The March Hare Murders (22 page)

“You’ve no proof,” Ingrid said.

“Enough, I think,” Upjohn answered.

“How could I have had anything to do with it—or Giles?” she asked. “Why, for instance, if I wanted to murder my husband, should I have burnt down the summer-house, when I knew he was sleeping indoors? Why should Giles have done it?”

“Simply in order to be able to ask that question,” Upjohn replied. “A stage was very carefully prepared. Too carefully. And your collaborator was too enthusiastic. He claimed to have seen what he could not have seen.”

“Like the March Hare,” the big man put in, standing at Upjohn’s elbow, “who claimed to have passed Nobody on the road. Giles Clay passed Nobody and then made the mistake of describing his appearance in detail.”

Ingrid shook her head slowly. As she had that afternoon, after each question she had been asked, she gave herself time before she made any answer. Then, relapsing into the vague, lost manner she had used in the afternoon, she said, “No, no, that’s nonsense. How could Giles have seen nobody?”

“At any rate he didn’t see David Obeney,” Upjohn said. “And we know that he didn’t because he described him rather carefully, mentioning how wild and excited he seemed. To have noticed that, he must have taken a good look, you’d think. I asked him if he didn’t think he might have made a mistake, looking through a wet windscreen. He reminded me then that the rain was being driven very hard by the wind in the same direction as the car was travelling, so that there had been hardly any drops on the windscreen. That was perfectly correct. But that meant that the rain would have been driven straight into the face of any one walking towards him. If that person had been David Obeney, his face would have been completely hidden by an umbrella. I don’t think an umbrella can look very excited.”

Ingrid shook her head again, and again vaguely said, “No.” But her eyes did not look vague. She was thinking fast.

“There were too many embroideries in the whole business,” Upjohn said. “I imagine that was Clay’s doing. I think Obeney had been marked down for the victim of the plot even before he got here. Who but Verinder knew of Obeney’s grudge against him, and to whom would he have mentioned it but his wife?”

David broke in. “But he didn’t know I was coming here. When we first met, he didn’t recognise me.”

“But I’d told Ingrid,” Stella said. “I know I had.”

Ingrid turned on her furiously. “You hadn’t!”

“I had,” Stella insisted.

David thought suddenly of his first day here, how Ingrid had watched him from the garden on his very first evening, how he had felt she wanted to talk to him and how he had pitied her for being married to Mark Verinder.

Upjohn was continuing. “The fire was meant as a ruse to draw attention to Obeney’s grudge against Verinder and to make Verinder himself suspicious of Obeney. Neither Clay nor his sister was likely to be suspected, since both of them knew that Verinder was sleeping in the house. The next step was to get hold of Obeney’s revolver—a piece of luck for them that he had one. It was easy enough to get hold of, since they were in and out of the house at all times. The next step after that was to wait for an occasion when Verinder was invited to lunch or drinks with Mrs. Masson. I think they had to wait for that longer than they expected. Verinder was anxious to be invited, but Mrs. Masson did not respond to his advances. Perhaps Clay and Mrs. Verinder had decided that they would have to think of a new plan; then, because Mrs. Masson decided to use certain information she possessed to force Verinder to leave the district, the invitation suddenly came. And so the plan was put into execution. Obeney was invited here to lunch. Mrs. Verinder knew that when he left he would go straight down the road to the Three Huntsmen, and as soon as she had seen him safely on his way, she ran over to Mrs. Pratt, snatched up the telephone and started to act her scene—and, in doing so, mentioned that her brother was already back at the cottage. She knew that, in such circumstances, Mrs. Pratt would certainly snatch the telephone from her, and as soon as Clay, at the other end, heard her voice, he was to fire off two blank cartridges, get in his car and come back as fast as he could. He’d done the murder some minutes earlier, and then, as usual, had not been able to resist one of his little bits of embroidery. He fetched an empty sherry glass from the kitchen and poured a little sherry into it, to suggest that there had been a fourth person there. It seems to have been that fourth sherry glass, stimulating thoughts of a Mad Hatter’s tea-party, that led my friend here to think of the March Hare and so to checking the movements of Mr. Obeney’s umbrella, also to making sure what time Mr. Obeney had arrived at the Three Huntsmen. He was vague about it himself, but the landlord said he arrived at about one-thirty. If in fact he had been to Mrs. Masson’s house and done the murder, that was a possibility and fitted with what Mrs. Verinder had said of his having left her about twelve-fifty. But if he had not been any farther than the pub and had not been for a rather improbable walk in the rain, then it was unlikely that he had left Mrs. Verinder much before one-ten, a few minutes before Mrs. Verinder ran into the Pratts’ to telephone.”

“But may I ask,” Ingrid said, “why I should have murdered my husband? If you think that I would have done so because he was unfaithful to me, you have no understanding of him or of me. I could have left him any day I chose, and if I had wanted a divorce, he would have given me one without any argument.”

“That may be,” Upjohn said. “But would he, in those circumstances, have provided for you?”

“As well as he can now,” she replied. “He has nothing to leave me.”

“Hasn’t he? What about some valuable books, which happen to be here now, but would not have been here much longer …? Stop her!”

He lunged out to catch her wrist.

But there was a table between them and no one else moved. Ingrid’s hand reached her mouth, and she swallowed before Upjohn touched her. Then she sat still, breathing deeply.

Stella turned suddenly to Ferdie and buried her face in his shoulder.

Ingrid looked at David. “I’m sorry, David,” she said. “There was nothing personal in it. If you could have helped me instead of Giles, I’d have liked it much better. Perhaps if you’d fallen in love with me instead of with Deirdre, we could have managed something. You’re level-headed, you’re sane, you’d have stopped me making mistakes. Giles was always an irresponsible fool. He spoilt everything. He deserved what he got. Yet I was fond of him, you know. And I was fond of Mark, very fond. Perhaps it wasn’t really a good idea, murdering him …”