CHAPTER ELEVENHilary sat in the bus and thought. She thought about the Mercers. She thought a great deal about the Mercers. Mrs. Mercer might be off her head, or she mightn’t. Mercer was uncommonly anxious to make it clear that she was off her head—he kept on saying it every five minutes. There was something in Shakespeare—how did it go—“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Mercer was rather like that about Mrs. Mercer—he protested so much that you couldn’t help having the feeling that perhaps he was overdoing it. “What I tell you three times is true.” That was Lewis Carroll in The Hunting of the Snark. That seemed to fit Alfred Mercer very well. If he went on saying that Mrs. Mercer was mad often enough it would be believed, and to all intents and purposes mad she would be, and nobod
