‘It’s all very well to laugh!’ But in her inside mind she laughed too and sang a little shouting song of joy, because once you begin to laugh together, how can you go on quarrelling? You simply can’t. And she was tired right through to the very marrow of her bones of quarrelling with Henry.
‘Prize fool!’ said Henry, no longer strangely polite.
Hilary shook her head and caught the inside corner of her lip between her teeth, because she wasn’t going to laugh for Henry to see – not yet.
That’s only because you can’t do it yourself. And you’ve got a nasty jealous disposition – I’ve told you about it before -and if you ever marry anyone, Henry, you’ll have to watch it because she’ll either walk out on you or else turn into a dreep because you’ve broken her spirit by giving her an ingrowing inferiority complex.’
Henry’s gaze rested on her with something disturbing in it. This was the Henry who could laugh at you with his eyes, and make your heart beat suddenly and hard.
‘I haven’t noticed any signs of it,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m the sort that walks out,’ said Hilary, and met his eyes with a hardy sparkle in her own.
Henry said nothing. He didn’t intend to be drawn. He continued to look at her, and in a panic Hilary returned to Mrs. Mercer.
‘Don’t you see, Henry, if you don’t believe Mrs. Mercer’s evidence – and I don’t – well then, she must know who did it. She wouldn’t just go telling all those lies to amuse herself – because she wasn’t amused, she was frightfully, frightfully miserable – or to spite Geoff, because she was frightfully, frightfully miserable about Geoff and about Marion. So if she was telling lies – and I’m sure she was – it was because she wanted to screen somebody else. And we’ve got to find out who it is – we’ve simply got to.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Henry stopped laughing at Hilary with his eyes and frowned instead, not at her, but past her at the Mercers, and the Everton Case, and the problem of finding about a quarter of a needle in several hypothetical bundles of hay. It was all very well for Hilary to propose a game of Spot the Murderer, but the trouble was that so far as he himself was concerned he had a conviction amounting to certainty that the murderer had already been spotted, and was now expiating his exasperated shot at the uncle who had cut him out of his will. It was, and had been all along, his opinion that Geoffrey Grey had got off light and was uncommonly lucky not to have been hanged.
Henry’s regiment was in Egypt, and after a leave spent very pleasantly in the Tyrol he had gone back to Cairo. James Everton was shot a couple of days before his leave was up. He had, at the time, been a good deal preoccupied with trying to make Hilary see the question of an engagement in the same light as he did. In the end they more or less split the difference, Henry asserting that they were engaged, whilst Hilary maintained that being engaged was stuffy. Snippets about the Case filtered through to Egypt. Hilary wrote voluminously about it from a passionately personal and partisan point of view, but he had never really read the evidence. He accepted the verdict, was sorry for Marion Grey, and counted the days till he could get home and make Hilary marry him. And here she was, without any intention of marrying him at all and every intention of trying to drag him into a wild goose attempt at re-opening the Everton Case. He reacted in the most obstinate and natural manner, focused the frown on Hilary, and said in his most dogmatic voice,
‘You’d better let it alone – the case is closed.’
Hilary beat her hands together again.
‘It isn’t – it can’t be! It won’t ever be closed until the real murderer is found and Geoff is free – and the more I think of it, the more I feel quite, quite sure that Mrs. Mercer knows who it is. Henry, it’s a hunch!’
Henry frowned upon the hunch.
‘What’s the good of talking like that? You say yourself that your first impression of the woman was that she was mad. I don’t mean to say she’s a raving lunatic, but she is obviously a morbid, hysterical person. If she was fond of the Greys she would naturally feel having to give evidence against Geoffrey. I can’t see anything in what you told me except that having given the evidence she apparently tried to crash in on Marion and make a scene about it.’
‘No,’ said Hilary – ‘no. No, it wasn’t that. She’d got something eating into her – I’m sure she had. Why did she say, “If I’d only seen her?” ’
‘Why does a hysterical person say anything?’
‘And why did she say things like “I didn’t get another chance – he took care of that,” and the bit about thanking God Mercer didn’t recognise me, because he wouldn’t ever have left us alone together. Why did she say that?’
Henry shrugged his shoulders.
‘If you’ve got a mad wife, you do your best to stop her annoying people – I don’t see anything in that. As a matter of fact I believe she really is unhinged.’
‘I should hate to be married to Mercer,’ said Hilary.
Henry burst out laughing.
‘Hilary, you really are!’
Hilary looked at him in a melting manner which it had taken her a good deal of time and trouble to acquire. She had copied it from a leading film star, and she wanted to seewhat effect it would have on Henry. It didn’t seem to have any effect at all, and as she began to feel that it was going to bring on a squint, she permitted a natural sparkle of anger to take its place.
‘When you make eyes at Henry, he
Behaves as if he didn’t see,’
said Hilary’s imp in a sort of piercing mosquito whisper. The angry sparkle became a shade brighter. Henry was a beast – he really was. The man in the film had gone down like a ninepin. It really wasn’t the slightest use making eyes at Henry, and if he was the last man left in London she wouldn’t marry him. She would almost rather be married to Mercer. No, she wouldn’t. A shiver went all down the back of her neck, and she said in a hurry,
‘You know what I mean. It would be enough to drive anyone into a lunatic asylum, I should think.’
‘Then you agree that she’s mad.’
‘No, I don’t. And the more Mercer follows me round and tells me she is about twice in every sentence, the less I’m going to believe it.’
Henry got up.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Mercer. Henry, his name’s Alfred. Isn’t it awful?’
‘Hilary – has he been following you?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, darling -I told you he had -most persistent. I should think he probably followed me all the way from Solway Lodge to Pinman’s Lane to where I got on to my bus, because he was talking to me most of the way and telling me about Mrs. Mercer being out of her mind, and when he’d said it more than six times I began to wonder why he was saying it.’
Henry sat down on the arm of the chair beside her. There was just room and no more.
‘Perhaps because it was true,’ he said
‘Or perhaps because it wasn’t.’
Their shoulders were touching. She looked round at him with a defiant gleam in her eye and prepared to do battle. But Henry had dropped his point. He put his arm round her in a sort of matter-of-course way as if they were still engaged and said,
‘That’s odd.’
‘What is?’
‘Mercer’s following you round like that.’
Hilary nodded. Henry’s arm made a good back – something nice to lean against. She said,
‘He’d found out that it was me in the train. I expect he bullied it out of her, poor thing. And he wasn’t quite sure what she’d said to me, but he was going to make sure that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to believe it. Now if he could make me believe that she was mad – Henry, don’t you see?’
Henry’s arm tightened a little.
‘I don’t know – she might really be mad,’ he said. ‘But it’s funny – was it today he followed you?’