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.’