The March Hare Murders (6 page)

“I don’t know why you should think that,” David said feebly.

“I told you,” she said, “I can tell.”

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t know. I just can. Some people are like that.”

“Intuition?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure if I believe in intuition,” David said.

“You can always call it by some other name, if you prefer.” She smiled—a grave smile, apparently naïve, yet with something equivocal about it.

“I mean,” David said, “when people lay claim to intuition, they’re usually putting up a pretence of some sort.”

“What sort?”

“It depends on the person, of course. And the circumstances.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” she said. “I know you don’t like Mark. It’s you who are pretending.”

He shook his head. “I said, I don’t know why you should think that.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ll leave it at that.”

But David suddenly had an irrational and dangerous desire not to leave it like that.

“Has he told you something to give you that idea?” he asked.

“So there
is
something to tell?”

“No,” David said abruptly.

“Even if he had,” she said, “I shouldn’t necessarily believe his version.”

“Don’t you believe what he tells you?”

“Every one tells lies,” she said.

Her silk dressing-gown brushed against him as she went towards the door. In the passage she paused again.

“I don’t mind people telling lies,” she said. “What I mind is if they go on denying it when they’ve been found out. That’s what I think is really dishonest. Now look”—she beckoned him after her, and when he joined her in the doorway, pointed down the passage—“Mark’s in there, in the kitchen, making the coffee. You go in, and I’ll come in a moment. I’m cold, now that I’m away from the fire. I want to get on something warmer.” She went up the stairs.

David went along the passage, opened the door of the kitchen, and saw Stella in the arms of Mark Verinder.

•   •   •   •   •

David’s first thought, that came before he had had time to recognise any feeling in himself about what he saw, was that Ingrid Verinder had known that this was what he would find and had arranged that he should be there to find it. After that, he began to realise that he was both angry and scared. But in some way it was with himself that he was most angry, accusing himself of some inadequacy.

Stella drew quickly away from Verinder and stood with her hands gripping the back of a kitchen chair. Verinder turned to the electric stove, took a saucepan of milk off it and said cheerfully, “Ah, good—coffee’s just ready. Is every one coming?”

David did not answer, nor did Stella. Luckily the others came in almost at once, first Ingrid Verinder, still in her yellow silk dressing-gown but with a shawl round her shoulders, then Ferdie and Giles Clay, Ferdie looking the most dishevelled and the dirtiest of the party, thus showing that he had taken the fire seriously. They gathered round the kitchen table to drink the coffee. Verinder poured it out.

“I’d like to thank you all very, very much,” he said. “It was wonderful of you to rally round like that. I think I’d like fires to happen quite often if they give occasion for such charming little parties as this.”

“Hope you’re well insured in that case,” Ferdie said, laughing at once at his own joke.

“Thank you, yes,” Verinder said. “I think quite adequately, though actually the summer-house …Well, it doesn’t matter.

And sometimes I’m not quite certain about my books. I’ve added some fairly valuable things recently, which aren’t really covered in a general policy. Sam Fortis is always persuading me to buy things on the spur of the moment—quite a salesman, our Sam—and then I just let them lie around. Criminally careless, of course.”

“I hope you hadn’t left any valuable ones in the summer-house,” Ferdie said.

“Oh no,” Verinder said, “I don’t think so. No, I know I didn’t.”

“Then what are you worrying about?” Ingrid asked.

“Nothing. Nothing whatever.” Verinder shook his head. “Nothing unless you think I should worry over the fact that apparently someone has tried to murder me.”

Stella put down her cup so abruptly that the coffee slopped on to the table.

Verinder gave his light, falsetto laugh.

“I’m sorry, I meant it as a joke,” he said, “but just possibly there might be something in it. What d’you think, all my kind friends here? Granted I can’t be beloved by everybody, d’you think any one could actually dislike me enough to try to murder me?”

There was a startled silence. Then Ingrid replied placidly. “None of us has the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Giles has,” Verinder replied.

“You mean the petrol-can?” Giles Clay said.

“Of course. The petrol-can.”

“Well,” Giles said, glancing round the table, yet, as David noticed, not looking into any one’s eyes, “I found a new petrol-can in the hedge just by the summer-house, which makes it look as if the fire had been started deliberately. And I suppose, when Mark talks about murder, what he means is that if he’d still been sleeping out there, as he has been all summer, there wouldn’t be much left of him at this moment.”

“Nothing but the charred remains of an incinerated scholar.” Verinder gave another little giggle. “As a matter of fact, and in spite of my having made a note in my will that I should prefer to be cremated, I find the thought rather unsavoury. Well, my dears, what do you think?”

In the long uncomfortable pause that followed, Ferdie tapped the rim of his saucer with his teaspoon, Stella sat taut and straight in her chair, Giles Clay frowned moodily, tipping his chair gently backwards and forwards, Ingrid rearranged the wrap around her shoulders. Looking from one to the other, David felt that there was something crazy about all this, that it arose out of some preposterous fantasy that had taken possession of them all. Then, to his extreme annoyance, he heard Verinder addressing him directly.

“You, Obeney,” Verinder said, “you’ve known me longer than any of the others. Tell me your frank opinion of my murderability.”

Reluctantly, David met Verinder’s eyes, and it seemed to him that they had more than their usual brightness.

David sighed. “Isn’t that the wrong word?” he asked.

“Is it?”

“We’re all murderable,” David said. “It’s a human characteristic. The question is, are we worth murdering?”

“Dear me,” Verinder said, “and you think I’m not? I’m not sure that I like the sound of that.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” David said. “Although we’ve known each other for so long, Professor, our knowledge of one another has been rather limited.”

Stella spoke suddenly and loudly, as if she could not bear this any more. “How absurd, how ridiculous you both are, talking about murder like that. Of course David doesn’t know anything about who might want to murder Mark—and of course nobody else wants to murder him.”

Giles straightened his chair with a jolt. “What about the petrol-can?”

“Oh, it must have been some lunatic, a holiday-maker probably,” Stella said, “who set fire to the summer-house without knowing a thing about Mark.”

“Yes, that’s what I think,” Ferdie said. He pushed his coffee away as if he disliked the taste of it.

Verinder began to smile again. “Can it be that my mind is too melodramatic?” His eyes slid along to meet Ingrid’s. She met them calmly. “And what do you think my dear?”

“You
are
melodramatic,” she said, smoothing her dark hair back. “Very.”

“Well, well, this is all very reassuring.” But Verinder’s smile had died quickly. “And you, Giles?”

Giles Clay did not answer.

Getting up from the table, Verinder seemed all of a sudden to be very angry. It was a contained, fuming rage. Thrusting his head forward, he said in a harsh, high voice, “It wouldn’t have been at all nice to be burnt alive, you know—not at all nice! Are any of you thinking about that?”

“But you could have got out quite easily,” Ingrid said, yawning. “It’s not as if you’d have been on a third floor, with the stairs burning.”

“Oh, indeed,” Verinder said, still more shrilly. “And suppose the bed-clothes had caught fire before I woke. That would have been quite pleasant, I suppose. And suppose I’d had my hair burnt off, and my eyebrows. Suppose I’d been disfigured; would you have liked that? I’m being melodramatic, am I? You think I’m just trying to attract attention to myself, suggesting, to use my friend Obeney’s pleasant phrase, that I’m ‘worthy’ of being murdered? I tell you, I’m not sure that I like that. I’m not sure that I like it at all.”

“You ought to go to bed,” Ingrid said. “You’re tired.”

Stella stood up quickly. She drank her coffee, said a hurried good-night and went out, without waiting to make sure that Ferdie and David were following her. The colour was high in her cheeks, and she avoided speaking directly to Verinder.

When David and Ferdie came out into the garden, they found that the fire was still burning. But it was dwindling rapidly, single flames licking around charred remnants of wood which kept subsiding upon one another into a smaller and smaller heap. When David reached his bedroom, the fire had sunk so low that he could scarcely see it from his window. Only occasional sparks leapt up into the darkness.

He was stooping to take off his shoes when he heard the door open. Stella came in softly, closed the door and leant against it, her arms hanging limply at her sides. She waited a moment, then said in a whisper, “It wasn’t
his
fault, David.”

David was feeling unbearably weary. He dragged off a shoe. “What wasn’t?”

“What you saw—his kissing me.”

“Oh, that.” He tugged at a shoelace which had got knotted.

“Really it wasn’t,” Stella said. “And you needn’t worry about me either. I know what I’m doing.”

The shoelace broke.

She went on. “And I know he doesn’t love me, so you needn’t worry about that either. But you won’t find me in the river. I can take the consequences of my actions.”

“Let’s talk about it another time,” David said.

“No, I want to talk about it now,” she said, “and then say no more about it. I don’t want you ever to refer to it again.”

“I haven’t referred to it,” he said.

She went on feverishly. “I know he doesn’t love me. He did only for a very short while, but that was worth it to me, and I can stand what I’ve got to stand. But it wasn’t his fault; I want you to know that.”

“All right,” David said. He dragged the shoe off without untying the lace. The shoe made a noisy thump as it fell on the floor.

“Oh,
listen
to me!” Stella said passionately.

“I have been listening,” David said.

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“There’s nothing to say, is there?”

“You realise, of course,” she said, “that Ferdie doesn’t know.”

All of a sudden David wished that he could have gone to her and put his arms around her and comforted her, but there had never been any habit of open tenderness between them, and besides, at that moment, such a gesture from him would have hurt her pride.

“Lord, I’m tired,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Of course, Mark’s in love now with Deirdre Masson,” Stella said. “But that won’t last either. Nothing lasts with him. He’s a terribly unhappy man really. I understand him so well, and I realise that it isn’t his fault.”

“And where does Ingrid come in—or doesn’t she?”

“Oh, she only wanted his money anyhow,” Stella said indifferently. “I think she’s quite happy.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Stella took hold of the door-handle. “Well, good-night.”

“Good-night.”

“Oh, David——”

She paused a long time. David waited.

When she spoke again, her tone had a false casualness. She looked past him at the window.

“When Ferdie and I got back from coffee with the Verinders this evening, there wasn’t any light in your room. Surely you hadn’t gone to bed already.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” David said.

“Then where were you? The pub must have shut some time before.”

He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Where was I? I believe I was just lying down here, thinking about nothing in particular. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” Stella said. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t out for a walk or anything?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. Why are you asking me all this?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Good-night, David.”

“Good-night, Stella.”

She went out. He heard her quick footsteps in the passage, and then the opening and closing of her bedroom door. Sitting still, staring before him, David suddenly realised, with a frightened sense of shock, the implications of those last, hurried questions.

S
TELLA
was frightened. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. A feeling of terrible responsibility appalled her. Without the least intention, she had brought something frightful into being, that was her belief. Lying awake beside Ferdie in the darkness, she was not capable of questioning it. While she pretended to question it, going over the evidence again and again, in strained reiteration, her mind in reality was holding fast to its conviction that David had set the Verinders’ summer-house on fire, David had tried to murder Mark Verinder.

And what evidence, after all, could she bring against this? There was David’s nature. She had never known him anything but gentle. But was it not sometimes the gentle people, who could not stand up for themselves, whose minds were filled with fantasies of violence? Besides, David had had a mental break-down, so that his control of such fantasies was probably even less than usual at the moment. … Stella sighed so deeply that she felt a sharp pain in her chest. It was she who had pressed David to come and stay here, and then, half-sensing the danger in the atmosphere, she had only felt hurt and angry at his bitter antagonism to Mark, instead of paying serious attention to the look that she had seen in David’s eyes. A look, she had thought, need not mean anything. A look does nothing. She had seen other people look at Mark with hatred. At times, she was sure, she had looked at him with hatred herself, though she loved him intensely, and once or twice, in moments of private agony, had thought that there might be some ease for her in his death. But that was not the point. The point was, could she find any evidence against its having been David who had set fire to the summer-house?