The March Hare Murders Read Free Page A

most outrageous injury that had ever been done to him, and he could not forgive his victim, he could not come to terms with him. But that was a terrible feeling. Hatred should precede a killing, not follow it, not eternally outlast it.
    David stood up. He had a feeling of uncomfortable enclosure in the room. “I think I’ll go and have that swim now,” he said.
    “Won’t you stay and see Ferdie first?” Stella suggested. “He’ll be in any time now.”
    “Well, all right.” But he did not sit down again. “I think I’ll go upstairs and unpack my things. You can call me when Ferdie comes.” He went to the door, went upstairs and shut himself into his bedroom.
    It was a big room at the front of the house, and from its window he could see the pale blue shimmering of the sea between wind-battered pine trees. He could also see a cottage which he supposed was Bell Cottage, the week-end home of Professor Verinder. It was a small white building with green shutters, and two surprisingly tall chimneys which put David in mind of the March Hare’s cottage in Alice in Wonderland. In the garden a woman in a light dress was stooping over one of the flower-beds, picking some dahlias. While David was at the window, she suddenly glanced up and appeared to see him. Straightening her back, she stood looking at him with a curious, long stare. Annoyed, David moved back from the window and began his unpacking.
    His suitcase was on the floor in the middle of the room. Lifting it on to the patchwork quilt on the bed, he unlocked it and took out the grey suit that was packed at the top. Shaking out the suit, he carried it to the tall wardrobe in the corner and arranged it on a hanger. It was a long time since he had worn that suit. He had collected it that day, in passing through London, together with some other possessions that he had not seen for a long time, from his old rooms in Doughty Street. His landlady had kept everything for him carefully. She had shown off her care to him with pride, pointing out moth-balls and tissue-paper wrappings. David had wondered about it. She had had no obligation to be so careful for him. But no one had any obligation to be as helpful as they seemed ready to be. Yet, as he looked round the pleasant room, at the bowl of white and yellow daisies on the table and the books beside the bed, he wished with a surge of desperation that he had made up his mind to go away from all this helpfulness and kindness.
    As he took his pyjamas out of the case, something heavy slid out of their folds on to the counterpane. It was his service revolver, which he ought to have surrendered long ago. His landlady had found it among his things and had begged him to remove it. She had told him it made her uneasy to have it in the house. David picked it up. The touch of it gave him an unpleasant feeling, and he wished he had got rid of it at the proper time. But he had never been good at getting rid of things. To do so needed some power of decision in which he was usually lacking. Glancing around at drawers and cupboards, he wondered what to do with the thing. At that moment the door opened.
    “Good Lord,” his brother-in-law said, “whatever are you doing with that?”
    “Wondering where to put it,” David said, laying the revolver down on the dressing-table. “Hallo, Ferdie.”
    “Hallo,” Ferdie Pratt said and came into the room and clapped David on the shoulder.
    Ferdie was thirty-seven. During the last five years he had aged, so it seemed to David, far more than one would have expected. He looked tired and seedy and uncertain, and with that, he had become heartier and louder and less convincing. He had been the athletic type that loses its vigour early. But he still had a kind of good looks, a wiry compactness of body, a ruddy simplicity of feature. His sandy hair was turning grey. He was an architect with offices in Wellford and was not unsuccessful in his work, but all his life he had disliked it, recognising his