Two of them, Mr. and Mrs. – a pint a day. Would that be them?’
Hilary’s heart gave a jump of pure joy. She hadn’t realised just what a hopeless, needle-in-the-hay kind of business she had embarked upon until she heard those stirring words. Her imp chanted:
‘A pint of milk a day
Keeps despair away.’
She said eagerly, ‘Yes, they might be. What were they like?’
The girl giggled a little.
‘She didn’t look as if she could call her soul her own. I wouldn’t let a man get the upper hand of me like that. Silly, I call it.’
‘Can you give me the address?’ said Hilary.
‘They were staying with Mrs. Green round in Albert Crescent – rooms, you know.’
‘’What is the number?‘ said Hilary quickly.
The girl yawned, covering her mouth with a plump white hand.
‘Oh, they’re not there any longer. Just a matter of one night, that was all.’
The disappointment was quite dreadful.
‘They’re not here any longer?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Friends of yours?’ she enquired with a sort of easy curiosity.
‘Oh, no. I just want to find them -on a matter of business.’
‘You’ve got to be careful,’ said the girl. She put her plump elbows on the counter and leaned towards Hilary. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to say anything if they were friends of yours, but Mrs. Green wasn’t half pleased to get rid of them. She liked him well enough but Mrs. just about gave her the creeps. Like a ghost about the house, she said, and a bit queer by all accounts. But what put her out more than anything else was her waking everyone up screaming in the night. Never heard anything like it, Mrs. Green said. And him trying to calm her down, and apologising all round. Quite the gentleman she said he was. And it was then he let out about her not being right in the head, and “Mr. Mercer,” says Mrs. Green -I know all about it, because she’s a friend of Aunt’s and come round and told her – “Mr. Mercer,” she says, “I’m sorry for you, and if your wife’s afflicted, I’m sorry for her, but this isn’t a home for the afflicted and I’ll trouble you to go elsewhere.” And Aunt said she done perfectly right, because you ve got to think about your own house, and screams in the night are just what might get a house a bad name. And Mr. Mercer said he was very sorry, and it shouldn’t occur again, and they were leaving, anyway.’
‘They’ve gone?’ said Hilary in the woeful voice of a child.
The girl nodded.
‘First thing. Closed their account and all.’
‘You don’t know where they’ve gone?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Not to say know. There was a cottage to let out Ledstow way. Mrs Green passed a remark about it.’
A cottage – that was just what she had thought of – a place where there wouldn’t be anyone for Mrs. Mercer to talk to – a lonely cottage where a woman might scream without being heard. A shiver ran all the way down her spine as she said,
‘Can you tell me how to get to this cottage?’
The girl shook her head again.
‘Sorry – I can’t.’
‘Mrs. Green might know.’
Another shake of the head.
‘Not her! Why, she told Aunt someone had told her about the cottage, but she didn’t know who it was. And Aunt said one of the agents would know, but Mrs. Green would have it that it was being let private and nothing to do with the agents. And then all of a sudden it came over her who it was told her about the cottage.’
‘Yes?’ said Hilary – ‘yes?’
The girl giggled and lolled on the counter.
‘It was Mr. Mercer himself. Funny -wasn’t it? It came back to her as clear as anything. He’d heard about the cottage from a friend, and he thought maybe he’d go and have a look at it. So that’s what he must have done. She didn’t take any notice at the time, but it came to her afterwards.’
The ray had faded out completely.
‘How far is Ledstow?’ said Hilary in a discouraged voice.
‘A matter of seven miles,’ said the girl.
Seven miles. If Hilary’s heart could have sunk any lower, it would have done so. It was a nasty dull, grey, foggy afternoon. It would be early dark, and still earlier dusk. The cottage might be as far away as the last of the seven miles between Ledlington and Ledstow. There was a horrible sagging inexactness about that ‘out on the Ledstow road’. She couldn’t just walk into the fog with the prospect of perhaps having to do fourteen miles and returning in the dark. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was remembering that Mercer had followed her this morning, and all of a sudden she was occupying herself with how he had come to be in Putney, and why he had followed her. The Mercers had gone down to Ledlington yesterday afternoon, presumably on their way to look at the cottage on the Ledstow road. They had slept at Mrs. Green’s – or, rather, they hadn’t slept, because Mrs. Mercer had screamed and raised the house. And Mrs. Green had given them notice and they had gone away ‘first thing’. Well, that left time for Mercer to get up to Putney and go to Solway Lodge. But what had he done with Mrs. Mercer? And why had he gone to Putney? And why did Mrs. Mercer scream in the night? Yes, why did Mrs. Mercer scream in the night?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hilary gave it up. She felt as small and mean as one of the little scuttling things that you turn up under a stone in the garden, but she gave it up. The urge to follow Mrs. Mercer and find out whether she was out of her mind or not failed and faded away before the prospect of a fourteen-mile walk in the dark along a country road which she did not know in search of a cottage which might not even exist and a woman who might be anywhere else in England. She had lunched on milk and a bun and she wanted her tea. You can’t buy much tea with sevenpence halfpenny, of which twopence has to be reserved for a bus fare at the other end, but she did her best with it.
Sitting in the train which was taking her back to London, she found that her opinion of herself was rising. Perhaps it was the tea, perhaps it was merely the revival of common sense which made her feel that she had done the right thing. Silly to lose herself in dark lanes, and impossible to frighten Marion by not getting home till all hours. Tonight of all nights Marion would want someone to come home to. It always took her days to get over one of those tormenting visits to Geoff. No, she was doing perfectly right to come back. Where she had been a stupid ass was in starting to go down to Ledlington in the afternoon. The thing to do was to get down there bright and early, say not later than ten o’clock, and so have plenty of time to look for the cottage and Mrs. Mercer by daylight. Horrid beyond words to think of being benighted, and hearing perhaps a footstep following her in the dark as Mercer had followed her this morning. She hadn’t liked it very much then, but what had been just vaguely unpleasant in a Putney street by daylight took on a nightmarish quality when she thought of it happening in the black dark without a house in call.
These arguments placated her conscience easily. The cottage wouldn’t run away. If Mrs. Mercer was there, she wouldn’t run away either. Tomorrow she would pawn Aunt Arabella’s ring and go down to Ledlington on the proceeds. It was the most hideous ring Hilary had ever seen in her life – a very large, badly-cut ruby practically buried in enormous heavy masses of gold. It weighed like lead and was quite unwearable, but it could always be trusted to produce a fiver at a pinch. Hilary decided that this was definitely a pinch. She planned to hire a bicycle and so escape an interminable search on foot. And that being off her mind, she went to sleep and slept peacefully all the way to town. She had a dream about Henry -a very encouraging dream – in which he told her that he had been in the wrong, and that his only wish was to be forgiven. This agreeably improbable picture was extremely solacing, but even in a dream this contrite and humble Henry seemed a little too good to be true. She awoke with a start, and dreamed no more.