The March Hare Murders (20 page)

She was sucking her lower lip, looking at Sam with dubious sullenness.

“If you’d stolen that book,” she said, “and one or two others—but they aren’t so valuable—I’d have been left almost penniless, d’you know that?”

Ferdie said in bewilderment, “But surely your husband was rich.”

“It was only the money he was earning,” she said, “and he never saved any; he was too generous. I’ve only got his furniture and books.”

“In that case, I should certainly say nothing about this particular book to the police,” Winnfrieda said.

“Don’t be a fool, Ingrid,” Ferdie said. “Tell them everything. Otherwise you may get into trouble of some sort. Here, let me ring them up for you. I’m sorry I stopped you just now, getting at the telephone. I shouldn’t have, if I hadn’t got myself all worked up.”

Ingrid rose. “I think I’ll go home again and think about it,” she said. “But will you please ring them up and tell them about Giles. We ought to have done that at once.” Heavy-footed, she crossed to the door.

Sam and Winnfrieda exchanged a look that suggested relief, but in the doorway Ingrid paused. “And you’d better tell them about the book too,” she said. “After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong with the book. They can’t take it away from me.” She went out.

David went quickly after her.

She must have heard his footsteps, but she did not turn. Catching up with her, he said, “Shall I come with you, Ingrid? You don’t want to be alone, do you?”

She looked at him with a blaze of horror in her eyes and started to run.

David stood stock still. He had not believed for a moment until then that she imagined that he had killed her husband and her brother.

•   •   •   •   •

When he went back to the sitting-room, he found Ferdie at the telephone, Sam and Winnfrieda drawn close to one another, whispering together, and Stella sitting rigidly in her chair, with her feet curled under her, lighting another cigarette. David caught her eye and gestured slightly towards the open door. Stella nodded, got up and went out after Ingrid.

But in a moment, Stella was back. “She doesn’t want me,” she said.

“All the same, hadn’t you better stay with her?” David suggested.

Stella shrugged her shoulders. “Not after what she’s just said,” she replied.

“What did she say?”

“That I know all about who did the murders and how.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” David said.

“Think not?” Stella went back to her chair.

Sam and Winnfrieda went together to the door. With a touch of defiance in his voice, as if he expected resistance, Sam said, “Well, good night all! Winnfrieda and I have decided to return to our peaceful home. We tried to do what we could for every one, but the efforts seem not to have been appreciated.”

“Here—wait!” Ferdie had just put down the telephone. “You can’t go off like that. The police will be here at any moment.”

“The police are perfectly at liberty to find us in our home,” Winnfrieda replied, “where we can sit and drink tea in comfort, and incidentally feed the cats, who must be almost as hungry, poor things, as we are ourselves. So good night!”

Arm in arm, they strode off into the dusk.

“Food!” Ferdie said, dropping into a chair. “God, I’ve been forgetting all about it. But I’ve been having quite a pain for the last hour. I thought it was because I’d eaten something unwholesome, but of course it’s just that I’m hungry. What about something to eat, Stella?”

She nodded and got up again, but before she had crossed the room, David said, “D’you think those two are really going home?”

Ferdie shrugged his shoulders. “They’d a right to go. How could we have stopped them?” He looked very tired, and there was a flush on his cheeks.

“I think perhaps I’d better go after them,” David said. “If they were to go down to the beach again——”

“No, I’ll go.” Ferdie got up abruptly. He put a hand on David’s shoulders. “You’ve had enough for one day. But you’re quite right, someone ought to keep an eye on them.”

“Won’t you have something to eat first?” Stella said.

“No—keep me something.” Ferdie hurried out.

Stella sighed and returned to her chair. “Lord, I’m tired,” she said. “I feel as if to-day had been going on and on for ever.”

Closing her eyes, she pressed her knuckles into them and gently massaged the lids. David sat down facing her. Taking his glasses off, he swung them gently before him, seeing Stella only as a blur of colour. Both he and Stella, in their own chosen forms of momentary blindness, were deeply withdrawn into themselves. The silence lasted for some minutes before either spoke.

It was David who began, not knowing why he spoke in a half-whisper. “Stella, I want to ask you something. There’s something I particularly want to know.”

Dropping her hands, she opened her eyes wearily. “Well?”

“Did you take my revolver from my room?”

“No.”

“For God’s sake,” he said, “tell me the truth.”

“No, I didn’t take it,” she said.

“But you looked for it, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “But I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes. I thought you’d taken it away yourself and hidden it somewhere. Didn’t you?”

“No.” He put on his glasses again and found that she was studying him doubtfully.

“Are you sure you didn’t?” she said.

“Of course I’m sure. I put the thing away on the day I arrived, and I haven’t seen it since.”

“But who else knew about it?”

“That’s the question,” he said. “Who else?”

“Didn’t you tell any one about it?”

“No. Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“The only other person who knew about it was Ferdie.”

He saw the sudden rigidity of her gestures. “Ferdie wouldn’t tell any one,” she said.

“Why not? What harm would there have been in it?”

Her mouth tightened. But still her voice was low. “You don’t really mean that, do you, David? You’re meaning, did Ferdie take it himself?”

It was now David who hesitated and then nodded. “Well, did he?” he said at last.

“No.”

“How d’you know?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“That’s a difficult thing to say for sure, isn’t it? Particularly with someone like Ferdie. Did you know, for instance, that Ferdie had realised the situation between you and Verinder long ago?”

She looked down. “No. …
But still, he wouldn’t have …done that. I know he wouldn’t. And as a matter of fact, I did tell somebody about the revolver.”

“Who?”

“Verinder.”

“Good God!” David said. “When?”

“This morning.”

David shook his head. “Too late. … And you see, whoever shot Verinder has to have certain definite characteristics. He has to be about my size and build, so that Clay could mistake him for me in the rain. He has to be someone who knew about my revolver and could get hold of it. And he has to be someone a little fanatically fussy over the cleanliness of what he eats or drinks.”

“How d’you arrive at that?” Stella asked.

“The fourth sherry glass that they kept talking about. The murderer wanted a drink when he’d done his shooting, and he went to the kitchen and fetched himself a clean glass instead of drinking out of one of the used glasses on the tray. Can you think of any one but Ferdie who’d bother to do that?”

“But still it wasn’t Ferdie. David …”

“Yes?”

With a false calm, covering a feverish anxiety as she searched his face for what she believed would be his real answer, whatever he might say, she asked, “Was it you?”

Instinctively David took off his glasses, then put them on again quickly, so that she should not misread the gesture.

“No, Stella, it wasn’t,” he said.

“If you’d done it,” she said, “you’d have no need to be afraid of telling me. I shouldn’t tell any one. And it might be easier if I knew for sure, then we could think out properly what we ought to do. And really, David, really, you could tell me everything quite safely.”

He started to laugh. But realising Stella’s terror, he stopped.

“Thank you,” he said, “but it wasn’t me.”

“But then who——?”

“Several other people had possible motives.”

“But who knew about the revolver?”

“Ferdie.”

“It wasn’t Ferdie.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She uncurled her legs, stretching them out wearily before her. “You know, I think I’m only just beginning to appreciate Ferdie,” she said. “He’s kind and gentle—always.”

“Have you never watched him hitting at a fly?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And it rather frightens me sometimes. But it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Look,” David said, “I’m not trying to make you think Ferdie did it. But you, he and I are the only people who knew about the revolver—unless one of us talked about it to somebody else. Well, I didn’t. And you say you didn’t—except to Verinder this morning, and the revolver disappeared days ago. So that leaves Ferdie. He
must
have told somebody about it.”

“But in that case, why hasn’t he admitted it?”

“Exactly—why?”

“He must be protecting whoever it is,” she said.

“And exposing other people—notably me—to a rather unpleasant danger,” David said.

“He can’t have thought of that,” Stella said. “Ferdie doesn’t really think much.”

“Whom would he protect?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He likes quite a lot of people, but not all that much—surely not all that much.”

“We’ll have to try and find out,” David said. “D’you think you could get him to tell you?”

“I don’t know. I can try. But, David …”

“Yes?”

“Suppose he
didn’t
tell anybody?”

“He must have told somebody,” David said impatiently. “Even if he didn’t realise he was doing it——”

“Ssh!” Stella said abruptly.

Lifting his head and listening, David heard footsteps approaching through the garden. They were quick footsteps, uneven, as if the person making them had been running, and now, even after slowing his pace down to a walk, could not control the haste that was in him. In another moment Ferdie burst into the room.

“The police are going down to the beach,” he said, “and they’ll be coming over here, I expect, in a few minutes.”

“What about Sam and Winnfrieda?” David asked.

“Sam and Winnfrieda?” Ferdie looked at him vaguely.

“You went after them.”

“Oh yes. … But I didn’t follow them.”

“Didn’t …? But then, good God …”

“It’s all right.” Ferdie was wiping his forehead. “I could see they were going straight home, so I didn’t bother about them. It was Ingrid who went down to the beach.”

Stella got up quickly. She came forward a step. “Ingrid?”

“Yes—as I went out, I realised there weren’t any lights in the cottage, so it struck me that she might have gone down there. Quite a natural thing to do, after all. So I went along to see, and there she was, poor girl, sitting on a rock beside Giles. I thought I ought to stick around and keep an eye on her. She just sat there and waited. And there didn’t seem to be any one else around. So I stayed till I heard the police come, then I got away in a hurry, thinking I might as well try to get a bit of something to eat before the new session of questioning begins. Stella, is there anything we could have quickly? I’ve got a most unpleasant feeling, which I’m sure is mostly hunger.”

Stella nodded and went wearily out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Ferdie turned to David. His manner was feverish. He caught hold of David’s sleeve.

“Look here, old man,” he said huskily, “I want to talk to you. I was doing some thinking while I was out there, and I want to tell you about it before Stella gets back—or the police get here. And that means I haven’t much time. Now look here, David, for Stella’s sake——”

“Yes?” David said.

“Why not tell me what really happened? I shouldn’t blame you. Verinder needed blotting out. And if Clay was meaning to blackmail you, then—well, I’m not so sure about that, but there are circumstances where—well, I’ve wanted to do murder myself pretty often during the last months, so I shouldn’t be the one to——”

“How could Clay have been meaning to blackmail me when he’d already told the police what he knew?” David asked. “Or what he thought he knew.”

“But listen, David, you haven’t let me finish. As I was saying, I shouldn’t really blame you, and the important thing, it seems to me, and I’m sure it does to you too, is that Stella shouldn’t get involved more than we can help. So I thought that if only you would trust me—and you can, really, you can—and tell me all that you know, then we could——”

David disengaged his arm. “I’m sorry, Ferdie, but I don’t believe I know any more about it than you do,” he said.

“But listen, you haven’t let me finish——”

“It’s no good, Ferdie,” David moved away. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But there’s a thing that you might be able to tell me. About the revolver …”

The excitement died out of Ferdie’s manner. In a flat voice he asked, “What about it?”

“Did you take it from my room?”

“I?” Ferdie exclaimed. “Good God, what are you talking about?”

“All right, all right,” David said, “you didn’t. But then did you tell any one about it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Think,” David said. “This is important.”

“I certainly did not,” Ferdie said. “Why on earth should I have told any one a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. But someone found out about it. Because I didn’t tell any one, and Stella says she didn’t.”

“Stella …?” Deep lines appeared between Ferdie’s eyes. “You aren’t suggesting …” Then his voice dropped. An even greater agitation appeared in his manner. “I suppose, after all, I’d better tell you the truth, David, but if you tell any one, before God, I’ll kill you. I did take the revolver. I took it only a day or two after you got here.”

•   •   •   •   •

At the astonishment on David’s face,
Ferdie reddened, and he looked away.

“Whatever made you do that?” David asked. His anxiety to grasp the implication of this new information deadened any anger he might have felt. He merely wanted to know, quite simply, what had made Ferdie do it.