Mrs. Mercer wrenched sharply away.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ she said. “You get along out of here, or something’ll happen!’
The tears stung Hilary’s eyes. She had thought – she had been sure -the wildest hopes had dazzled her – and then suddenly everything was gone.
Mrs. Mercer had retreated into the doorway. She stood there leaning against the jamb. There was a wretched triumph in her voice.
‘You go back on to the road and turn to the left, and you’ll get to Ledlington! Where’s your bicycle?’
Hilary straightened herself. She was stiff from leaning over the sill.
‘Smashed.’ And then, ‘They tried to kill me.’
Mrs. Mercer put up a hand, touched her lips, and let it fall again. The lips parted and said,
‘Who?’
‘Don’t you know?’ said Hilary with a little scorn in her voice.
Mrs. Mercer backed away from her into the kitchen. When she was clear of the door she thrust at it with her hands and with her knee. The door fell to with a clap. Hilary was alone in the foggy dark.
She felt her way back round the house and out at the gate. Then she followed the ruts again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Marion Grey was showing a dress called Moonlight. There was very little of it, but what there was was quite well named. The time was five o’clock in the afternoon. Harriet St. Just’s showroom was full of women, some of whom had come there to amuse themselves and not to buy. Most of them called her Harry, or darling. She charged incredible prices for her clothes, and had contrived a quite astonishing success in the three years of her venture. She and Marion had been at school together, but she recognised no friendships during business hours. From ten to six Marion was simply Vania, and one of the best mannequins in London.
A dark, stooping woman, lined and haggard, called across half a dozen people.
‘Harry, that’s divine! I’ll have it just as it is. Ask her to turn round and let me see the back again.’
Marion turned slowly, gracefully, looked over a shadowy shoulder, and held the pose. Her dark hair was knotted on her neck. She was made up to a smooth, even pallor. The shadows under her eyes made them look unnaturally large, unnaturally dark. She did not look as if she were really there at all. The dress followed the lovely lines of her figure, softening them like a mist.
Harriet St. Just said, ‘That will do. You can show the black velvet next.’
Marion went out trailing her blue-grey moonlight. A girl called Celia who had been showing a bright green sports suit giggled as the showroom door closed behind them.
‘Old Katie’s got a nerve! “I’ll have that”!’ She mimicked the dark woman’s voice. ‘Gosh – what a hag she’ll look in it! I call it a shame – a lovely dress like that!’
Marion said nothing. With the skill of long practice she was slipping the dress off over her head. She managed it without ruffling a single hair. Then she took down a black velvet dress with a matching cloak and began to put it on.
A short, fair woman with thick fluffy eyebrows put her head round the door.
‘Someone wants you on the ’phone, Vania.’
Celia giggled again.
‘Well, I wouldn’t be you if old Harry gets to know about it! In the middle of a dress show! I say, Flora, have I really got to show that ghastly pink rag? It’s not my style a bit. I wouldn’t be seen dead in it in the Tottenham Court Road – and I can’t say fairer than that.’
‘You just hurry!’ said Flora and shut the door on her.
Marion lifted the receiver from the office telephone. Flora ought to have said she was engaged. She couldn’t imagine who could possibly be ringing her up here. They had no business to do it. Flora was much too good-natured – a sort of cousin of Harriet’s who did about six people’s work and was never out of temper, but she couldn’t say no. She put the receiver to her ear, and heard a man’s voice say rather faintly,
‘Mrs. Grey?’
‘Yes.’
The black velvet was slipping from her shoulder. She shifted her hand and pulled it up.
‘ Marion, is that you?’ And all at once she knew who was speaking. Her face changed. She said in a low, hard voice,
‘Who are you? Who is speaking?’ But she knew very well.
‘Bertie Everton,’ said the voice. ‘Look here, don’t ring off – it’s important.’
‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘I know, I know – you feel like that. It’s my misfortune. I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s something about Geoffrey I thought you ought to know. Just a chance, but there it is. I thought I’d tell you.’
She leaned with her free hand on Harriet’s writing-table, leaned hard, and said,
‘I can’t see you. If you’ve anything – to say – you can see my solicitor.’ Her lips were so stiff that they shaped the words with difficulty. After a confused moment she wondered whether they had shaped them at all, because he was saying,
‘Then I’ll call for you at six.’
That broke the stiffness anyway. She said with a rush of anger,
‘You can’t come here – you must know that.’
‘Then I’ll be at your flat at half past six. You’ll be home by then?’
‘I can’t see you. There’s a dress show. I shall be late.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Bertie Everton, and with a click the line was dead.
Marion went back to show the black velvet gown, which was called Lucrezia Borgia. It had a stiff full skirt and a tight bodice embroidered with pearls after the Renaissance fashion. The heavy sleeves were slashed from shoulder to wrist over deep-toned ivory satin. She saw herself in a mirror as she opened the showroom door, but it was not the dress she saw reflected there, it was the anger in her eyes.
The dress had a great success. It was bought by a wispy fair-haired woman who sniffed and dabbed continually the tip of her nose with a small square of magenta chiffon. She was somebody’s friend from the country, and if she fancied herself as Lucrezia Borgia, it was nobody’s business but her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hilary reached the outskirts of Ledlington at a little after half past six. The first street-lamp almost brought tears into her eyes, she was so glad to see it. When you have been wandering in one of those dark places of the earth which are full of cruelty, and when you have only just escaped being murdered there, omnibuses, and trams, and gas-lamps, and crowds of people really do seem almost too good to be true.
The crowds of people looked oddly at Hilary. It didn’t occur to her at first that they were looking oddly, because she was so rapturously pleased to see them, but after she had got over the first of that the oddness began to soak in, and she woke up with a start to realise that she had been slithering about on wet roads and scrambling through hedges, and that she was probably looking like a last year’s scarecrow. She gazed about her, and beheld on the other side of the road the sign of The Magpie and Parrot. The sign was a very pleasant one. The magpie and the parrot sat side by side upon a golden perch. The magpie was very black and very white, and the parrot was very green. They advertise one of Ledlington’s most respected hotels, but nobody knows how it got its name.
Hilary crossed the road, mounted half a dozen steps, and entered such a dark passage that she was instantly filled with confidence. It might appear gloomy later on when she had washed her face, but at the moment it was very comfortable. She told the pleasant elderly woman at the desk that she had had a bicycle accident, and immediately everyone in the hotel began to be kind and helpful. It was very nice of them, because really when Hilary saw herself in the glass she looked the most disreputable object it is possible to imagine. All one side of her face was plastered with mud. She remembered the grit of the road under her cheek. She had lost her hat – she didn’t remember anything about that -and the mud had got into her hair. There was a long scratch running back across her temple, and another fairly deep one on her chin. They had bled a good deal, and the blood had run into the mud. Her coat was torn, and her skirt was torn, and her hands were torn.