Hilary sat down on the arm of a large leather-covered chair. She was glad to sit down, but it put her at a disadvantage, because Henry remained standing. He leaned against the mantelpiece and gazed silently over the top of her head. Enraging. Because if you wanted to stop Henry talking you couldn’t – he merely raised his voice and continued to air his views. And now, when you wanted him to talk, he went all strong and silent and looked over the top of your head. She said, in rather a breathless voice,

‘Don’t do that!’

Henry looked at her, and immediately looked away again. ‘As if I was a black beetle!’ said Hilary to herself.

He said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and Hilary forgot about her knees wobbling and jumped up.

‘Henry, I really won’t be spoken to like that! I wanted to talk to you, but if you’re going to be a perfectly polite stranger, I’m off!’

Henry continued to avert his gaze. She understood him to say in a muffled tone that he wasn’t being a polite stranger, and inside herself Hilary grinned and heard a little jigging rhyme which said,

‘Henry is never very polite,

But when he is he’s a perfect fright.’

She emerged, to hear him enquire what he could do for her, and all at once her eyes stung, and she heard herself say,

‘Nothing. I’m going.’

Henry got to the door first. He put his back against it and said,

‘You can’t go.’

‘I don’t want to go – I want to talk. But I can’t unless you’ll be rational.’

‘I’m perfectly rational,’ said Henry.

Then come and sit down. I really do want to talk, and I can’t whilst you go on being about eleven feet high.’

He subsided into a second leather chair. They were so close that if she had been sitting in the chair instead of on the arm, their knees would have touched. She had now a slight adyantage, as from this position it was she who looked down on him whilst he looked up to her. She thought it an entirely suitable arrangement, but had serious doubts as to its ever becoming permanent. Even now Henry wasn’t looking at her. Suppose he wasn’t just putting it on – suppose he really didn’t want to look at her any more… It was a most unnerving thought.

Quite suddenly she began to wish that she hadn’t come. And just at that moment Henry said rather gruffly,

‘Is anything the matter?’

A new, warm feeling rushed over Hilary. Henry only spoke like that when he really minded, and if he really minded, it was going to be all right. She nodded and said,

That’s what I want to talk to you about. Things have been happening, and I can’t talk to Marion because it upsets her, and I feel as if I must talk to someone, because of course it’s very, very, very important, so I thought we – we -well, we were friends -and I thought if I talked to you, you’d tell me what I ought to do next.’

There! Henry ought to adore that -he liked them meek and feminine. At least he did in theory, but in practice he might get bored.

‘Henry would like his wife to be meek

If he had a new one once a week.’

Henry brightened a little.

‘You’d better tell me all about it. What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing.’ Hilary shook a mournful head. ‘At least I only got into a wrong train by mistake – and that wasn’t my fault. I – I just saw someone who – who frightened me, so I got into a Ledlington train by mistake and didn’t find it out for ages.’

‘Someone frightened you? How?’

‘By glaring. It’s very unnerving for a sensitive young girl to be glared at on a public platform.’

Henry looked at her with suspicion.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘You,’ said Hilary, and only just stopped herself saying ‘Darling.’

‘You’ve no idea how you glared -at least I hope you haven’t, because it’s much worse if you meant it. But I was completely shattered, and by the time I’d picked up the bits, there I was in a lonely carriage in a Ledlington train with Mrs. Mercer having suppressed hysterics in the other corner and beginning to clutch hold of my dress and confide in me, only I didn’t know it was Mrs. Mercer or I’d have encouraged her a lot more.’

‘Mrs. Mercer?’ said Henry in a very odd tone indeed.

Hilary nodded.

‘Alfred Mercer and Mrs. Mercer. You won’t remember, because you’d gone back to Egypt before the trial, came off – Geoff’s trial – the Everton Case. The Mercers were James Everton’s married couple, and they were the spot witnesses for the prosecution – Mrs. Mercer’s evidence very nearly hanged Geoff. And when I was in the train with her she recognised me, and then she began to cry and to say the oddest things.’

‘What sort of things, Hilary?’ Henry had stopped being superior and offended. His voice was eager and the words hurried out.

‘Well, it was all about Marion and the trial, and a lot of gasping and sobbing and staring, and a funny sort of story about how she’d tried to see Marion when the trial was going on. She said she went round to the house where she was staying and tried to see her. She said, “Miss, if I never spoke another word, it’s true I tried to see her.” And she said she’d given her husband the slip. And then she said in quite a frightful sort of whisper things like “If she had seen me.” But she didn’t see her, because she was resting. Poor Marion, she was nearly dead by then -they wouldn’t have let her see anyone – but Mrs. Mercer seemed most dreadfully upset about it. And then she said her husband came and she never got another chance. She said he saw to that.’

Henry was looking straight at her for the first time.

‘It really was Mrs. Mercer?’

‘Oh yes. Marion showed me a photograph and I recognised it at once. It was Mrs. Mercer all right.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Do you want me to describe her?’

‘No – no. I want to know how she seemed. You said she was having hysterics. Did she know what she was saying?’

‘Oh yes, I should think so – oh yes, I’m sure she did. When I said hysterics, I didn’t mean she was screaming the place down. She was just awfully upset, you know – crying, and gasping, and trembling all over, and every now and then she’d pull herself together, and then she’d break down again.’

‘Something on her mind – ’ said Henry slowly. Then, with a good deal of emphasis, ‘You didn’t think of her being out of her mind, did you?’

‘No – no, I didn’t – not after the first minute or two. I did at first because of the way she stared, and because of her bursting out that she knew me, and things like “Thank God he didn’t,” and, “He’d never have gone if he had.” ’

‘He?

‘Mercer. He went along the corridor. I – I’d been looking out of the window, and when I turned round I just saw a man getting up and going along. I’d been picking up the bits, you know – the ones you shattered by scowling across the platform at me – so I hadn’t been noticing who was in the carriage, and when I’d got myself put together again, and turned round, there was the man going out into the corridor and the woman staring at me, and I did think she was mad for about a minute and a half.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did I think she was mad at first – or why didn’t I think so afterwards?’

‘Both.’

‘Well, I thought she was mad at first because of her staring and saying “Thank God” at me – anyone would. But when I found out that she really did know me because of seeing me with Marion at the trial, and that the reason she was all worked up and emoted was because she was frightfully sorry for Marion and couldn’t get her off her mind, I didn’t think she was mad any more. That sort of person gets gulpy at once if they’re fond of someone who’s in trouble, so I just thought it was that, but when I found out who she was, all the rather odd things she’d been saying came up in my mind, and I wondered.’

‘You wondered whether she was mad?’