Free The March Hare Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars

summer-house.”
    Deirdre asked quickly, “Who made that suggestion?”
    “I think it was Verinder himself.”
    “Oh. … Then d’you think there’s any need to take it particularly seriously?”
    “Why not?”
    “He is very melodramatic.”
    “Well, personally I’m not inclined to take any of it particularly seriously,” David said. “A summer-house was burnt, nothing valuable was damaged, and that’s that.”
    “And the petrol-can taken from your garage?”
    “Perhaps it wasn’t taken. Perhaps it was never there.”
    “It seems such an odd thing to do,” Deirdre said thoughtfully, tapping her cigarette on the edge of an ashtray, “to burn an empty summer-house. Now if it had been the cottage itself …”
    Stella swung round on them. “Well, if it had been?”
    “No,” Deirdre said, “it would have been a pity really. It’s a nice little cottage. They don’t build them like that any more. D’you think someone who wants it would be trying to drive Verinder out of it? Perhaps Sam Fortis would like it himself. It belongs to him, and it’s much nicer than that suburban shack where he and Winnfrieda live. Only I imagine Verinder pays Sam some utterly fabulous rent for it.”
    “As a matter of fact,” Stella said, “I know that he only pays twenty-five shillings a week. Ingrid told me so.”
    “Twenty-five shillings!” Deirdre looked at her in astonishment. “But that’s impossible.”
    “It’s what Ingrid told me,” Stella said.
    “But Sam isn’t a fool, and he could easily get three or four guineas for it.”
    “Ingrid said it’s the pre-war rent,” Stella explained. “If a place has been let at a certain rent before, you can’t just put it up nowadays. It isn’t legal.”
    “But it hasn’t been let before.”
    “Not let?”
    “No, it belonged to Miss Seymour, that old lady who’d had it built and who lived in it till she died last year,” Deirdre said. “Then Sam bought it and let it to Verinder.”
    “Well, what does it matter anyway,” Stella said. “All it means is that Sam isn’t a profiteer.”
    “But twenty-five shillings is absurd.” Deirdre sounded as if she were annoyed by the absurdity. She sat staring in front of her with a frown hardening the lines of her face.
    “Perhaps,” David said, “Verinder has a hold over Sam Fortis.” He said it cheerfully, and it was plain that he did not mean it. All the time, during this conversation, Stella was amazed by David’s cheerfulness, as if talking of Verinder in this way was doing him good. “A slight touch of blackmail,” he added.
    “Ah, you’re probably quite right,” Deirdre said. “I’ve always thought Verinder was a crook of some sort. For one thing, how does he get enough money to go abroad so often and for so long? I’ve often wondered about that. He’s going to France again in a few weeks’ time, you know. And he was there only last month.”
    “Doesn’t some Council of Something or Other send him to conferences of one sort and another?” David suggested.
    Deirdre laughed. “I’m very much afraid you’re probably right about that,” she said, “only it would be nicer to think he was mixed up with some underground racket. Not necessarily blackmail, because I don’t see how that would help him with currency difficulties, but blackmail might come into it somewhere—it strikes me as quite in character. By the way, Mr. Obeney, are you interested in books?”
    The abrupt and obvious change of subject irritated Stella. Unable to stay still, she fidgeted about the room. She heard David say, “Books? People here are always asking me sudden questions about books. What is it about the place?” She heard Deirdre answer, “I meant their bindings. I bind books, you know. I wondered if you were interested.” All at once Stella thought of Winnfrieda Fortis. She would talk to Winnfrieda.
    It was only a few minutes later that Deirdre rose to go. To Stella’s surprise, David suggested that he should