After about five minutes Mrs. Thompson came in. She was much, much fatter than the butler, but she didn’t in the least suggest a balloon. She was the most solid human being Hilary had ever beheld, and her tread shook the floor. She wore black cashmere, with white frilling at the throat and an onyx brooch like a bullseye set in plaited gold. Her neck bulged above the frilling, and her cheeks bulged above her neck. She wore no cap, but her masses of hair were tightly plaited and wound about her head in a monstrous braid which did not as yet show any sign of turning grey. The contrast between this shiny black hair and the deep habitual flush of the large face below it gave her a very decided look. Hilary saw at once that here was a person who knew her own mind – her yea would be yea, and her nay nay. The last faint hope that Mrs. Thompson might have been lying at the inquest faded away and died before the emphatic responsibility of her aspect. Hilary found her so alarming that she would have dithered if she had let herself stop to think. She said, ‘Mrs. Thompson?’ in a pretty, breathless voice, and Mrs. Thompson said, ‘Yes, Miss.’
‘I wondered,’ said Hilary, and then she stuck, and Mrs. Thompson said ‘Yes, miss’ again, but this time her small, steady grey eyes took on a look of recognition – at least that was what Hilary thought. The colour came brightly into her cheeks and burned there. She said,
‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, I know you’re busy, and I’m interrupting you, but if you would just let me ask you one or two questions – ’
Mrs. Thompson stood there very large and portentous. The look of recognition was gone. Her face was like a brick wall. At last she said,
‘I know your face, but I don’t remember your name.’
‘Hilary Carew. I’m Mrs. Grey’s cousin -Mrs. Geoffrey Grey.’
Mrs. Thompson came a heavy step nearer and put up a hand to her ear.
‘I’m very hard of hearing – I’ll have to trouble you to speak up, miss.’
‘Yes – I remember.’ Hilary pitched her voice high and clear. Aunt Emmeline’s Eliza was hard of hearing too, so she had had practice. ‘Is that better?’
Mrs. Thompson nodded.
‘People don’t speak up as they used to do, but that will be all right. What did you want, miss?’
‘It’s about the Everton Case. You’re the second person who remembers seeing me at the trial though I was only there one day. At least I suppose that’s where you saw me.’
Mrs. Thompson nodded again.
‘With Mrs. Grey, pore lady.’
‘Yes,’ said Hilary. ‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson, he didn’t do it – he really didn’t.’
Mrs. Thompson shook her head.
‘And that’s what I should have said myself if I hadn’t seen him with the pistol in his hand.’
‘He didn’t – he really didn’t,’ said Hilary very earnestly and very loud. ‘But it’s no good talking about that, and that’s not what I came here to talk about. I only wanted to ask you if you know about the daily help, the woman who used to come in and help Mrs. Mercer at Solway Lodge, because they didn’t call her either at the inquest or at the trial, and there’s something I want to ask her most dreadfully badly.’
Mrs. Thompson didn’t snort, because she had been very well brought up and knew her manners. It was, however, apparent that only a sense of what was due to herself prevented her from snorting.
‘That Mrs. Ashley!’
‘Was that her name?’
Mrs. Thompson nodded.
‘And a good thing they didn’t call her for a witness, for a poorer spirited, more Peter-grievous kind of a creature I never come across nor never want to!’
‘And do you know where she lives?’ said Hilary quickly.
Mrs. Thompson shook her head with heavy scorn. It was not for her to know the lurking-places of Peter-grievous females who went out by the day.
Hilary turned quite pale with disappointment.
‘Oh, Mrs. Thompson – but I want to find her so frightfully badly.’
Mrs. Thompson considered.
‘If she’d had anything to tell, the police ’ud have got it out of her, and she’d have been called for a witness and have had hysterics in the court as likely as not. People ought to be able to control themselves is what I say, but Mrs. Ashley never. And I can’t give you her address, miss, only knowing about her through Mrs. Mercer, but you might hear of her at Smith the greengrocer’s about three doors up from where you come into the High Street, because it was Mrs. Smith recommended her to Mrs. Mercer when she was looking for help. And I won’t say she wasn’t pretty fair at her work, though I couldn’t have stood her about the house myself.’
Hilary came away quite bright and brisk. Mrs. Smith would be able to give her Mrs. Ashley’s address, and she might be able to find out something that would help Geoff. She hadn’t expected anything of Mrs. Thompson who must have been pumped completely dry between the inquest and the trial. If you don’t expect anything you don’t let yourself feel disappointed. Mrs. Thompson thought Geoffrey had done it, but then of course she didn’t know Geoff. She could only repeat what she had said at the inquest and finish up with ‘I saw him with the pistol in his hand.’ Hilary wasn’t going to let herself be damped and daunted by that.
She found the greengrocer’s shop without difficulty, and was given Mrs. Ashley’s address by the buxom fair-haired Mrs. Smith, who obviously thought that she was looking for daily help – ‘And I’m sure, madam, you’ll find Mrs. Ashley very nice about the house – very nice indeed. Ladies I’ve recommended her to have always been very well satisfied- 10 Pinman’s Lane, and if you go round the corner and take the second on the left and the third on the right you can’t miss it. And you’ll find her in. She was here not half an hour ago, and she was going home then. The lady she’s been working for is away, and all she’s got to do is keep the house aired.’
Hilary thought Pinman’s Lane a most depressing place. The houses were old and tottery, with tiny windows. She knocked at the door of No. 10. Nothing happened. She knocked again. Then someone began to come down the stairs, and the minute Hilary heard that footstep she knew why Mrs. Thompson had wanted to snort. It was one of those trailing footsteps, a hesitating, slow dreep of a footstep. James Everton must have had some fatal attraction for dreeps, because Mrs. Mercer had been one too. Or – a window opened brightly in Hilary’s mind – was Mercer the kind of man who liked to lord it over a batch of spineless, subservient women? She was wondering about that when the door opened and Mrs. Ashley stood there putting back the faded hair from her faded eyes and peering at Hilary in a vaguely questioning manner. She had once been a very pretty girl. The faded hair had been a pale ash-blonde, and the faded eyes a very soft pale blue. Her features were regular and good, but the apple-blossom tints which had coloured them had long since departed, leaving her lined and sallow. She might have been thirty-five, she might have been fifty-five. There was no knowing.
Hilary said, ‘May I come in?’ and walked firmly past her and into the room on the right. She felt quite sure that it was no use waiting to be asked in, and she wasn’t going to stand on the doorstep and talk about the Everton Case in the hearing of the neighbours.
The room was most dreadfully pathetic – very old linoleum on the floor with the pattern worn away and the edges frayed, a rug that looked as if it had been picked off a rubbish heap, and a sofa with broken springs and bulges of horsehair coming through the burst American cloth. There was a wooden chair and a sagging wicker one, and a table with a woollen table-cloth which had once been red.
Hilary stood by the table and waited for Mrs. Ashley to come in and shut the door.
CHAPTER NINE
Mrs. Ashley looked frightened to death. Hilary thought she had never seen anyone so ridiculously frightened in her life. Ridiculously because – well, really, there wasn’t anything for her to be frightened about. You don’t need to look like a rabbit in a trap just because you once worked in a house where there was a murder and someone comes to ask you a few quite harmless questions about it. All
the same, there was Mrs. Ashley with her mouth open in a pale O and her eyes staring with terror.
‘I’m Mrs Grey’s cousin,’ repeated Hilary firmly.
Some kind of a sound came out of the pale O, but it didn’t make any sense.
Hilary tapped with her foot. She really could have shaken the creature.
‘Mrs. Geoffrey Grey – Geoffrey Grey’s wife. I’m her cousin. I only wanted to ask you one or two questions – Mrs. Ashley, why are you so frightened?’
Mrs. Ashley caught her breath. Her chin trembled. She put up a hand to cover her mouth.
‘I don’t know anything – I can’t say anything.’
Hilary restrained herself. If she lost her temper, it would be all up. She said in the careful, gentle voice which she would have used to someone who was not quite right in the head:
‘There’s nothing to be frightened about. I really only wanted to ask you something about Mrs. Mercer.’
This seemed to have a soothing effect. Mrs. Ashley took her hand away from her mouth, moistened her lips with a pale tongue, and said in a faint, gasping voice:
‘Mrs. Mercer?’
‘Yes. You were helping her at Solway Lodge, weren’t you? Did she tell you she had a toothache the day Mr. Everton was shot?’
‘Oh no, miss, she didn’t.’
It was obvious that the question was a relief, and the answer an easy one.
‘Did you know that she’d been having toothache?’
‘Oh no, miss, I didn’t.’
‘You didn’t know she’d had trouble with her teeth?’
‘Oh no, Miss.’
‘But I suppose she used to talk to you a good bit?’
‘Sometimes she would and sometimes she wouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Ashley – ‘not if Mr. Mercer was anywhere about. But if we were by ourselves in the bedrooms as it might be, she’d tell me how she’d lived down by the sea when she was a girl the first time she was in service. She thought a lot about that place Mrs. Mercer did. There was a lady and a little boy, and the gentleman a lot away from home. There was a baby too, but it was the little boy she thought the world of.’ Mrs. Ashley paused for breath. The topic seemed to have reassured her, and she had stopped looking like something in a trap.
Hilary brought her firmly back from Mrs. Mercer’s reminiscences to Mrs. Mercer herself.
‘Then you didn’t know she had a toothache?’
‘Oh no, miss.’
Hilary let the toothache go.
‘What time did you leave – on the 16th, I mean?’
The frightened look came back into Mrs. Ashley’s face. She showed the whites of her eyes like a nervous horse as she said:
‘I had my tea and went same as usual.’
Now what was the matter with her?
‘And what time was that?’ said Hilary.
Mrs. Ashley’s mouth opened and shut. She looked dreadfully like a fish on a hook.
‘Six o’clock,’ she said on an almost inaudible gasp.
‘And you didn’t sec anything out of the way?’
Mrs. Ashley shook her head.
‘Or hear anything?’
Mrs. Ashley turned the colour of a tallow candle and her eyes bolted, but she shook her head again.
Hilary, exasperated, took a step towards her and said with all the severity of her twenty-two years:
‘Mrs. Ashley, you did hear something. It’s no good your saying you didn’t, because I can see that you did, and if you won’t tell me what it is, I shall just have to think about going to the police.’
It wasn’t possible to look more frightened, but it was possible to shiver. Mrs. Ashley shivered, and clutched at the table for support.
‘I went away at six o’clock – gospel truth I did.’
Hilary came darting at her with, ‘But did you come back again, Mrs. Ashley -did you come back?’ And then and there the woman collapsed, going down on her knees by the table, sobbing and weeping, her hands pressed over her eyes and her tongue stumbling and failing under a landslide of words.
‘I told her I wouldn’t tell, and I never. I promised her sure and certain I wouldn’t tell. I told the police I went away at six like I always done and no reason why I shouldn’t and take my gospel oath on it for true’s true and I went away like I said and no one never arst me nothing more except that pore lady and I promised her faithful I wouldn’t tell and I never.’
Hilary felt a little cold and bewildered. The sound of Mrs. Ashley’s sobs filled the room. She had let go of the table and was crouched in a sort of heap against one of the rickety legs, rbcking herself to and fro and crying.
‘Mrs. Ashley – listen to me! What are you talking about? Who made you promise not to tell?’
‘I never!’ said Mrs. Ashley with a rending sniff. ‘The police come, and I don’t know how I kep’ myself, but I never.’
‘Who did you promise? You must tell me who you promised.’
Mrs. Ashley’s sobs redoubled.
‘She come here, and I told her. And she sat in that chair and she arst me to promise. Not three months off her time she was. And I promised, and I kep’ my promise.’ She pushed the hair from her face with a trembling, dabbing hand and stared at Hilary in a sort of weak pride. ’I didn’t tell the police – I didn’t tell no one – only her-only Mrs. Grey.’
Hilary knelt down on the shabby floor so that she could face her eye to eye.
‘What did you hear?’ she said in a young, small voice.
Mrs. Ashley rocked and sobbed. Hilary’s voice went down into a whisper.
‘Tell me – Mrs. Ashley, tell me – I’ve got to know. It won’t hurt anyone now – Geoff’s in prison – the case is closed. I’m Marion ’s cousin – you can tell me. You see, I know that you came back. I’ve got to know what happened – I’ve got to know what you heard.’ She put out a hand and took the woman by the wrist. ’Mrs. Ashley, why did you go back?’
‘I dropped my letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘I’ve got a boy that went for a sailor. He’s seventeen – and it’s his first trip – and he wrote to me from India -and I took the letter for to show Mrs. Mercer -she and me used to talk about my boy, and about the one she set such store by in her first place – and when I got home I hadn’t got my letter, so I come back – ’
‘Yes?’ said Hilary.
Mrs. Ashley pushed back her damp hair.
‘Mr. Mercer he’d have burnt it or tore it up, Mr. Mercer would. No feelings for a mother, Mr. Mercer hasn’t – many’s the time me and Mrs. Mercer have said it when he wasn’t by. So I dursn’t leave it over till next day and I come back. I knew where I must have left it for certain, because it was when Mr. Everton was out and I was doing the study, and Mrs. Mercer come in aud I read her the letter. And I put it back in my pocket in a hurry because we heard Mr. Mercer, and it must have slipped out and seeing I was tight up against the curtains I’d good hope no one ’ad seen it. So I waited till I thought Mr. Everton ’ud be at dinner and I come along.’
‘Yes!’ said Hilary – ‘yes?’
Mrs. Ashley had stopped crying. She sniffed and gulped, but she was fairly launched.
‘I come back and I thought no need to let anyone know. And I thought a fine evening like this the study window’ll be open right down to the ground, and no more than to put my hand inside and take my letter if it was there, and if not I must just leave it and take my chance of a word with Mrs. Mercer.’ She paused and rocked herself, and stared at Hilary with frightened eyes. ‘I made sure Mr. Everton ’ud be at dinner, but I come along tight up to the wall and I hadn’t got to no more than a yard or two from the study window than I heard Mr. Everton call out and there come the sound of a shot, and I turned around and I ran.’ She choked on a sob. ‘I didn’t see no one, and no one didn’t see me. I don’t know how I get home – I don’t indeed.’
Hilary felt exactly as if someone had dashed cold water in her face. She was braced, eager, and steady. Something in her mind kept saying, ‘Th
e time -the time that she heard the shot – that’s what matters – the time – the time of the shot.’ She said it aloud in a clear, firm voice.
‘What time was it? What time did you hear the shot?’
Mrs. Ashley stopped rocking. Her mouth fell open. She seemed to be thinking.
There was a clock struck when I come along Oakley Road- ’
‘Yes – yes?’
‘Eight o’clock it struck.’
Hilary drew a long joyful breath. It was only five minutes walk from Oakley Road to Solway Lodge. That is to say, Geoff had made five minutes of it. A woman would probably take seven or eight minutes, and a dreep like Mrs. Ashley might take ten. But if Mrs. Ashley had heard that shot fired at ten minutes past eight, it couldn’t have been fired by Geoffrey Grey. Geoff couldn’t possibly have reached Solway Lodge before a quarter past eight, and even then you had got to allow time for him to meet his uncle and quarrel with him if you were going to believe the Mercers’ evidence. She said in an eager, trembling voice:
‘Then it couldn’t have been later than ten past eight when you heard that shot?’
Mrs. Ashley sat back on her heels and stared. Her hands had fallen palm upwards in her lap. She said in a flat voice:
‘No, miss – it would be later than that – a good bit.’
Hilary’s heart gave a jump.
‘It couldn’t be! You couldn’t take more than ten minutes from Oakley Road – nobody could.’
‘Oh no, miss.’
‘Then it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes past eight.’
Mrs. Ashley opened and shut her mouth exactly like a fish. Then she said, ‘It was a good bit later than that,’ in her meek, flat voice.
The Case Is Closed Page 7