Thinner Than Water by E.X. Ferrars

Author:E.X. Ferrars
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631942761
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2022-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The press, in the persons of three local reporters, arrived about nine o’clock. Felix supplied them with a f luent if not very accurate account of what had happened and did not let them approach Hannah.

Rosie and Gavin did not arrive until nearly twelve o’clock. On their way they had stopped at the police station in Spellbridge and been kept there for some time, and by the time that they reached Charlwood they knew as much about the murder as Hannah, Felix or I. But Gavin was not altogether prepared to believe this. He wanted a firsthand account from each of us of what we had seen and what we had told the police.

Felix, who had just returned from a session in the photographic studio of Oliver Flint, told a far more coherent story of what had happened than Hannah or I, though naturally he said nothing about his nocturnal rambling about the house. In a few minutes that he and I had to ourselves in the drawing room while Rosie and Gavin were upstairs in his room, unpacking their suitcases, and Hannah was in the kitchen, I asked him if he had found it worth his while, being photographed. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I didn’t find out anything I didn’t know already,” he said. “But he’s good, very good. Better than I expected. If he weren’t bone lazy, I think he could have become famous.”

I had often had the same feeling about Felix himself. With his imagination and intelligence, I believed that he might have achieved almost anything, if only he had been capable of occasional hard work.

“What did you expect to find out?” I asked.

“Nothing special,” he said. “But there was one thing that was interesting in its way. A photograph of Hannah that he had up on the wall. I don’t wonder she doesn’t like him.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“Only that it made her utterly frightening. A sort of gorgon. You could almost see the snakes writhing in her hair. When he saw me looking at it, he laughed and said it was one of the best things he’d ever done, but that it had cost him her friendship. There was another photograph that took my fancy, a family group of himself and Nora and Rosie, as different from the one of Hannah as it could possibly be. It was really charming.”

“If he was in it himself, I wonder who took it.”

“Hannah, perhaps, while they were still friends.”

I was just about to say that I did not feel sure that they had ever been friends, that friendship was not one of Hannah’s talents, when she came in, saying coldly that she had not expected to have to provide lunch for five people that day and that we should have to be satisfied with tinned ham, salad and cheese.

“I hardly eat anything for lunch myself when I’m alone,” she said. “Just some yogurt and an apple. I do all my cooking in the evening. But I expect you’re all hungry and want drinks as well.

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