The March Hare Murders (17 page)

“Did he have a glass of sherry with you before he left?”

“Yes, he did.”

“You had to fetch the glass from the kitchen; it wasn’t on the tray in the sitting-room?”

“No, I’d only put two glasses out.” Her eyebrows went up again. “Why?”

“When did you fetch the fourth glass?” he asked her.

“The fourth glass?”

“Yes.”

She made as if to shake her head, then checked the movement with a grimace of pain. “I didn’t fetch a fourth glass.”

“You didn’t? Are you sure of that?”

“I fetched the glass for Giles and then didn’t go into the kitchen again. Why?” she said.

“There were four glasses, all used, on the tray in the sitting-room.”

One of her hands smoothed out a wrinkle in the white coverlet. “Well, I didn’t fetch it,” she said after a while. “Perhaps the murderer thought he’d like a drink.”

“He was being rather particular, wasn’t he, fetching himself a clean glass?”

“In that case,” she said, smiling, “it may be a useful clue as to his identity, mayn’t it? Find someone who’s abnormally fussy about things like that, and you’ve got him.”

Upjohn smiled back. But immediately he became grave again. “Have you no idea of his identity, Mrs. Masson? Have you no suspicion of the motive for this murder?”

Her hand went on smoothing out the wrinkle in the coverlet, which always sprang back again when her touch released it. “With a man like Professor Verinder,” she said, “there could be so many motives.”

“Would you like to explain that?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Please, Mrs. Masson——”

“You see, almost every one in this place—every one he knew at all well in this place—had a conceivable motive for wanting him dead. That was why I decided to blackmail him. He was a destructive influence.” She met his eyes as soon as she had said that, with a look that was covertly challenging.

He smiled at her again. “I think, at any rate, you want to explain that, don’t you?”

“Yes. …” But she looked down and was silent for some moments before she went on. “Yes, I realised I’d have to tell you about it anyway. It may be connected with his murder or it may not; I don’t know. But it was like this. I asked Professor Verinder over to lunch to-day because I wanted to use some knowledge I’d got about him to make him leave the neighbourhood. I’d decided that his being here was doing a great deal of damage to some people I like. I dare say you’ll say I shouldn’t have done that and that I ought to have taken my knowledge to the police, but I didn’t like the idea of doing that—and all I wanted was to make him move.”

“This knowledge you had, Mrs. Masson—was it something about books?”

She looked up quickly. “Oh, so you know about it, do you?”

“I’d still like to hear what you know about it,” he said.

Just then a nurse put her head in at the door. “All right, Mrs. Masson?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks,” Deirdre said, and the nurse withdrew again. “Well,” Deirdre went on, “I knew Professor Verinder was making a practice of smuggling first editions of considerable value out of the country. That is to say, I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed. I knew he kept making trips abroad which couldn’t have been covered by the amount of foreign currency we’re allowed, and I’d assumed these were official in some way—conferences and so on—until a few days ago I found a copy of Caorsin’s
Siege of Rhodes
in his house. It was a first edition—I knew it; I recognised it. I’d seen it only a week or so before in Sam Fortis’s shop. But it had had a forged frontispiece stuck in, so that it appeared to be an edition of a much later date and relatively valueless. So I did a little putting two and two together. … After all,” she added uncertainly, as if wanting to excuse herself, “I didn’t actually know anything—I didn’t know enough to go to the police.”

“Speaking of Mr. Fortis,” Upjohn said, “did you ring him up this morning and ask him to come immediately to your house?”

He thought her eyes grew anxious. “Yes,” she said.

“When was that?”

“Around one o’clock, I think.”

“And when did he get there?”

“He didn’t—or anyway not until after—after it had happened.”

“May I ask why you wanted to see him so urgently?”

“Well, I wanted to make him admit that he’d sold Mark Verinder that book.”

“You didn’t get a sherry glass out, ready for him?”

“No, I told you I didn’t.”

He nodded. “I just wanted to make sure. You see, he says the glass had been used before he helped himself to some sherry, yet the only fingerprints on it are his and your own.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know yet.”

“Mine would be on it, naturally,” she said, “since it was probably I who washed it up. I have a charwoman, but she’s got a heavy hand with the crockery, and I don’t often let her touch my more precious things. Is there anything else you want to know, Inspector?”

“D’you feel well enough to go on?” he asked. “I could come back later.”

“No,” she said, “let’s get it over now.”

“Well then, will you try to tell me as much as you can remember of what actually happened?”

He saw her draw a deep breath before she answered, and her eyelids contracted again.

“That’s the trouble, I don’t really remember anything,” she said. “Shock acts like that, doesn’t it? I remember sitting there, talking to Mark Verinder, and then there’s a blank. I’ve a feeling as if I can remember screaming, and there’s a sense of sudden darkness, but that’s all. I’m sorry. I know it isn’t helpful. I suppose whoever it was, was standing outside the window.”

“Probably,” Upjohn said. Realising that her pale face had been showing increasing signs of strain while she talked, he knew that he ought to stop questioning her. But he wanted to ask her one more question. “Mrs. Masson, you said just now that every one here who knew Professor Verinder well had a possible motive for murdering him. Would you like to tell me more about that?”

“I haven’t much to tell you,” she said. “I meant it rather generally. He was damaging a lot of people, that’s all I meant.”

“Surely there must have been something specific in your mind,” Upjohn said. “Otherwise I can’t quite see a woman like you resorting to blackmail. His wife now, and Mr. and Mrs. Pratt—what motives had they?”

“You’re trying to turn me into a slanderous gossip.” She laughed sardonically. “However, perhaps it’ll come better from me rather than from Mrs. Scales.”

“Mrs. Scales?”

“The ubiquitous charwoman of the neighbourhood who keeps us all informed about one another. Well, to begin with Mrs. Verinder, I should think her motive’s obvious. Her husband was continually and blatantly unfaithful to her. She didn’t seem to mind, yet it might be that she suddenly got tired of it. Then her brother—well, he’s very fond of her, that might have been enough to make him murderous too. Then Stella Pratt. I think she was in love with Mark Verinder. She’s a shy, unstable girl, desperate to love somebody and disappointed in her husband. Then Ferdie Pratt—well, he may have realised the situation. And Sam and Winnfrieda Fortis—I don’t know what trouble Mark Verinder may have laid up for them with his little racket. Perhaps they’ll find life more comfortable with him out of the way. … You see, there’s really nothing very specific about any of it—nothing you need take particularly seriously.”

“You’ve said nothing yet about Mr. Obeney.”

Her look grew confused. “No, I know, but then he could have nothing to do with it, could he …? About that sherry glass, Inspector—did you say there were four?”

“Let’s just stick to Mr. Obeney for a moment, shall we, Mrs. Masson?” Upjohn said. “Professor Verinder and yourself were shot by bullets from a revolver belonging to Mr. Obeney. He’s been heard to utter threats against Professor Verinder. He’s known to be in an unstable mental condition. He was seen on the road this morning, near your house, apparently in a very excited condition.”

“Who saw him?” she asked quickly.

“That half-Rumanian fellow.”

“Half-Rumanian?” She stared incredulously. “Who on earth is half-Rumanian?”

“Mr. Clay—and, I suppose, Mrs. Verinder.”

Deirdre began to laugh. She laughed with an extraordinarily vivid look of relief on her face. But almost immediately a look of pain replaced it, and she raised her hand to the bandages round her neck.

“Giles isn’t half-Rumanian,” she said. “He’s as English as you or I.”

“But he said so himself,” Upjohn objected.

“I’ve no doubt he did,” she said. “But you mustn’t believe anything Giles says. He’s one of those people who spends his time in a world of complete fantasy, and sometimes he can’t resist pulling you into it to share it with him. Ask his sister.”

“H’m,” Upjohn said thoughtfully. “So he’s one of those. Those people are a nuisance.”

“Not a very serious nuisance,” Deirdre said, “once you know they do it.”

“A nuisance to me in my job,” Upjohn said, “because there are two kinds, the ones who lie about everything and really want to take you in, and the ones who tell you their fancy stories for fun and can give you a straight account of important facts as well as the next man. Which kind is Mr. Clay?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only know Professor Verinder used to say you could rely on him absolutely so long as you didn’t believe a word he said. And I don’t think he’d be a good liar on any practical matter. His imagination would run ahead of him too fast. He’d make blunders and be inconsistent.”

“So that if he says he saw Mr. Obeney on a certain stretch of road, he probably did see him on that stretch of road?”

She seemed surprised at this conclusion to her argument.

“Oh, I don’t think you could say that for sure,” she said. “Besides, he could have made a mistake.”

Looking with some sympathy at the small figure in the high hospital bed, Upjohn stood up. “So you don’t think it was David Obeney who shot you, Mrs. Masson?”

She repeated, “Giles could have made a mistake. It was pouring with rain, wasn’t it? People tend to look alike in the rain.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Upjohn said.

“You might even confuse a man and a woman, mightn’t you? If the woman were wearing a long mackintosh. …”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I don’t know what I think, yet, Mrs. Masson,” Upjohn said.

W
HEN THE
police left the Pratts’ house, it seemed filled all of a sudden with a heavy, bewildering quiet. It was something as oppressive as the presence of uniformed men. The feeling of tension had grown no less through their absence.

Abruptly, as if moved by the same impulse, Sam and Winnfrieda Fortis got up and took themselves off. Giles and Ingrid stayed a little longer; then, with a few muttered words and with Giles’ arm around Ingrid, they went back to the cottage. David, finding himself with a silent Stella and Ferdie, both of whom sat watching him with anxious eyes, went upstairs to his room, picked up his swimming things and hurried out of the house.

He was somehow disquieted by the fact that he had not been arrested. From the moment when he had returned to the house, he had expected to be arrested. There had been a feeling of inevitability about it, almost a rightness, or, at any rate, a conclusiveness. He still felt sure that he would be charged with the murder. A part of him even resented having to wait for this to happen. His irrational but deep feeling was that the whole horror in Deirdre’s house had occurred simply so that fate could settle some mysterious account with him. Giving no thought to the way in which the murder had in fact happened, he merely felt that some great power of evil had surrounded him and was working solely for his destruction.

He walked along quickly. He assumed that he was being followed, but for some reason he was anxious not to test the truth of this by looking around him and kept his eyes on the ground. He began to think again of Deirdre. All day, in intervals of fending off the suspicions and questions of the people around him, he had been thinking of her. No one had said anything about allowing him to see her in the hospital. But then no one but Ingrid could be aware of how much he wanted to see her. No one knew how much the few talks he had had with her had done for him. Yet perhaps she would think the same as other people and would not want to see him.

The evening had grown still and mild. The light in the hour before the dusk was flat and shadowless. Puddles lay on the path, and between them the ground was slimy. The air was full of heavy scents of wet grass and pine needles. The copper bark of the trees shone with a thin varnish of moisture, and now and then a fine spray was shaken down from them, pattering underneath the branches with the sound of a new shower of rain. The path from the cliff-top to the beach was more slippery than usual, and David fell once, smearing his trousers with mud, as he scrambled down it.

The water felt unexpectedly warm. It was steely grey in colour, with an oily swell, looking as if some imponderable menace were held down under its smoothly rolling surface. The waves broke with what seemed to David to be the sound of grimly controlled anger and sucked the pebbles back with them as they receded in a hurried, scrabbling throng.

As usual, David struck straight out from the shore, swimming on until he began to tire. He could swim much faster and farther now than when he had first arrived. Soon he lost the sound of the waves breaking, and with his short-sighted eyes seeing only dim differences of greyness around him, felt for a while as if to swim on and on would have been the answer to all problems. But warned by this feeling, which sooner or later, he knew, would begin to frighten him, he turned and started swimming back to the shore. This happened just in time for him to see a murder committed.

He was not sure that it was a murder. His vision was not clear enough for him to be sure. But at what he saw, his heart started pounding, and even though he could not make himself believe that what his faulty vision told him was occurring, could possibly be a version of the truth, a wild urgency got into the way his arms cut the water. For what he thought he saw was two people standing close together on the cliffs, and then one of them calmly push the other over the edge.