Hilary shivered. It was a most desperately bleak thought. No wonder Marion had that frozen look. Of course Geoffrey might have been really dead – he might have been hanged. After reading that evidence Hilary wondered why he hadn’t been hanged. There had been an enormous petition. People had been most awfully sorry for Marion because she was going to have a baby, and she supposed the jury must have had some faint doubt in their minds, because they had recommended him to mercy. It must have been that. Or perhaps they, too, were sorry for Marion, whose baby might have been born on the very day fixed for the execution. It was born the day she heard about the reprieve. And the baby died, and Marion hung on the edge of death, and then came back like a ghost to haunt the place where she had been so happy.

Another shiver ran over Hilary, but this time it was a shiver of revulsion. However bad things were, you needn’t sit down under them. If you looked at them too long they got you down. You mustn’t go on looking at them – you must do something. There was always something to be done if you put your mind to it. Hilary began to put her mind to it, and at once she knew what she could do about the Everton Case. She could go down to Putney and rout out the daily help who hadn’t been called as a witness.

She walked to the bottom of the road and caught a bus, just as Geoffrey Grey had done on the night of July 16th, sixteen months ago. It had taken him between a quarter of an hour and twenty minutes to reach Solway Lodge, getting off at the corner and making quick work of Holly Lane with his long stride. It took Hilary twenty-five minutes, because she didn’t know the way and had to stop and ask, and she didn’t go in by the garden gate, but round to the proper entrance, where she stood and looked through iron scroll-work at a leaf-strewn drive wept over by dripping half-denuded trees. She didn’t go in – it wasn’t any use going in. The house was shut up, and three boards in a row proclaimed Bertie Everton’s desire to sell it. Houses which have figured in a murder case do not sell very easily, but it is of course permissible to hope.

Hilary passed the notice-boards and a second gate and came to the entrance of Sudbury House. Sudbury House belonged to Sir John Blakeney. Mrs. Thompson was Sir John Blakeney’s housekeeper, and it was from Mrs. Thompson that Hilary hoped to extract the name and address of that uncalled witness. The gate stood open, and she walked in, and along a narrow winding drive. When Holly Lane was really a lane Sudbury House had been a desirable country residence. It stood square and dignified in Georgian brick, the dark red flush of Virginia creeper still clinging to the side that caught the sun.

Hilary went to the front door and rang the bell. She supposed she really ought to go the back door, but she just wasn’t going to. If she let this thing get her down, it would get her down. She wasn’t going to help it by having an inferiority complex and going round to back doors.

She waited for the front door to open. It was quite simple – she was going to ask for Mrs. Thompson. It was for whoever opened the door to do the rest. She had only got to stick her chin in the air, bite the inside corner of her lip rather hard, and tell herself not to be a rabbit.

And in the event she was quite right – it was perfectly simple. A most fat, benevolent butler opened the door. He had lovely manners and seemed to see nothing odd about her wanting to see Mrs. Thompson. He reminded Hilary of air balloons she had loved when she was a child – pink, smooth, and creaking a little if you blew them up too tightly. The butler’s creak was partly a wheeze and partly starch. He showed her into a sort of morning-room and went away almost as lightly as a balloon would have done. Hilary did hope he wouldn’t blow away or blow up before he got to Mrs. Thompson. Her balloons had been liable to these tragic fatalities.

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.’