The March Hare Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars Page A

been at all nice to be burnt alive, you know—not at all nice! Are any of you thinking about that?”
    “But you could have got out quite easily,” Ingrid said, yawning. “It’s not as if you’d have been on a third floor, with the stairs burning.”
    “Oh, indeed,” Verinder said, still more shrilly. “And suppose the bed-clothes had caught fire before I woke. That would have been quite pleasant, I suppose. And suppose I’d had my hair burnt off, and my eyebrows. Suppose I’d been disfigured; would you have liked that? I’m being melodramatic, am I? You think I’m just trying to attract attention to myself, suggesting, to use my friend Obeney’s pleasant phrase, that I’m ‘worthy’ of being murdered? I tell you, I’m not sure that I like that. I’m not sure that I like it at all.”
    “You ought to go to bed,” Ingrid said. “You’re tired.”
    Stella stood up quickly. She drank her coffee, said a hurried good-night and went out, without waiting to make sure that Ferdie and David were following her. The colour was high in her cheeks, and she avoided speaking directly to Verinder.
    When David and Ferdie came out into the garden, they found that the fire was still burning. But it was dwindling rapidly, single flames licking around charred remnants of wood which kept subsiding upon one another into a smaller and smaller heap. When David reached his bedroom, the fire had sunk so low that he could scarcely see it from his window. Only occasional sparks leapt up into the darkness.
    He was stooping to take off his shoes when he heard the door open. Stella came in softly, closed the door and leant against it, her arms hanging limply at her sides. She waited a moment, then said in a whisper, “It wasn’t his fault, David.”
    David was feeling unbearably weary. He dragged off a shoe. “What wasn’t?”
    “What you saw—his kissing me.”
    “Oh, that.” He tugged at a shoelace which had got knotted.
    “Really it wasn’t,” Stella said. “And you needn’t worry about me either. I know what I’m doing.”
    The shoelace broke.
    She went on. “And I know he doesn’t love me, so you needn’t worry about that either. But you won’t find me in the river. I can take the consequences of my actions.”
    “Let’s talk about it another time,” David said.
    “No, I want to talk about it now,” she said, “and then say no more about it. I don’t want you ever to refer to it again.”
    “I haven’t referred to it,” he said.
    She went on feverishly. “I know he doesn’t love me. He did only for a very short while, but that was worth it to me, and I can stand what I’ve got to stand. But it wasn’t his fault; I want you to know that.”
    “All right,” David said. He dragged the shoe off without untying the lace. The shoe made a noisy thump as it fell on the floor.
    “Oh, listen to me!” Stella said passionately.
    “I have been listening,” David said.
    “Why don’t you say anything?”
    “There’s nothing to say, is there?”
    “You realise, of course,” she said, “that Ferdie doesn’t know.”
    All of a sudden David wished that he could have gone to her and put his arms around her and comforted her, but there had never been any habit of open tenderness between them, and besides, at that moment, such a gesture from him would have hurt her pride.
    “Lord, I’m tired,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
    “Of course, Mark’s in love now with Deirdre Masson,” Stella said. “But that won’t last either. Nothing lasts with him. He’s a terribly unhappy man really. I understand him so well, and I realise that it isn’t his fault.”
    “And where does Ingrid come in—or doesn’t she?”
    “Oh, she only wanted his money anyhow,” Stella said indifferently. “I think she’s quite happy.”
    “I hope you’re right.”
    Stella took hold of the door-handle. “Well, good-night.”
    “Good-night.”
    “Oh, David——”
    She paused a long time. David