‘Oh—’ said Marion.
Hilary nodded with vigour.
‘Looking about eleven feet high and too purposeful for words. I should think he’d just been seeing his mother and she’d been telling him what an escape he’d had, and how she’d been quite sure from the very beginning that I wasn’t at all suitable and would never have made him the sort of wife she had been to his father.’
Marion shook her head reprovingly. Hilary made a face and hurried on.
‘When I think that I might have had Mrs Cunningham for a mother-in-law it gives me the creeps all down my spine. What an escape! I expect my guardian angel arranged the Row on purpose to save me.’
Marion shook her head again.
‘Henry won’t expect you to see very much of her.’
Hilary flushed scarlet and stuck her chin in the air.
‘Henry won’t?’ she said. ‘How do you mean, Henry won’t? We’re absolutely, finally, and completely disengaged, and I don’t care what he expects or doesn’t expect. And you’re not letting me get on with my story, which is most adventurous and exciting. And the only reason I said anything at all about Henry was because I’ve got a nice open nature and I had to explain why I bolted into a completely wrong train and didn’t notice where I was until we were well on the way, and then I found it was a corridor train, so I knew I’d done something silly. And when I asked the woman in the corridor corner where we were going, first she said Ledlington, and then she clasped her hands and said she’d recognised me the minute I got into the train.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Darling, I don’t know. But you ought to be able to place her, because it was you she really wanted to ask about. And at first I thought it was just curiosity, because she let on that she’d seen me with you in court—it must have been the afternoon Aunt Emmeline crocked up, because that was the only time I was there—and of course I just boiled, and got up to go and find another carriage, because ghouls make me perfectly sick. And then I saw she wasn’t a ghoul.’
‘How?’ Marion’s voice was strained.
‘She caught my coat, and I could feel her shaking. She looked most frightfully unhappy and sort of desperate—not gloating like a ghoul. And she said she only wanted to know how you were, because she’d always liked you, and—things like that.’
It came over Hilary rather late in the day that it would really have been better to stick to Henry as a topic. She had bolted for the second time with a rather similar result. The story of her adventure wasn’t really calculated to bring Marion out of her mood, but she would have to go through with it now, because Marion was asking insistently, ‘Who was she?’
‘I don’t know, darling—I told you I didn’t. I really do think she was a bit batty, because she talked in the oddest way. There was a man with her. He went along the corridor just about the time I came to—after seeing Henry, you know. And she said awfully queer things about him, like thanking God he’d gone, because she’d been hoping and praying she’d get a chance of speaking to me. She was most frightfully worked up, you know, twisting her hands about and clutching at her collar as if she couldn’t breathe.’
‘What was she like?’ said Marion slowly. She was leaning her head upon her hand, and the long fingers hid her eyes.
‘Well—rather like Aunt Emmeline’s Mrs Tidmarsh—you know, the one who comes in and obliges when Eliza has a holiday. Not really, but a sort of family likeness—that all-overish look and awfully respectable—and the way she called me miss all the time. I’ve known Mrs Tidmarsh do it twice in a sentence, and I’m not at all sure this poor thing didn’t too.’
‘Middle-aged?’
‘Born that way. You know how it is with Mrs Tidmarsh—you simply couldn’t think of her being a baby, or young. Like her clothes—they never get any older, and you can’t imagine their ever being new.’
‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ said Marion Grey. And then, ‘What did she want to know?’
‘About you—how you were—whether you were all right—and—and about Geoff—’ She hesitated. ‘Marion, she did say one awfully queer thing. I don’t know whether I ought—’
‘Yes—tell me.’
Hilary looked at her doubtfully. That was the worst of getting into a wrong train, you never knew where it was going to take you.
‘Well, I expect she’s barmy really. She said she’d tried to see you whilst the case was going on. She said she gave him the slip and went round to where you were staying, but of course they didn’t let her in. But she said something like “If they had” under her breath—I didn’t quite catch it, because she was all choky and shaky, but that’s what it sounded like. No, it was, “I didn’t see her,” and then, “If I had,” or something like that. She was so worked up that I can’t be sure.’
Hilary’s voice became uncertain and faded away. Something had happened to the atmosphere. It had become strange, and the strangeness came from Marion, who had not moved and who did not speak. She sat there with her hand over her eyes, and the strangeness flowed from her and filled the room.
Hilary bore it as long as she could. Then she unlocked her hands and scrambled up on to her knees, and at the same moment Marion got up and went over to the window. There was an oak chest which made a windowseat, the deeply panelled front towards the room, the top littered with green and blue cushions. Marion swept them to the floor, opened the lid, and came back with a photograph album in her hand. She did not speak, but sat down and began to turn the leaves.
Presently she found what she was looking for, and held the page for Hilary to see. It was a snapshot taken in a garden. A rose arch, a bed of lilies with sharply recurved petals, a tea-table, people having tea. Marion smiling out of the picture—an elderly man with a heavy moustache.
Hilary had never seen James Everton, but every line of his face was most sickeningly familiar. All the newspapers in England had been full of him and his photograph a year ago when Geoffrey Grey was being tried for his murder.
Geoffrey wasn’t in the picture. That was because he was taking it, and Marion’s smile was for him. But there was a third person, a woman leaning over the tea-table setting down a plate of scones.
Like Marion, she faced the camera. She had a plate in her right hand, and she looked as if someone had just spoken to her or called her name.
Hilary gave a little gasp and said, ‘Oh, yes—that’s her!’
THREE
THERE WAS A pause. Hilary looked at the photograph, and Marion looked at Hilary with a faint bitter smile.
‘That is Mrs Mercer,’ she said, ‘James’ housekeeper.’ She took the book back and laid it open on her knee. ‘Geoffrey might have got off if it hadn’t been for her. Her evidence tipped the scale. She cried, you know, all the time she was giving it, and of course that went down well with the jury. If she’d been vindictive or hard, it wouldn’t have hurt Geoff half as much, but when she swore with sobs that she’d heard him quarrelling with James about the will, she damned him. There was just a chance they’d believe he’d found James dead, but she finished that.’ Marion’s voice left off on the edge of a break. After a moment she said in a curious, wondering tone, ‘I always thought she was such a nice woman. She gave me the recipe for those scones. She seemed to like me.’
Hilary was sitting back on her heels.
‘She said she’d always liked you.’
‘Then why did she do it? Why did she do it? I’ve thought myself blind and stupid, and I can’t get a glimmer of why she should have done it.’
‘Yes—why?’ said Hilary.
‘She was lying. But why should she have lied? She liked Geoff. She gave that evidence against him as if she was on the rack—that’s what made it so damning. But why did she give it at all? That’s what I can’t, can’t get any answer to. James was dead when Geoff got there. We went over and over it together. It was eight o’clock when James rang him up. We had just finished dinner, and he went straight off—oh, you’ve heard it a hundred times, but what
matters is that it’s true. James did ring him up. He did go down to Putney just as he said in his evidence. He stood over there and hung up the receiver, and said, “James wants to see me at once. He sounds in a most awful stew.” He kissed me and ran down the stairs. And when he got there James was dead—fallen down across his writing-table, and the pistol lying there. And Geoff picked it up. Oh, if only he hadn’t picked it up! He said he didn’t know he had until he saw it in his hand. He came in by the garden door, and he didn’t see anyone till he saw James, and James was dead, and the pistol was there and he picked it up. And then Mercer came knocking at the door, and it was locked. Hilary—who locked it? It was locked on the inside and the key in the door, and only Geoff’s finger-prints on the key and on the handle, because he went and tried the door when Mercer knocked. And then he turned the key and let him in, and there was Mercer and Mrs Mercer, and Mercer said, “Oh, my God, Mr Geoff! What have you done?”’
‘Don’t!’ said Hilary. ‘Don’t go over it, darling—it doesn’t do any good.’
‘Do you think I’d sit here and talk if there was anything I could do?’ said Marion in a low, exhausted voice. ‘Mercer said he hadn’t heard anything except what he took to be a burst tyre or a motor-bike back-firing about a minute before. He was in the pantry cleaning the glass and silver and putting it away. And he was—his cleaning things were all spread about, and the stuff was on his hands. But Mrs Mercer had been upstairs to turn down James’ bed, and she said when she came through the hall she heard voices very loud in the study. And she said she went and listened because she was frightened, and she swore she heard Geoffrey in there quarrelling with James. And then she swore she heard the shot, and screamed and ran for Mercer.’ She got up, and the photograph-album fell sprawling against Hilary’s knees.
With an abrupt but graceful movement Marion pushed back the chair and began to walk up and down. She was so pale that Hilary was frightened. Her air of exhaustion had changed into one of restless pain.
‘I’ve gone over it, and over it, and over it. I’ve gone over it until I can say it in my sleep and it doesn’t mean anything at all. None of it means anything. It got to be like that in court—just a noise—just words. And that woman crying and swearing Geoff’s life away, and no reason for it, no motive anywhere—no motive for anyone to kill James. Except Geoff if he’d lost his head and done it in a rage when James told him about the new will and cutting him out of everything. Hilary, he didn’t do it—he didn’t! I swear he didn’t! They made a lot of his hot temper, but I’ll swear he didn’t do it! James brought him up to be his heir, and he’d no right to change like that. He’d no right to take him into the office and promise him a partnership, and then go back on it, if that’s what he meant to do. But Geoff wouldn’t have touched him—I know he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even have hit him, and it simply isn’t possible that he shot him.’ She stopped her restless pacing by the window and stood with her back to the room for a silent moment. Then she said, ‘It isn’t possible—except in a nightmare—but this has been a nightmare so long, and—sometimes—I—feel—that—I—may—begin—to—believe—in—it.’
Hilary said, ‘No!’ with a quick sob.
Marion turned round.
‘Why did James destroy his will and make another one? Why did he leave everything to Bertie Everton? He never had a good word to say about him, and he was fond of Geoff. They were together all the day before. There wasn’t any quarrel—there wasn’t anything. And next day he destroyed his will and made another one, and at eight o’clock that night he sent for Geoff, and Geoff found him dead.’
‘You don’t think—’ said Hilary.
‘I’ve done nothing but think—I’m nearly mad with thinking.’
Hilary was shaken with excitement. She had lived with Marion for nearly a year, and never, never, never had Marion discussed the Case before. She kept it shut up in a horrible secret place inside her, and she never forgot it for a moment waking or sleeping, but she never, never, never spoke about it.
And Hilary had always seethed with bright ideas about the Case. If Marion would only talk about it, open her horrid secret place and let the darkness out and Hilary’s bright ideas in, well, she felt quite, quite sure she would be able to pounce on something which had been overlooked and the whole thing would be cleared up.
‘No—no—darling, do listen. Marion, please. You don’t think somebody forged the will?’
Marion stood by the chest, half turned from the room. She gave a laugh that was a good deal like a sob.
‘Oh, Hilary, what a child you are! Do you suppose that wasn’t thought of? Do you suppose everything wasn’t thought of? He drove down to the bank, and it was witnessed by the manager and one of the clerks.’
‘Why?’ said Hilary. ‘I mean, why didn’t he get the Mercers to do it? You don’t generally go to a bank to sign your will.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marion wearily. ‘He did, anyhow. The Mercers couldn’t sign because they had a legacy. James sent for his solicitor and destroyed the old will in his presence. Then he got him to make the new one, and they went down to the bank together and James signed it there.’
‘Where was Bertie Everton?’ said Hilary.
‘In Edinburgh. He went up by the night train.’
‘Then he was here the day before?’
‘Oh, yes—he went down to Putney and he saw James—dined with him as a matter of fact. But you can’t make anything out of that, except that obviously something was said or done which made James change his mind—and his will. He had always loathed Bertie, but something happened all in about an hour and a half to make him decide to leave him every penny he’d got. I was down for a thousand in the old will, and he even cut that out. Bertie’s brother Frank, who’d always had an allowance from him and can’t keep a job to save his life, he was cut out, too. Under the old will the allowance was to continue. He’s a bad hat and a rolling stone, but he was just as much James’ nephew as Bertie or Geoff, and James always meant to provide for him. He used to say he’d got a screw loose, but he didn’t loathe him like he loathed Bertie. Bertie was everything he detested—and he left him every penny.’
Hilary put her hands on the floor behind her and leaned on them.
‘Why did he detest him? What’s the matter with Bertie?’
Marion gave an odd, quick shrug.
‘Nothing. That’s what enraged James. He used to say that Bertie had never done a stroke of work in his life nor wanted to. He’s got some money, you know, and he just floats round gracefully, collecting china, playing the piano, dancing with all the girls, and being very agreeable to their mothers and aunts and grandmothers—you never see him speaking to a man. And when James heard he was embroidering chair-covers for a set of Louis Quinze chairs he’d picked up at a sale—well, Geoff and I honestly thought he was going to have a fit.’
‘Marion, how do you know this Bertie creature was in Scotland when James—died?’
‘He went up by the night train. He was staying at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh. He’d been there for some days when he came down to see James, no one knows why. Well, he saw him and he went back again. His waiter said he had breakfast and lunch in the hotel, and after lunch he made a complaint about the bell in his room being out of order, and at four o’clock he was worrying about a telephone call he was expecting.’ She lifted her hand and let it fall on the lid of the chest. ‘You see—he couldn’t have been at Putney. James was dead by a quarter past eight. Besides—Bertie—if you knew him—’
‘I’m thinking about the other one,’ said Hilary, ‘Frank, the rolling-stone bad-lot one.’
‘It’s no good, I’m afraid,’ said Marion. ‘Frank was in Glasgow. He’s got the best alibi of anyone, because he was actually having his allowance paid over to him just before six o’clock. James paid it through a Glasgow solicitor weekly because Frank never could make any money last for more than a week whatever it was. He called to collect it just before six that day, and he di
dn’t leave the office till getting on for a quarter past six, so I’m afraid he couldn’t possibly have murdered James. It would have been so nice and simple if he had, but—he didn’t.’
‘Who did?’ said Hilary before she could stop to think.
Marion was standing still. At Hilary’s question she seemed to become something more than still. Where there is life there is breath, and where there is breath there is always some movement. Marion seemed to have stopped breathing. There was a long, frightening minute when it seemed to Hilary that she had stopped breathing. She stared at her with round, terrified eyes, and it came to her that Marion wasn’t sure—wasn’t sure about Geoff. She loved Geoff terribly, but she wasn’t sure that he hadn’t killed James Everton. That seemed so shocking to Hilary that she couldn’t think of anything to say or anything to do. She leaned back upon her hands and felt them go numb.
Marion’s stillness broke. She turned suddenly, and suddenly all the self-control of that year of misery and iron broke, too. She said, ‘I don’t know—nobody knows—nobody will ever know. We shall just go on, and on, and on, and we shall never know. I’m twenty-five and Geoff is twenty-eight. Perhaps we shall have to go on for another fifty years. Fifty years.’ Her voice went down into some cold depth.
Hilary took her weight off her numb hands and scrambled up.
‘Marion—darling—don’t! It’s not really for life—you know—they let them out.’
‘Twenty-five years,’ said Marion in a tormented voice. ‘Twenty-five years, and something off for good conduct. Say it’s twenty years—twenty years. You don’t know what one year has done to him. It would have been better if they had killed him at once. They’re killing him now, a little at a time, a little bit every day, and long before the twenty years are up he’ll be dead. There won’t be anything left that I knew or loved. There’ll be a body called Geoffrey Grey, because his body won’t die. He’s strong, and they say it’s a very healthy life, so his body won’t die. Only my Geoff is dying—now—now—whilst we’re talking.’
Case Is Closed Page 2
