The March Hare Murders (14 page)

“Very interesting,” Upjohn said. “What time did you pass him?”

“My uncle?”

“This man Obeney.”

“Oh,” Giles said. “Well, I told you, I can’t tell you exactly. A few minutes after I left Mrs. Masson’s, that’s all I know.”

Upjohn narrowed his eyes, thinking, looking past his witness at the window. He noticed that the rain was stopping. In the last minute or two the room had become perceptibly lighter.

“What happened next?” he asked.

“I went on home,” Giles said.

“And then?”

Giles took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. Then he had a fit of coughing.

“Yes, what happened then?” Upjohn repeated.

“Look, I don’t like this,” Giles said hoarsely.

“What don’t you like?”

“Talking about other people.”

“What other people?”

“I think I’d sooner that you asked my sister.”

“She’s scarcely in a state to answer questions at the moment.”

“No. … But still I’d sooner that you asked her.”

“Does it really make any difference which of you tells me what happened next?”

“No,” Giles said unwillingly. “No, I suppose it doesn’t. … All right then. I’ll tell you. You see, when I got back I found my sister in a pretty wild state. She came dashing out the moment she heard the car and asked me if I’d seen Obeney. I told her I had, and she asked me where, so I told her, and she asked me how he’d looked, and I told her”—Giles hesitated again—“I told her he’d been walking along very fast, looking a bit strange——”

“You said nothing about that before,” Upjohn interrupted.

“No,” Giles agreed, “but I see I may as well tell you the whole thing as it actually happened.”

“What did you mean by strange?”

“Well, worked up, you know.”

“Excited?”

“Yes—very excited.”

“You could see that in the rain?”

“Oh yes. As a matter of fact, the wind was driving very hard from behind me—the windscreen was almost clear.”

Upjohn nodded, remembering his own drive back from Mrs. Masson’s house. The wind from behind had been so strong that only a few drops of rain had splashed on to the windscreen.

Giles went on. “Well, when I told her that—I mean about where I’d seen Obeney and about his looking so excited, I thought my sister’d have hysterics. As you’ve just seen, she’s really a rather hysterical type. Most of the time she doesn’t show it; she seems quiet and self-contained and a bit phlegmatic. But every now and then the other side comes out and startles people who didn’t know it was there. She started screaming at me that I must drive straight back to Mrs. Masson’s and stop Obeney murdering Mark. You see, Obeney’d been with her until a little while before, and apparently he’d been in a perfectly extraordinary state, striding up and down the room and threatening to kill Professor Verinder, because of something that he’d done to some girl sometime or other. Then Obeney’d suddenly started talking about a gun he’d got and had gone dashing out into the rain. My sister’d nearly gone mad with anxiety, because she’d not been able to decide if Obeney’d really meant what he’d said or not. After all, it isn’t easy to believe a person means a thing like that—a person one knows and likes, and so on. So she’d wasted time, changing her mind about it every moment. And then I’d arrived. …”

“And you drove back to Mrs. Masson’s, as she wanted?” Upjohn asked.

“No,” Giles said. “We realised, by the time I’d got the story out of her, that we’d be too late if we did that, and Ingrid suddenly had the idea that she’d come over here and telephone. There’s no telephone at the cottage. She dashed over, telling me to wait so that I could still drive over to Mrs. Masson’s if it was necessary. So I waited. But she didn’t come back, so after a few minutes I came over here too and found both my sister and Mrs. Pratt in a frightful state, saying they’d heard Professor Verinder being murdered.”

“Just a minute. Wasn’t Mr. Pratt there too?” Upjohn asked.

“No, they rang him up later, and as soon as he’d heard what had happened, he came out here.”

“Didn’t you think of going out to Mrs. Masson’s then?”

“Well yes, I did think of it. But I didn’t like to leave my sister.”

“I see,” Upjohn said. Getting up, he went to the window and opened it. The rain had quite stopped now. A smell of wet earth came freshly into the room. “This man Obeney,” he said returning, “you said just now that he’d had a breakdown. Was that a polite way of giving me the information that he is, or has been, insane?”

•   •   •   •   •

Giles’ handkerchief came into play again before he made up his mind how to answer. His face flushed with embarrassment and uncertainty. At last he mumbled, “No, I wasn’t trying to give you any special information. I know he had a breakdown, but that’s all I know.”

“Ah,”
Upjohn said. Leaning back, he ran a finger along the line of his jaw. “Ah,” he said again, “thank you. Well, I think that’s all for the moment, Mr. Clay. Would you be so kind as to ask your sister—no, wait, we’ll give her a little longer to recover. Ask Mrs. Pratt to come in, will you?”

Giles got quickly to his feet and escaped in a hurry.

A moment later Stella Pratt came into the room. She sat down facing Upjohn and looked at him with eyes that appeared very large in her pale face. Upjohn knew instantly that she was antagonistic.

He began in a quiet voice. “I just heard Mr. Clay’s version of what happened, Mrs. Pratt, and I’ll tell you straight away that what he said appears to concern your brother a good deal. He says your brother threatened to murder Professor Verinder, that he was seen with a revolver, and was seen in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Masson’s house, apparently in a very wrought-up state.”

He paused. Stella neither stirred nor answered. The eyes that looked so unnaturally large continued staring hard into his.

Upjohn went on. “Will you tell me your own version of what happened here?”

Stella nodded composedly. Her voice, when it came, sounded harsh and dry. “It’s as I told you; I heard the shots on the telephone.”

“Yes, but tell me more about it,” Upjohn said. “Tell me what happened before you telephoned.”

“You mean when Mrs. Verinder suddenly came in?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was in here by myself,” Stella said in a monotone and speaking so quietly that Upjohn could only just catch the words. “As a matter of fact, I was playing the piano. Mrs. Verinder suddenly ran in and without explaining anything, snatched up the telephone——”

“You mean she didn’t ring or knock?” Upjohn asked.

“Oh no, they never do; they always just wander in when they feel like it,” she said.

“Mightn’t that be inconvenient sometimes?”

“Oh no,” she said indifferently, “we don’t mind. We do the same over there.”

“I see. Well then, she came in suddenly. …”

“Yes, and started to telephone. Of course I had to stop playing. And while she was waiting to get through I asked her what had happened. I could see something was wrong, she looked so wild. And she said something like, ‘Your brother’s on his way over to shoot Mark, and I’ve got to warn them he’s coming.’ Then she got through, and started talking to Mrs. Masson——”

“Just a moment,” Upjohn said. “When she said that, didn’t it surprise you?”

He saw by the quick look of shock on Stella’s face that she had never even thought of being surprised, that it was his question that surprised her. But she replied, almost at once, “Yes, of course I was surprised.”

“Well, what did she say to Mrs. Masson?” Upjohn asked.

“She asked for her husband,” Stella answered. “She wasn’t very clear about what she wanted, she seemed all in a muddle, but she said she must speak to her husband at once, because my brother was on the way over to kill him. Naturally, I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t make out what was happening, but I knew that was all nonsense. David wouldn’t suddenly dash over to Mrs. Masson’s house and murder Professor Verinder. As a matter of fact, I thought she’d gone mad. So I made a grab for the telephone. She tried to stop me at first, saying that she must speak to her husband, but I got the telephone away from her and started telling Professor Verinder that I thought his wife had gone out of her mind, and then I heard the shots——” Her voice cracked, and she stopped, her eyes still looking almost unblinkingly into Upjohn’s.

He nodded, giving her a chance to go on again of her own accord, but she stayed silent. After a moment he asked, “Did you actually speak to Professor Verinder?”

“Oh yes,” she said.

“What did he say?”

She frowned, as if she couldn’t remember. “I think he just said ‘What’s that? What’s that?’—or something like that. I don’t suppose he could make out what I was saying. I suppose that isn’t surprising. I don’t expect I made it very clear.”

“But you heard his voice before you heard the shots?”

“Oh yes.”

“And that was all he said, ‘What’s that? What’s that?’”

“Something like that.”

“What happened next?”

He saw her hands twist in her lap. “I think I went on trying to speak to him on the telephone,” she said, “but I couldn’t get an answer. The line seemed quite dead; I couldn’t hear anything. Mrs. Verinder took the telephone and tried to make someone answer, but they didn’t. So then we rang off, and then tried ringing up again, but we only got the engaged signal. So then we rang up the operator and asked her to connect us, but she said they must have left the telephone off the hook so that she couldn’t put us through. We got her to try several times, but it wasn’t any good. And then Giles came in, and we told him what had happened, and he said we must ring up the police immediately. I—I didn’t want to.”

Upjohn nodded again. She relaxed a little in her chair. Her eyelids dropped for a moment.

“I know my brother didn’t do it,” she said.

“Where is he now, do you know?”

“But he didn’t do it,” she said.

“Did you know he had a revolver?”

She stiffened again. She fixed her antagonistic stare again on Upjohn’s face. “Yes,” she said.

“Where did he keep it?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No. Why should he?”

“How did you know he had one?”

“My husband saw it in his room when he was unpacking on the day that he arrived.”

“Did you never see it yourself?”

“No.”

“Did you never ask him about it?”

“I didn’t ever think about it.”

“Didn’t it strike you that for someone who’d been in a somewhat unstable mental condition, as I gather was the case with your brother, a revolver might not be a very desirable possession?”

He noticed that she had started trembling and abruptly her soft, monotonous voice became harsh again. “My brother is not a homicidal maniac, Inspector. He did not kill Professor Verinder.”

“Did any one else, besides yourself and your husband, know of the existence of this revolver?”

“Not unless my brother told them. That is——”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m sure they didn’t.”

“And you say you do not know where your brother is now?”

She began to say, “No,” but changed her mind and said instead, “He might be at the Three Huntsmen. If he really went walking in that direction at all, that was probably where he was going. He often goes there.”

“Mr. Clay says he saw him beyond the Three Huntsmen,” Upjohn said.

“Mr. Clay might be wrong.”

“Yes, he might be wrong,” Upjohn said.

After a pause Stella asked, “Is that all?”

Upjohn hesitated, nodded, then said, “Yes, I think that’s all for the present.”

She stood up. As she did so, she caught her foot against the leg of her chair, knocking it a few inches across the floor. At this she looked so dismayed that it was plain she believed that up to that moment she had not betrayed her nervousness. But the noise of the chair scraping the boards was mixed with another noise, the sound of footsteps on gravel. Stella looked round. Then, in a hopeless, resigned tone, said, “That’s probably my brother now.”

But she was mistaken. The person who had just arrived at the house, wearing a long mackintosh with a hood over her neatly cropped dark head, was Winnfrieda Fortis.

Winnfrieda nodded coolly at Upjohn as he opened the door, then looked around her.

“Where’s my husband?” she asked.

Sam heard her voice and came out of the sitting-room. A glance passed between them, wary but with some message in it. As Upjohn came forward, Sam introduced his wife. Winnfrieda began unbuttoning her mackintosh.

“This is frightful,” she said calmly.

“I suppose you mean the murder,” Upjohn said.

Winnfrieda raised her eyebrows. “Did you suppose I meant the weather?”

“But may I ask, Mrs. Fortis, how you know there’s been a murder?”

Again a glance passed between Winnfrieda and Sam.

Sam answered, “I ought to have mentioned, Inspector, that I telephoned my wife.”

Upjohn looked irritated. “From Mrs. Masson’s house? Yes, you certainly should have mentioned that.”

“I’m afraid it slipped my mind when I described my actions,” Sam said. “It seemed of no importance to any one but myself. I am but a weak mortal, Inspector, a peculiarly weak one. In moments of crisis, I always telephone my wife.”

“When did you telephone?” Upjohn asked abruptly.

“Immediately after telephoning the police station.”

“That’s to say, within a few minutes of arriving at the house?”

“Yes, I believe that is correct.”

“Say at about ten to two?”

“Yes.”

“It’s now half-past three,” Upjohn said.

“So it is,” Sam said, looking at his watch. “How time flies.”

“The Inspector is implying, my dear,” Winnfrieda said, “that in the circumstances, I have taken an unconscionable time in getting here.”

Upjohn did not contradict this statement.

Slipping out of her mackintosh, Winnfrieda draped it over the newel-post. She looked as neat and composed as ever in her red suit with the garnet brooch on the lapel.

“I came as quickly as I could,” she said, “but I had various things to do in the shop before I could leave.”