The Case Is Closed

CHAPTER 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 there 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 sharply 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 farther 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 of stairs 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 took and 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 was over – I wish I was 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 heart-rending 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 hack, 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 round. 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 take and write what I tell you, and don’t be all day over it! You’re a good enough 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 – ” ’

Hilary heard a slow breath taken.

‘What’s this I’m writing?’ said Mrs. Mercer’s whispering voice.

‘You’ll know when you’ve written it, my girl,’ said Alfred Mercer. ‘Have you got that down- “One day he found out”? All right, go on – “It was the day Mr. Bertie Everton come to see him from Scotland… He didn’t have time to talk about it… He was very angry… Alfred said he’d make it all right, and he give notice for us to be married… but it wasn’t any good… Mr. Everton said we’d got to go… and he said it was his duty to expose us… So I took Mr Geoffrey’s pistol as he’d left in his bottom drawer… It was the sixteenth of July… Mrs. Thompson from next door was having a bit of supper with us… I went through to the dining-room… and as I passed the study door… I heard Mr. Everton telephoning to Mr. Geoffrey Grey… He wanted him to come round at once… I thought he was going to tell him about Alfred and me… It was eight o’clock… I made up my mind what I would do… I knew when Mr. Geoffrey would get there… A little before the time I said I must go and turn the bed down… I went and got Mr. Geoffrey’s pistol – ” ’

‘Alfred!’ It was less of a word than a gasp. A faint, frightened scream followed it.

‘You’ll get more than that, if you go asking for it! You get on! Ready? “Mr. Geoffrey’s pistol”-you’ve got that down?… Now! “I put it under my apron and went into the study… I asked Mr. Everton to have mercy on me and not tell no one… He called me a bad name… and I shot him – ” ’

Hilary heard a rustle, as if the paper had suddenly been pushed away.

‘I won’t -I won’t write it -they’d hang me!’ The whisper was wild with fear.

‘You’ve written enough to hang yourself already,’ said Alfred Mercer. “But they won’t hang you, Louie-you needn’t be afraid of that. They won’t get a chance to hang you, because as soon as you’ve written this and signed it, you’re going to drink what I’ve got in this bottle, and when you’ve drunk it you’ll go off asleep and you won’t know nothing more.’

‘I won’t,’ said the whispering voice – ‘I won’t!’

‘You won’t, won’t you? Then – ’ His voice dropped until Hilary could hear no words, only rough sound -harsh, rasping sound like an animal snarling.

Mrs. Mercer screamed again and gasped out, shuddering.

‘No – no! I’ll do anything?’

‘You’d better. Here get on! I don’t want to be all day. It’s a good job a blot or two don’t matter, for you’ve made a fair mess of the paper. “I shot him” – you just write that down! And mind it’s clear enough to read! Come along now!’

The paper moved again. The pen moved. Mrs. Mercer groaned. Mercer’s voice went on, cool and hard.

‘ “I locked the door… and I wiped the key and the handle… I wiped the pistol too… and I put it on the mat in front of the garden door… Then I ran round and got in by one of the drawing-room windows and shut it after me… They were all latched when the police came… but I’d left one open on purpose so that I could get in quick… I waited till I saw Mr. Geoffrey come past the window and go into the study… Then I ran into the hall and screamed… and Alfred came running, and Mrs. Thompson… and banged on the door… And everyone thought he done it… and I let them think so… I didn’t tell my husband nor anyone… Alfred never knew nothing, only what I told him… He thought Mr. Geoffrey done it same as everyone did… And I swore false at the inquest and at the trial… but now I can’t bear it no longer… Alfred and me got married like he promised… and he’s been good to me. But I can’t bear it no longer… I’m a wicked woman and I ought to die”… And now you sign your name nice and clear underneath-your lawful married name, Louisa Kezia Mercer!’

Hilary’s hair was wet against her temples. A cold drop ran trickling between her shoulder-blades. It was like the most dreadful nightmare with every sense an avenue for horror – the unclean smell of the place, sight lost in darkness, a violent threat in her ears. What had she been listening to? What was this story which Alfred Mercer had dictated? Was it a lie that he was forcing on this poor broken creature at the point of the knife – or was it true? It might very easily be true. It fitted everywhere, and it explained everything. No, it didn’t explain why James Everton had changed his will. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered if only Geoff was cleared.

These thoughts floated in the terror and confusion of her mind, while at the same time she heard Mrs. Mercer raise her voice in a frantic appeal.

‘Alfred – for the Lord’s sake! I can’t sign that! Alfred, I’ll never say a word – I swear I won’t! I’ll go where no one won’t ever find me, and I’ll never say a word -I’ll take my Bible oath I won’t!’

On the other side of the door Alfred Mercer wrenched away from the grovelling woman who clutched his knees. He let out an agry oath, and then controlled himself. Whatever happened, she’d got to sign the statement, she’d got to sign it. He said, in a deadly quiet voice -

‘Get up, Louie! Get up off the floor!’

Mrs. Mercer looked up stupidly. She was so much afraid that she could no longer think. She was afraid of being hanged, and she was afraid to die, and she was afraid of the knife in Alfred’s hand – but she was most afraid of the knife. She got up, and when he told her to sit she sat, and when he told her to sign her name she took the pen in her cold shaking hand.

‘Put your name to it!’ said Alfred Mercer. He came close and showed her the knife.

Hilary strained against her own terror, and strained to hear. She listened for the faint small sound of the pen on the paper as it moved in the loops and curls of Louisa Kezia Mercer’s signature. ‘If she signs it, he’ll kill her – he’ll kill her at once. I can’t stop here and let her be killed. He’s got a knife. He’ll kill me too. Nobody knows where I am. Henry doesn’t know – Henry – ’

‘Are you going to sign that paper, or have I got to make you?’ said Alfred Mercer.

Mrs, Mercer signed her name.