Now she was listening at the door and could hear nothing. Outside the tenement hummed with noise, but here in this flat there was an empty silence. If she let herself stop to think she would run away from it into the noise again. She struck her hands sharply together, put a tingling palm to the cold door knob, and went in.

It was a bare, wretched room, with a dirty rag of curtain looped back from the window where she had seen the face. A ramshackle double bed stood facing the light, and there was some kind of press or cupboard against the right-hand wall. There was a rickety table in the middle of the room with a couple of chairs beside it. The door hid the head of the bed as Hilary came in, and at first she thought the room was empty.

She came farther in, and saw Mrs. Mercer standing against the wall. She had gone back as far as she could go. One hand clutched the rail of the bed, the other was pressed against her side. Hilary thought she would have sunk down if she had been less stiff with terror. Her face showed the same extremity of fear which had brought Hilary up five flights of stairs to find out what was wrong. And then, before her eyes, the tension broke. Mrs. Mercer let go of the rail, slumped down on the side of the bed, and began to cry.

Hilary shut the door. She said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s frightened you?’

There were choking sobs, and a rain of tears.

‘Mrs. Mercer – ’

‘I thought you was him – oh lord, I did! What shall I do? Oh lord! What shall I do?’

Hilary put a hand on her shoulder and kept it there.

‘You thought I was Mercer? Is he in the flat, or is he out?’

The terrified pale eyes looked up at her.

‘He’ll be coming back – any time now – to finish me. That’s what he’s brought me here for – to finish me off!’ She caught Hilary’s other hand in a cold, damp grip. ‘I darsn’t sleep, and I darsn’t eat! He’s left the gas tap on once already – and there was a bitter taste in the tea – but he said it was nothing – but he didn’t drink the cup I poured him out -and when I said to him, “Aren’t you going to drink your tea, Alfred?” he took and pushed the saucer so that half of it spilled – and he said, “Drink it yourself, and a good riddance!” – and he called me a name he didn’t ought to a-done – because I’m his wife and got my lines to show – whatever may have happened in the past – and not for him to throw it up at me neither – lord knows it isn’t!’

Hilary pressed hard on the thin shoulder.

‘Why do you stay with him, Mrs. Mercer? Why don’t you come away? What’s to stop you? Come away with me now – at once, before he gets back!’

Mrs. Mercer twisted away from her with a sort of desperate strength.

‘Do you think he’d let me go? There isn’t nowhere he wouldn’t follow me and do me in. Oh lord – I wish it was over – I wish I was dead!’

‘Why does he want to kill you?’ said Hilary slowly.

Mrs. Mercer shuddered and was silent.

Hilary went on.

‘Shall I tell you? I know, and you know. That’s the trouble – you know too much. He wants to kill you because you know too much about the Everton murder. He wants to kill you because you know that Geoffrey Grey is innocent. And I don’t care whether he kills us both or not – you’re going to tell me what you know – now!’

Mrs. Mercer stopped crying. She drooped there on the bed, quiet and limp in her respectable black. With her faded eyes fixed on Hilary’s face, she said with a heart-rending simplicity,

‘They’d hang me.’

Hilary’s pulses jumped. Hope flared in her. She said in a hurried undertone,

‘I don’t think they would. You’re ill. You didn’t do it yourself – did you?’

The pale eyes winced from hers.

‘Mrs. Mercer – you didn’t shoot Mr. Everton, did you? You must tell – you must!’

Mrs. Mercer’s tongue came out and wetted her dry lips. She said ‘No,’ and forced her voice and said it again a little louder – ‘No.’

‘Who did?’ said Hilary, and with that there came to them both the click of the outer door.

Mrs. Mercer got to her feet with a jerk that was not like any natural movement. She pushed Hilary, and pointed at the press. Her voice made a sound in her throat, and failed.

But there was neither time nor need for words. Alfred Mercer had come hack, and in all that bare room the press offered the only possibility of a hiding-place. There was not even time for thought. Sheer primitive instinct took its place. Without any conscious interval Hilary found herself in the dark, ill-smelling cupboard with the door shut close. There was very little room. Her shoulder touched rough wood. Her back was against the wall. Something swung and dangled against her in the darkness. Mrs. Mercer’s words started into her mind, and the sweat of terror broke upon her lip, her temples. ‘They’ll hang me.’ Something was hanging here -

She wrenched herself back to sanity. Of course there was something hanging there -that was what cupboards were for. Mrs. Mercer had hung her coat in this one. It hung and dangled and swung against Hilary’s cheek. The sweat broke again. She heard Alfred Mercer speak in the room beyond. He said roughly,

‘Sulking again?’

‘No, Alfred.’

Hilary wondered at the way the woman had regained control of herself. The words sounded almost as they were meant to sound – almost, but not quite.

‘No, Alfred!’ said Mercer, mimicking her. That’s what you keep on saying – isn’t it? Have you been leaking to that damned girl? No, Alfred! Have you seen her? Did you speak to her? Did she come nosing round the cottage? No, Alfred! And all the time – all the time it was yes – yes – yes – you damned sniveller!’

Hilary had to guess at the shuddering effort with which Mrs. Mercer answered him.

‘I don’t know what you mean – I’m sure I don’t.’

‘Oh, no – you wouldn’t! You didn’t speak to her in the train, I suppose?’

‘I only asked after Mrs. Grey – I told you, Alfred.’ She was breaking again. The effort had spent itself. Her voice dragged.

‘And what call had you got to speak to her at all? It’s you that’s stirred the whole thing up. The case was closed, wasn’t it? Mr. Geoffrey Grey was in prison. If you’d kept your tongue between your teeth we were in clover. Do you think I can trust you after that?’

‘I never said nothing – I swear I didn’t.’

Alfred Mercer’s voice dropped to an ugly whisper.

‘Then what brought her down to Ledlington? And what brought her nosing along the Ledstow road? And what brought her to the cottage if it wasn’t that you’d as good as told her you knew something that’d get Mr. Geoffrey out of prison?’

‘I never, Alfred – I never!’

‘Oh, no – you never do nothing! If it hadn’t been for me finding the marks of her shoes up against the scullery window, you wouldn’t never have told me she’d come nosing round. And how am I going to know what you told her then? And how am I going to know you haven’t set the police on us?’

‘I’ll take my Bible oath -’ said Mrs. Mercer in a wild, shaken voice. It broke upon a sob – upon a torrent of sobs.

‘Chuck it!’ said Mercer. ‘You don’t do yourself no good that way. This door’s shut and the outside door’s shut, and there’s no one to hear if you scream your head off. There’s a sight too much noise outside for anyone to notice – I’ve told you that before. That’s why we’ve come here, Louie. There’s a man in the flat across the landing that gets drunk regular three times in the week and most Sundays, and when he’s drunk he beats his wife, and when he beats her she screams something horrid, so they tell me. I was talking about him to a man on the stair last night. Something horrid, she screams. And when I said to the man I was talking to, “Don’t the neighbours come in?” he laughed and said, “No fear – they’re used to it.” And when I said, “Don’t they fetch’the police?” he said, “The police know better than to come interfering between man and wife, and if they didn’t they’d get a lesson they’d be sorry for.” So it won’t do no good screaming, Louie.’