Rehearsals for Murder by Elizabeth Ferrars Page B

of the emotional interchange. Which was it?”
    â€œI generally picked something pleasant and entertaining which I thought she would enjoy. Why I’m telling you this is that I want you to understand the relationship that existed between us—as I myself understood it. Well, a short while ago she and I came to an arrangement about a summer holiday for Vanessa. Miss Capell had some relations who own a farm near Okehampton; the arrangement was that Vanessa should spend about a month with them. They have several children, and the companionship of other children has been a serious lack in my daughter’s life. Her aunt and uncle are devoted to her but they’re elderly and somewhat eccentric, so altogether I thought the change an excellent idea. Yesterday afternoon Miss Capell came to tea with me in order to——”
    â€œWhere?” said Toby.
    â€œAt my flat. She came in order to make the final arrangements. I’d arranged, of course, to pay for Vanessa’s board but I also wanted to make some payment to Miss Capell for all the trouble she was taking. I knew she’d no work, in fact was subsisting on what she could get from the Unemployment Assistance Board. However…” In his sigh was a sound of heavy pain. “If I’d realized how she’d take the suggestion, if I’d had the least anticipation of the distress it’d cause her, I’d never have made it. She was unbelievably distressed—unbelievably. She said I was the last person on earth from whom she’d dream of accepting any money. She said——” He hesitated, and his voice went stiff and cold with discomfort. “She said she was in love with me.”
    Toby looked up sharply.
    â€œOh,” said Roger Clare swiftly, “of course I knew it was—it was, well, a combination of her warm and expansive nature and her sympathy for…”
    â€œYour bereavement,” Toby suggested.
    â€œIn short,” said Roger Clare, “I realized it was simply a mixture of her own generosity and a certain amount of gratitude that gave her this—this idea. Nevertheless, it upset me a great deal. I wondered if I’d been to blame. It made me feel——”
    â€œWe can guess how it made you feel,” said Toby.
    â€œLet’s get on to the telephoning.”
    Roger Clare rose and again paced across the floor. He was more restless and less master of his nerves than he liked to show.
    â€œI decided,” he said, “perhaps mistakenly, I don’t know, that the best thing for Lou would be if she and I were to terminate the friendship between us, if we were simply to agree to see no more of one another. I thought, too, that it’d be best if I were to make some other arrangement for Vanessa. As I say, perhaps I was wrong. She became—she became exceedingly distressed. She cried. She told me she hadn’t dreamt of its making any difference to our relations. She begged that she should be allowed to take Vanessa down to Okehampton. Well, I agreed. That’s to say”—his hand was again busy, smoothing his unruffled hair—“I agreed at the time. But after she’d gone I started thinking it over and came to the conclusion that this business of—of obligations and gratitude and so on had better cease. I rang up her flat——”
    â€œTelephone makes it so much easier, doesn’t it?” said Toby.
    â€œI rang up her flat, but she wasn’t there. I rang up several times and again in the morning, but there wasn’t any answer. So I decided to ring up here. I thought perhaps I could catch her before she and Vanessa left for Devon. It was Mrs Fry who answered the telephone. She told me that Miss Capell was staying for the weekend. So after lunch I drove down here to see her and tell her my view of things.”
    â€œDid you tell Mrs Fry why you were telephoning?” asked Vanner.
    â€œNo, I told her I’d