The Case Is Closed by Patricia Wentworth Page A

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?…
    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