‘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?’
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.’