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.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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…