The Case Is Closed (5 page)

The sitting-room clock struck three. Hilary was asleep, her head tilted against the back of the chair, the file still heavy across her knees. The light stared down at her and took all the colour out of her face. The birds and flowers of Marion’s chintz were bright, but Hilary was pale and very deeply asleep. The light shone on her closed eyelids without reaching her. One moment she was there, full of trouble for Geoffrey and for Marion, and then quite suddenly one of those doors in the long, smooth wall of her city of sleep had opened and let her through.

She came into a queer place. It was a very queer place indeed, a long dark passage running crooked all the way, and because she was in a dream the darkness did not prevent her from seeing the walls of the passage, and they were all made of black looking-glass. She could see herself reflected in them, and two Hilarys walking one on either side of her. In the dream that seemed quite natural and comforting, but when she had gone a little way the reflections began to change, not all at once, but slowly, slowly, slowly, until the two who walked with her were not Hilary, but two strangers. She could not see who they were, but she knew that they were strangers. If she could have turned her head she would have been able to see, but she couldn’t turn her head. A cold fear gripped the back of her neck and held it rigid. Something in her began to feel lost child and not wanting to dream this dream any more. Something in her melted, and wept, and cried for Henry, because in her dream she had forgotten about Henry’s Atrocious Behaviour and only remembered that he wouldn’t let anything hurt her.

The light shone on her closed eyelids, and the tears of her dream welled up and ran down over her pale cheeks tear by tear. They wetted the bright pattern of the chintz, soaking into the blue bird-feathers and the rose-coloured paeony-petals. One of the tears wandered into the deep crinkle at the corner of her mouth. The salt taste of it came through into the dream.

In the next room Marion Grey lay in the dark and slept. She did not dream at all. All day long she turned a courageous mask upon the world. She had her living to earn. She earned it as a mannequin. All day long she stood, walked, and postured in clothes that were sometimes beautiful and sometimes hideous, but always staggeringly expensive. The long graceful lines of her body and the fact that she was Geoffrey Grey’s wife gave her a certain value. All day long she endured that knowledge. She had got the job through a friend, and Harriet St. Just had been completely frank. ‘You will change your name of course. Equally, of course, it will be known who you are. I am taking a risk — it may be good for trade, it may be bad. With my particular clientele, I think it will be good. If it is bad, you will go. At once. I am taking a big risk.’ The risk had justified itself. She earned her living and she earned it hard. Tomorrow she would be back at Harriet’s — she would be Vanya. Tonight she was not even Marion Grey. She was sunk in so deep a trance of fatigue that she had lost herself, lost Geoffrey, lost the cold sorrow which lay always like ice upon her heart.

Geoffrey Grey slept, too. He lay on his narrow bed, as his mother had seen him lie when he was a baby, as he had lain on his almost equally hard school bed, as Marion had watched him lie in the moonlight, in the breaking dawn, one arm thrown over his head and the hand of the other under his cheek. He was asleep and dreaming with a furious zest of all those things from which he was shut away. His body was in prison, but his mind went free. He was running in his school sports, winning the hundred yards again, breasting the tape, hearing the applause break out. And then all in a flash he was flying with Elvery. A roar of sound — stars — cloud underneath them as white as boiling milk —and the wind going past. And then he was diving into the bluest sea in the world — down into it, and down, and down, and the blue getting bluer all the time. And then up again crazily fast, and Marion waiting for him in the sunshine. They took hands and ran over the sea together hand in hand, just skimming the bright water. Once in a way the crest of a wave came up at them in foam and hung them with rainbows. He saw Marion with a rainbow in her hair.

Captain Henry Cunningham was not asleep when the clock struck three. He had, in point of fact, given up trying to go to sleep. He had given it up some time before at, say, a quarter to two, when he had switched on the light and tried to concentrate upon an article about Chinese porcelain. He had made no hand at it at all. If he was really going to chuck the Service and carry on the antique business which his godfather, old Mr. Henry Eustatius, had so surprisingly bequeathed to him, he had a lot of arrears of knowledge to make up with regard to porcelain. He had not, of course, made up his mind about sending in his papers, but he would have to make up his mind before the month was out. The Morrises’ offer couldn’t be kept open much longer — it would have to be accepted or refused. His leave would be up at the end of the month.

Hilary was, of course, the disturbing factor. Hilary had been immensely keen about their running the antique business together. He had practically made up his mind then. But if Hilary was off, he felt like being off too — off to the ends of the earth as far as possible from Hilary Carew, and from his mother who never saw him without telling him what an escape he had had. With inward rage Henry was aware that he had not escaped, and that he had no desire to escape. Hilary had behaved atrociously — he used her own words — but he hadn’t the slightest intention of letting her get away with it. He was leaving her alone because he was angry, and because she deserved to be left alone, and when she had been punished sufficiently and was properly humble and penitent he meant to forgive her. At least that is what it all looked like in the daytime, but at night it didn’t seem quite so easy. Suppose Hilary wouldn’t make it up.

Suppose she had got really entangled with that swine Basil Montague. Suppose — suppose — suppose he had lost her…

It was at these moments, that sleep receded and porcelain lost its power to fix the mind. Henry sat miserably on the edge of his bed and wondered, undutifully and not for the first time, why his father had married his mother, and why his mother disliked Hilary so much. She hadn’t stopped abusing her the whole afternoon, and it was the last afternoon which Henry meant to spend at Norwood for a good long time. Thank heaven and his queer old godfather for the four-roomed flat over the antique shop which provided such a good excuse for not spending his leave with his mother. He had planned to live in the flat with Hilary.

There he was, back at Hilary again. His rage turned against himself because he was letting a chance glimpse of her unbalance him. When you have mapped out a path you should be prepared to follow it, and he was letting an accidental glimpse of Hilary tempt him to leave the mapped-out path and go plunging across country with the one idea of reaching her as soon as possible, snatching her up and kissing her, carrying her away and marrying her out of hand. He had actually fallen so low as to write to her — not the sort of calm forgiving letter of the plan but an incoherent appeal to make it up, to love him again, to marry him quickly. Even superior young men have their moments of weakness. It is true that he had surmounted his. The ashes of that undignified appeal were choking the grate at this moment, the light draught from the chimney stirred them lightly. So perish all traitor thoughts.

Henry directed a most portentous frown upon the grate. He hadn’t really seen Hilary this afternoon, he had only caught that one teasing, tantalising, unsatisfying glimpse. It had left him with the impression that she was pale. His heart contracted at the thought of Hilary pale, of Hilary ill. His brain instantly reminded him that she never had very much colour on a cold day. It was, of course, possible that she had caught sight of him before he had caught sight of her, and that the pallor was due to a smitten conscience. Henry’s brain here produced a sardonic ‘I don’t think!’ He had no reason to suppose that Hilary’s conscience was taking a hand in the affair at all. It had always struck him as a very spritely and resilient conscience. He somehow didn’t see it being pale and remorseful over having disregarded his wishes.

At this point two conflicting comments emerged as it were from opposite sides of his mind. ‘Little beast!’ was one. And the other, ‘Oh, Hilary — darling!’ Very disturbing to the feelings, to be so mixed up about a girl as not to be able to think of her as the darling of your heart without being irritatingly conscious that she was a little beast, or to dismiss her as a little beast without the instant and poignant reminder that she was the darling of your heart. From this quite common dilemma there is no escape alone. Two may sometimes find the way out hand-in-hand. Henry had no hand to hold. He continued to gloom at the grate, where the ash had settled into an almost impalpable dust.

Hilary opened her eyes and blinked at the light. It was very bright for London sun in November, and it was surprisingly high over head. She blinked again. It wasn’t the sun, it was the electric light shining down on her from the bowl in the ceiling. And she wasn’t in bed, she was in the living-room of the flat, in Geoff’s big chair, with something heavy weighing her down. She sat up, the heavy thing fell off with a bang on the floor, and she saw that it was the file of the Everton Murder.

Of course — she had been reading it. She had read the inquest, and then she must have dropped asleep, because the clock was striking seven and a horrid cold, foggy light was seeping in through the curtains. She was cold, and stiff, and sleepy — not comfortably sleepy, but up-all-night, train-journey tired.

‘Bath,’ said Hilary to herself very firmly. She stretched, got out of the chair, and picked up the file, and as she did so the door opened and Marion stood looking at her with surprise and something else — anger.

‘Hilary! What are you doing?’

Hilary clutched the file. Her funny short curls were all on end. She looked rather like a ghost that has forgotten how to vanish, a guilty and dishevelled ghost. She said in a casual, murmuring voice,

‘I went to sleep.’

‘Here?’

‘Um.’

‘You haven’t been to bed?’

Hilary glanced down at her pyjamas. She couldn’t remember whether she had been to bed or not. She had undressed, because here she was in her pyjamas. Then she began to remember.

‘Um — I went to bed — but I couldn’t sleep — so I came in here.’ She shivered and pulled her dressing-gown round her. Marion had the frozen look again. It was enough to make anyone feel cold.

‘Reading that?’ said Marion, looking at the file.

‘Yes. Don’t look like that, Marion. I only wanted — I’ve never read—the inquest.’

‘And you’ve only to read it for the whole thing to be cleared up!’ Marion’s voice had a sharp edge of anger on it.

Hilary came wide awake. It wasn’t fair of Marion to talk like that when she was only trying to help. And then she was full of compunction. Poor darling, it was only because everything to do with the case just got her on the raw. She said with a quick rush of pity,

‘Don’t! I did want to help — I did. I’ll put it away. I didn’t mean you to see it, but I went to sleep.’

Marion went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The daylight showed beyond the glass, sickly with fog, sodden with moisture. She turned back and saw Hilary putting away the file. The Everton Case was closed. Geoff was in prison. Here was the new day that she had to meet. She said not unkindly,

‘Run along and dress. I’ll get breakfast.’

But Hilary hesitated in the doorway.

‘If — if you didn’t hate to talk about it so much, darling — ’

‘I won’t talk about it!’ said Marion, the edge on her voice again. She was dressed for the street and cleverly made up. She looked like an ultra-modern poster — incredibly thin, amazingly artificial, but graceful, always graceful.

Hilary said quickly. ‘There are things — I wish you would — there are things I want to ask about.’

‘I won’t talk about it!’ said Marion again.

Hilary had stopped looking like a ghost. She was brightly flushed and her eyes were wet. She saw Marion’s queer poster colouring all blurred as if it was drowned in tears. But they were her tears, not Marion’s — Marion wouldn’t cry. She turned and ran into her own room and shut the door.

When Marion had gone to work Hilary washed up the breakfast things, made beds, and ran over the floors with a carpet-sweeper where there was a carpet and with a mop where there wasn’t. The flat was very small, and it didn’t take long. They had a woman once a week to do the heavy cleaning.

When she had finished Hilary sat down to think. She took a pencil and paper and wrote the things that came into her mind.

Mrs. Mercer — why did she cry such a lot? She cried at the inquest, and she cried at the trial, and she cried in the train. But it didn’t stop her saying she heard Geoffrey quarrelling with his uncle. She needn’t have said it. She cried, but she went on saying it.

That was the first thing that struck her.

Then — the daily help hadn’t been called as a witness. She would like to ask her some questions. About that toothache of Mrs. Mercer’s —it seemed funny that she should have had it that night. So convenient if you were all to bits with a bad conscience and felt you simply had to put your head in your hands and groan. You could with a toothache, and nobody would think anything about it.

Then Mrs. Thompson. Terribly respectable, terribly deaf. How convenient to have a deaf visitor if someone was going to be shot and you knew it. If you didn’t know it, why have a deaf visitor?

There was of course no logic in this, but Hilary had not a very logical mind. She wasn’t bothering about being logical, she was just putting down what came into her head. The deafness of the Mercers’ visitor was one of these things. Another thing that struck her was what a lot of alibis everyone had. Looking back on what she had read last night, it seemed to her that all those people couldn’t have had better alibis if they had sat down and thought them out beforehand. And bright as lightning there zigzagged through her mind the thought, ‘Suppose they had.’

Mercer — Bertie Everton — Mrs. Mercer — Frank Everton…

Mrs. Thompson to supper on just that one night. Mrs. Thompson so deaf that she couldn’t hear a shot, but able to testify that Mercer hadn’t left the kitchen and that Mrs. Mercer hadn’t been gone long enough to shoot James Everton and get back into the house. Not that she thought that Mrs. Mercer had shot James Everton. She was a dithery dreep of a woman, and she wouldn’t have the nerve to shoot a guinea-pig. Hilary simply couldn’t believe in her firing a pistol at her employer. A dreep is and remains a dreep. It doesn’t suddenly become a cool plotting assassin. Mrs. Mercer’s weepy evidence might be, and probably was, a tissue of lies, but it wasn’t she who had shot James Everton.

Well, that looked as if the Mercers were a wash-out. But the Evertons, Bertie and Frank, one in Edinburgh and the other in Glasgow —what about them? The answer to that was discouraging in the extreme. You could put it into one word — nothing. Nothing about the Evertons — nothing. Bertie was in Edinburgh, and Frank was in Glasgow, with solicitors vouching for them, and chambermaids bringing their early morning tea and answering their bells when they rang. There simply wasn’t anything you could do about the Evertons. If they had been specialising in alibis for years they couldn’t have come out of it better. It wasn’t any good — it really wasn’t any good. The case was closed. Geoff was in prison, and by the time he came out he’d be dead. And Marion would be dead, too. And these two dead people would have to go away and try to make a new life somewhere.

Hilary shivered. It was a most desperately bleak thought. No wonder Marion had that frozen look. Of course Geoffrey might have been really dead — he might have been hanged. After reading that evidence Hilary wondered why he hadn’t been hanged. There had been an enormous petition. People had been most awfully sorry for Marion because she was going to have a baby, and she supposed the jury must have had some faint doubt in their minds, because they had recommended him to mercy. It must have been that. Or perhaps they, too, were sorry for Marion, whose baby might have been born on the very day fixed for the execution. It was born the day she heard about the reprieve. And the baby died, and Marion hung on the edge of death, and then came back like a ghost to haunt the place where she had been so happy.

Another shiver ran over Hilary, but this time it was a shiver of revulsion. However bad things were, you needn’t sit down under them. If you looked at them too long they got you down. You mustn’t go on looking at them — you must do something. There was always something to be done if you put your mind to it. Hilary began to put her mind to it, and at once she knew what she could do about the Everton Case. She could go down to Putney and rout out the daily help who hadn’t been called as a witness.

She walked to the bottom of the road and caught a bus, just as Geoffrey Grey had done on the night of July 16th, sixteen months ago. It had taken him between a quarter of an hour and twenty minutes to reach Solway Lodge, getting off at the corner and making quick work of Holly Lane with his long stride. It took Hilary twenty-five minutes, because she didn’t know the way and had to stop and ask, and she didn’t go in by the garden gate, but round to the proper entrance, where she stood and looked through iron scroll-work at a leaf-strewn drive wept over by dripping half-denuded trees. She didn’t go in — it wasn’t any use going in. The house was shut up, and three boards in a row proclaimed Bertie Everton’s desire to sell it. Houses which have figured in a murder case do not sell very easily, but it is of course permissible to hope.

Hilary passed the notice-boards and a second gate and came to the entrance of Sudbury House. Sudbury House belonged to Sir John Blakeney. Mrs. Thompson was Sir John Blakeney’s housekeeper, and it was from Mrs. Thompson that Hilary hoped to extract the name and address of that uncalled witness. The gate stood open, and she walked in, and along a narrow winding drive. When Holly Lane was really a lane Sudbury House had been a desirable country residence. It stood square and dignified in Georgian brick, the dark red flush of Virginia creeper still clinging to the side that caught the sun.

Hilary went to the front door and rang the bell. She supposed she really ought to go the back door, but she just wasn’t going to. If she let this thing get her down, it would get her down. She wasn’t going to help it by having an inferiority complex and going round to back doors.

She waited for the front door to open. It was quite simple — she was going to ask for Mrs. Thompson. It was for whoever opened the door to do the rest. She had only got to stick her chin in the air, bite the inside corner of her lip rather hard, and tell herself not to be a rabbit.

And in the event she was quite right — it was perfectly simple. A most fat, benevolent butler opened the door. He had lovely manners and seemed to see nothing odd about her wanting to see Mrs. Thompson. He reminded Hilary of air balloons she had loved when she was a child — pink, smooth, and creaking a little if you blew them up too tightly. The butler’s creak was partly a wheeze and partly starch. He showed her into a sort of morning-room and went away almost as lightly as a balloon would have done. Hilary did hope he wouldn’t blow away or blow up before he got to Mrs. Thompson. Her balloons had been liable to these tragic fatalities.

After about five minutes Mrs. Thompson came in. She was much, much fatter than the butler, but she didn’t in the least suggest a balloon. She was the most solid human being Hilary had ever beheld, and her tread shook the floor. She wore black cashmere, with white frilling at the throat and an onyx brooch like a bullseye set in plaited gold. Her neck bulged above the frilling, and her cheeks bulged above her neck. She wore no cap, but her masses of hair were tightly plaited and wound about her head in a monstrous braid which did not as yet show any sign of turning grey. The contrast between this shiny black hair and the deep habitual flush of the large face below it gave her a very decided look. Hilary saw at once that here was a person who knew her own mind — her yea would be yea, and her nay nay. The last faint hope that Mrs. Thompson might have been lying at the inquest faded away and died before the emphatic responsibility of her aspect. Hilary found her so alarming that she would have dithered if she had let herself stop to think. She said, ‘Mrs. Thompson?’ in a pretty, breathless voice, and Mrs. Thompson said, ‘Yes, Miss.’

‘I wondered,’ said Hilary, and then she stuck, and Mrs. Thompson said ‘Yes, miss’ again, but this time her small, steady grey eyes took on a look of recognition — at least that was what Hilary thought. The colour came brightly into her cheeks and burned there. She said,

‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, I know you’re busy, and I’m interrupting you, but if you would just let me ask you one or two questions — ’

Mrs. Thompson stood there very large and portentous. The look of recognition was gone. Her face was like a brick wall. At last she said,

‘I know your face, but I don’t remember your name.’

‘Hilary Carew. I’m Mrs. Grey’s cousin —Mrs. Geoffrey Grey.’

Mrs. Thompson came a heavy step nearer and put up a hand to her ear.

‘I’m very hard of hearing — I’ll have to trouble you to speak up, miss.’

‘Yes — I remember.’ Hilary pitched her voice high and clear. Aunt Emmeline’s Eliza was hard of hearing too, so she had had practice. ‘Is that better?’

Mrs. Thompson nodded.

‘People don’t speak up as they used to do, but that will be all right. What did you want, miss?’

‘It’s about the Everton Case. You’re the second person who remembers seeing me at the trial though I was only there one day. At least I suppose that’s where you saw me.’

Mrs. Thompson nodded again.

‘With Mrs. Grey, pore lady.’

‘Yes,’ said Hilary. ‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, he didn’t do it — he really didn’t.’

Mrs. Thompson shook her head.

‘And that’s what I should have said myself if I hadn’t seen him with the pistol in his hand.’

‘He didn’t — he really didn’t,’ said Hilary very earnestly and very loud. ‘But it’s no good talking about that, and that’s not what I came here to talk about. I only wanted to ask you if you know about the daily help, the woman who used to come in and help Mrs. Mercer at Solway Lodge, because they didn’t call her either at the inquest or at the trial, and there’s something I want to ask her most dreadfully badly.’

Mrs. Thompson didn’t snort, because she had been very well brought up and knew her manners. It was, however, apparent that only a sense of what was due to herself prevented her from snorting.

‘That Mrs. Ashley!’

‘Was that her name?’

Mrs. Thompson nodded.

‘And a good thing they didn’t call her for a witness, for a poorer spirited, more Peter-grievous kind of a creature I never come across nor never want to!’