‘No.’ She began to say something, and stopped herself, looking from one to the other in a bewildered manner. ‘If it wasna Mr Everton, who was it?’ she said.
THIRTY
THEY DREW THREE garages blank, and were late for lunch. Cousin Selina was not at all pleased. She said it didn’t matter in the tone of one who holds fast to politeness in face of overwhelming temptation. She bit her lip and feared the joint would be overdone, and having tasted her portion, sighed and cast her eyes up and then down again. After which she partook of beef and Brussels sprouts with the air of a martyr.
When the tablemaid was in the room Henry and Hilary supplied a little difficult conversation, but as soon as they were alone Mrs McAlister found a mournful voice.
‘It is a great pity that Marion does not change her name,’ was the text upon which a considerable sermon could be preached. Cousin Selina preached it with vigour. It had always been her opinion that Geoffrey Grey was an unsuitable husband for Marion.
‘Very good-looking young men never make good husbands. My own dear husband—’ A long excursus on the virtues of the late Professor, who had certainly not been renowned for his beauty. As Hilary put it afterwards—‘A pet lamb, darling, but exactly like a ginger monkey.’
Leaving the Professor, his widow rehearsed the advice she had given to Marion on more than one occasion—‘And if she had taken it she would not be in her present painful position. There was a young man whom I would have been very glad to see her married to. But no, she insisted on having her own way. And what is the result—will you have any more beef, Captain Cunningham?...Then perhaps you will kindly ring the bell for Jeannie.’
‘Henry, I shall burst!’ said Hilary when they got away again. ‘What do we do now—Glasgow, or garages? She rests till tea-time.’
‘If it’s Glasgow, we can’t get back to tea.’
‘We could ring up and say we’d got stuck—important business—any old thing.’
‘Or I could go, and you could stay here,’ suggested Henry.
Hilary stamped on the pavement.
‘Look here, my lad, you say that again, and you’ll see what happens! If you think that I’m going to stay here and talk to Cousin Selina while you go off sleuthing by yourself, well, you’ve made a mistake, that’s all!’
‘All right, all right—you needn’t get worked up about it. We’ll go to Glasgow tomorrow. We’d better get on with the garage business this afternoon, though how in the world Miss Silver expects anyone to remember anything about any car in the world after more than a year. It’s a wild-goose chase, but I suppose we’d better get on with it.’
‘We might find a wild goose in a mare’s nest,’ said Hilary.
They found nothing. It was a most cold, discouraging quest. Snow began to fall in the Pentlands, and the streets of Edinburgh ran with a chilly rain. Later there were six hours of Cousin Selina’s conversation before it was decently possible to go to bed.
Next day Glasgow, under one of those dark skies which appear ready to discharge every conceivable type of bad weather—rain, snow, sleet, hail or thunder. It hung low, it bulged, it threatened, but for the moment nothing happened.
From the firm of Johnstone, Johnstone and McCandlish they obtained Frank Everton’s address, and presently found themselves in a poorish quarter, from which they arrived rather suddenly at a very authentic slum.
Henry frowned at the place. It was very much worse than he had expected. There were some ill-looking hooligans about. The tenement houses reared up gaunt and dirty. He looked at the stair up which they would have to go, and took Hilary firmly by the elbow.
‘Look here, you can’t come up. I oughtn’t to have let you come. I’d no idea the fellow was living in a slum.’
‘I’m not going to wait here,’ said Hilary. She felt no enthusiasm for the stair, but even less for this cold slummy street.
‘No, you’ll have to go back.’
‘Back where?’
‘I’ll come with you as far as the corner. There’s quite a decent street beyond. You can just walk up and down there till I come.’
A frightfully dull occupation walking up and down and waiting for someone to come. The street might have been a street in any town. Its flat, ugly houses were as drably dull as they could be. Hilary got tired of walking between them. She thought she would go a little way round the corner to see if Henry was coming. There was no sign of him. The street was much emptier than it had been. She walked a dozen paces, and then a dozen more.
And then she wasn’t sure which of those big crowded tenement houses Henry had gone into. A little thin, strange voice spoke inside her mind. It said, ‘Suppose he doesn’t ever come back.’ And with that a sort of horror came up amongst her thoughts like a fog. She was cold with it, through and through to her very heart. But it was nonsense. What could happen to Henry in that big crowded house? It was swarming with people. It was the safest place in the world. It was full of chattering, scolding women and noisy children. And who would take any notice if anyone shouted or cried out? The horror came again. She stared up at the rows and rows of windows on those great reared-up blocks, and suddenly high up at one of the windows, she saw Mrs Mercer’s face.
THIRTY ONE
THE FACE STAYED there for the time it took to miss a breath and then take two with a gasp between. Then it was gone, moving back from the pane and lost in the room behind.
Hilary went on staring up at the window. It was a fifth-floor window on the left of the common stair. Mrs Mercer’s face had certainly been there a moment ago. She couldn’t doubt that, because even if she had imagined the face, she couldn’t possibly have imagined its ghastly look of fear. She had never seen such a look on any human face before, and she hoped she would never see it again. At the thought of those desperate, staring eyes, that mouth loose with terror, Hilary knew that she couldn’t wait—she must do something at once. She didn’t even think about Henry. She ran across the street and plunged into the darkness of the stair.
At the second floor she stopped, breathless. You can’t run up five flights of stairs, and there’s no sense in trying to.
Here we go up, up, up.
Here we go down, down, down.
‘No, not down—up. And you’ve got to keep your head, and your breath, or you won’t be any good when you get there.’
All the way up she passed no one except perhaps a dozen children by twos and threes on the landings. They were all very small, because the older ones were at school. They took no notice of Hilary, and she took no notice of them. She reached the fifth floor and knocked on the first door on her left, and it wasn’t until the sound of her knocking came on the air that she began to wonder what she would do if Alfred Mercer answered it. It was a most horrid thought, and what was the good of thinking it—now when it was too late? She could run away...She wasn’t going to run away.
There wasn’t any answer to her knocking. She raised her hand to knock again, but it stayed there, an inch away from the door, without the power to move forward or make any sound. A sort of frozen terror was gaining on her. To break it she made a sudden effort, bringing her hand down upon the door knob. Her hand turned, and the knob with it. The door opened inwards with a click.
Hilary stood on the threshold, and saw a bare passage with three doors opening off it. Funny to say opening when all the doors were shut. It would be the left-hand one behind which Mrs Mercer had stood and looked out of the window. She closed the outer door and went towards it, and as she did so a cold, cold shiver ran down her spine. The other rooms were behind her now. Suppose Alfred Mercer came out of one of them and caught her by the throat and choked her dead...He wouldn’t. Why should he? One voice said that. And another, ‘He would if he thought you knew too much.’
Now she was listening at the door and could hear nothing. Outside the tenement hummed with noise, but here in this flat was an empty silence. If she let herself stop to think she would run away from it into the noise again. She struck her hands s
harply together, put a tingling palm to the cold door knob, and went in.
It was a bare, wretched room, with a dirty rag of curtain looped back from the window where she had seen the face. A ramshackle double bed stood facing the light, and there was some kind of press or cupboard against the right-hand wall. There was a rickety table in the middle of the room with a couple of chairs beside it. The door hid the head of the bed as Hilary came in, and at first she thought the room was empty.
She came further in, and saw Mrs Mercer standing against the wall. She had gone back as far as she could go. One hand clutched the rail of the bed, the other was pressed against her side. Hilary thought she would have sunk down if she had been less stiff with terror. Her face showed the same extremity of fear which had brought Hilary up five flights to find out what was wrong. And then, before her eyes, the tension broke. Mrs Mercer let go of the rail, slumped down on the side of the bed, and began to cry.
Hilary shut the door. She said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s frightened you?’
There were choking sobs, and a rain of tears.
‘Mrs Mercer—’
‘I thought you was him—oh Lord, I did! What shall I do? Oh Lord! What shall I do?’
Hilary put a hand on her shoulder and kept it there.
‘You thought I was Mercer? Is he in the flat, or is he out?’
The terrified pale eyes looked up at her.
‘He’ll be coming back—any time now—to finish me. That’s what he’s brought me here for—to finish me off!’ She caught Hilary’s other hand in a cold, damp grip. ‘I darsn’t sleep, and I darsn’t eat! He’s left the gas tap on once already—and there was a bitter taste in the tea—but he said it was nothing—but he didn’t drink the cup I poured him out—and when I said to him, “Aren’t you going to drink your tea, Alfred?” he pushed the saucer so that half of it spilled—and he said, “Drink it yourself, and a good riddance!”—and he called me a name he didn’t ought to a done—because I’m his wife and got my lines to show—whatever may have happened in the past—and not for him to throw it up at me neither—lord knows it isn’t!’
Hilary pressed hard on the thin shoulder.
‘Why do you stay with him, Mrs Mercer? Why don’t you come away? What’s to stop you? Come away with me now—at once, before he gets back!’
Mrs Mercer twisted away from her with a sort of desperate strength.
‘Do you think he’d let me go? There isn’t nowhere he wouldn’t follow me and do me in. Oh Lord—I wish it were over—I wish I were dead!’
‘Why does he want to kill you?’ said Hilary slowly.
Mrs Mercer shuddered and was silent.
Hilary went on. ‘Shall I tell you? I know, and you know. That’s the trouble—you know too much. He wants to kill you because you know too much about the Everton murder. He wants to kill you because you know that Geoffrey Grey is innocent. And I don’t care whether he kills us both or not—you’re going to tell me what you know—now!’
Mrs Mercer stopped crying. She drooped there on the bed, quiet and limp in her respectable black. With her faded eyes fixed on Hilary’s face, she said with a heartrending simplicity, ‘They’d hang me.’
Hilary’s pulses jumped. Hope flared in her. She said in a hurried undertone, ‘I don’t think they would. You’re ill. You didn’t do it yourself—did you?’
The pale eyes winced from hers.
‘Mrs Mercer—you didn’t shoot Mr Everton, did you? You must tell—you must!’
Mrs Mercer’s tongue came out and wetted her dry lips. She said, ‘No,’ and forced her voice and said it again a little louder, ‘No.’
‘Who did?’ said Hilary, and with that there came to them both the click of the outer door.
Mrs Mercer got to her feet with a jerk that was not like any natural movement. She pushed Hilary, and pointed at the press. Her voice made a sound in her throat, and failed.
But there was neither time nor need for words. Alfred Mercer had come back, and in all that bare room the press offered the only possibility of a hiding-place. There was not even time for thought. Sheer primitive instinct took its place. Without any conscious interval Hilary found herself in the dark, ill-smelling cupboard with the door shut close. There was very little room. Her shoulder touched rough wood. Her back was against the wall. Something swung and dangled against her in the darkness. Mrs Mercer’s words started into her mind, and the sweat of terror broke upon her lip, her temples. ‘They’ll hang me.’ Something was hanging here—
She wrenched herself back to sanity. Of course there was something hanging there—that was what cupboards were for. Mrs Mercer had hung her coat in this one. It hung and dangled and swung against Hilary’s cheek. The sweat broke again. She heard Alfred Mercer speak in the room beyond. He said roughly, ‘Sulking again?’
‘No, Alfred.’
Hilary wondered at the way the woman had regained control of herself. The words sounded almost as they were meant to sound—almost, but not quite.
‘No, Alfred!’ said Mercer, mimicking her. ‘That’s what you keep on saying—isn’t it? Have you been leaking to that damned girl? No, Alfred! Have you seen her? Did you speak to her? Did she come nosing round the cottage? No, Alfred! And all the time—all the time it was yes—yes—yes—you damned sniveller!’
Hilary had to guess at the shuddering effort with which Mrs Mercer answered him.
‘I don’t know what you mean—I’m sure I don’t.’
‘Oh, no—you wouldn’t! You didn’t speak to her in the train, I suppose?’
‘I only asked after Mrs Grey—I told you, Alfred.’ She was breaking again. The effort had spent itself. Her voice dragged.
‘And what call had you got to speak to her at all? It’s you that’s stirred the whole thing up. The case was closed, wasn’t it? Mr Geoffrey Grey was in prison. If you’d kept your tongue between your teeth we were in clover. Do you think I can trust you after that?’
‘I never said nothing—I swear I didn’t.’
Alfred Mercer’s voice dropped to an ugly whisper.
‘Then what brought her down to Ledlington? And what brought her nosing along the Ledstow road? And what brought her to the cottage if it wasn’t that you’d as good as told her you knew something that’d get Mr Geoffrey out of prison?’
‘I never, Alfred—I never!’
‘Oh, no—you never do nothing! If it hadn’t been for me finding the marks of her shoes up against the scullery window, you wouldn’t never have told me she’d come nosing around. And how am I going to know what you told her then? And how am I going to know you haven’t set the police on us?’
‘I’ll take my Bible oath—’ said Mrs Mercer in a wild, shaken voice. It broke upon a sob—upon a torrent of sobs.
‘Chuck it!’ said Mercer. ‘You don’t do yourself no good that way. This door’s shut and the outside door’s shut, and there’s no one to hear if you scream your head off. There’s a sight too much noise outside for anyone to notice—I’ve told you that before. That’s why we’ve come here, Louie. There’s a man in the flat across the landing that gets drunk regular three times in the week and most Sundays, and when he’s drunk he beats his wife, and when he beats her she screams something horrid, so they tell me. I was talking about him to a man on the stair last night. Something horrid, she screams. And when I said to the man I was talking to, “Don’t the neighbours come in?” he laughed and said, “No fear—they’re used to it.” And when I said, “Don’t they fetch the police?” he said, “The police know better than to come interfering between man and wife, and if they didn’t they’d get a lesson they’d be sorry for.” So it won’t do no good screaming, Louie.’
There was a pause, and a shuffling sound. In her mind Hilary saw again what she had seen when she came into the room, Mrs Mercer backed up against the wall and clutching at the bed rail. She thought if the cupboard door were open, that she would see her just like that, with the frantic terror in her face.
There wasn’t
any sound after the shuffle. There wasn’t any sound until Alfred Mercer spoke again. He said harshly, ‘That’s enough of that, my girl! You come and sit down to the table and write what I tell you!’
Hilary heard Mrs Mercer’s gasp of relief. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this. It was some horror of violence which she had stiffened herself to meet. At this demand that she should sit down and write, her breath came again with a sob.
‘What do you want me to write, Alfred?’
‘You come and sit down and I’ll tell you.’
Hilary heard the shuffling sound again, the sound of unwilling, dragging feet upon the boarded floor. A chair scraped. There was a rustle of paper. And then Mercer’s voice.
‘You write what I tell you, and don’t be all day over it! You’re a good scholar when you choose. And don’t you leave nothing out nor yet put nothing in, or it’ll be the worse for you. Now! You put the date at the top of the paper, November 27th, and then you start writing, “I can’t stand it any longer...I’ve been a very wicked woman, and I’ve got to tell what happened so that Mr Geoffrey Grey can go free.”’
The chair scraped again as if it had been pushed back. In a faint agitated whisper Mrs Mercer said, ‘What do you want? You said you’d cut my heart out if I told.’
‘You write what I tell you!’ said Alfred Mercer. ‘If you don’t—you see this knife, Louie—d’you see it? It’s sharp. Do you want me to show you how sharp it is? All right, then, you write down what I said!’
She wrote. The room was so still that Hilary could hear the sound of the pen as it hurried across the paper—a tiny rustling sound. And then Alfred Mercer’s voice. And then the pen again—and the voice again—and a long, shuddering breath.
‘Got that lot down? All right, go on—“I didn’t mean to kill Mr Everton ...Alfred and me had been sweethearts long ago...He said if I’d go with him as man and wife to Mr Everton he’d marry me, so I went...And he kept putting me off, and one day Mr Everton found out—”’
Case Is Closed Page 20
