The March Hare Murders Read Free Page B

creative limitations and resenting his inability to do anything else instead. He was a man of vague discontents and day-dreams, mixed up with some hard-headed shrewdness. There had never been any intimate liking between him and David, though they had always treated one another with reasonable friendliness.
    Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Ferdie watched as David went on unpacking.
    “Stella says you’re really pretty well now,” Ferdie said cautiously, his eyes on David’s face.
    “Why, yes,” David answered, “there’s nothing much the matter with me.”
    “You just need to take things quietly, I expect.”
    “Yes, that’s all,” David agreed.
    “Fine. Well, you can do that here all right.”
    “It’s extremely good of you and Stella to have me.” David bundled some socks into a drawer. “How are things with you, Ferdie?”
    “Me? Oh, not so bad. How d’you like the house?”
    “It’s very nice indeed.”
    “Cost five thousand,” Ferdie told him.
    “Good Lord!” David said.
    “I could sell it for seven to-morrow.” Ferdie suddenly sprang up. With a folded newspaper, he started lashing at a fly that was circling in the air above him. As the fly evaded him, Ferdie pursued it across the room. “I can’t stand flies!” he panted, beating with his paper against the window-pane until the fly dropped dead on the sill. “Never know what they’ve been on last, never can tell what infection they’re carrying. What I say is, one deserves to get ill, if one doesn’t keep the flies down in one’s house. … Yes, as I was saying, seven thousand, easily, to-morrow.”
    “But you aren’t thinking of selling it, are you?” David asked.
    “No, no, it’s a good property, worth hanging on to. Besides, property round here’s going to go up.” Ferdie looked out of the window. “That cottage of Verinder’s, I wouldn’t mind buying that up if I got the chance; it’d be a good investment.”
    “Is there any hope of his leaving?”
    “Not that I know of. Anyhow, he’s only the tenant—pays some fabulous rent, I suppose. The place belongs to a man called Fortis, who’s got a book-shop in Wellford.”
    David had found his swimming shorts, and tossing them aside, closed the suitcase. “D’you see a lot of Verinder?” he asked.
    “Oh, a goodish bit. Nice chap. Sound. I didn’t expect to like him. I used to read those articles of his on sociology and personal problems and what not, and his ideas got me down, they seemed so smooth and tricky. But I must say, what he said was often sense, and he’s all right when you get to know him.
    Conceited as hell, and can’t leave any woman alone, and you’ve only to rustle a pound note for him to come running up; besides, he’s a bore if you see too much of him, but still …” Again Ferdie lashed at the window-pane to slaughter a drowsily buzzing fly. The movement was so unexpected and so violent that David found something alarming in it, yet the fly escaped and wheeled away towards the ceiling. “Damn,” Ferdie muttered, smoothing the paper between thin, strong hands.
    “If I have to see much of Verinder …” David began, but he stopped himself.
    “Oh, he’s not so bad really, you know,” Ferdie said, “and he’s got a nice lot of books in that place of his. Very interesting—first editions and so on. And his wife’s nice. I feel sorry for her sometimes; still, I suppose she knew what she was doing. Oh, Verinder’s not so bad. … Now what about yourself, David? Got any plans yet?”
    “Some,” David said, “of a sort.”
    “No need to hurry. Best not to hurry. Still, it helps sometimes to have plans. The one thing I can’t stand is not to know what’s ahead of me. Uncertainty …!”
    David looked at him curiously. Five years ago Ferdie Pratt had seemed to him a mature and confident man; not a very clever man, not a very sensitive one, but sure and solid and with much natural good sense about him. Beside him, David had felt