‘Something on her mind – ’ said Henry slowly. Then, with a good deal of emphasis, ‘You didn’t think of her being out of her mind, did you?’
‘No – no, I didn’t – not after the first minute or two. I did at first because of the way she stared, and because of her bursting out that she knew me, and things like “Thank God he didn’t,” and, “He’d never have gone if he had.” ’
‘He?
‘Mercer. He went along the corridor. I – I’d been looking out of the window, and when I turned round I just saw a man getting up and going along. I’d been picking up the bits, you know – the ones you shattered by scowling across the platform at me – so I hadn’t been noticing who was in the carriage, and when I’d got myself put together again, and turned round, there was the man going out into the corridor and the woman staring at me, and I did think she was mad for about a minute and a half.’
‘Why?’
‘Why did I think she was mad at first – or why didn’t I think so afterwards?’
‘Both.’
‘Well, I thought she was mad at first because of her staring and saying “Thank God” at me – anyone would. But when I found out that she really did know me because of seeing me with Marion at the trial, and that the reason she was all worked up and emoted was because she was frightfully sorry for Marion and couldn’t get her off her mind, I didn’t think she was mad any more. That sort of person gets gulpy at once if they’re fond of someone who’s in trouble, so I just thought it was that, but when I found out who she was, all the rather odd things she’d been saying came up in my mind, and I wondered.’
‘You wondered whether she was mad?’
‘No – I wondered what she’d got on her mind.’
Henry leaned forward with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. ‘Well, you said yourself that her evidence nearly hanged Geoffrey Grey.’
‘Yes, it did. She’d been up to turn down Mr. Everton’s bed, you know, and she swore that when she came down again she heard voices in the study and she thought there was a quarrel going on, and she was frightened and went to the door to listen, and she swore that she recognised Geoffrey’s voice. So then she said she thought it was all right, and she was coming away, when she heard a shot, and she screamed, and Mercer came running out of his pantry where he was cleaning the silver. The study door was locked, and when they banged on it Geoff opened it from inside with the pistol in his hand. It’s frightful evidence, Henry.’
‘And Grey’s story was?’
‘His uncle rang him up at eight and asked him to come along at once. He was very much upset. Geoff went along, and he would have got there at between a quarter and twenty past eight. He went into the study through the open French window, and he said his uncle was lying across the writing-table and the pistol was on the floor in front of the window. He said he picked it up, and then he heard a scream in the hall and the Mercers came banging at the door, and when he found it was locked he unlocked it and let them in. And there were only his finger-prints on the handle and on the pistol.’
Henry said, ‘I remember.’ And then he said what he had forborne to say during the six months of their engagement – ‘That’s pretty conclusive evidence. What makes you think he didn’t do it?’
Hilary’s colour flared. She beat her hands together and said in a voice of passionate sincerity,
‘He didn’t -he didn’t really! He couldn’t! You see, I know Geoff.’
Something in Henry responded to that sure loyalty, it was like trumpets blowing. It was like the drum-beat in a march. It stirred the blood and carried you along. But Hilary might whistle for the comfort of knowing that she had stirred him. He frowned a little and said,
‘Is Marion as sure as you are?’
Hilary’s colour failed as suddenly as it had flamed. She wasn’t sure, poor Marion – she wasn’t sure. She was too worn out with pain to be sure. A cold terror peered at her from her own thoughts and betrayed her from within.
Hilary looked away and said in a voice of sober courage,
‘Geoff didn’t do it.’
‘Then who did?’
‘Mrs. Mercer knows,’ said Hilary. Her own words startled her so much that she felt herself shaking. She had not known that she was going to say that. She hadn’t even known that she was thinking it.
‘Why do you say that?’ said Henry quickly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must. You can’t say a thing like that without knowing why you said it.’
Henry was riding the high horse. Its trampling had a reviving effect upon Hilary. She might marry Henry, or she might not marry Henry, but she simply wasn’t going to be trampled on. She stuck her chin in the air and said,
‘I can. I don’t know why I said it, because it just popped out. I didn’t first think, “Mrs. Mercer knows,” and then say it – I just said it, and then I felt perfectly certain that she did know. That’s the way my mind works – things I’ve never thought about at all come banging out, and then when I do start thinking about them they are true.’
Henry came down off the high horse with a bump. She was so comic when she talked like that with her colour glowing again, and her eyes as bright as a bird’s, and the little brown curls all shining under her perky hat. She wanted shaking and she wanted kissing, and meanwhile he burst out laughing at her.
‘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.