The March Hare Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars

Ingrid asked.
    “Nothing. Nothing whatever.” Verinder shook his head. “Nothing unless you think I should worry over the fact that apparently someone has tried to murder me.”
    Stella put down her cup so abruptly that the coffee slopped on to the table.
    Verinder gave his light, falsetto laugh.
    “I’m sorry, I meant it as a joke,” he said, “but just possibly there might be something in it. What d’you think, all my kind friends here? Granted I can’t be beloved by everybody, d’you think any one could actually dislike me enough to try to murder me?”
    There was a startled silence. Then Ingrid replied placidly. “None of us has the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Giles has,” Verinder replied.
    “You mean the petrol-can?” Giles Clay said.
    “Of course. The petrol-can.”
    “Well,” Giles said, glancing round the table, yet, as David noticed, not looking into any one’s eyes, “I found a new petrol-can in the hedge just by the summer-house, which makes it look as if the fire had been started deliberately. And I suppose, when Mark talks about murder, what he means is that if he’d still been sleeping out there, as he has been all summer, there wouldn’t be much left of him at this moment.”
    “Nothing but the charred remains of an incinerated scholar.” Verinder gave another little giggle. “As a matter of fact, and in spite of my having made a note in my will that I should prefer to be cremated, I find the thought rather unsavoury. Well, my dears, what do you think?”
    In the long uncomfortable pause that followed, Ferdie tapped the rim of his saucer with his teaspoon, Stella sat taut and straight in her chair, Giles Clay frowned moodily, tipping his chair gently backwards and forwards, Ingrid rearranged the wrap around her shoulders. Looking from one to the other, David felt that there was something crazy about all this, that it arose out of some preposterous fantasy that had taken possession of them all. Then, to his extreme annoyance, he heard Verinder addressing him directly.
    “You, Obeney,” Verinder said, “you’ve known me longer than any of the others. Tell me your frank opinion of my murderability.”
    Reluctantly, David met Verinder’s eyes, and it seemed to him that they had more than their usual brightness.
    David sighed. “Isn’t that the wrong word?” he asked.
    “Is it?”
    “We’re all murderable,” David said. “It’s a human characteristic. The question is, are we worth murdering?”
    “Dear me,” Verinder said, “and you think I’m not? I’m not sure that I like the sound of that.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know,” David said. “Although we’ve known each other for so long, Professor, our knowledge of one another has been rather limited.”
    Stella spoke suddenly and loudly, as if she could not bear this any more. “How absurd, how ridiculous you both are, talking about murder like that. Of course David doesn’t know anything about who might want to murder Mark—and of course nobody else wants to murder him.”
    Giles straightened his chair with a jolt. “What about the petrol-can?”
    “Oh, it must have been some lunatic, a holiday-maker probably,” Stella said, “who set fire to the summer-house without knowing a thing about Mark.”
    “Yes, that’s what I think,” Ferdie said. He pushed his coffee away as if he disliked the taste of it.
    Verinder began to smile again. “Can it be that my mind is too melodramatic?” His eyes slid along to meet Ingrid’s. She met them calmly. “And what do you think my dear?”
    “You are melodramatic,” she said, smoothing her dark hair back. “Very.”
    “Well, well, this is all very reassuring.” But Verinder’s smile had died quickly. “And you, Giles?”
    Giles Clay did not answer.
    Getting up from the table, Verinder seemed all of a sudden to be very angry. It was a contained, fuming rage. Thrusting his head forward, he said in a harsh, high voice, “It wouldn’t have