TWENTY THREE
THERE WAS NO one but Hilary in the lounge of the Magpie and Parrot when Henry walked in about an hour and a half later. He picked her up and kissed her as if they had never broken off their engagement, and Hilary kissed him back as she had never done while they were still engaged. It was still only a very little while since the sharpest edge of her despair had been, ‘I shall never see Henry again.’
Henry completely forgot all the things he had been going to say. He kissed her, and went on kissing her, and at intervals he asked her if she was sure she wasn’t hurt.
‘If I was—would you mind?’
‘Don’t say things like that!’
She burrowed her nose into his neck.
‘Why should you, darling? I mean we’re not engaged any more. You wouldn’t have to wear a black tie if I’d been murdered.’
Henry’s arms went all stiff and hard. It was most uncomfortable.
‘You’re not to say things like that!’
‘Why, darling?’
‘I don’t like it.’ He held her tight and kissed her hard.
Nice to have Henry’s arms round her. Nice to be kissed.
All of a sudden he wasn’t kissing her any more. He was making a plan.
‘Look here, we’ve got to catch the nine-fifty. Have you had any food?’
‘No—I waited for you. I thought it would be nice if you paid for it.’
‘Then we must eat, and you can tell me what you’ve been doing. You’re sure you’re not hurt?’
‘Mortally wounded, but I’m being brave about it.’
Henry frowned at the scratches.
‘I can’t think what you’ve been doing to yourself,’ he said, and got a mournful glance.
‘My fatal beauty is wrecked! What a good thing we’ve disengaged, because I should simply have to be noble and break it off if it weren’t.’
‘No fishing!’ said Henry, and marched her off to the dining-room, where the head waiter informed them that the nine-fifty had been the nine-forty-five since the first of October, and though of course it might be late on account of the fog, he wouldn’t advise them to chance it. He recommended soup and a cold veal and ham pie, and he thought they had better have a taxi from Mr Whittington’s garage, and if they wished him to do so, he would get the hall porter to ring up about it.
It didn’t seem to be the moment for explanations. The soup was good, the veal and ham pie was good, and the coffee was delicious. The head waiter hovered like a ministering angel. Hilary thought how nice it would be if she and Henry were on their honeymoon instead of escaping from murderers. And then something made her blush, and she looked up and met Henry’s eye and blushed more brightly still.
They caught their train, and had a carriage to themselves—an empty train and an empty carriage, but not frightening any more, because Henry was there too. As the engine started and their carriage banged clanking into the buffers of the one in front of it, Henry said, ‘Now, Hilary—what have you been up to? You’d better get it off your chest.’
Hilary got it off her chest. They were facing one another in two corner seats. She could see exactly how Henry was taking it, and he could see the scratch on her chin, and the scratch on her forehead, and just how little colour there was in her cheeks.
‘You see, darling, I simply had to find Mrs Mercer, so it’s no good going over that part of it, because we’re sure to quarrel, and if we once start quarrelling, I shan’t ever get on with telling you about the people who tried to murder me.’
‘Hilary—stop! What are you saying?’
She gave a little grave nod.
‘It’s true. I want to tell you about it.’ Then, suddenly off at a tangent, ‘I say, I do hope the young man I hired the bicycle from doesn’t think I’ve embezzled it, because he’s rather a lamb, and I shouldn’t like him to think I was an embezzler.’
‘He won’t. The hotel is going to tell him to send in his bill. You get on with telling me what happened.’
Hilary shivered.
‘It was perfectly beastly,’ she said, ‘like the stickiest kind of nightmare. I kept on hoping I’d wake up, but I didn’t. You see, I found out that the Mercers had been in Ledlington and their landlady hoofed them out because Mrs Mercer screamed in the night. And the girl in the milk-shop said she thought they’d moved into a cottage on the Ledstow road, so first I went to the house-agents to find out about cottages, and then I did a gloomy trek right out to Ledstow, forcing my way into cottages as I went. And everyone was very nice, only none of them was Mrs Mercer. By the time I got to Ledstow I felt as if I had been hunting needles in bundles of hay for years, and it was tea-time. So I had tea at the village pub, and when I opened the door to get my bill, there was Mercer walking down the passage like a grimly ghost.’
‘Hilary!’ Henry’s tone was very unbelieving.
‘Word of honour, darling. Well, of course, I shot back into the room, and rang, and paid my bill and fled. But just as I was opening the outside door, there he was coming back again—and I think he saw me.’
‘Why?’ said Henry.
‘Because of what happened afterwards.’
‘What did happen?’
‘Well, it was practically pitch-dark, and there were wallops of fog lying about loose all over the place, and whenever I came to one I had to get off and walk, so I wasn’t getting on very fast. And every time I had to get off I got a most horrid nightmare kind of feeling that something was coming after me, and that it was going to catch me up.’
There was a pause.
Henry said, ‘Nonsense!’ in a rough, reassuring way, and Hilary said in rather a wavering voice, ‘Henry—would you mind—if I held your hand—because—’
Henry pulled her across the carriage on to his knees, put both arms around her, and rocked her as if she was a baby.
‘First—class—prize—silly—little—fool!’
‘Um—’ said Hilary, a good deal comforted.
‘Now you can go on,’ said Henry.
She went on with her head against his shoulder.
‘Wasn’t nice. Was horrid. Like being lost dog in a bad dream. And just when it got to its worst a car came blinding out of the fog and I jumped for the side of the road. Henry, I only just jumped in time. They weren’t coming so fast at first, and I thought I’d try and follow them into Ledlington, and then I think they saw me, and they tried to run me down.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Henry with his arms round her.
‘No,’ said Hilary, in a soft, sighing voice.
‘They couldn’t!’
‘They did. And I jumped, and hit my head, and I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew they were carrying me. And one of them said I was only stunned. And then he said, “Quick now, and we’ll make a job of it!” And then, Henry—then—they put me down in the road and got back into the car and got ready to drive it over me.’
Henry stopped rocking. His arms tightened about her. Behind the jab she had just given to his nerves his mind said, ‘You know this can’t possibly be true. She got run down in the fog and hit her head. The rest of it isn’t anything at all—she dreamed it.’
She turned her head on his shoulder. By craning backwards she could see his profile with the ceiling light behind it. It was one of those strong, silent profiles. She gave a little gentle sigh and said, ‘You’re not believing me.’
It was really very difficult for Henry. The last thing on earth he wanted was to start another quarrel, but he had by nature the gift which Thomas the Rhymer so indignantly refused at the hands of the Queen of Elfland—the tongue that can never lie.
‘My tongue is mine ain,’ True Thomas said,
A gudely gift ye wad gie to me!
I neither dout to buy nor sell,
At fair or tryst where I may be.
‘I dout neither speak to prince or peer,
Nor ask of grace from fair ladye.’
In fact, a most uncomfortable and embarrassing gift. It wasn’t H
enry’s fault—he hadn’t asked for it. He often found it extremely inconvenient, especially in his dealings with women. In reply to Hilary’s sigh and ‘You’re not believing me,’ he could do no better with his tongue than to make it keep silence.
Hilary sighed again. Then she put her head back on his shoulder.
‘That means you’re not. I don’t know why you want to marry me if you don’t believe a word I say.’
Henry kissed her, which was quite easy and committed him to nothing. When she could speak again she said, ‘I shouldn’t kiss someone I thought was a liar, but I suppose men are different. I’m too tired to quarrel about it.’
‘I don’t think you’re a liar.’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think you had concussion. You say you knocked your head. I think the rest of it was a sort of dream. You have them when you’re concussed.’
‘I don’t! Henry, you’ve got a stubborn disposition. I think I’m behaving exactly like Patient Griselda not to quarrel. I’m admiring myself a lot for it, so I hope you are too. I suppose it’s no good going on telling you what happened—if you’re not going to believe it, I mean.’
Henry shook her a little. He also said, ‘Go on.’
She went on in a small meek voice with her lips quite close to his ear.
‘Of course if you say it was only a dream, it must have been one—Henry the Never Wrong and all that sort of thing. Well, in this perfectly horrid dream they did put me down in the road and got ready to run me over. I was all muzzy, and I’d have let them do it, only when they banged the door of the car something went click like when you put the electric light on, and I got my head up and saw the car coming for me, and I did a sort of slither and got off on to the grass and through the scratchiest hedge in England. And after that there was a sort of hollow with bushes, and I hid there. And when they couldn’t find me they got into the car again and went away. And I was afraid to go back on to the road because of not knowing it was a dream and being afraid of them waiting there to grab me, so I walked brightly up a lot of ruts till I came to a gate. And then I walked round a cottage till I came to a scullery window, and there was Mrs Mercer making tea.’
Henry held her away so that he could look at her.
‘Hilary—are you making this up?’
He got a mournful shake of the head.
‘I’m not nearly clever enough. And, oh, Henry, it was the most crashing disappointment, because first she was angry and then she began to say things like she did in the train.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, she said, “Go! Go, while you can!” and that she didn’t dare let me in. She said he’d cut her heart out—and of course she meant Mercer. And the way she looked when she said it made me feel perfectly sick. I shouldn’t feel frightfully safe myself in a lonely cottage with Mercer if he thought I was giving the show away, and that’s what she was on the edge of doing. You know she told me in the train that she tried to see Marion when the trial was going on. Well, I pressed her about that, and she looked as if she was going to flop, and said, “It’s too late.” I grabbed hold of her wrist—we were talking across the scullery sink—and she began to cry, and said she couldn’t say her prayers, and why hadn’t she told Marion, only if she had Mercer would have killed her, and then she’d have gone to hell. So I swore I wouldn’t go until she told me, and I asked her if she wanted Mercer to find me there when he got back. And then she went all flesh-creeping and said he’d kill me—with the bread-knife—and say she’d done it, and then they’d take her away and lock her up, because he’d make them believe she was mad.’
‘She must be mad. What’s the good of believing what a mad woman says?’
Hilary gave a faint, shaky laugh.
‘Is she mad in my dream, or mad really? I’m only telling you a dream, you know—at least you said it was only a dream. And the way I dreamed it she wasn’t mad, she was just horribly frightened—and if it’s my own dream, I ought to know, oughtn’t I? Anyhow, I asked her bang out.’
‘You asked her what?’
‘I asked her if she was mad—just like that. I said, “Are you mad, Mrs Mercer?” And she said, “Not without he sends me mad with his wickedness.” And then she cried buckets, and wished she was dead. And just when she’d got to the point when I thought she was going to tell me what she’d got on her mind, she shut right up like a clam and pulled her hand away from me and ran into the kitchen and banged the door. And I don’t know how many miles I walked into Ledlington after that, but when I saw the first lamp-post I felt as if I could have kissed its boots.’
Henry said nothing. He was wondering how much of Hilary’s story was concussion, and how much was true. The way he straightened it out in his mind she had taken a toss off her bicycle and had wandered away across the fields. If she had really seen Mrs Mercer, the woman had said some very odd things. But had she seen her, or had she dreamed the whole thing? He had begun by being sure that she had, but his conviction had begun to weaken. Hilary did not appear to be at all concussed. She didn’t look muzzy, or excited or dazed, she just looked tired. And the very fact that she didn’t flare up and go into a rage in defence of her story did more to shake him than anything else could have done. Hilary went into rages rather easily, but when it came to this story of hers she had just stuck to it with a rather convincing calm.
She said suddenly, close to his ear, ‘Do you still think I’m telling lies?’
There wasn’t a spark of resentment in her voice. It was engagingly soft. Henry liked soft-voiced women. He was a good deal shaken and melted. He said, ‘Hilary—’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘What I mean to say is—well, it isn’t easy to put it the way I want to, but—look here, are you really sure that all this happened?’
‘Cross my heart!’
‘You’re sure you didn’t dream it?’
‘Quite, quite, quite sure. Henry, I didn’t really—it all happened.’
‘Well then, suppose it happened—I don’t say whether it did or it didn’t, but suppose it did.’
‘What do you want to suppose?’
‘I want to go back to the smash. You say there were two men in the car that knocked you over?’
‘There were two men in the car that ran me down,’ said Hilary firmly.
‘Did you see them?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Then how do you know there were two men?’
Hilary put out the tip of her tongue and drew it back again.
‘Because they carried me. One of them had me by the shoulders, and the other one by the knees. Besides—one of them spoke—I told you. He said, “Be quick—we’ll make a job of it!” And he wasn’t talking to me.’
‘Did you know his voice?’
Hilary said ‘No’ with heartfelt regret. It would have been so nice and easy if it had been Mercer’s voice and she could have sworn to it. But it wasn’t, and she couldn’t, so she had to say so. As a matter of fact this did her good with Henry because if she had dreamed the whole thing she would probably have tacked the voice on to Mercer.
He frowned and said, ‘You only heard one man speak?’
‘That’s all. But there were two of them carrying me, and they dumped me face downwards in the road and got into the car again to run me over.’
Henry stifled perceptibly. A beastly dream if it was a dream. And if it wasn’t...He felt as if he was walking in the dark upon a road which might at any moment collapse. A preliminary tremor stirred the very ground upon which his foot rested, and at the next step he might become aware of an opening gulf. If Hilary’s life had really been attempted, there must be some strong motive behind the attempt. If the attempt had failed, the motive remained. If it was strong enough to impel murder once, would it not be strong enough again? He wished with all his heart he could be sure that it was all a dream.
He looked down at the stains on the front of Hilary’s dress and coat. She said that they had put h
er down on her face in the road. Her jumper was stained right up to the throat. He knew what he wanted to believe, but there is no help in believing what isn’t true. He said, ‘Who do you think the two men were? Have you any idea?’
‘Yes, of course I have. I think one of them was Mercer.’
‘But not the one you heard speak?’
‘No, not that one.’
‘Mercer wouldn’t have a car.’
He was arguing as if the thing was true instead of being fantastic.
‘Oh, no—the car belonged to the other man. It was a big car.’ She gave a little shudder as she remembered it rushing down upon her. Then she said in a defiant voice, ‘It was Bertie Everton’s car. I’m sure it was.’
‘What makes you say that? What have you got to go on?’
‘Nothing—I’m just sure. And he did come round to the shop on purpose to tell you Mrs Mercer was mad after she’d talked to me in the train.’
Henry felt a most overwhelming relief. He had very nearly swung over to believing in Hilary’s villains, but thank goodness he had been pulled up in time. The whole thing was fantastic. On this point at least he could bring proof.
‘Look here, Hilary, you mustn’t go saying things like that—you’ll be getting yourself into trouble. And you’re wrong—it couldn’t have been Bertie Everton because he was in London.’
‘Oh—did you see him?’
‘No, but Marion did.’
‘What?’
‘Marion saw him. You know you told me to ring her up and say I was bringing you home. Well, he’d just left her then. She was in a white rage about it. He rang her up at her shop. She only just managed to choke him off coming there, I gather, and when she got back to the flat he was waiting for her. So you see—you mayn’t like Bertie Everton, but he didn’t try and run you down. He’s got a perfectly good alibi.’
Hilary lifted her head with a jerk.
‘I think Bertie Everton has too many alibis,’ she said.
TWENTY FOUR
MARION WAS STILL in a cold rage when they arrived at the flat. A hot anger would have been so much easier to meet. When you love someone and they look at you as if they had never seen you before and never want to see you again, it does rather take the edge off coming home.
Case Is Closed Page 16
