppose you want me to listen-in on this.” As she moved away out of sight, David Obeney came into the room.

He was followed into it by the big man who had accompanied Upjohn to Mrs. Masson’s house.

“Ah, good afternoon, sir,” he said to David in a friendly way. “What a shower that was, to be sure, wasn’t it? I wished I’d had the use of your umbrella sooner.” Then he explained to Upjohn. “This gentleman allowed me the use of some of his umbrella on the way over to Bell Cottage.”

David gave a start. “Umbrella,” he said. “My umbrella. I’ve left it somewhere.”

“Sit down, won’t you?” Upjohn said.

“Damn it,” David said. “I’ve left it somewhere. And it isn’t mine.”

The tall man chuckled. “That’s the way with umbrellas, isn’t it? I never can keep one for two weeks myself—particularly if it isn’t mine.”

“Damn!” David said again and looked savagely at Upjohn, as if he were to blame for having made him forget the umbrella. “I hate losing things. It’s a bad sign.”

“Perhaps you can remember where you left it,” Upjohn said.

“I can’t,” David said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“If you try to remember where you went——”

“Ah yes, where I went! That’s just what you want to know, isn’t it?” David sat down, meeting Upjohn’s gaze with a bitter twist to his mouth. He had not taken his hands out of his pockets. “I went to the pub. I went there and I stayed there; I came back. Will that do you?”

“Hardly,” Upjohn said. “The pub’s been closed for some time.”

“How true. Well, then, I went to the pub, I stayed there till closing time, getting slightly drunk, owing to some worries I had on my mind—or perhaps simply because I like getting slightly drunk. And then, seeing that the rain had stopped, I went for a walk to clear my head. I don’t like my sister to see me drunk. She worries. Will that do you?”

“Not quite,” Upjohn replied. “I should like to know what time you got to the pub. By the way, I take it you mean the Three Huntsmen?”

“Just so, the Three Huntsmen.” David said. “And I don’t know what time I got there.”

“Not even approximately?”

“Oh—approximately—half-past one, I should say.”

“Half-past one?”

“Just about.”

“You came from lunching with Mrs. Verinder, didn’t you?”

“Well, it began as lunch.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that I left earlier than anticipated, that’s all.”

“And where did you go then?”

“To the pub.”

“Straight to the pub?”

“What d’you think? It wasn’t the weather to go walking, was it?”

“But Mrs. Verinder says you left her house at a quarter to or ten to one.”

“Does she? Well, perhaps I did; I don’t know.”

“But you couldn’t take three-quarters of an hour to walk from Bell Cottage to the Three Huntsmen.”

“No. … Well, perhaps the pub clock was fast. Perhaps I got there sooner than I thought. You’d better ask them.”

“When you were with Mrs. Verinder, did you threaten her husband and talk about a revolver?”

A look of shock appeared in the eyes behind the thick glasses. The hands, still in the pockets of the mackintosh, seemed to dive deeper down into them, the arms stiffening. “Did she tell you that?”

“Never mind about that. Did you do it?”

“No.”

“You did not threaten her husband? You did not say anything about a revolver?”

“I haven’t got a revolver.”

“Your brother-in-law says he saw one in your possession the day you arrived here.”

“Oh yes. … Yes, I know. But I haven’t got it now.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Nothing. It vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Disappeared. I had it in the drawer of my dressing-table, and then one day it wasn’t there any more.”

“And have you no idea what happened to it?”

“Well, I think that …” David stopped. He looked unsure for a moment. “I think my sister took it. I think she was afraid of my having it, perhaps because if you’ve once been off your head, you’re supposed to be liable to commit suicide—or it may have been because of a rather stupid way I sometimes talked. Anyway, she searched my room, and it was after that I missed it.”

“How do you know she searched your room? Did she tell you about it?”

“No, but I was in the garden of Bell Cottage, and I saw her at the window. And then, when I came in, it was obvious that the room had been searched, and then I found the revolver was gone.”

“This stupid way you talked—was that, by any chance, threatening Professor Verinder?”

Abruptly one of David’s hands came out of a pocket. Upjohn tensed for an instant as he saw it, half-expecting some violent movement to follow. But David only removed his glasses and gave his eyes a rub with the back of his wrist. He began to swing the glasses gently to and fro in front of him.

“Well, yes,” he said quietly. “I sometimes threatened him.” Without his glasses, his eyes had a blurry, gentle look, without expression.

“To his face?” Upjohn asked.

“No—and it was mostly just a stupid way of talking.”

“You didn’t mean it?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I hated his guts, and it was a way of relieving my feelings without my having to do anything else about it.”

Upjohn nodded, as if he understood that answer. “Mr. Obeney, when you were walking towards the Three Huntsmen, do you remember a car passing you?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “Perhaps.”

“Try to remember.”

David’s forehead wrinkled. “I think one or two cars went by—I’m not sure. I was walking head on into the rain and not taking much notice of anything.”

“D’you think they went by before or after you passed the Three Huntsmen?”

“I didn’t pass the Three Huntsmen. I went in.”

“You stick to that?”

“Of course.”

“Although you took three quarters of an hour to get there from Bell Cottage?”

“I didn’t take three quarters of an hour. The pub clock must have been fast. You can easily find out about that.”

“That’s right,” Upjohn said. “I can.”

David thrust his glasses back into place and immediately his gaze became hard and acute. “It seems to me you ought to be giving me that famous warning,” he said.

Upjohn shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. There’s no real reason, at the moment, to suspect you any more than any one else. We don’t even know yet if Professor Verinder was shot with your revolver, or that your revolver comes into the affair at all. The only fact against you is the one you admit, that you did threaten Professor Verinder. But you say you didn’t do so to-day when you were with Mrs. Verinder?”

David hesitated. His hesitation lasted a long time, and in the middle of it his expression suddenly changed. The look of wariness went from it and a bleak tiredness and hopelessness took its place.

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact,” he said. “I did threaten him. I said I was going straight along to kill him, and I said something about wishing I’d got my revolver with me. But of course I didn’t mean it. I’d been drinking, and I was angry because of something Mrs. Verinder had told me. But I didn’t mean it.”

Upjohn and the big man, who had settled himself in a corner of the room, exchanged glances. Upjohn got up.

“Well, I think that’s all for the present, Mr. Obeney,” he said, “unless, of course, there’s anything special you can tell us which you think might help.”

David stood up facing him. “I wonder where the hell I left that umbrella,” he said and went out of the room.

Upjohn turned to the big man again with a short laugh. “Not a very helpful reply,” he said. “Well, what d’you think, Tom?”

“I think you can’t do much till you’ve had a talk to the lady in the hospital,” was the answer. “That may simplify a lot of things. Meanwhile …”

“yes?”

“I think,” Tom said thoughtfully, “I’d find out where that young man did leave his umbrella.”

•   •   •   •   •

That was easily done. The umbrella that David Obeney had taken out with him was found in the keeping of the landlord of the Three Huntsmen, who said that the gentleman had left it behind him in the saloon bar when he went out at closing time. After some time, it turned out that the clock in the saloon bar was only three minutes fast, and the barmaid thought that it must have been around half-past one when the gentleman arrived.

Later that same afternoon, David Obeney’s revolver was found in some bushes close to Deirdre Masson’s house. Two shots had been fired from it.

At six o’clock that evening, Inspector Upjohn was allowed to interview Deirdre Masson in the hospital.

The small face with the pointed chin and high cheek-bones was very pale, but the hazel eyes were cheerful. Deirdre’s neck was covered in a thick layer of bandages. Her fair hair was arranged as usual, in plaits across the top of her head. When she saw Upjohn she gave a cautious smile, testing out how much pain this slight movement of muscle might cost her. The result seemed to reassure her, for the smile broadened.

“Hallo,” she said. “Have you come to view the body?”

“Not quite that, I hope,” Upjohn said. “Are you sure that you feel able to talk, Mrs. Masson?”

“Oh yes, quite sure,” she said. “I gather I’m a bit of a fraud really. The trouble seems to have been mostly shock. But is it true that Professor Verinder’s dead, Inspector?”

“Yes, Mrs. Masson.” Upjohn sat down on the chair put ready for him beside the high hospital bed. Deirdre seemed enthroned above him against the white heap of pillows. “And I’d like you to tell me everything you can about how it happened.”

“But I can’t tell you anything. I didn’t see anything.” Her eyelids had contracted slightly, and she had dropped the effort at a smile. “I think the shots must have come from outside the window, and I had my back to it. I saw nothing at all.”

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What were you doing at the time it happened?”

“I was talking to Professor Verinder.”

“Was there any one else in the room with you?”

“No.”

“Had there been at any time?”

“Yes. Professor Verinder’s brother-in-law, Giles Clay, had been in for a short time. He’d driven Professor Verinder over. I remember I was a bit put out about that. I didn’t want Mr. Clay to feel I didn’t want him there, yet I’d particularly wanted a private talk with Professor Verinder. But luckily Mr. Clay didn’t seem to want to stay and left quite quickly.”