‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I want to know what you meant when you said you tried to see Mrs Grey while the trial was on.’
Mrs Mercer strained away from the sink and from Hilary.
‘I did go—I did try—nobody can’t say I didn’t try. I thought he’d have killed me then.’
‘You tried to see her, and she was resting. Why did you try? What did you want to say to her?’
She felt the crazy leap of the pulse that was under her hand. Her grasp tightened. Her head swam with all the unhappiness that had been since then. It wasn’t battle, murder, and sudden death that were the most dreadful things—it was having to go on after they had scorched your life to the bone. She thought of Marion as she had been, Marion as she was now.
She said in a breaking voice, ‘You asked me about Marion. She’s so changed. If you could see her you wouldn’t be able to bear it—you wouldn’t really. Won’t you tell me why you went to see her, and what you were going to say? You say if she had seen you—you said it in the train. If she had seen you—what were you going to tell her if she had seen you?’
Mrs Mercer stopped pulling away. The hand at her side dropped limply. She said in a faint, exhausted tone, ‘It’s too late.’
‘Tell me,’ said Hilary.
Mrs Mercer shook her head, not with any energy, but as if, being weak, she could not keep it from shaking.
‘Let me go!’ she said.
Hilary held the cold wrist.
‘What were you going to tell her?’
Mrs Mercer began to cry. Her nose twitched and the tears ran down beside it into her mouth.
‘It’s no use,’ she said with a gasping sob. ‘I was brought up religious, and I know what I done. I darsn’t read my Bible, and I darsn’t say my prayers, and I darsn’t go back on what I promised Mercer. If I had told her then, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but what’s said now won’t mend what’s gone, nor it won’t save me from what I done. Only if Mercer was to know he’d kill me, and then I’d be in hell.’ She had stopped gasping. The words came out with hardly any breath behind them, her voice failing but never quite gone.
Hilary shook the wrist she was holding.
‘Hell’s now,’ she said, ‘when you’re doing something wicked. No wonder you’re unhappy. Tell me what you were going to say to Marion. Please tell me. I won’t go till you do. Do you want Mercer to come back and find me here? I don’t. But I can’t go till you’ve told me.’
Mrs Mercer leaned towards her across the sink.
‘He’ll kill you,’ she said in a whispering voice, ‘with the bread-knife or something—and say I did it as like as not—and say I’m mad. He tells everyone I’m mad, and when he’s killed you that’s what he’ll say—“My wife done it.” And they’ll take me away and lock me up—because he’ll say I’m mad.’
Hilary’s heart banged against her side. Was it true? Was it? Was it? She said, very slow, and afraid, and like a child, ‘Are you mad, Mrs Mercer?’
The woman broke into a flood of tears.
‘I’m not, I’m not! Not without he sends me mad with all his wickedness! Oh, miss, I wish I were dead—I wish I were dead!’
Hilary stopped feeling afraid. She managed to pat the heaving shoulder, and felt it pitifully sharp and thin.
‘Mrs Mercer, do stop crying. If you said what wasn’t true at the trial—and I think you did, because I know Geoff never killed anyone, I really know it—if you did a wicked thing like that, don’t you see your only chance is to tell the truth now and put it right? I don’t wonder you feel like that about hell, with Geoff in prison and Marion so unhappy. But just think how awful it would have been for you if he’d been hanged and there wasn’t anything you could do that would bring him back and put things right again. Doesn’t that make you feel a bit better? Because you can put it right now. You don’t want to go on being miserable like this—do you?’
Mrs Mercer wrenched sharply away.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ she said. ‘You get along out of here, or something’ll happen!’
The tears stung Hilary’s eyes. She had thought—she had been sure—the wildest hopes had dazzled her—and then suddenly everything was gone.
Mrs Mercer had retreated into the doorway. She stood there leaning against the jamb. There was a wretched triumph in her voice.
‘You go back on to the road and turn to the left, and you’ll get to Ledlington! Where’s your bicycle?’
Hilary straightened herself. She was stiff from leaning over the sill.
‘Smashed.’ And then, ‘They tried to kill me.’
Mrs Mercer put up a hand, touched her lips, and let it fall again. The lips parted and said, ‘Who?’
‘Don’t you know?’ said Hilary with a little scorn in her voice.
Mrs Mercer backed away from her into the kitchen. When she was clear of the door she thrust at it with her hands and with her knee. The door fell to with a clap. Hilary was alone in the foggy dark.
She felt her way back round the house and out at the gate. Then she followed the ruts again.
TWENTY ONE
MARION GREY WAS showing a dress called Moonlight. There was very little of it, but what there was was quite well named. The time was five o’clock in the afternoon. Harriet St Just’s showroom was full of women, some of whom had come there to amuse themselves and not to buy. Most of them called her Harry, or darling. She charged incredible prices for her clothes, and had contrived a quite astonishing success in the three years of her venture. She and Marion had been at school together, but she recognised no friendships during business hours. From ten to six Marion was simply Vania, and one of the best mannequins in London.
A dark, stooping woman, lined and haggard, called across half a dozen people, ‘Harry, that’s divine! I’ll have it just as it is. Ask her to turn round and let me see the back again.’
Marion turned slowly, gracefully looked over a shadowy shoulder, and held the pose. Her dark hair was knotted on her neck. She was made up to a smooth, even pallor. The shadows under her eyes made them look unnaturally large, unnaturally dark. She did not look as if she were really there at all. The dress followed the lovely lines of her figure, softening them like a mist.
Harriet St Just said, ‘That will do. You can show the black velvet next.’
Marion went out trailing her blue-grey moonlight. A girl called Celia who had been showing a bright green sports suit giggled as the showroom door closed behind them.
‘Old Katie’s got a nerve! “I’ll have that”!’ She mimicked the dark woman’s voice. ‘Gosh—what a hag she’ll look in it! I call it a shame—a lovely dress like that!’
Marion said nothing. With the skill of long practice she was slipping the dress off over her head. She managed it without ruffling a single hair. Then she took down a black velvet dress with a matching cloak and began to put it on.
A short, fair woman with thick fluffy eyebrows put her head round the door.
‘Someone wants you on the phone, Vania.’
Celia giggled again.
‘Well, I wouldn’t be you if old Harry gets to know about it! In the middle of a dress show! I say, Flora, have I really got to show that ghastly pink rag? It’s not my style a bit. I wouldn’t be seen dead in it in the Tottenham Court Road—and I can’t say fairer than that.’
‘You just hurry!’ said Flora and shut the door on her.
Marion lifted the receiver from the office telephone. Flora ought to have said she was engaged. She couldn’t imagine who could possibly be ringing her up here. They had no business to do it. Flora was much too good-natured—a sort of cousin of Harriet’s who did about six people’s work and was never out of temper, but she couldn’t say no. She put the receiver to her ear, and heard a man’s voice say rather faintly, ‘Mrs Grey?’
‘Yes.’
The black velvet was slipping from her shoulder. She shifted her hand and pulled it up.
‘Marion, is that you?’
A
nd all at once she knew who was speaking. Her face changed. She said in a low, hard voice, ‘Who are you? Who is speaking?’ But she knew very well.
‘Bertie Everton,’ said the voice. ‘Look here, don’t ring off—it’s important.’
‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘I know, I know—you feel like that. It’s my misfortune. I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s something about Geoffrey I thought you ought to know. Just a chance, but there it is. I thought I’d tell you.’
She leaned with her free hand on Harriet’s writing-table, leaned hard, and said, ‘I can’t see you. If you’ve anything—to say—you can see my solicitor.’ Her lips were so stiff that they shaped the words with difficulty.
After a confused moment she wondered whether they had shaped them at all, because he was saying, ‘Then I’ll call for you at six.’
That broke the stiffness anyway. She said with a rush of anger, ‘You can’t come here—you must know that.’
‘Then I’ll be at your flat at half-past six. You’ll be home by then?’
‘I can’t see you. There’s a dress show. I shall be late.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Bertie Everton, and with a click the line was dead.
Marion went back to show the black velvet gown, which was called Lucrezia Borgia. It had a stiff full skirt and a tight bodice embroidered with pearls after the Renaissance fashion. The heavy sleeves were slashed from shoulder to wrist over deep-toned ivory satin. She saw herself in a mirror as she opened the showroom door, but it was not the dress she saw reflected there, it was the anger in her eyes.
The dress had a great success. It was bought by a wispy fair-haired woman who sniffed and dabbed continually the tip of her nose with a small square of magenta chiffon. She was somebody’s friend from the country, and if she fancied herself as Lucrezia Borgia, it was nobody’s business but her own.
TWENTY TWO
HILARY REACHED THE outskirts of Ledlington a little after half-past six. The first street-lamp almost brought tears into her eyes, she was so glad to see it. When you have been wandering in one of those dark places of the earth which are full of cruelty, and when you have only just escaped being murdered there, omnibuses, trams, gas-lamps, and crowds of people really do seem almost too good to be true.
The crowds of people looked oddly at Hilary. It didn’t occur to her that they were looking oddly, because she was so rapturously pleased to see them, but after she had got over the first of that the oddness began to soak in, and she woke up with a start to realise that she had been slithering about on wet roads and scrambling through hedges, and that she was probably looking like a last year’s scarecrow. She gazed about her, and beheld on the other side of the road the sign of The Magpie and Parrot. The sign was a very pleasant one. The magpie and the parrot sat side by side upon a golden perch. The magpie was very black and very white, and the parrot was very green. They advertised one of Ledlington’s most respected hotels, but nobody knew how it got its name.
Hilary crossed the road, mounted half a dozen steps, and entered such a dark passage that she was instantly filled with confidence. It might appear gloomy later on when she had washed her face, but at the moment it was very comfortable. She told the pleasant elderly woman at the desk that she had had a bicycle accident, and immediately everyone in the hotel began to be kind and helpful. It was very nice of them, because really when Hilary saw herself in the glass she looked the most disreputable object it was possible to imagine. All one side of her face was plastered with mud. She remembered the grit of the road under her cheek. She had lost her hat—she didn’t remember anything about that—and the mud had got into her hair. There was a long scratch running back across her temple, and another fairly deep one on her chin. They had bled a good deal, and the blood had run into the mud. Her coat was torn, her skirt was torn, and her hands were torn.
‘Golly—what a mess!’ she said, and proceeded to get it off.
There was lovely hot water, lots of soap, a large rough towel, and little soft one produced by a very kind chambermaid—‘because it’ll be soft on those scratches, miss’. With these and a large bathroom to splash round in she made a good job of getting the mud off, whilst the chambermaid put in some first aid on the ripped-up coat. They brought her tea which was quite terribly good (the Magpie and Parrot pays six shillings a pound for its tea), and a time-table which was not so good, because the minute she began to look up trains it came over her that there wasn’t anything in the world that would get her into one of those trains with the prospect of travelling up to London by herself tonight. It wasn’t any use arguing or calling herself a coward. Her courage had run out and she simply couldn’t do it. Any carriage she got into would either be empty to start with, or it would go empty on her at the very first stop. And then one of them would get in, and there would be an accident on the line, and an end of Hilary Carew. Because if they had wanted to kill her an hour ago on the Ledlington road, nothing had happened since to make them change their minds. Contrariwise, as Humpty Dumpty says. And if they wanted to kill her, they would certainly watch the station, because they would expect her to catch a train, and it would occur to them as it did to her that very few people would be taking the London train on a night like this. Nobody would if they weren’t obliged to. And that was the trouble—Hilary was obliged to. There was Marion for one thing, and there was the money question for another. Aunt Arabella’s ring had produced a fiver. Out of that, getting here and back would account for about twelve bob. She had left two pounds on deposit for the bicycle, and she would have to go and tell the shock-headed boy that it was all smashed up and pay whatever they valued it at. She couldn’t possibly risk a hotel bill on the top of that. What she could do, and what she immediately made up her mind to do, was to ring up Henry.
There was a sort of shiny office stool in the telephone box. It was very slippery and uncomfortable, but it was better than nothing. As Hilary sat on it and waited for her call, it came over her that it wasn’t any good quarrelling with Henry—it didn’t really seem to make any difference. They had a sensational row and broke off their engagement, and the first minute Mrs Mercer wept at her and Mercer followed her in the street she could no more help making a bee line for Henry than she could help breathing. Well, then they had a second row, and Henry forbade her to go hunting the Mercers, and she had done it, and they hadn’t spoken for a week. Yet the minute people tried to murder her and she was frightened, here she was, ringing him up and quite sure that he would come and fetch her. He would probably say ‘I told you so’, and they were practically certain to quarrel again. They would probably quarrel all the way back to town. The prospect was a most comforting one. How nice, how safe, how exhilarating to have Henry to quarrel with in that railway carriage instead of being murdered by a person or persons unknown.
The bell went ping, and as she snatched up the receiver, Henry said, ‘Hello!’
‘Hello!’ said Hilary brightly.
‘Who is it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Oh, it’s you?’
‘Idiot!’ said Hilary in a soft insinuating voice.
Henry set himself to disguise his reactions. He supposed Hilary wanted something or she wouldn’t be ringing him up. There was satisfaction in the thought that she couldn’t get on without him, but he wasn’t giving anything away. He had a dark suspicion that she used that voice because she knew it did things to his feelings. Like poking up the tiger with a sugar-stick.
He said, ‘What do you want?’ in the tone of one who has been rung up by a boring aunt.
‘You,’ said Hilary, nearly forty miles away. She said it so softly that it only just reached him, and he wasn’t sure whether the little wobble in the middle was a laughing wobble or a crying one.
If she was really—but suppose she wasn’t—
He said, ‘Hilary—’ but she blinked back some tears which she hadn’t expected, and said in a breathless kind of way, ‘Henry—will you come and fe
tch me—please?’
‘Hilary—what’s the matter? Is anything the matter? I wish you’d speak up. I can’t hear a word you say. You’re not crying, are you? Where are you?’
‘L-l-ledlington.’
‘You sound as if you were crying. Are you crying?’
‘I th-think so.’
‘You must know.’
A bright female voice said, ‘Thrrree minutes,’ to which Henry, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t his call, replied with a firm demand for another three. After which he said, ‘Hello!’ and, ‘Are you there?’ And then, ‘Tell me what’s the matter with you at once!’
Hilary steadied her voice. She had only meant to let it thrill a little at Henry, but it had let her down and she was really crying now, she couldn’t think why.
‘Henry, please come. I want you—badly. I can’t tell you on the telephone. I’m at the Magpie and Parrot at Ledlington. I’ve smashed a bicycle, and I don’t think I’ve got enough money to pay for it.’
‘Are you hurt?’
He said that much too quickly. Why should she be hurt? But she was crying. She wouldn’t cry because she was hurt. He was horribly frightened, and angry with Hilary because she was frightening him. Little fool! Little damned darling fool!
He heard her say, ‘No—only scratched,’ and then, ‘You can’t drive—it’s too foggy. Will you ring Marion up and tell her you’re fetching me? You needn’t say where I am.’
The girl at the exchange said, ‘Six minutes.’ Hilary said, ‘Golly!’ And Henry said, ‘Another six,’ and Hilary giggled, and Captain Henry Cunningham blushed because now he really had given himself away.
‘There’s a train at seven-forty,’ said Hilary sweetly. ‘We don’t want any more minutes—it’s much too expensive. You hurry up and catch that train, darling.’
The telephone bell tinkled and the line went dead.
Case Is Closed Page 15
