The March Hare Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars Page B

waited.
    When she spoke again, her tone had a false casualness. She looked past him at the window.
    “When Ferdie and I got back from coffee with the Verinders this evening, there wasn’t any light in your room. Surely you hadn’t gone to bed already.”
    “I shouldn’t think so,” David said.
    “Then where were you? The pub must have shut some time before.”
    He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Where was I? I believe I was just lying down here, thinking about nothing in particular. Why?”
    “Oh, nothing,” Stella said. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t out for a walk or anything?”
    “No.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Of course, I’m sure. Why are you asking me all this?”
    “Oh, it’s nothing. Good-night, David.”
    “Good-night, Stella.”
    She went out. He heard her quick footsteps in the passage, and then the opening and closing of her bedroom door. Sitting still, staring before him, David suddenly realised, with a frightened sense of shock, the implications of those last, hurried questions.

II
    S TELLA was frightened. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. A feeling of terrible responsibility appalled her. Without the least intention, she had brought something frightful into being, that was her belief. Lying awake beside Ferdie in the darkness, she was not capable of questioning it. While she pretended to question it, going over the evidence again and again, in strained reiteration, her mind in reality was holding fast to its conviction that David had set the Verinders’ summer-house on fire, David had tried to murder Mark Verinder.
    And what evidence, after all, could she bring against this? There was David’s nature. She had never known him anything but gentle. But was it not sometimes the gentle people, who could not stand up for themselves, whose minds were filled with fantasies of violence? Besides, David had had a mental break-down, so that his control of such fantasies was probably even less than usual at the moment. … Stella sighed so deeply that she felt a sharp pain in her chest. It was she who had pressed David to come and stay here, and then, half-sensing the danger in the atmosphere, she had only felt hurt and angry at his bitter antagonism to Mark, instead of paying serious attention to the look that she had seen in David’s eyes. A look, she had thought, need not mean anything. A look does nothing. She had seen other people look at Mark with hatred. At times, she was sure, she had looked at him with hatred herself, though she loved him intensely, and once or twice, in moments of private agony, had thought that there might be some ease for her in his death. But that was not the point. The point was, could she find any evidence against its having been David who had set fire to the summer-house?
    David had a pathological terror of fire. That was something. She knew that the lorry with which David had run over the man in Italy had burst into flames. But she had an idea that any exaggerated fear could easily enough turn into its opposite. Fear and desire could sometimes be close together. So that was no argument. She closed her eyes against the harshly staring darkness. But she did not trouble to try to sleep; that would have been a useless strain. She had to think, to find evidence, to decide what to do.
    All of a sudden she got out of bed. She moved so abruptly that Ferdie stirred and asked drowsily, “What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” Stella said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “What time is it?” Ferdie asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Ferdie rolled over and burrowed his head into the pillow.
    Pulling on her dressing-gown, Stella went out, walking with some noise as far as the end of the passage, then tiptoeing silently and rapidly down the stairs.
    She went to the kitchen for the garage key, then out to the garage. She knew how many cans of petrol ought to be there, and it was as she had feared, one was missing.
    When she got back to bed she felt sick