‘Oh yes, miss.’ And at that her voice broke, in choking sobs and her eyes rained down tears.

One bit of Hilary wondered furiously how anyone could produce such a continuous water flow, whilst another bit of her was cold and afraid on the edge of knowing what James Everton had said. She heard herself whisper:

‘What did he say? You must tell me what he said. ’

And then Mrs. Ashley, with her face in her hands, choking out:

‘He said – oh, miss, he said, “My own nephew!” Oh, miss, that’s what I heard him say – “My own nephew!” And then the shot, and I ran for my life, and that’s all. And I promised pore Mrs. Grey – I promised her faithful that I wouldn’t tell.’

Hilary felt perfectly cold and stiff.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said. The case is closed.’

CHAPTER TEN

Hilary walked along Pinman’s Lane with heavy feet and a much, much heavier heart. Poor Marion – poor, poor Marion, coming here with a flickering hope as Hilary had come, and hearing this damning evidence as Hilary had heard it. Only much, much worse for Marion – unbelievably, dreadfully worse. She mustn’t ever know that Hilary knew. She must be able to believe that she had shut Mrs. Ashley’s mouth on the evidence which would certainly have hanged Geoffrey Grey.

She turned the corner of Pinman’s Lane and walked back blindly along the way by which she had come. Was it well to save a man for years, monotonous years, of deadening prison life? Wouldn’t the sharp wrench have been better – better for Geoff, and better for Marion too? But even in retrospect she shrank back from the thought. There are things beyond enduring. She shuddered away from this one, and came back with a start to the outside world.

She must have taken a wrong turning, for she was in a street she did not know at all. Of course she didn’t know any of the streets really, but this one she was sure she had never seen before – little raw houses, barely finished yet already occupied, semi-detached, with one half of a house painted bice green and the other half mustard yellow, red curtains in one family’s windows, and royal blue next door, and roofs tiled in every imaginable shade. The effect was very new and clean, and the houses like bright Christmas toys just unpacked and set out all in a row.

It was when she was thinking they looked like toys that she heard a footstep behind her, and in the moment of hearing it she became conscious that the sound was not a new one. It had been going on for quite a long time, probably ever since she had turned out of Pinman’s Lane. It had been there, but she hadn’t been listening to it. She listened now, walking a little faster. The footsteps quickened too. She looked over her shoulder and saw a man in a Burberry and a brown felt hat. He had a fawn muffler pulled well up round his throat, and between hat brim and muffler she had a glimpse of regular features, a clean-shaven upper lip, and light eyes. She looked away at once, but it was too late. He lifted his hat and came up with her.

‘Excuse me, Miss Carew – ’

The sound of her name startled her so much that she forgot all the rules. If people speak to you in the street, you don’t say anything, you just walk on as if they hadn’t ever been born. If you can manage to look as if you had been brought up in a refrigerator, so much the better, and you simply mustn’t blush or look frightened. Hilary forgot all these things. A bright annoyed colour sprang to her cheeks, and she said:

‘What do you want? I don’t know you.’

‘No, miss, but if you’ll excuse me I should like a word with you. I was on the train with you the other day, and I recognised you at once, but of course you wouldn’t know me unless you happened to notice me in the train.’ His manner was that of an upper servant, civil and respectful. The ‘miss’ was reassuring.

Hilary said, ‘In the train? Do you mean yesterday?’

‘Yes, miss. We were in the carriage with you, me and my wife, yesterday on the Ledlington train. I don’t suppose you noticed me, because I was out of the carriage a good part of the time, but perhaps you noticed my wife.’

‘Why?’ said Hilary, looking at him rather disconcertingly. Her bright no-coloured eyes had the frank stare of a child.

The man looked past her. He said:

‘Well, miss, I thought you two being alone in the carriage as it were – well, I thought perhaps you might have got into conversation.’

Hilary’s heart gave a little jump. Mercer -it was Mercer. And he thought perhaps she had talked to Mrs. Mercer in the train, and that Mrs. Mercer had talked to her. She didn’t believe for a moment that he had recognised her yesterday. Of course he might have. Mrs. Mercer had recognised her, and Mrs. Thompson had, but all the time Mercer was in the carriage she had sat looking out of the window, and when he came back she herself had gone out into the corridor and stayed there until the Ledlington stop. He had stood aside to let her pass, and of course he might have recognised her then, but she didn’t think so, because if he had, and if there was anything he wanted to say, he could have followed her down the corridor and said it there. No, he had got it out of his poor draggly wife afterwards and now he wanted to find out just what the poor thing had said. How he had found her, she just couldn’t imagine, but when she thought about it afterwards she wondered whether he had been at Solway Lodge on some business of his own or of Bertie Everton’s and had seen her looking in through the gate, or whether he had followed her all the way from the flat. Both these thoughts gave her a nasty creepy feeling down the back of her neck. She said with no perceptible pause:

‘Oh yes, we talked a little.’

‘Begging your pardon, miss, I hope my wife didn’t make herself troublesome to you in any way. She’s quiet enough as a rule or I wouldn’t have left her with a stranger, but as soon as I came back into the carriage I could see she’d been working herself up, and when I saw you turning the corner of the road just now I thought I would take the liberty of catching up with you and saying I hope she didn’t saying anything she shouldn’t or give any offence. She’s quiet enough as a rule, poor thing, but I could see she was all worked up, and I shouldn’t like to think she’d offended a young lady that was connected with a family where we’d been in service.’

Hilary turned that bright look on him again. A very superior, well-spoken man, but she didn’t like his eyes. They were the blankest eyes she had ever seen – light, hard eyes without a trace of expression in them. She thought of Mrs. Mercer weeping in the train, and she thought a man with eyes like that might break a woman down. She said:

‘You were in service with Mr. Everton at Solway Lodge?

‘Yes. A very sad affair, miss.’

They were walking along between the bright toy houses. Hilary thought, ‘I’d rather live in one of these than under those dripping trees at Solway Lodge.’ Everything clean, everything new. Nobody else’s sins, and follies, and crimes, and loves, and hates hanging around. Little gay bandbox rooms. A little gay garden where she and Henry would prodigiously admire own marigolds, own Canterbury bells, own Black-eyed Susans.

But she wasn’t ever going to have a house with Henry now. Mercer’s words echoed faintly in her mind – ‘A very sad affair.’ She blinked sharply twice and said,

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Very sad indeed. And my wife not being very strong in her head, she can’t properly get over it, miss, and I should be very sorry if she’d annoyed you in any way.’

‘No,’ said Hilary – ‘no, she didn’t annoy me.’ Her voice had an abstracted sound, because she was trying to remember just what Mrs. Mercer had said… ‘Oh, miss, if you only knew.’ That was one of the things. If she only knew what? What was there for her to know?…