These thoughts floated in the terror and confusion of her mind, while at the same time she heard Mrs. Mercer raise her voice in a frantic appeal.
‘Alfred – for the Lord’s sake! I can’t sign that! Alfred, I’ll never say a word – I swear I won’t! I’ll go where no one won’t ever find me, and I’ll never say a word -I’ll take my Bible oath I won’t!’
On the other side of the door Alfred Mercer wrenched away from the grovelling woman who clutched his knees. He let out an agry oath, and then controlled himself. Whatever happened, she’d got to sign the statement, she’d got to sign it. He said, in a deadly quiet voice -
‘Get up, Louie! Get up off the floor!’
Mrs. Mercer looked up stupidly. She was so much afraid that she could no longer think. She was afraid of being hanged, and she was afraid to die, and she was afraid of the knife in Alfred’s hand – but she was most afraid of the knife. She got up, and when he told her to sit she sat, and when he told her to sign her name she took the pen in her cold shaking hand.
‘Put your name to it!’ said Alfred Mercer. He came close and showed her the knife.
Hilary strained against her own terror, and strained to hear. She listened for the faint small sound of the pen on the paper as it moved in the loops and curls of Louisa Kezia Mercer’s signature. ‘If she signs it, he’ll kill her – he’ll kill her at once. I can’t stop here and let her be killed. He’s got a knife. He’ll kill me too. Nobody knows where I am. Henry doesn’t know – Henry – ’
‘Are you going to sign that paper, or have I got to make you?’ said Alfred Mercer.
Mrs, Mercer signed her name.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Hilary caught at her courage with all her might. If the worst came to the worst, she must run out and get to the door and scream. ‘There’s a woman over the way who screams three times a week when her husband beats her, and no one takes any notice. It’s no good screaming.’ No good thinking of that. Think -think hard about the room – about where the furniture is. He’ll be taken by surprise. Think where the table is, and the chairs. The chairs. Pick one up if you can -yes, pick one up and drive at him with a leg – at his knees – or his head. A good deal could be done with a chair, and his knife would be no good to him.
She put her hand on the latch of the cupboard door and lifted it. The door moved outwards a shade, a thread, a crack – a crack to look through. She could see a long streak of daylight, and in the daylight Mrs. Mercer leaning back with her hands in her lap. Her face was drained of all expression. The terror had gone from it to her eyes. They were fixed on Alfred Mercer, who faced her across the table. Hilary couldn’t see his face. She didn’t dare open the door any wider. She held on to the latch to prevent it swinging out. She could only see Mercer’s hands. One of them held the knife. He put it down on the far side of the table. Hilary could just see as far as where it lay with the blade catching the light – a horn handle, a bright blade, and a fine, keen edge. The sheet of paper upon which Mrs. Mercer had been writing just failed to touch this edge. The pen had rolled against the inkpot, a cheap twopenny bottle, with the cork lying beside it.
She forced her eyes away. There had been two chairs. Mrs. Mercer was sitting on one of them. Where was the other? It must be on the far side of the table, behind Alfred Mercer. His hands went out of the picture and came back again with a little packet done up in white paper. Hilary watched him undo the paper and let it fall. There came out a small glass bottle with a screw top, a little thing not more than three inches long. Mrs. Mercer’s pale, terrified eyes stared at it fixedly. Hilary stared, too.
Alfred Mercer held the bottle in his left hand, unscrewed the top, and cupping his palm, tilted out into it a dozen round white pellets. Hilary’s heart began to beat very fast indeed. He was going to poison that poor dreep, right there in front of her eyes, and if he began she would simply have to burst out of the cupboard and do what she could to stop him. She tried to think, but it wasn’t easy. He would have to dissolve those things in water – you couldn’t make anyone swallow a dozen pellets dry. The question was, had he got any water here or hadn’t he? There wasn’t any on the table. If he had to go to the kitchen for it, there would be just one lightning chance to make a dash for safety.
Alfred Mercer’s right hand put the bottle down and dropped the little screw cap carelessly beside the blotted sheet of paper upon which Louisa Mercer had written her confession. His left hand closed on the pellets.
‘Damn it -I’ve forgotten the water!’ he said, and picked up the knife and was gone from Hilary’s field of vision. He crossed it again on his way to the door, and this time she saw his face going past her quickly in profile. It gave her a thrill of horror to see how ordinary he looked, how entirely the respectable butler. He might have been fetching the water for one of his master’s guests.
As he passed, Hilary was giving herself orders – urgent, insistent orders – ‘Count three when he’s gone through the door – let him go out of the door and count three. Then run. Make her run too. You must – you’ve got to. It’s the only chance.’
He went past the foot of the bed and out of the door. Hilary let the cupboard door swing wide and counted three. Then she ran to Mrs. Mercer, taking her by the shoulders, shaking her, and saying breathlessly,
‘Run – run! Quick – it’s your only chancel’
It was a chance that was lost already. There was no life, no movement, no response. The head had fallen back. The eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. The arms hung limp.
‘No good,’ said Hilary to herself – ‘no good.’
She snatched the inkpot from the table and ran out of the room. The kitchen door was open, and the outer door was shut. They faced each other with no more than a yard between. From the kitchen came the sound of running water. It stopped. Hilary snatched at the knob of the outer door, but before she could turn it Alfred Mercer’s hand came down on her shoulder and swung her round. They stared at each other for a long, intolerable moment. He must have put the knife in his pocket, for there was no sign of it. One hand gripped her, the other held a glass half full of water with the little pile of dissolving pellets sending up air bubbles through it. The respectable butler’s face was a snarling mask.
Hilary screamed at the top of her voice and struck hard at his face with the bottle of ink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Henry Cunningham came down the dirty tenement stair and emerged upon the street. He wore a puzzled frown, and he carried a small parcel done up in an extremely crumpled piece of brown paper. A yard from the step he walked into the last person he was expecting to meet – Miss Maud Silver, in a black coat with a shabby fur collar, and a black felt hat enlivened by a bunch of purple velvet pansies. Henry exclaimed, and Miss Silver exclaimed. What she actually said was, ‘Dear me!’ After which she put a hand on Henry’s arm and began to walk briskly up the street beside him.
‘We will not, perhaps, talk here. I was on my way to interview Francis Everton, but I see you have already done so. I have another appointment, so we must not lose time. I should prefer to hear your report before proceeding any farther myself.’
‘You can’t proceed any farther,’ said Henry, casting an odd look at her. He was thinking that she would pass very well as a district visitor, but that he himself was rather conspicuous, and that the sooner they collected Hilary and went somewhere where they could talk the better.
‘And just what do you mean by that?’ said Miss Maud Silver.
They turned into, a side street.
‘Frank Everton is dead,’ said Henry.
‘When?’