CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The face stayed there for the time it took to miss a breath and then take two with a gasp between. Then it was gone, moving back from the pane and lost in the room behind.
Hilary went on staring up at the window. It was a fifth-floor window on the left of the common stair. Mrs. Mercer’s face had certainly been there a moment ago. She couldn’t doubt that, because even if she had imagined the face, she couldn’t possibly have imagined its ghastly look of fear. She had never seen such a look on any human face before, and she hoped she would never see it again. At the thought of those desperate, staring eyes, that mouth loose with terror, Hilary knew that she couldn’t wait -she must do something at once. She didn’t even think about Henry. She ran across the street and plunged into the darkness of the stair.
At the second floor she stopped, breathless. You can’t run up five flights of stairs, and there’s no sense in trying to.
Here we go up, up, up.
Here we go down, down, down.
‘No, not down -up. And you’ve got to keep your head, and your breath, or you won’t be any good when you get there.’
All the way up she passed no one except perhaps a dozen children by twos and threes on the landings. They were all very small, because the older ones were at school. They took no notice of Hilary, and she took no notice of them. She reached the fifth floor and knocked on the first door on her left, and it wasn’t until the sound of her knocking came on the air that she began to wonder what she would do if Alfred Mercer answered it. It was a most horrid thought, and what was the good of thinking it – now when it was too late? She could run away… She wasn’t going to run away.
There wasn’t any answer to her knocking. She raised her hand to knock again, but it stayed there, an inch away from the door, without the power to move forward or make any sound. A sort of frozen terror was gaining on her. To break it she made a sudden effort, bringing her hand down upon the door knob. Her hand turned, and the knob with it. The door opened inwards with a click.
Hilary stood on the threshold, and saw a bare passage with three doors opening off it. Funny to say opening when all the doors were shut. It would be the left-hand one behind which Mrs. Mercer had stood and looked out of the window. She closed the outer door and went towards it, and as she did so a cold, cold shiver ran down her spine. The other rooms were behind her now. Suppose Alfred Mercer came out of one of them and caught her by the throat and choked her dead… He wouldn’t. Why should he? One voice said that. And another, ‘He would if he thought you knew too much.’
Now she was listening at the door and could hear nothing. Outside the tenement hummed with noise, but here in this flat there was an empty silence. If she let herself stop to think she would run away from it into the noise again. She struck her hands sharply together, put a tingling palm to the cold door knob, and went in.
It was a bare, wretched room, with a dirty rag of curtain looped back from the window where she had seen the face. A ramshackle double bed stood facing the light, and there was some kind of press or cupboard against the right-hand wall. There was a rickety table in the middle of the room with a couple of chairs beside it. The door hid the head of the bed as Hilary came in, and at first she thought the room was empty.
She came farther in, and saw Mrs. Mercer standing against the wall. She had gone back as far as she could go. One hand clutched the rail of the bed, the other was pressed against her side. Hilary thought she would have sunk down if she had been less stiff with terror. Her face showed the same extremity of fear which had brought Hilary up five flights of stairs to find out what was wrong. And then, before her eyes, the tension broke. Mrs. Mercer let go of the rail, slumped down on the side of the bed, and began to cry.
Hilary shut the door. She said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s frightened you?’
There were choking sobs, and a rain of tears.
‘Mrs. Mercer – ’
‘I thought you was him – oh lord, I did! What shall I do? Oh lord! What shall I do?’
Hilary put a hand on her shoulder and kept it there.
‘You thought I was Mercer? Is he in the flat, or is he out?’
The terrified pale eyes looked up at her.
‘He’ll be coming back – any time now – to finish me. That’s what he’s brought me here for – to finish me off!’ She caught Hilary’s other hand in a cold, damp grip. ‘I darsn’t sleep, and I darsn’t eat! He’s left the gas tap on once already – and there was a bitter taste in the tea – but he said it was nothing – but he didn’t drink the cup I poured him out -and when I said to him, “Aren’t you going to drink your tea, Alfred?” he took and pushed the saucer so that half of it spilled – and he said, “Drink it yourself, and a good riddance!” – and he called me a name he didn’t ought to a-done – because I’m his wife and got my lines to show – whatever may have happened in the past – and not for him to throw it up at me neither – lord knows it isn’t!’
Hilary pressed hard on the thin shoulder.
‘Why do you stay with him, Mrs. Mercer? Why don’t you come away? What’s to stop you? Come away with me now – at once, before he gets back!’
Mrs. Mercer twisted away from her with a sort of desperate strength.
‘Do you think he’d let me go? There isn’t nowhere he wouldn’t follow me and do me in. Oh lord – I wish it was over – I wish I was dead!’
‘Why does he want to kill you?’ said Hilary slowly.
Mrs. Mercer shuddered and was silent.
Hilary went on.
‘Shall I tell you? I know, and you know. That’s the trouble – you know too much. He wants to kill you because you know too much about the Everton murder. He wants to kill you because you know that Geoffrey Grey is innocent. And I don’t care whether he kills us both or not – you’re going to tell me what you know – now!’
Mrs. Mercer stopped crying. She drooped there on the bed, quiet and limp in her respectable black. With her faded eyes fixed on Hilary’s face, she said with a heart-rending simplicity,
‘They’d hang me.’
Hilary’s pulses jumped. Hope flared in her. She said in a hurried undertone,
‘I don’t think they would. You’re ill. You didn’t do it yourself – did you?’
The pale eyes winced from hers.
‘Mrs. Mercer – you didn’t shoot Mr. Everton, did you? You must tell – you must!’
Mrs. Mercer’s tongue came out and wetted her dry lips. She said ‘No,’ and forced her voice and said it again a little louder – ‘No.’
‘Who did?’ said Hilary, and with that there came to them both the click of the outer door.
Mrs. Mercer got to her feet with a jerk that was not like any natural movement. She pushed Hilary, and pointed at the press. Her voice made a sound in her throat, and failed.
But there was neither time nor need for words. Alfred Mercer had come hack, and in all that bare room the press offered the only possibility of a hiding-place. There was not even time for thought. Sheer primitive instinct took its place. Without any conscious interval Hilary found herself in the dark, ill-smelling cupboard with the door shut close. There was very little room. Her shoulder touched rough wood. Her back was against the wall. Something swung and dangled against her in the darkness. Mrs. Mercer’s words started into her mind, and the sweat of terror broke upon her lip, her temples. ‘They’ll hang me.’ Something was hanging here -