‘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.
CHAPTER NINE
Mrs. Ashley looked frightened to death. Hilary thought she had never seen anyone so ridiculously frightened in her life. Ridiculously because – well, really, there wasn’t anything for her to be frightened about. You don’t need to look like a rabbit in a trap just because you once worked in a house where there was a murder and someone comes to ask you a few quite harmless questions about it. All the same, there was Mrs. Ashley with her mouth open in a pale O and her eyes staring with terror.
‘I’m Mrs Grey’s cousin,’ repeated Hilary firmly.
Some kind of a sound came out of the pale O, but it didn’t make any sense.
Hilary tapped with her foot. She really could have shaken the creature.
‘Mrs. Geoffrey Grey – Geoffrey Grey’s wife. I’m her cousin. I only wanted to ask you one or two questions – Mrs. Ashley, why are you so frightened?’
Mrs. Ashley caught her breath. Her chin trembled. She put up a hand to cover her mouth.
‘I don’t know anything – I can’t say anything.’
Hilary restrained herself. If she lost her temper, it would be all up. She said in the careful, gentle voice which she would have used to someone who was not quite right in the head: