The Case Is Closed Read Online Free PDF Page A

find a door, and you were never sure what door you were going to find, so every going to sleep was an adventure. Sometimes, of course, you opened a very dull door and got into an empty room with nothing inside it. Sometimes, like poor Marion, you couldn’t find a door at all, and just wandered groping along the wall getting more and more tired with every step. Hilary had very little personal experience of this. Doors sprang open to her before her fingers fumbled for the latch.
    But tonight she couldn’t get to sleep. She was cold after hanging out of the bathroom window, so she buried herself up to the eyes in blankets. Then all of a sudden she was in a raging heat and pushing them away. Her pillow was too high — too low — too soft — too hard. Then, just as she thought she had settled herself, her nose began to tickle.
    And all the time something went round and round in her head like a gramophone record. Only it was like a record which someone is playing next door — you can hear it enough to be driven nearly crazy, but strain as you will, you can’t quite make out the tune. Round, and round, and round, and round went the gramophone record in Hilary’s head — round, and round, and round, and round. But she couldn’t make sense of it. It was all the little bits of things which she had heard and known about the Everton murder and about Geoffrey Grey’s trial, but they didn’t hang together and they didn’t make sense. That was because you can’t make sense out of nonsense — and she didn’t care what anyone said, it was nonsense to believe that Geoff had shot his uncle.
    Hilary straightened her pillow for the umpteenth time and promised herself not to move until she had counted a hundred, but long before she got there her nose was tickling again, and a hair had got into her ear, and the arm she was lying on had pins and needles in it. She flung the bedclothes off and sat up. It wasn’t any use, she had much better get up and do something. And all of a sudden it came to her that she would go into the living-room and dig out the file about the trial and read it right through. She knew where it was — down at the bottom of the oak chest — and with Marion asleep, and hours and hours of the night before her, she could go right through the file from beginning to end. She wanted to read the inquest, because she had missed that altogether through being in the Tyrol with Henry’s cousins, and meeting Henry, and getting practically engaged to him but not quite.
    She put on her dressing-gown and slippers, tiptoed across the passage, and shut the living-room door. She turned on both lights and got out the file. Then she sat down in the big armchair and began to read all about the Everton Case.
    James Everton was shot somewhere between eight o’clock and twenty minutes past eight on the evening of Tuesday, July 16th. He was alive at eight o’clock, for that was when he telephoned to Geoffrey Grey, but he was dead twenty minutes later, because that was when Geoffrey opened the door and the Mercers rushed into the study. Mrs. Mercer said she had only just heard the shot. She said on her oath, ‘I had been up to turn down Mr. Everton’s bed, and when I was coming through the hall I heard the sound of voices in the study. It sounded as if there was a quarrel going on. I didn’t know of anyone being there with Mr. Everton, so I was frightened and I went to the door to listen. I recognised Mr. Geoffrey Grey’s voice, and I was coming away, because I thought that if it was Mr. Geoffrey it was all right. Then I heard the sound of a shot. I screamed out and Mercer came running from his pantry, where he was cleaning the silver. He shook the door, but it was locked. And then Mr. Geoffrey opened it, and he had a pistol in his hand and Mr. Everton was fallen down across his desk.’
    Pressed by the Coroner as to whether she had heard what Mr. Grey was saying when she recognised his voice, Mrs. Mercer became very agitated