‘Why?’ said Hilary, looking at him rather disconcertingly. Her bright no-coloured eyes had the frank stare of a child.
The man looked past her. He said:
‘Well, miss, I thought you two being alone in the carriage as it were – well, I thought perhaps you might have got into conversation.’
Hilary’s heart gave a little jump. Mercer -it was Mercer. And he thought perhaps she had talked to Mrs. Mercer in the train, and that Mrs. Mercer had talked to her. She didn’t believe for a moment that he had recognised her yesterday. Of course he might have. Mrs. Mercer had recognised her, and Mrs. Thompson had, but all the time Mercer was in the carriage she had sat looking out of the window, and when he came back she herself had gone out into the corridor and stayed there until the Ledlington stop. He had stood aside to let her pass, and of course he might have recognised her then, but she didn’t think so, because if he had, and if there was anything he wanted to say, he could have followed her down the corridor and said it there. No, he had got it out of his poor draggly wife afterwards and now he wanted to find out just what the poor thing had said. How he had found her, she just couldn’t imagine, but when she thought about it afterwards she wondered whether he had been at Solway Lodge on some business of his own or of Bertie Everton’s and had seen her looking in through the gate, or whether he had followed her all the way from the flat. Both these thoughts gave her a nasty creepy feeling down the back of her neck. She said with no perceptible pause:
‘Oh yes, we talked a little.’
‘Begging your pardon, miss, I hope my wife didn’t make herself troublesome to you in any way. She’s quiet enough as a rule or I wouldn’t have left her with a stranger, but as soon as I came back into the carriage I could see she’d been working herself up, and when I saw you turning the corner of the road just now I thought I would take the liberty of catching up with you and saying I hope she didn’t saying anything she shouldn’t or give any offence. She’s quiet enough as a rule, poor thing, but I could see she was all worked up, and I shouldn’t like to think she’d offended a young lady that was connected with a family where we’d been in service.’
Hilary turned that bright look on him again. A very superior, well-spoken man, but she didn’t like his eyes. They were the blankest eyes she had ever seen – light, hard eyes without a trace of expression in them. She thought of Mrs. Mercer weeping in the train, and she thought a man with eyes like that might break a woman down. She said:
‘You were in service with Mr. Everton at Solway Lodge?
‘Yes. A very sad affair, miss.’
They were walking along between the bright toy houses. Hilary thought, ‘I’d rather live in one of these than under those dripping trees at Solway Lodge.’ Everything clean, everything new. Nobody else’s sins, and follies, and crimes, and loves, and hates hanging around. Little gay bandbox rooms. A little gay garden where she and Henry would prodigiously admire own marigolds, own Canterbury bells, own Black-eyed Susans.
But she wasn’t ever going to have a house with Henry now. Mercer’s words echoed faintly in her mind – ‘A very sad affair.’ She blinked sharply twice and said,
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Very sad indeed. And my wife not being very strong in her head, she can’t properly get over it, miss, and I should be very sorry if she’d annoyed you in any way.’
‘No,’ said Hilary – ‘no, she didn’t annoy me.’ Her voice had an abstracted sound, because she was trying to remember just what Mrs. Mercer had said… ‘Oh, miss, if you only knew.’ That was one of the things. If she only knew what? What was there for her to know?…
She didn’t see Mercer look sharply at her and then look away, but his voice came through her thoughts.
‘She’s in very poor health, miss, I’m sorry to say, and it doesn’t do to let her talk about the case, because she gets all worked up and doesn’t hardly know what she’s saying.’
Hilary said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She was trying to think what else Mrs. Mercer had said… I tried to see her.’ Her -that was Marion – poor Marion, with the trial going on. ‘Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true as I tried to see her. I give him the slip and I got out.’
Mercer’s voice came through again.
‘Then she didn’t say anything she oughtn’t to, miss?’
‘Oh no,’ said Hilary a little vaguely. She wasn’t really thinking about what she said. She was thinking about Mrs. Mercer giving her husband the slip, with Geoff being tried for murder and the Mercers the chief witnesses against him. And Mrs. Mercer had tried to see Marion, tried desperately. ‘Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true as I tried to see her.’ The woman’s very tone of horror sounded in her mind, and the way her light wild eyes had been fixed as she whispered, ‘If she’d ha’ seen me,’ and then, ‘She didn’t see me. Resting – that’s what they told me. And then he came and I never got another chance. He saw to that.’ It had meant nothing to her at the time. It began to mean something to her now. What had Mrs. Mercer been going to say, and what chance had been missed because poor worn-out Marion had been persuaded to take a brief uneasy rest?…
Mercer was saying something, she didn’t know what. She wrenched away from that train journey and turned on him with a sudden energy.
‘You were a witness at Mr. Grey’s trial – you were both witnesses?’
He kept his eyes down as he answered her.
‘Yes, miss. It was very painful to me and Mrs. Mercer. Mrs. Mercer’s never got over it yet.’
‘Do you believe that Mr. Grey did it?’ The words came to Hilary’s lips without thought or purpose.
Mercer looked at the pavement. His tone had a note of respectful reproof.
‘That was for the jury to say, miss. Mrs. Mercer and me we had to do our duty.’
Something boiled up in Hilary so suddenly that she nearly lost her self-control. She felt a strong uncivilised urge to slap Mercer’s smooth, well-featured face and give him the lie. Fortunately it was nearly, and not quite. Civilised young women do not slap butlers’ faces in the street -it simply isn’t done. She turned hot and cold all over at her narrow escape and walked a little faster. The new road had run into an old one, and she could hear the roar of a thoroughfare not too far away. She wished passionately to catch a bus and leave Putney and Mercer to their own devices.
He still kept up with her and went on talking about his wife.
‘It’s no use raking things up that’s bound to be painful to all concerned, and so I’ve told Mrs. Mercer many a time, but being weak in the head -it’s her nerves the doctor says – she kinds of harps on the case and blames herself because she had to give evidence. But as I said to her, “You’re bound to say what you know, and no blame to you if it goes against anyone.” “You can’t tell lies,” I said -“not on your Bible oath in a court of law, you can’t. You’ve got to tell what you’ve seen or heard, and it’s the judge and the jury that does the rest, not you.” But there, she goes on harping on it, and I can’t stop her. But as long as she didn’t annoy you, miss – I’m sure you’d be one that would make allowances for her not being what you might call quite right in the head.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Hilary.
The thoroughfare was most helpfully near. She walked faster and faster. That was at least six times Mercer had told her that Mrs. Mercer wasn’t right in the head. He must be very anxious for it to soak right in. She wondered why. And then she thought she knew. And then she thought that if he said it again, she would probably scream.
They emerged upon the High Street, and her heart jumped with joyful relief.
‘Good morning,’ she said – ‘I’m catching a bus.’ And caught one.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hilary sat in the bus and thought. She thought about the Mercers. She thought a great deal about the Mercers. Mrs. Mercer might be off her head, or she mightn’t. Mercer was uncommonly anxious to make it clear that she was off her head – he kept on saying it every five minutes. There€ was something in Shakespeare – how did it go – ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’ Mercer was rather like that about Mrs. Mercer – he protested so much that you couldn’t help having the feeling that perhaps he was overdoing it. ‘What I tell you three times is true.’ That was Lewis Carroll in The Hunting of the Snark. That seemed to fit Alfred Mercer very well. If he went on saying that Mrs. Mercer was mad often enough it would be believed, and to all intents and purposes mad she would be, and nobody would take any notice of what she said.