The March Hare Murders (18 page)

A sound that reached him faintly, even though it might have been no more than the cry of a gull, added terror to the vision. The person who was still on the cliff-top stood there for a moment, seeming to look quietly down, then walked away quickly through the pines. It was impossible for David to tell even if it had been a man or a woman; all he could say for sure was that this figure had been dressed in the drab colour that suggested a mackintosh. He could see nothing of the body, or whatever it had been, that had fallen to the beach.

But when he had climbed out of the water and had snatched up his spectacles from where he had laid them on the top of his heap of clothes, he at once saw the body, half-hidden by a rock, and realised that it was the body of Giles Clay. Stooping down over him and finding, as he gingerly touched the head, that it rolled almost lightly under his touch, David supposed that Giles’ neck was broken.

David did not know how long he stood there, but suddenly he found that he was so cold that he could scarcely move. As he started to pick his way, barefooted, back to his clothes, he shivered all over. Trying to dry himself, he fumbled so clumsily that he gave up the attempt and fumbled his way into his clothes instead. It seemed an age before he had dragged on his shirt and trousers and thrust his feet into his shoes.

Yet, as he sat on the shingle, tying his shoelaces, all the feeling of hurry suddenly disappeared. For some minutes he stayed like that, each hand holding a shoelace, a look of surprise on his face changing to one of sharp dismay. After a little he lit a cigarette, got up and with deliberation walked back to look again at the body.

Propping himself against a rock, he stood staring down at it. There was only one thing he could do now, he thought. He must disappear. He must not return to the house, not go to the police, but must disappear instantly and for ever before he could be charged with this second murder. For now the odds against him were too heavy. The only question was whether he should leave the body of Giles Clay lying where it was, caught up between two rocks, the head lolling, the legs sprawling on the shingle, or should hide it quickly, to give himself more time.

He took a look at the cliff face, to see if there were any crevices large enough to hold the body of a man. It did not look promising. There were plenty of gashes in the rock, but none of them was more than a few inches wide. Next David considered how long it would take him to bury the body in the shingle. All the time that he was thinking of these things, he had an impression that his mind was working coolly and lucidly, with a practical attention to detail of which he felt rather proud, but he never stopped shivering, and his lips were stiff and blue, and when a voice near him said, “Well, well, well, so here we have more trouble, and of a peculiarly unpleasant character, if I’m not mistaken,” he felt as if he had been struck a blow on the head. Dropping his cigarette in his shock, he jerked round and saw Sam and Winnfrieda Fortis on the path above him.

It was Sam who had spoken. He was looking down at what he could see of Giles Clay with a bright, curious, undisturbed stare. Winnfrieda seemed more shaken. She was holding on to the rock behind her and seemed to be trying to say something, but could not bring out the words. She looked as if she would have liked to move her gaze away from the dead man, but could not achieve that either.

David stooped and picked up his cigarette. “When did you arrive?” he asked.

“About a minute or two after you started wondering how to dispose of the body,” Sam answered. He continued down the wet, slippery path. Tramping across the shingle till he stood beside David, he looked down into the bruised, dead face. Winnfrieda followed him but did not come quite as far as where the body lay.

“I disapprove of death,” she said, with an attempt at her usual manner. “It puts me out. It upsets me. And needless to say, I disapprove of murder. I suppose it is murder?” She raised questioning eyebrows at David. “It would seem impossible to deny.”

Instead of replying, David addressed Sam. “What brought you down here?”

“What brought you?” Sam asked.

“I came for a swim,” David said.

“Ah yes, I see the wet bathing-costume—most convincing.” Sam’s voice was thin. “And what brought poor Giles, do you suppose?”

“I should think more knowledge than was good for him,” David said. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I see no reason why we should answer it,” Winnfrieda said. “Our reasons for going walking on a public part of the cliff are entirely our own affair.”

“Exactly,” Sam said.

“All right,” David said. He had a feeling that it was in some way fortunate for him that these two people had arrived, that this coming had prevented his carrying out some crazy, desperate action. “Did you meet any one on your way down?”

“Whom should we meet?” Sam asked.

“The murderer,” David said. “Wearing a mackintosh.”

“Ah,” Sam said, “so you saw him?”

“Yes, I saw him.” David trod the stub of his cigarette into the pebbles and immediately took another out of his pocket. “I saw him push Clay over the edge of the cliff.”

“Really, is that so?” Sam said. “And just as a matter of interest, who was he?”

David struck a match, cupping it between his hands to shelter it from the little breeze that there was. “You’re both wearing mackintoshes,” he remarked.

“I consider that an outrageous remark,” Winnfrieda said.

“It probably is. But I consider your attitude to me a little outrageous,” David said. “You both seem to be taking for granted that I did this.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Sam said. “But not unnaturally we’re interested in what you say you saw.”

“I saw the murder,” David repeated.

“But then, who did it?”

“There are circumstances in which it’s possible to see certain things and not others.”

“You mean you didn’t see who did it?” Winnfrieda came a step closer.

“Just what did you see?” Sam asked.

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep that for the police,” David said. “Suppose you go and get them.”

Sam and Winnfrieda looked at one another. They had a way of looking at one another which suggested that they could read one another’s thoughts, without a word having passed between them, could communicate with one another in front of other people and come to decisions. When Sam spoke next, it was as if he were saying what Winnfrieda had told him to say. “Wouldn’t it be better if you went?”

Winnfrieda added, “Unless, of course, you feel that having found the body, you have, so to speak, certain rights of property over it.”

“Suppose I do feel like that—or something like it?” David said.

“Then one of us had better go and one stay with you,” Sam said.

Again there was an exchange of glances between him and Winnfrieda. This time, with a part of his mind that was not really thinking at all about what was happening, but had started trying to make a plan, David noticed that as their eyes met and mysteriously communicated some intelligence to one another and parted, Winnfrieda’s glance and then Sam’s went to a point on the cliff face some yards to the right of where they were standing. Then their eyes met once more as if to confirm something.

“Clay saw you on the road near Deirdre’s house, didn’t he?” Sam said.

“And I wonder,” Winnfrieda went on, “if he saw something else that he’d so far omitted to mention.”

“But might mention at any time,” Sam said.

“Yes, I wonder,” Winnfrieda said.

David tapped some ash from his cigarette on to the rock beside him. “This looks like being a useless discussion,” he said. “Which one of you is going?”

Again he noticed their glances slide quickly towards that same point on the cliff to the right of where they were standing. This time David took it in more consciously, and curiosity began to stir in his mind.

“Suppose we all go,” Winnfrieda said.

“Yes,” Sam said at once, “suppose we all go. We can’t do anything for poor Clay by staying here.”

“And if the murderer should still be in the vicinity,” Winnfrieda said, “it would not be very pleasant for one person, staying behind.”

Suddenly, giving no warning of his intention, David swung his legs over the rock against which he had been leaning and started towards the cliff.

Winnfrieda called out sharply, “Where are you going?”

David did not answer. Striding quickly between the rocks scattered along the foot of the cliff, he sprang up on one and looking at the small clump of small, wind-dried shrubs which he found clinging to the cliff at about the point at which Sam and Winnfrieda had looked with such interest, he discovered a narrow fissure that slanted up from behind the shrubs.

As he slid a hand into the fissure, he was aware of an excited movement behind him, and the beginnings of an angry exclamation from Winnfrieda.

But Sam appeared to take the matter calmly. “After all,” he said, in his loud, harsh voice, “the matter is really of very little importance.” And as David withdrew his hand from the crack in the rock, holding the parcel he had found in it, Sam added, “Please handle what you find there carefully, my dear Obeney. It
is of some value.”

The parcel was loosely wrapped in a mackintosh. Inside this were several layers of newspaper. Inside these was an ancient-looking book. Its title was
The Siege of Rhodes,
by Guielmus Caorsin.

•   •   •   •   •

“Well, that’s a funny thing to find buried in a rock,” David said.

Sam laughed loudly. Winnfrieda was watching David with an air of anxiety.

“Very funny,” Sam said. “So funny that it simply doesn’t make sense, does it? But we all have our personal peculiarities, and for all you know mine is hiding books in rocks.”

“Whose mackintosh is this?” David asked.

“Mine,” Sam answered.

“Are your initials G. C.?”

Sam took a quick step forward. But almost at once he recovered himself and stood still, saying stiffly, “Well, it may have been Clay’s. He may have left it with me sometime. He was a careless fellow.”

“Not with his clothes,” David said.

“None of this has anything to do with you,” Winnfrieda said shrilly. “Please give us that book.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Balancing on the rock above them, David began to wrap the book up again in the sheets of newspaper. “I think we’ll all go up and see Mrs. Verinder. After all, you’ve nothing to stay behind for now, have you? And Mrs. Verinder ought to be told, I feel, about the death of her brother and about the disappearance of what you say is a valuable book from her husband’s library.”

“The book is not of any very great value,” Sam said. “It is not a first edition.”

“All the same, she might like to know what’s happened to it,” David said.

He stepped from the rock on to the path to the top of the cliff. “Coming?”

Without answering and with their mouths tightly shut, in a way that made them curiously resemble each other, Sam and Winnfrieda followed him.

Their first few steps were slow, as if they were both confused and undecided. But then, with another of their wordless agreements, they suddenly moved forward briskly, and as soon as they reached the top of the cliff, Winnfrieda took Sam’s arm and they strode ahead of David, marching along so that it looked as if they, and not David, had chosen their direction. At the cottage gate they gave one glance back at him over their shoulders, then marched up the path, coming to a standstill, still arm in arm, on the doorstep, where Sam raised his free hand and gave the door a blow with the knocker. David did not wait for the knock to be answered, but walked past them and in at the door.

He called out “Ingrid!”

No voice replied, and there was no sound of movement inside the cottage. Without calling out again, David went rapidly from one room to the next, looking for Ingrid Verinder.

He found her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table. In the dusk her face was a pale, exhausted mask. She looked up at David sightlessly as he came forward.

On the table in front of her was a bottle.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking it up.

She reached out to take it away from him. Looking at the label on the bottle, David saw it contained a household disinfectant. He took it to the sink and emptied it down the drain.

“Why did you do that?” Ingrid asked. Then she saw Sam and Winnfrieda. “Hallo,” she said, “have you seen Giles? He went out to see if he could get any news about Deirdre, but he hasn’t come back.” Her voice was low and expressionless. The purplish lids of her eyes were the only colour in her face.

“Yes, we have seen Giles,” Sam said. He switched on the light, then he and Winnfrieda disengaged their arms and came each to one side of Ingrid.

“I wish he’d come back,” she said. “I don’t like being alone here. I didn’t think he’d go out and stay away so long.”

“My dear,” Winnfrieda said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “I’m afraid you’ve got to face another terrible shock. I’m afraid he isn’t coming back.”

“He’ll come back,” Ingrid said. “He always comes back. He can’t get on without me. I’ve always had to look after Giles. He’s so stupid.”

“My dear, I’m afraid he’s dead,” Winnfrieda said.

David thought she did it rather well. She had become firm and commanding and a little overpowering, with a suggestion of tenderness available, if Ingrid should need it.

Ingrid might not have heard the words. “I don’t know what I shall do now,” she said. “I wanted to talk it over with Giles.

I can’t stand this house now. I knew it as soon as I came back this afternoon. Because for one thing, I haven’t got any friends here. One couldn’t have any friends, with Mark about. So without Mark I shan’t be able to stay.” Then she wrinkled her forehead, looking distrustfully at Winnfrieda, rather as a deaf person might look who suspects that something intentionally inaudible has been said to make game of her. “You said he’s dead,” she said accusingly.

“Yes—Giles is dead,” Winnfrieda repeated. “We found him at the bottom of the cliffs. We think—oh Lord, I don’t know how to say this, Ingrid—we think he’d been pushed over.”

There was a long time-lag before Ingrid showed any reaction. Then she said coldly, “I don’t believe you.” There was still almost no expression on the blotched pale face.