‘You just hurry!’ said Flora and shut the door on her.
Marion lifted the receiver from the office telephone. Flora ought to have said she was engaged. She couldn’t imagine who could possibly be ringing her up here. They had no business to do it. Flora was much too good-natured – a sort of cousin of Harriet’s who did about six people’s work and was never out of temper, but she couldn’t say no. She put the receiver to her ear, and heard a man’s voice say rather faintly,
‘Mrs. Grey?’
‘Yes.’
The black velvet was slipping from her shoulder. She shifted her hand and pulled it up.
‘ Marion, is that you?’ And all at once she knew who was speaking. Her face changed. She said in a low, hard voice,
‘Who are you? Who is speaking?’ But she knew very well.
‘Bertie Everton,’ said the voice. ‘Look here, don’t ring off – it’s important.’
‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘I know, I know – you feel like that. It’s my misfortune. I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s something about Geoffrey I thought you ought to know. Just a chance, but there it is. I thought I’d tell you.’
She leaned with her free hand on Harriet’s writing-table, leaned hard, and said,
‘I can’t see you. If you’ve anything – to say – you can see my solicitor.’ Her lips were so stiff that they shaped the words with difficulty. After a confused moment she wondered whether they had shaped them at all, because he was saying,
‘Then I’ll call for you at six.’
That broke the stiffness anyway. She said with a rush of anger,
‘You can’t come here – you must know that.’
‘Then I’ll be at your flat at half past six. You’ll be home by then?’
‘I can’t see you. There’s a dress show. I shall be late.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Bertie Everton, and with a click the line was dead.
Marion went back to show the black velvet gown, which was called Lucrezia Borgia. It had a stiff full skirt and a tight bodice embroidered with pearls after the Renaissance fashion. The heavy sleeves were slashed from shoulder to wrist over deep-toned ivory satin. She saw herself in a mirror as she opened the showroom door, but it was not the dress she saw reflected there, it was the anger in her eyes.
The dress had a great success. It was bought by a wispy fair-haired woman who sniffed and dabbed continually the tip of her nose with a small square of magenta chiffon. She was somebody’s friend from the country, and if she fancied herself as Lucrezia Borgia, it was nobody’s business but her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hilary reached the outskirts of Ledlington at a little after half past six. The first street-lamp almost brought tears into her eyes, she was so glad to see it. When you have been wandering in one of those dark places of the earth which are full of cruelty, and when you have only just escaped being murdered there, omnibuses, and trams, and gas-lamps, and crowds of people really do seem almost too good to be true.
The crowds of people looked oddly at Hilary. It didn’t occur to her at first that they were looking oddly, because she was so rapturously pleased to see them, but after she had got over the first of that the oddness began to soak in, and she woke up with a start to realise that she had been slithering about on wet roads and scrambling through hedges, and that she was probably looking like a last year’s scarecrow. She gazed about her, and beheld on the other side of the road the sign of The Magpie and Parrot. The sign was a very pleasant one. The magpie and the parrot sat side by side upon a golden perch. The magpie was very black and very white, and the parrot was very green. They advertise one of Ledlington’s most respected hotels, but nobody knows how it got its name.
Hilary crossed the road, mounted half a dozen steps, and entered such a dark passage that she was instantly filled with confidence. It might appear gloomy later on when she had washed her face, but at the moment it was very comfortable. She told the pleasant elderly woman at the desk that she had had a bicycle accident, and immediately everyone in the hotel began to be kind and helpful. It was very nice of them, because really when Hilary saw herself in the glass she looked the most disreputable object it is possible to imagine. All one side of her face was plastered with mud. She remembered the grit of the road under her cheek. She had lost her hat – she didn’t remember anything about that -and the mud had got into her hair. There was a long scratch running back across her temple, and another fairly deep one on her chin. They had bled a good deal, and the blood had run into the mud. Her coat was torn, and her skirt was torn, and her hands were torn.
‘Golly – what a mess!’ she said, and proceeded to get it off.
There was lovely hot water, and lots of soap, and a large rough towel, and a little soft one produced by a very kind chambermaid – ‘because it’ll be soft on those scratches, miss.’ With these and a large bathroom to splash round in she made a good job of getting the mud off, whilst the chambermaid put in some first aid on the ripped-up coat. They brought her tea which was quite terribly good (the Magpie and Parrot pays six shillings a pound for its tea), and a time-table which was not so good, because the minute she began to look up trains it came over her that there wasn’t anything in the world that would get her into one of those trains with the prospect of travelling up to London by herself tonight. It wasn’t any use arguing or calling herself a coward. Her courage had run out and she simply couldn’t do it. Any carriage she got into would either be empty to start with, or it would go empty on her at the very first stop. And then one of them would get in, and there would be an accident on the line, and an end of Hilary Carew. Because if they had wanted to kill her an hour ago on the Lcdlington road, nothing had happened since to make them change their minds. Contrariwise, as Humpty Dumpty says. And if they wanted to kill her, they would certainly watch the station, because they would expect her to catch a train, and it would occur to them as it did to her that very few people would be taking the London train on a night like this. Nobody would if they weren’t obliged to. And that was the trouble – Hilary was obliged to. There was Marion for one thing, and there was the money question for another. Aunt Arabella’s ring had produced a fiver. Out of that, getting here and back would account for about twelve bob. She had left two pounds on deposit for the bicycle, and she would have to go and tell the shock-headed boy that it was all smashed up and pay whatever they valued it at. She couldn’t possibly risk an hotel bill on the top of that. What she could do, and what she immediately made up her mind to do, was to ring up Henry.
There was a sort of shiny office stool in the telephone-box. It was very slippery and uncomfortable, but it was better than nothing. As Hilary sat on it and waited for her call, it came over her that it wasn’t any good quarrelling with Henry -it didn’t really seem to make any difference. They had a sensational Row and broke off their engagement, and the first minute Mrs. Mercer wept at her and Mercer followed her in the street she could no more help making a bee line for Henry than she could help breathing. Well, then they had a second row, and Henry forbade her to go hunting the Mercers, and she had done it, and they hadn’t spoken for a week. Yet the minute people tried to murder her and she was frightened, here she was, ringing him up and quite sure that he would come and fetch her. He would probably say ‘I told you so’, and they were practically certain to quarrel again. They would probably quarrel all the way back to town. The prospect was a most comforting one. How nice, how safe, how exhilarating to have Henry to quarrel with in that railway carriage instead of being murdered by a person or persons unknown.
The bell went ping, and as she snatched up the receiver, Henry said ‘Hullo!’