There was no curtain, at least none that was drawn. There was a sink below the sill, and taps. There was no light in the room, which seemed to be a scullery and very small, but a door stood open into the kitchen, and a lamp on the kitchen table shone upon the window and upon the fog. It shone in Hilary’s eyes and dazzled her, so that at first she could see nothing except the lamp and the blue and white checked tablecloth which was spread between it and the table. In spite of being dazzled she kept her eyes wide and looked through the open door. Then she saw something else. She saw Mrs. Mercer turn round from the range with a teapot in her hand. The range was beyond the table and the lamp, a big old-fashioned range with a glowing fire. Mrs. Mercer turned round from it with the teapot. She set it down upon a tray beside the lamp – an old-fashioned tin tray with a gold pattern on it. Then she straightened herself up as if she had been carrying something heavy.
Hilary knocked on the window.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Mrs. Mercer came round the table and through the scullery door. She unlatched the window above the sink, and pushed it open, and said in a weak, dragging voice,
‘Is that the milk? I didn’t expect you in all this fog.’
Hilary leaned well in over the sill. She wasn’t going to have any windows shut in her face. If it was humanly possible to have some of the tea in that fat brown teapot, she meant to have it. She hoped earnestly that the milk-jug she now saw on the tray was not empty, and it revived her a good deal to notice that there was only one cup. Alfred was evidently not expected home to tea. She let the light fall on her face, and she said,
‘Good evening, Mrs. Mercer.’
Mrs. Mercer caught at the edge of the sink and swayed. The lamp was behind her, and her face just a blur. After a minute she said weakly,
‘It’s Miss Carew?’
Hilary nodded.
‘Won’t you let me in? I’d like a cup of tea – you don’t know how much I’d like a cup of tea. I’ve just had a fall off my bicycle. I expect I look as if I’d been dragged through a hedge. May I come in and tidy up?’
Mrs. Mercer still held on to the sink with one hand. The other was at her side. She said,
‘Oh, miss – you frightened me!’
‘I’m so sorry if I did.’
She stared at Hilary.
‘Perhaps you’ve got to catch a train,’ she said.
‘I can’t think how I’m going to get to the station – my bicycle’s all smashed up. Won’t you let me in and give me some tea?’
‘My husband don’t like visitors. I’m expecting him.’
There’s only one cup on the tray.’
Mrs. Mercer began to shake.
‘Can’t I say who I want in my house and who I don’t? I didn’t ask you to come here, did I? If you’d got any sense in you you’d stay away. Haven’t you got anything to do at home that you must needs come trapesing and trailing after those what don’t want you? You be off quick! And the quicker the better, because if Mercer comes home – if Mercer comes home – ’
Up to that first mention of the man’s name she had used an angry whisper, but now it failed. Her eyes were fixed with terror, not upon Hilary, but upon some picture called up by her own words, some picture of Alfred Mercer coming home and finding them here – together.
‘Mrs. Mercer – ’ Hilary’s voice was urgent – ‘I want to ask you something. I don’t want to stay – I’ve got to get back to town.’
Mrs. Mercer’s pale tongue came out and moistened her lips.
‘Go!’ she said. ‘Go – go – go – while you can – ’
Hilary nodded.
‘I want to go every bit as much as you want me to. I’ll go the very minute you’ve told me what I want to know. And if you don’t want Mercer to find me here we’d better get on with it. But I do wish you’d let me in.’
The pale tongue touched the pale lips again.
‘I darsn’t. He’d – cut my heart out.’
Hilary’s spine crept, not so much at the words as at the sick look of terror which went with them. It was no good going on like this. She leaned in as far as she could and dropped her hand on Mrs. Mercer’s wrist. It was icy cold, and the fingers clenched on the stone edge of the sink.
‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I want to know what you meant when you said you tried to see Mrs. Grey while the trial was on.’
Mrs. Mercer strained away from the sink and from Hilary.
‘I did go – I did try – nobody can’t say I didn’t try. I thought he’d have killed me then.’
‘You tried to see her, and she was resting. Why did you try? What did you want to say to her?’
She felt the crazy leap of the pulse that was under her hand. Her grasp tightened. Her head swam with all the unhappiness that had been since then. It wasn’t battle, murder, and sudden death that were the most dreadful things – it was having to go on after they had scorched your life to the bone. She thought of Marion as she had been, Marion as she was now. She said in a breaking voice,
‘You asked me about Marion. She’s so changed. If you could see her you wouldn’t be able to bear it -you wouldn’t really. Won’t you tell me why you went to see her, and what you were going to say? You said if she had seen you – you said it in the train. If she had seen you – what were you going to tell her if she had seen you?’
Mrs. Mercer stopped pulling away. The hand at her side dropped limply. She said in a faint, exhausted tone,
‘It’s too late.’
‘Tell me,’ said Hilary.
Mrs. Mercer shook her head, not with any energy, but as if, being weak, she could not keep it from shaking.
‘Let me go!’ she said.
Hilary held the cold wrist.
‘What were you going to tell her?’
Mrs. Mercer began to cry. Her nose twitched and the tears ran down beside it into her mouth.
‘It’s no use,’ she said with a gasping sob. ‘I was brought up religious, and I know what I done. I darsn’t read my Bible, and I darsn’t say my prayers, and I darsn’t go back on what I promised Mercer. If I had told her then, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but what’s said now won’t mend what’s gone, nor it won’t save me from what I done. Only if Mercer was to know he’d kill me, and then I’d be in hell.’ She had stopped gasping. The words came out with hardly any breath behind them, her voice failing but never quite gone.
Hilary shook the wrist she was holding.
‘Hell’s now,’ she said – ‘when you’re doing something wicked. No wonder you’re unhappy. Tell me what you were going to say to Marion. Please tell me. I won’t go till you do. Do you want Mercer to come back and find me here? I don’t. But I can’t go till you’ve told me.’
Mrs. Mercer leaned towards her across the sink.
‘He’ll kill you,’ she said in a whispering voice – with the bread-knife or something – and say I did it as like as not – and say I’m mad. He tells everyone I’m mad, and when he’s killed you that’s what he’ll say – “My wife done it.” And they’ll take me away and lock me up – because he’ll say I’m mad.’
Hilary’s heart banged against her side. Was it true? Was it? Was it? She said, very slow, and afraid, and like a child,
‘Are you mad, Mrs. Mercer?’
The woman broke into a flood of tears.
‘I’m not, I’m not! Not without he sends me mad with all his wickedness! Oh, miss, I wish I was dead – I wish I was dead!’
Hilary stopped feeling afraid. She managed to pat the heaving shoulder, and felt it pitifully sharp and thin.
‘Mrs. Mercer, do stop crying. If you said what wasn’t true at the trial – and I think you did, because I know Geoff never killed anyone, I really know it – if you did a wicked thing like that, don’t you see your only chance is to tell the truth now and put it right? I don’t wonder you feel like that about hell, with Geoff in prison and Marion so unhappy. But just think how awful it would have been for you if he’d been hanged and there wasn’t anything you could do that would bring him back and put things right again. Doesn’t that make you feel a bit better? Because you can put it right now. You don’t want to go on being miserable like this – do you?’