She didn’t see Mercer look sharply at her and then look away, but his voice came through her thoughts.

‘She’s in very poor health, miss, I’m sorry to say, and it doesn’t do to let her talk about the case, because she gets all worked up and doesn’t hardly know what she’s saying.’

Hilary said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She was trying to think what else Mrs. Mercer had said… I tried to see her.’ Her -that was Marion – poor Marion, with the trial going on. ‘Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true as I tried to see her. I give him the slip and I got out.’

Mercer’s voice came through again.

‘Then she didn’t say anything she oughtn’t to, miss?’

‘Oh no,’ said Hilary a little vaguely. She wasn’t really thinking about what she said. She was thinking about Mrs. Mercer giving her husband the slip, with Geoff being tried for murder and the Mercers the chief witnesses against him. And Mrs. Mercer had tried to see Marion, tried desperately. ‘Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true as I tried to see her.’ The woman’s very tone of horror sounded in her mind, and the way her light wild eyes had been fixed as she whispered, ‘If she’d ha’ seen me,’ and then, ‘She didn’t see me. Resting – that’s what they told me. And then he came and I never got another chance. He saw to that.’ It had meant nothing to her at the time. It began to mean something to her now. What had Mrs. Mercer been going to say, and what chance had been missed because poor worn-out Marion had been persuaded to take a brief uneasy rest?…

Mercer was saying something, she didn’t know what. She wrenched away from that train journey and turned on him with a sudden energy.

‘You were a witness at Mr. Grey’s trial – you were both witnesses?’

He kept his eyes down as he answered her.

‘Yes, miss. It was very painful to me and Mrs. Mercer. Mrs. Mercer’s never got over it yet.’

‘Do you believe that Mr. Grey did it?’ The words came to Hilary’s lips without thought or purpose.

Mercer looked at the pavement. His tone had a note of respectful reproof.

‘That was for the jury to say, miss. Mrs. Mercer and me we had to do our duty.’

Something boiled up in Hilary so suddenly that she nearly lost her self-control. She felt a strong uncivilised urge to slap Mercer’s smooth, well-featured face and give him the lie. Fortunately it was nearly, and not quite. Civilised young women do not slap butlers’ faces in the street -it simply isn’t done. She turned hot and cold all over at her narrow escape and walked a little faster. The new road had run into an old one, and she could hear the roar of a thoroughfare not too far away. She wished passionately to catch a bus and leave Putney and Mercer to their own devices.

He still kept up with her and went on talking about his wife.

‘It’s no use raking things up that’s bound to be painful to all concerned, and so I’ve told Mrs. Mercer many a time, but being weak in the head -it’s her nerves the doctor says – she kinds of harps on the case and blames herself because she had to give evidence. But as I said to her, “You’re bound to say what you know, and no blame to you if it goes against anyone.” “You can’t tell lies,” I said -“not on your Bible oath in a court of law, you can’t. You’ve got to tell what you’ve seen or heard, and it’s the judge and the jury that does the rest, not you.” But there, she goes on harping on it, and I can’t stop her. But as long as she didn’t annoy you, miss – I’m sure you’d be one that would make allowances for her not being what you might call quite right in the head.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Hilary.

The thoroughfare was most helpfully near. She walked faster and faster. That was at least six times Mercer had told her that Mrs. Mercer wasn’t right in the head. He must be very anxious for it to soak right in. She wondered why. And then she thought she knew. And then she thought that if he said it again, she would probably scream.

They emerged upon the High Street, and her heart jumped with joyful relief.

‘Good morning,’ she said – ‘I’m catching a bus.’ And caught one.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hilary sat in the bus and thought. She thought about the Mercers. She thought a great deal about the Mercers. Mrs. Mercer might be off her head, or she mightn’t. Mercer was uncommonly anxious to make it clear that she was off her head – he kept on saying it every five minutes. There_€ was something in Shakespeare – how did it go – ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’ Mercer was rather like that about Mrs. Mercer – he protested so much that you couldn’t help having the feeling that perhaps he was overdoing it. ‘What I tell you three times is true.’ That was Lewis Carroll in The Hunting of the Snark. That seemed to fit Alfred Mercer very well. If he went on saying that Mrs. Mercer was mad often enough it would be believed, and to all intents and purposes mad she would be, and nobody would take any notice of what she said.

An idiotic rhyme cavorted suddenly amongst these serious deliberations:

‘If I had a husband like Mr. Mercer,

I should want him to be a sea-going purser

And go long voyages over the main

And hardly ever come home again.’

Quite definitely and unreasonably, she didn’t like Mercer. But that didn’t necessarily mean that he was telling lies. You may dislike a person very much, and yet they may be telling the truth. Hilary reflected on this curious fact, and decided that she must not allow herself to be biased. Mercer might be speaking the truth and Mrs. Mercer might be off her head, but contrariwise he might be telling lies and Mrs. Mercer might be what she had appeared to Hilary to be -just a poor thing, a dreep – a frightened poor thing with something on her mind. If there were even once chance in a thousand that this was true, something ought to be done about it.

Hilary began to consider what she could do. The Mercers had left the train at Ledlington. She could, of course, go down to Ledlington and try to find Mrs. Mercer, but just how you began to look for a stranger in a strange place like Ledlington she really had no idea. What she wanted was someone to talk the whole thing over with. How could you think a thing like that out all by yourself? What you wanted was someone to say ‘Nonsense’ in a loud commanding voice and having said it, to take up his stand on the hearth rug and lay down the law with that passionate indifference to argument or contradiction which was one of Henry’s most marked characteristics. But she probably wasn’t ever going to see Henry again. She blinked hard and stared out of the window of the bus. There really did seem to be an unnecessary amount of misery in the world. She would never have believed that she could have thought with yearning of Henry laying down the law. What was the good of thinking about Henry when she wasn’t going ever to see him again and couldn’t possibly ask his advice?

Hilary gave herself a shake and sat up. What was there to prevent her from asking Henry’s advice? They had been friends. They had thought they would like to be married, and had become engaged. And then they had found out that they didn’t want to be married and had become disengaged. Considered rationally, the next step should be a reversion to friendship. It was completely irrational to be dead cuts with a man just because you weren’t going to marry him.

With a slightly quickened pulse, and in what she told herself was a calmly deliberative frame of mind, Hilary decided that she would go and see Henry and ask his advice. She must talk to someone, and she couldn’t talk to Marion. She would be calm and perfectly friendly. At their last interview she had been scarlet in the face with rage. She had stamped, she had come very near to screaming at Henry. But that was because he simply wouldn’t stop talking or let her get in a word edgeways. It would be pleasant to show him that she could behave with poise and dignity, polite but aloof, courteous, and unruffled.