Free The Case Is Closed by Patricia Wentworth Page B

Nothing about the Evertons — nothing. Bertie was in Edinburgh, and Frank was in Glasgow, with solicitors vouching for them, and chambermaids bringing their early morning tea and answering their bells when they rang. There simply wasn’t anything you could do about the Evertons. If they had been specialising in alibis for years they couldn’t have come out of it better. It wasn’t any good — it really wasn’t any good. The case was closed. Geoff was in prison, and by the time he came out he’d be dead. And Marion would be dead, too. And these two dead people would have to go away and try to make a new life somewhere.
    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