The Case Is Closed

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hilary sat down on the arm of a large leather-covered chair. She was glad to sit down, but it put her at a disadvantage, because Henry remained standing. He leaned against the mantelpiece and gazed silently over the top of her head. Enraging. Because if you wanted to stop Henry talking you couldn’t – he merely raised his voice and continued to air his views. And now, when you wanted him to talk, he went all strong and silent and looked over the top of your head. She said, in rather a breathless voice,

‘Don’t do that!’

Henry looked at her, and immediately looked away again. ‘As if I was a black beetle!’ said Hilary to herself.

He said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and Hilary forgot about her knees wobbling and jumped up.

‘Henry, I really won’t be spoken to like that! I wanted to talk to you, but if you’re going to be a perfectly polite stranger, I’m off!’

Henry continued to avert his gaze. She understood him to say in a muffled tone that he wasn’t being a polite stranger, and inside herself Hilary grinned and heard a little jigging rhyme which said,

‘Henry is never very polite,

But when he is he’s a perfect fright.’

She emerged, to hear him enquire what he could do for her, and all at once her eyes stung, and she heard herself say,

‘Nothing. I’m going.’

Henry got to the door first. He put his back against it and said,

‘You can’t go.’

‘I don’t want to go – I want to talk. But I can’t unless you’ll be rational.’

‘I’m perfectly rational,’ said Henry.

Then come and sit down. I really do want to talk, and I can’t whilst you go on being about eleven feet high.’

He subsided into a second leather chair. They were so close that if she had been sitting in the chair instead of on the arm, their knees would have touched. She had now a slight adyantage, as from this position it was she who looked down on him whilst he looked up to her. She thought it an entirely suitable arrangement, but had serious doubts as to its ever becoming permanent. Even now Henry wasn’t looking at her. Suppose he wasn’t just putting it on – suppose he really didn’t want to look at her any more… It was a most unnerving thought.

Quite suddenly she began to wish that she hadn’t come. And just at that moment Henry said rather gruffly,

‘Is anything the matter?’

A new, warm feeling rushed over Hilary. Henry only spoke like that when he really minded, and if he really minded, it was going to be all right. She nodded and said,

That’s what I want to talk to you about. Things have been happening, and I can’t talk to Marion because it upsets her, and I feel as if I must talk to someone, because of course it’s very, very, very important, so I thought we – we -well, we were friends -and I thought if I talked to you, you’d tell me what I ought to do next.’

There! Henry ought to adore that -he liked them meek and feminine. At least he did in theory, but in practice he might get bored.

‘Henry would like his wife to be meek

If he had a new one once a week.’

Henry brightened a little.

‘You’d better tell me all about it. What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing.’ Hilary shook a mournful head. ‘At least I only got into a wrong train by mistake – and that wasn’t my fault. I – I just saw someone who – who frightened me, so I got into a Ledlington train by mistake and didn’t find it out for ages.’

‘Someone frightened you? How?’

‘By glaring. It’s very unnerving for a sensitive young girl to be glared at on a public platform.’

Henry looked at her with suspicion.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘You,’ said Hilary, and only just stopped herself saying ‘Darling.’

‘You’ve no idea how you glared -at least I hope you haven’t, because it’s much worse if you meant it. But I was completely shattered, and by the time I’d picked up the bits, there I was in a lonely carriage in a Ledlington train with Mrs. Mercer having suppressed hysterics in the other corner and beginning to clutch hold of my dress and confide in me, only I didn’t know it was Mrs. Mercer or I’d have encouraged her a lot more.’

‘Mrs. Mercer?’ said Henry in a very odd tone indeed.

Hilary nodded.

‘Alfred Mercer and Mrs. Mercer. You won’t remember, because you’d gone back to Egypt before the trial, came off – Geoff’s trial – the Everton Case. The Mercers were James Everton’s married couple, and they were the spot witnesses for the prosecution – Mrs. Mercer’s evidence very nearly hanged Geoff. And when I was in the train with her she recognised me, and then she began to cry and to say the oddest things.’

‘What sort of things, Hilary?’ Henry had stopped being superior and offended. His voice was eager and the words hurried out.

‘Well, it was all about Marion and the trial, and a lot of gasping and sobbing and staring, and a funny sort of story about how she’d tried to see Marion when the trial was going on. She said she went round to the house where she was staying and tried to see her. She said, “Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true I tried to see her.” And she said she’d given her husband the slip. And then she said in quite a frightful sort of whisper things like “If she had seen me.” But she didn’t see her, because she was resting. Poor Marion, she was nearly dead by then -they wouldn’t have let her see anyone – but Mrs. Mercer seemed most dreadfully upset about it. And then she said her husband came and she never got another chance. She said he saw to that.’

Henry was looking straight at her for the first time.

‘It really was Mrs. Mercer?’

‘Oh yes. Marion showed me a photograph and I recognised it at once. It was Mrs. Mercer all right.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Do you want me to describe her?’

‘No – no. I want to know how she seemed. You said she was having hysterics. Did she know what she was saying?’

‘Oh yes, I should think so – oh yes, I’m sure she did. When I said hysterics, I didn’t mean she was screaming the place down. She was just awfully upset, you know – crying, and gasping, and trembling all over, and every now and then she’d pull herself together, and then she’d break down again.’

‘Something on her mind – ’ said Henry slowly. Then, with a good deal of emphasis, ‘You didn’t think of her being out of her mind, did you?’

‘No – no, I didn’t – not after the first minute or two. I did at first because of the way she stared, and because of her bursting out that she knew me, and things like “Thank God he didn’t,” and, “He’d never have gone if he had.” ’

‘He?

‘Mercer. He went along the corridor. I – I’d been looking out of the window, and when I turned round I just saw a man getting up and going along. I’d been picking up the bits, you know – the ones you shattered by scowling across the platform at me – so I hadn’t been noticing who was in the carriage, and when I’d got myself put together again, and turned round, there was the man going out into the corridor and the woman staring at me, and I did think she was mad for about a minute and a half.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did I think she was mad at first – or why didn’t I think so afterwards?’

‘Both.’

‘Well, I thought she was mad at first because of her staring and saying “Thank God” at me – anyone would. But when I found out that she really did know me because of seeing me with Marion at the trial, and that the reason she was all worked up and emoted was because she was frightfully sorry for Marion and couldn’t get her off her mind, I didn’t think she was mad any more. That sort of person gets gulpy at once if they’re fond of someone who’s in trouble, so I just thought it was that, but when I found out who she was, all the rather odd things she’d been saying came up in my mind, and I wondered.’

‘You wondered whether she was mad?’

‘No – I wondered what she’d got on her mind.’

Henry leaned forward with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. ‘Well, you said yourself that her evidence nearly hanged Geoffrey Grey.’

‘Yes, it did. She’d been up to turn down Mr. Everton’s bed, you know, and she swore that when she came down again she heard voices in the study and she thought there was a quarrel going on, and she was frightened and went to the door to listen, and she swore that she recognised Geoffrey’s voice. So then she said she thought it was all right, and she was coming away, when she heard a shot, and she screamed, and Mercer came running out of his pantry where he was cleaning the silver. The study door was locked, and when they banged on it Geoff opened it from inside with the pistol in his hand. It’s frightful evidence, Henry.’

‘And Grey’s story was?’

‘His uncle rang him up at eight and asked him to come along at once. He was very much upset. Geoff went along, and he would have got there at between a quarter and twenty past eight. He went into the study through the open French window, and he said his uncle was lying across the writing-table and the pistol was on the floor in front of the window. He said he picked it up, and then he heard a scream in the hall and the Mercers came banging at the door, and when he found it was locked he unlocked it and let them in. And there were only his finger-prints on the handle and on the pistol.’

Henry said, ‘I remember.’ And then he said what he had forborne to say during the six months of their engagement – ‘That’s pretty conclusive evidence. What makes you think he didn’t do it?’

Hilary’s colour flared. She beat her hands together and said in a voice of passionate sincerity,

‘He didn’t -he didn’t really! He couldn’t! You see, I know Geoff.’

Something in Henry responded to that sure loyalty, it was like trumpets blowing. It was like the drum-beat in a march. It stirred the blood and carried you along. But Hilary might whistle for the comfort of knowing that she had stirred him. He frowned a little and said,

‘Is Marion as sure as you are?’

Hilary’s colour failed as suddenly as it had flamed. She wasn’t sure, poor Marion – she wasn’t sure. She was too worn out with pain to be sure. A cold terror peered at her from her own thoughts and betrayed her from within.

Hilary looked away and said in a voice of sober courage,

‘Geoff didn’t do it.’

‘Then who did?’

‘Mrs. Mercer knows,’ said Hilary. Her own words startled her so much that she felt herself shaking. She had not known that she was going to say that. She hadn’t even known that she was thinking it.

‘Why do you say that?’ said Henry quickly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must. You can’t say a thing like that without knowing why you said it.’

Henry was riding the high horse. Its trampling had a reviving effect upon Hilary. She might marry Henry, or she might not marry Henry, but she simply wasn’t going to be trampled on. She stuck her chin in the air and said,

‘I can. I don’t know why I said it, because it just popped out. I didn’t first think, “Mrs. Mercer knows,” and then say it – I just said it, and then I felt perfectly certain that she did know. That’s the way my mind works – things I’ve never thought about at all come banging out, and then when I do start thinking about them they are true.’

Henry came down off the high horse with a bump. She was so comic when she talked like that with her colour glowing again, and her eyes as bright as a bird’s, and the little brown curls all shining under her perky hat. She wanted shaking and she wanted kissing, and meanwhile he burst out laughing at her.

‘It’s all very well to laugh!’ But in her inside mind she laughed too and sang a little shouting song of joy, because once you begin to laugh together, how can you go on quarrelling? You simply can’t. And she was tired right through to the very marrow of her bones of quarrelling with Henry.

‘Prize fool!’ said Henry, no longer strangely polite.

Hilary shook her head and caught the inside corner of her lip between her teeth, because she wasn’t going to laugh for Henry to see – not yet.

That’s only because you can’t do it yourself. And you’ve got a nasty jealous disposition – I’ve told you about it before -and if you ever marry anyone, Henry, you’ll have to watch it because she’ll either walk out on you or else turn into a dreep because you’ve broken her spirit by giving her an ingrowing inferiority complex.’

Henry’s gaze rested on her with something disturbing in it. This was the Henry who could laugh at you with his eyes, and make your heart beat suddenly and hard.

‘I haven’t noticed any signs of it,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m the sort that walks out,’ said Hilary, and met his eyes with a hardy sparkle in her own.

Henry said nothing. He didn’t intend to be drawn. He continued to look at her, and in a panic Hilary returned to Mrs. Mercer.

‘Don’t you see, Henry, if you don’t believe Mrs. Mercer’s evidence – and I don’t – well then, she must know who did it. She wouldn’t just go telling all those lies to amuse herself – because she wasn’t amused, she was frightfully, frightfully miserable – or to spite Geoff, because she was frightfully, frightfully miserable about Geoff and about Marion. So if she was telling lies – and I’m sure she was – it was because she wanted to screen somebody else. And we’ve got to find out who it is – we’ve simply got to.’