Case Is Closed by Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver 02 - Case Is Closed

Author:Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver 02 - Case Is Closed [Wentworth, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753176603
Google: 7UG1LHCAwJ0C
Amazon: 0340200464
Barnesnoble: 0340200464
Goodreads: 12002953
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 1976-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

HILARY’S MIND WENT perfectly cold and stiff, but her hand shut the door. She stood on the other side of it and waited without thought or movement. She did not know how long she waited.

She began to think again. Was he coming in here? No, he wasn’t. The footsteps went past. She lost them. What was Alfred Mercer doing here? She didn’t know. She wanted to know, but there wasn’t any way of finding out. Had he followed her? She must find out. She went to the fireplace and rang the bell.

It seemed a long time before anyone answered it. Then the girl who had brought the tea came in and said there was eighteenpence to pay. Hilary took out two shillings and a sixpence, put one shilling and a sixpenny bit into the girl’s hand, and held the other shilling between finger and thumb.

‘I wonder if you could tell me the name of the man who came in just now?’

The girl was plump and good-tempered—a heavily built young thing with a high colour. She looked at the shilling and said, ‘Oh, no, miss, I couldn’t.’

‘You don’t know his name?’

‘Oh, no, miss, I don’t.’

‘You’ve seen him before—he’s been here before?’

‘Oh, no, miss, he hasn’t.’

‘You mean he’s a stranger?’

‘Oh, no, miss.’

Hilary could have stamped with rage. Did the girl know anything, or didn’t she? She seemed impenetrably stupid, but you never could tell. And she couldn’t afford to stay here and perhaps be caught asking awkward questions. Whether the girl knew Alfred Mercer or not, it was very certain that Alfred Mercer would know Hilary Carew, and that blighted girl had left the door open when she came in. Hilary Carew had got to make herself scarce, and she’d got to look slippy about it.

She looked slippy, but she didn’t look slippy enough, for just as she got to the end of the passage and had her hand on the outer door, Alfred Mercer came walking briskly back by the way he had gone. Hilary looked sideways and saw him, and with the same movement she pulled the door towards her and slipped out.

There was a recessed porch and some steps. Her bicycle was leaning against the steps, but someone had knocked it down and she had to pick it up. She was very, very quick about it. One moment she was groping for the bicycle, and the next she was wobbling out on to the road and leaning forward to reach the electric lamp and switch it on. Nothing seemed to happen when she did this. It wasn’t as dark as it was going to be later on, but it was quite dark enough, and there was quite a lot of fog. It was her own fault for stopping to have tea, but there comes a point when you care more about having your tea than about doing what you ought to do, and Hilary had reached that point. She now used some bitter expressions about the shock-headed young man who had sent her out on a foggy afternoon with a lamp which had probably died last winter.

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