The Case Is Closed

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hilary opened her eyes and blinked at the light. It was very bright for London sun in November, and it was surprisingly high over head. She blinked again. It wasn’t the sun, it was the electric light shining down on her from the bowl in the ceiling. And she wasn’t in bed, she was in the living-room of the flat, in Geoff’s big chair, with something heavy weighing her down. She sat up, the heavy thing fell off with a bang on the floor, and she saw that it was the file of the Everton Murder.

Of course – she had been reading it. She had read the inquest, and then she must have dropped asleep, because the clock was striking seven and a horrid cold, foggy light was seeping in through the curtains. She was cold, and stiff, and sleepy – not comfortably sleepy, but up-all-night, train-journey tired.

‘ Bath,’ said Hilary to herself very firmly. She stretched, got out of the chair, and picked up the file, and as she did so the door opened and Marion stood looking at her with surprise and something else – anger.

‘Hilary! What are you doing?’

Hilary clutched the file. Her funny short curls were all on end. She looked rather like a ghost that has forgotten how to vanish, a guilty and dishevelled ghost. She said in a casual, murmuring voice,

‘I went to sleep.’

‘Here?’

‘Um.’

‘You haven’t been to bed?’

Hilary glanced down at her pyjamas. She couldn’t remember whether she had been to bed or not. She had undressed, because here she was in her pyjamas. Then she began to remember.

‘Um – I went to bed – but I couldn’t sleep – so I came in here.’ She shivered and pulled her dressing-gown round her. Marion had the frozen look again. It was enough to make anyone feel cold.

‘Reading that?’ said Marion, looking at the file.

‘Yes. Don’t look like that, Marion. I only wanted – I’ve never read-the inquest.’

‘And you’ve only to read it for the whole thing to be cleared up!’ Marion ’s voice had a sharp edge of anger on it.

Hilary came wide awake. It wasn’t fair of Marion to talk like that when she was only trying to help. And then she was full of compunction. Poor darling, it was only because everything to do with the case just got her on the raw. She said with a quick rush of pity,

‘Don’t! I did want to help – I did. I’ll put it away. I didn’t mean you to see it, but I went to sleep.’

Marion went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The daylight showed beyond the glass, sickly with fog, sodden with moisture. She turned back and saw Hilary putting away the file. The Everton Case was closed. Geoff was in prison. Here was the new day that she had to meet. She said not unkindly,

‘Run along and dress. I’ll get breakfast.’

But Hilary hesitated in the doorway.

‘If – if you didn’t hate to talk about it so much, darling – ’

‘I won’t talk about it!’ said Marion, the edge on her voice again. She was dressed for the street and cleverly made up. She looked like an ultra-modern poster – incredibly thin, amazingly artificial, but graceful, always graceful.

Hilary said quickly. ‘There are things – I wish you would – there are things I want to ask about.’

‘I won’t talk about it!’ said Marion again.

Hilary had stopped looking like a ghost. She was brightly flushed and her eyes were wet. She saw Marion ’s queer poster colouring all blurred as if it was drowned in tears. But they were her tears, not Marion ’s – Marion wouldn’t cry. She turned and ran into her own room and shut the door.

When Marion had gone to work Hilary washed up the breakfast things, made beds, and ran over the floors with a carpet-sweeper where there was a carpet and with a mop where there wasn’t. The flat was very small, and it didn’t take long. They had a woman once a week to do the heavy cleaning.

When she had finished Hilary sat down to think. She took a pencil and paper and wrote the things that came into her mind.

Mrs. Mercer – why did she cry such a lot? She cried at the inquest, and she cried at the trial, and she cried in the train. But it didn’t stop her saying she heard Geoffrey quarrelling with his uncle. She needn’t have said it. She cried, but she went on saying it.

That was the first thing that struck her.

Then – the daily help hadn’t been called as a witness. She would like to ask her some questions. About that toothache of Mrs. Mercer’s -it seemed funny that she should have had it that night. So convenient if you were all to bits with a bad conscience and felt you simply had to put your head in your hands and groan. You could with a toothache, and nobody would think anything about it.

Then Mrs. Thompson. Terribly respectable, terribly deaf. How convenient to have a deaf visitor if someone was going to be shot and you knew it. If you didn’t know it, why have a deaf visitor?

There was of course no logic in this, but Hilary had not a very logical mind. She wasn’t bothering about being logical, she was just putting down what came into her head. The deafness of the Mercers’ visitor was one of these things. Another thing that struck her was what a lot of alibis everyone had. Looking back on what she had read last night, it seemed to her that all those people couldn’t have had better alibis if they had sat down and thought them out beforehand. And bright as lightning there zigzagged through her mind the thought, ‘Suppose they had.’

Mercer – Bertie Everton – Mrs. Mercer – Frank Everton…

Mrs. Thompson to supper on just that one night. Mrs. Thompson so deaf that she couldn’t hear a shot, but able to testify that Mercer hadn’t left the kitchen and that Mrs. Mercer hadn’t been gone long enough to shoot James Everton and get back into the house. Not that she thought that Mrs. Mercer had shot James Everton. She was a dithery dreep of a woman, and she wouldn’t have the nerve to shoot a guinea-pig. Hilary simply couldn’t believe in her firing a pistol at her employer. A dreep is and remains a dreep. It doesn’t suddenly become a cool plotting assassin. Mrs. Mercer’s weepy evidence might be, and probably was, a tissue of lies, but it wasn’t she who had shot James Everton.

Well, that looked as if the Mercers were a wash-out. But the Evertons, Bertie and Frank, one in Edinburgh and the other in Glasgow -what about them? The answer to that was discouraging in the extreme. You could put it into one word – nothing. Nothing about the Evertons – nothing. Bertie was in Edinburgh, and Frank was in Glasgow, with solicitors vouching for them, and chambermaids bringing their early morning tea and answering their bells when they rang. There simply wasn’t anything you could do about the Evertons. If they had been specialising in alibis for years they couldn’t have come out of it better. It wasn’t any good – it really wasn’t any good. The case was closed. Geoff was in prison, and by the time he came out he’d be dead. And Marion would be dead, too. And these two dead people would have to go away and try to make a new life somewhere.

Hilary shivered. It was a most desperately bleak thought. No wonder Marion had that frozen look. Of course Geoffrey might have been really dead – he might have been hanged. After reading that evidence Hilary wondered why he hadn’t been hanged. There had been an enormous petition. People had been most awfully sorry for Marion because she was going to have a baby, and she supposed the jury must have had some faint doubt in their minds, because they had recommended him to mercy. It must have been that. Or perhaps they, too, were sorry for Marion, whose baby might have been born on the very day fixed for the execution. It was born the day she heard about the reprieve. And the baby died, and Marion hung on the edge of death, and then came back like a ghost to haunt the place where she had been so happy.

Another shiver ran over Hilary, but this time it was a shiver of revulsion. However bad things were, you needn’t sit down under them. If you looked at them too long they got you down. You mustn’t go on looking at them – you must do something. There was always something to be done if you put your mind to it. Hilary began to put her mind to it, and at once she knew what she could do about the Everton Case. She could go down to Putney and rout out the daily help who hadn’t been called as a witness.

She walked to the bottom of the road and caught a bus, just as Geoffrey Grey had done on the night of July 16th, sixteen months ago. It had taken him between a quarter of an hour and twenty minutes to reach Solway Lodge, getting off at the corner and making quick work of Holly Lane with his long stride. It took Hilary twenty-five minutes, because she didn’t know the way and had to stop and ask, and she didn’t go in by the garden gate, but round to the proper entrance, where she stood and looked through iron scroll-work at a leaf-strewn drive wept over by dripping half-denuded trees. She didn’t go in – it wasn’t any use going in. The house was shut up, and three boards in a row proclaimed Bertie Everton’s desire to sell it. Houses which have figured in a murder case do not sell very easily, but it is of course permissible to hope.

Hilary passed the notice-boards and a second gate and came to the entrance of Sudbury House. Sudbury House belonged to Sir John Blakeney. Mrs. Thompson was Sir John Blakeney’s housekeeper, and it was from Mrs. Thompson that Hilary hoped to extract the name and address of that uncalled witness. The gate stood open, and she walked in, and along a narrow winding drive. When Holly Lane was really a lane Sudbury House had been a desirable country residence. It stood square and dignified in Georgian brick, the dark red flush of Virginia creeper still clinging to the side that caught the sun.

Hilary went to the front door and rang the bell. She supposed she really ought to go the back door, but she just wasn’t going to. If she let this thing get her down, it would get her down. She wasn’t going to help it by having an inferiority complex and going round to back doors.

She waited for the front door to open. It was quite simple – she was going to ask for Mrs. Thompson. It was for whoever opened the door to do the rest. She had only got to stick her chin in the air, bite the inside corner of her lip rather hard, and tell herself not to be a rabbit.

And in the event she was quite right – it was perfectly simple. A most fat, benevolent butler opened the door. He had lovely manners and seemed to see nothing odd about her wanting to see Mrs. Thompson. He reminded Hilary of air balloons she had loved when she was a child – pink, smooth, and creaking a little if you blew them up too tightly. The butler’s creak was partly a wheeze and partly starch. He showed her into a sort of morning-room and went away almost as lightly as a balloon would have done. Hilary did hope he wouldn’t blow away or blow up before he got to Mrs. Thompson. Her balloons had been liable to these tragic fatalities.

After about five minutes Mrs. Thompson came in. She was much, much fatter than the butler, but she didn’t in the least suggest a balloon. She was the most solid human being Hilary had ever beheld, and her tread shook the floor. She wore black cashmere, with white frilling at the throat and an onyx brooch like a bullseye set in plaited gold. Her neck bulged above the frilling, and her cheeks bulged above her neck. She wore no cap, but her masses of hair were tightly plaited and wound about her head in a monstrous braid which did not as yet show any sign of turning grey. The contrast between this shiny black hair and the deep habitual flush of the large face below it gave her a very decided look. Hilary saw at once that here was a person who knew her own mind – her yea would be yea, and her nay nay. The last faint hope that Mrs. Thompson might have been lying at the inquest faded away and died before the emphatic responsibility of her aspect. Hilary found her so alarming that she would have dithered if she had let herself stop to think. She said, ‘Mrs. Thompson?’ in a pretty, breathless voice, and Mrs. Thompson said, ‘Yes, Miss.’

‘I wondered,’ said Hilary, and then she stuck, and Mrs. Thompson said ‘Yes, miss’ again, but this time her small, steady grey eyes took on a look of recognition – at least that was what Hilary thought. The colour came brightly into her cheeks and burned there. She said,

‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, I know you’re busy, and I’m interrupting you, but if you would just let me ask you one or two questions – ’

Mrs. Thompson stood there very large and portentous. The look of recognition was gone. Her face was like a brick wall. At last she said,

‘I know your face, but I don’t remember your name.’

‘Hilary Carew. I’m Mrs. Grey’s cousin -Mrs. Geoffrey Grey.’

Mrs. Thompson came a heavy step nearer and put up a hand to her ear.

‘I’m very hard of hearing – I’ll have to trouble you to speak up, miss.’

‘Yes – I remember.’ Hilary pitched her voice high and clear. Aunt Emmeline’s Eliza was hard of hearing too, so she had had practice. ‘Is that better?’

Mrs. Thompson nodded.

‘People don’t speak up as they used to do, but that will be all right. What did you want, miss?’

‘It’s about the Everton Case. You’re the second person who remembers seeing me at the trial though I was only there one day. At least I suppose that’s where you saw me.’

Mrs. Thompson nodded again.

‘With Mrs. Grey, pore lady.’

‘Yes,’ said Hilary. ‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, he didn’t do it – he really didn’t.’

Mrs. Thompson shook her head.

‘And that’s what I should have said myself if I hadn’t seen him with the pistol in his hand.’

‘He didn’t – he really didn’t,’ said Hilary very earnestly and very loud. ‘But it’s no good talking about that, and that’s not what I came here to talk about. I only wanted to ask you if you know about the daily help, the woman who used to come in and help Mrs. Mercer at Solway Lodge, because they didn’t call her either at the inquest or at the trial, and there’s something I want to ask her most dreadfully badly.’

Mrs. Thompson didn’t snort, because she had been very well brought up and knew her manners. It was, however, apparent that only a sense of what was due to herself prevented her from snorting.

‘That Mrs. Ashley!’

‘Was that her name?’

Mrs. Thompson nodded.

‘And a good thing they didn’t call her for a witness, for a poorer spirited, more Peter-grievous kind of a creature I never come across nor never want to!’

‘And do you know where she lives?’ said Hilary quickly.

Mrs. Thompson shook her head with heavy scorn. It was not for her to know the lurking-places of Peter-grievous females who went out by the day.

Hilary turned quite pale with disappointment.

‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson – but I want to find her so frightfully badly.’

Mrs. Thompson considered.

‘If she’d had anything to tell, the police ’ud have got it out of her, and she’d have been called for a witness and have had hysterics in the court as likely as not. People ought to be able to control themselves is what I say, but Mrs. Ashley never. And I can’t give you her address, miss, only knowing about her through Mrs. Mercer, but you might hear of her at Smith the greengrocer’s about three doors up from where you come into the High Street, because it was Mrs. Smith recommended her to Mrs. Mercer when she was looking for help. And I won’t say she wasn’t pretty fair at her work, though I couldn’t have stood her about the house myself.’

Hilary came away quite bright and brisk. Mrs. Smith would be able to give her Mrs. Ashley’s address, and she might be able to find out something that would help Geoff. She hadn’t expected anything of Mrs. Thompson who must have been pumped completely dry between the inquest and the trial. If you don’t expect anything you don’t let yourself feel disappointed. Mrs. Thompson thought Geoffrey had done it, but then of course she didn’t know Geoff. She could only repeat what she had said at the inquest and finish up with ‘I saw him with the pistol in his hand.’ Hilary wasn’t going to let herself be damped and daunted by that.

She found the greengrocer’s shop without difficulty, and was given Mrs. Ashley’s address by the buxom fair-haired Mrs. Smith, who obviously thought that she was looking for daily help – ‘And I’m sure, madam, you’ll find Mrs. Ashley very nice about the house – very nice indeed. Ladies I’ve recommended her to have always been very well satisfied- 10 Pinman’s Lane, and if you go round the corner and take the second on the left and the third on the right you can’t miss it. And you’ll find her in. She was here not half an hour ago, and she was going home then. The lady she’s been working for is away, and all she’s got to do is keep the house aired.’

Hilary thought Pinman’s Lane a most depressing place. The houses were old and tottery, with tiny windows. She knocked at the door of No. 10. Nothing happened. She knocked again. Then someone began to come down the stairs, and the minute Hilary heard that footstep she knew why Mrs. Thompson had wanted to snort. It was one of those trailing footsteps, a hesitating, slow dreep of a footstep. James Everton must have had some fatal attraction for dreeps, because Mrs. Mercer had been one too. Or – a window opened brightly in Hilary’s mind – was Mercer the kind of man who liked to lord it over a batch of spineless, subservient women? She was wondering about that when the door opened and Mrs. Ashley stood there putting back the faded hair from her faded eyes and peering at Hilary in a vaguely questioning manner. She had once been a very pretty girl. The faded hair had been a pale ash-blonde, and the faded eyes a very soft pale blue. Her features were regular and good, but the apple-blossom tints which had coloured them had long since departed, leaving her lined and sallow. She might have been thirty-five, she might have been fifty-five. There was no knowing.

Hilary said, ‘May I come in?’ and walked firmly past her and into the room on the right. She felt quite sure that it was no use waiting to be asked in, and she wasn’t going to stand on the doorstep and talk about the Everton Case in the hearing of the neighbours.

The room was most dreadfully pathetic – very old linoleum on the floor with the pattern worn away and the edges frayed, a rug that looked as if it had been picked off a rubbish heap, and a sofa with broken springs and bulges of horsehair coming through the burst American cloth. There was a wooden chair and a sagging wicker one, and a table with a woollen table-cloth which had once been red.

Hilary stood by the table and waited for Mrs. Ashley to come in and shut the door.