Henry found himself curiously impressed, he couldn’t think why. There was nothing impressive about mouse-coloured hair, indeterminate features, and a toneless voice. Yet Miss Silver impressed him. He said quickly,
‘And what was your opinion?’
‘At present I should prefer not to say.’ She put down her knitting and took up her pen again. ‘You wish me to get any information I can about the Mercers. Can you give me their Christian names?’
‘Yes -I’ve just been going through the case. He is Alfred, and she is Louisa Kezia Mercer.’
‘I suppose you don’t know her maiden name?’.
He shook his head.
‘I’m afraid I don’t. I don’t know anything about either of them except what came out in the evidence. I don’t know where they are living or what they are doing – and I want to know.’
Miss Silver wrote in the bright blue exercise-book. Then she looked up at Henry.
‘I could help you more if you would trust me, Captain Cunningham. Nearly every client is the same -they hold something back, and the thing they hold back is the thing which would help me most. It always comes out in the end, but frankness in the first instance would save me a good deal of trouble.’ She coughed again. ‘For instance, it would assist me greatly to know when and where your friend encountered the Mercers, and what happened when she encountered them. Quite obviously it was something which encouraged her to think that the case might be re-opened. You did not agree, and you are employing me because you hope that I shall enable you to support your opinion with evidence which your friend will accept.’
The colour rose in Henry’s face. He hadn’t mentioned Hilary. The last thing he wanted was to mention Hilary. He was prepared to swear that he had got no nearer mentioning her than to say that there was someone whom he wanted to convince. This infernal little maiden aunt of a woman had nosed Hilary out and guessed at an encounter with the Mercers. He felt secretly afraid of her, and looked up with a frown to find that she was smiling at him. Miss Silver had a smile which seemed to belong to quite a different person. It changed her face to that of a friend. Quite suddenly Henry was telling her about Hilary getting into the wrong train and finding herself in the same compartment as the Mercers.
Miss Silver listened. Her needles clicked. She said ‘Dear, dear!’ at one point, and ‘Poor thing’ at another. The ‘Poor thing’ referred to Marion Grey. Mrs. Mercer’s stumbling, agitated sentences repeated by Henry in a completely unemotional voice drew forth a fit of coughing and an ‘Oh, dear me!’
‘And they got out at Ledlington, Captain Cunningham?’
‘She says they did, but I don’t suppose she really knows. She got out there herself because it wasn’t her train and she had to get back to town.’
‘And she hasn’t seen either of them since?’
‘Well, yes, she has.’
Heny found himself telling her about Alfred Mercer following Hilary through the byways of Putney for the purpose, apparently, of informing her that his wife was out of her mind. And then, before he knew where he was, he had thrown in Bertie Everton’s visit to himself upon what seemed to be a similar errand.
Miss Silver looked up from time to time and then looked down again. She was knitting so rapidly that the woolly sock appeared to rotate.
‘And you see, Miss Silver, if there is something fishy going on, I don’t want Miss Carew to get mixed up in it.’
‘Naturally.’
‘But at the same time I can’t say I think that there’s any doubt at all about the murder. Grey did it all right. I just want – ’
Miss Silver drew out a needle and stabbed it into the wool again.
‘You just want to have your own opinion confirmed. I have told you that I can only undertake to provide you with facts – I cannot guarantee that they will be to your liking. Do you still wish to employ me?’
Henry had the strangest feeling. It was just as if a shutter in his mind had jerked open. Light and air rushed in upon a dark place – bright light, strong air. And then the shutter banged to again and everything was dark.
He said, ‘Yes, please,’ and was astonished at the firmness of his own voice.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hilary caught the two o’clock train to Ledlington. She got into a carriage with a pair of lovers, a pretty girl, and a woman with nine parcels. At least there ought to have been nine parcels, but it presently appeared that there were only eight. As the train had now started, it wasn’t possible to do anything about it except rummage along the seats and under the seats in a vague, unhappy manner, apologising profusely the while. Hilary helped in the search, the pretty girl read a sixpenny novelette, and the lovers held hands.
The owner of the lost parcel was a fat, worried woman with a flow of quite extraordinarily disconnected talk.
‘I don’t know where I could have left it I’m sure, unless it was Perry’s. Johnny’s socks it’ll be – two good pairs. Oh, dear me – gone down the drain as you may say! And what Mr. Brown’ll say I reelly don’t know. I never knew a child so hard on his heels as what Johnny is, though I don’t say Ella isn’t a caution, too. Excuse me, miss, but you don’t happen to be sitting on a little parcel of mine, I suppose? It’s a soft stuff, so you mightn’t notice it. I didn’t ask you before, did I? I’m sure I’m ever so sorry if I did, but if you didn’t mind – well, I’ll just count them again… I can’t make them more than eight, try how I will. And it might be Mabel’s scarf, and if it is, she won’t half go on, and I don’t know whatever Mr. Brown is going to say.’
Hilary heard a good deal more about Mr. Brown, who was the fat woman’s husband, and Johnny and Mabel, who were her almost grown-up son and daughter, and Ella who was an after-thought and a great deal younger than the other two. She heard all about what Mr. Brown did in the war, and how Johnny had three relapses when he had scarlet fever, and how troublesome Mabel had been when she had to wear a band on her front teeth -‘Stuck right out like a rabbit’s, they did, but they’ve come in lovely, and no thanks to her – fret, fret, fret, and whine, whine, whine, and “Must I wear this horrid thing, Mum?” if you’ll believe me! You’d never credit the trouble I had with her, and now it’s over, she doesn’t say thank you – but that’s what girls are like. Why, when Ella had the whooping-cough – ’
Hilary heard all about Ella’s whooping-cough, and Johnny’s mumps, and the time Mr. Brown went off his food and couldn’t fancy anything but a lightly-boiled egg, thus leading up to the day when the egg was bad and what Mr. Brown said after he had spat it out.
Owing to these reminiscences, the journey was so much lost time as far as working out a plan of campaign was concerned. Hilary had meant to sit with her eyes shut and think hard all the way to Ledlington, instead of which she was fully occupied in following Mrs. Brown’s acrobatic leaps from one family illness to another and in murmuring at suitable intervals, ‘How inconvenient!’ and ‘How dreadful!’ She therefore walked out of Ledlington station without any idea of what she was going to do next. She gazed around her, and felt her heart sink like a stone. Ledlington was quite a place. Ledlington would in fact have been very much offended if it had struck a stranger as anything but a full-sized town. How did you find a woman whose address you didn’t know in a full-sized town? The post-office wouldn’t give you an address, it would only forward a letter. And it would be no good writing to Mrs. Mercer, because Mercer would certainly read the letter. No, what she wanted was what she had had and had thrown away – ten minutes alone with the woman whose evidence had sent Geoff to penal servitude for life. There is one drawback to breaking a woman’s spirit – and Mercer might live to become aware of it. A broken spring no longer holds the lock – it has lost its resistance, and any resolute hand may jar it open. Hilary felt a good deal of confidence in her own ability to make Mrs. Mercer speak, but she hadn’t the faintest idea of how to find her.