Suspension of Mercy (16 page)

Within two minutes, he had arranged to go to Inez’s and Carpie’s. Inez was out. Sydney took a taxi, because their place was such a long way from any bus stop.

Carpie, in sandals and a shapeless housedress, opened the door for him. “Welcome, Sydney! Come in and sit. It’s the children’s hour on the living-room floor. You won’t mind, will you?”

“Oh, no,” Sydney said pleasantly.

Two blankets were spread on the floor, reminding Sydney of the picnic, but now the babies were pushing plastic toys around instead of food.

“Can I get you some coffee, Syd?”

“Oh, no, thanks.”

“Sit down.”

He did, to get out of the way, sit down on the studio couch.

“Or a sherry? That’s all the house boasts just now. Boasts? You should taste it, yet.”

“Nothing, thanks. I won’t stay more than ten minutes,” Sydney said, though he thought he’d nearly miss the next train, anyway, and have another hour’s wait.

Carpie sat down on a square hassock of yellow leather. “How long will you be in Brighton?”

“Two or three days, I imagine. Enough to give it a good look. I think I can do a better job of looking than the police.”

“Tell me. About this digging. What’s up?” Carpie chuckled throatily. The hassock sagged under her great weight. It was astounding that anyone could be so mature in a womanly way at twenty-four, which was all she was. In fact, Carpie preferred to say she was a little older.

“They dug for the carpet, which I buried pretty deeply,” Sydney said, “and now they’re wasting time digging for Alicia. As for Mrs. Lilybanks, she had an attack just as I was walking in her door Sunday evening to tell her there was nothing to worry about in the carpet, you see. The police had just found it, so I had official information.” Sydney shrugged. He accepted the cigarette that Carpie offered. “Thanks.” He took a deep pull on the cigarette. “I think I’ll stay around Brighton over Friday and Saturday night. If Alicia’s with a boy friend, he might not get down till Friday or Saturday. I might not see them.” He felt utterly depressed.

Carpie looked a little stunned by all the information. She was watching Sydney carefully. “I liked Mrs. Lilybanks.”

“So did I.”

“You haven’t heard a thing about Alicia? Not a hint from anywhere?”

“Not a hint. In fact, the reason I came to see you is to ask you—again—if you have any ideas as to boy friends.”

Carpie’s full, lipstickless lips remained in solemn repose, closed. Her wide dark eyes were fixed on Sydney’s face. “Inez and I even talked about it. The answer is no, Syd. I’m sorry.”

“You see—” Sydney got up. “I have the feeling—just a feeling—it’s somebody she met here. We don’t know so many people who give parties like the ones you give. Not the Polk-Faradays, for instance, not any of the people up in Suffolk. Down, sorry. That last party . . . When was it? In March?”

Carpie thought, pressing a heavy hand against her temple. “Oh, lordie. Around then. I remember. People standing up around the walls. I certainly didn’t know everyone who was here. People brought people. You know.”

If any man at that party had struck up an acquaintance with Alicia, Sydney thought, he wouldn’t likely have come back to Inez’s and Carpie’s, even if invited. That was another handicap in naming him. “Wait.” Sydney stood up and faced the wall beside the door. “There was a fellow standing over here talking to Alicia that night. On the make, I remember. I was over here on the couch and never met him. Do you remember anybody sort of well-dressed, brown hair, not too tall, about thirty? I can’t remember the eyes. Very neat?”

Carpie chuckled again. “Ought to. Neat and well-dressed. That doesn’t turn up here too often.”

Sydney smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Could you ask Inez if she remembers anybody like that? Very Savile Row?”

“Sure, Syd.”

“And I’ll call you tonight. On the off chance she remembers.” He picked up his bag. “I’ll just make that train if I taxi to the station. Sorry to be so rude, Carpie.”

“That’s all right!” She came with him to the door. “Best place for a taxi is turn left and left again.”

Sydney found a taxi quickly and made the train. Today was the first time he had been among the public in a long while, he realized as he sat in a compartment with five other men. None of them stared at him. His picture had been in the papers only once, in early August, when the search for Alicia had begun.

At Brighton, he stepped into a sunny, open world, where it looked as if nothing and no one could hide. Men wore sportshirts without ties, women were in sandals and slacks or bright cotton skirts. Sydney walked down to the seafront. Utterly useless to look for her at 3:30
P.M.
on the boardwalk, he supposed, yet the temptation to try the obvious places first was irresistible, and he visited three hotel lobbies briefly, and walked back the way he had come with his eyes on the beach and the boardwalk. He paid a sixpence admission and went onto the Palace Pier. Here were hotdog stands, caramel popcorn, your-photo-in-three-minutes booths, mechanical fortune-tellers, bingo parlors, and the noise of mingled juke boxes. For another sixpence, one could rent a deckchair from 9
A.M.
to 2
P.M.
, but Alicia was not sitting in any of them. Sydney went back to shore, and asked the direction to police headquarters.

Mr. MacIntosh was not on hand, but a pleasant man called Constable Clare spoke to him and explained, using a map of Brighton and the district, how they had been conducting the search.

“Two weeks ago, we covered all this,” said Constable Clare, indicating a wide circle around Brighton, full of roads on which inns’ and hotels’ names were written as well as towns’. “We even knocked on doors. Naturally, we’re looking in a much wider area—all over England, you might say.”

Here they were joined by Mr. MacIntosh, a dark, slender man. “I understand from the Ipswich office you want to join the search.” His lips smiled at one corner.

“Yes, I do. For a few days,” Sydney replied.

“I’d appreciate it, if you’d check in here morning and evening to tell us what you might have discovered. Or heard. A telephone call will do. Where will you be stopping in Brighton?”

“No idea as yet. I might not even stay in Brighton.”

“Would you mind giving us a ring tonight then, Mr. Bartleby, when you put yourself up?”

Sydney walked out into the sunlit street again. For what it was worth, he supposed he should be at the railway station at seven and also at eight this evening.

He was, and it netted him nothing, neither Alicia nor the elusive face of the dapper man Sydney was trying to recollect. He had a drink in three restaurants after that, at the height of the dinner hour. No luck, either. Then he reclaimed his bag from the depository at the railway station, walked with it to the bus station, and took a bus to a tiny spot ten miles away called Sumner Downs. It was as good a place as any, Sydney thought. He put himself up at an inn, where bed and breakfast was twenty-six shillings, and called Brighton police headquarters from a kiosk outdoors on the road, so as not to be overheard by anyone in the inn. However, the name Bartleby hadn’t aroused any interest in the woman proprietor.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know the name of the inn,” Sydney said in answer to the police clerk’s question. “But it looks like the only one in town.”

In the next two days, Thursday and Friday, Sydney toured the countryside in buses which stopped everywhere, Bognor Regis on the west, Arundel, Lancing and Worthing, then Seaford and Peacehaven to the east of Brighton. Sometimes he got out and walked about, looking, and sometimes he asked questions at general stores and post offices. No one had heard of a blond young woman, a summer guest, or of a young woman a little on the tall side and slender, whose hair was blond or reddish or brown (Sydney couldn’t imagine Alicia dyeing her hair black), but everyone asked, “What’s her name?” and Sydney always said, “That doesn’t matter, because I’m sure she’d be using a false name.” Two or three of the people he asked said, “They were looking for the Bartleby woman a couple of weeks back. We think she’s dead, poor girl. It wouldn’t be her you’re looking for, would it?” “No,” Sydney had answered, for what good would it have done to say yes?

On Friday, August 19, Sydney was back in Brighton in time for the 5
P.M.
train. There were trains every half hour now. Hurrying businessmen poured off them, many with expectant smiles, many crashing happily into the arms of waiting girls—but no girl was Alicia and no man was Dapper Dan. If the fellow was as well-heeled as he looked, Sydney thought, he might well drive down in a car. Sydney filled the intervals between trains with tea or a drink in the buffet of the station. At seven, back on the platform to watch the detraining passengers, Sydney saw a man who looked very much like the man he remembered.

He was hatless, hurrying, with his head a little ducked, as if he didn’t want to be seen.

Anyway, Sydney gave chase. The man wasn’t looking for anyone, that was plain from the way he kept his head down. He wore a gray business suit, neatly pressed, jacket open, carried a rolled umbrella, a black briefcase, and a bulging paper shopping bag from Sainsbury’s. He looked for a taxi outside the station. Sydney did the same. The man got his, and Sydney managed to get one, by being rude to a woman, about fifteen seconds later.

“Just turn right here—first,” Sydney said, sitting forward on his seat in order to keep the man’s taxi in view.

“Into town?”

“I don’t know yet.” A moment later, Sydney said, “I’m with a friend in another taxi, the third up on the right. I’ve got to follow him.”

The driver was rather lost, but courteous, and Sydney promised to direct him as he watched the other taxi. They went down to the sea road and turned right. Like a jockey, Sydney urged his driver to pass a couple of cars so the man’s taxi was in better view. Sydney sat up still more as the town thinned out. Suppose it wasn’t the right taxi? Suppose the man were meeting a fat, dark-haired girl, or going to a house full of people where he was expected, a house where Alicia wasn’t, and where the people had never heard of Alicia?

The man’s taxi made a right turn, away from the sea, and slowed.

“Not too close behind him, please . . . Okay, drive on past,” Sydney said in a suddenly choking voice.

Sydney had seen Alicia standing at the left side of the road beside a motor scooter, her hair short and auburn in the light of the setting sun, a summer skirt of blue billowing out. He looked left as he passed the two, who were so absorbed in each other—hands held, a kiss on the cheek and on the lips—they might not have known if a parade of lions was passing them. Sydney even heard a high note of Alicia’s voice through the open window.

“Those are my friends,” Sydney said. “I want to surprise them later, so—could you make a turn up here, turn around and go back?”

The driver did so. The scooter was out of sight now, but there was a smaller road off to the right. Sydney asked the driver to take it. The scooter was in sight for a moment, then disappeared as it descended a hill. It was not going fast. The man was driving, Alicia was behind. The sea was on the left, and the road narrowed. Sydney did not want to be seen following them.

“All right, turn around again, if you will,” Sydney said somewhat breathlessly. “I’d like to go back.”

“Go back?”

“I’m early,” Sydney said limply, not caring what he said. He had the driver go back to the station, because he couldn’t think of any other place to tell him to go to.

After he had paid off the taxi, Sydney stood in a daze in the station without direction or purpose for a full half minute. Alicia looked very happy. That was perhaps the most shocking thing of all. However, one had to be practical and efficient: names, addresses, dates, and all that. Telephone numbers. He forced himself to remember Inez’s and Carpie’s. Then he got a lot of shillings from a ten-bob note, and went to a telephone booth.

Inez’s voice came first, yelling over her shoulder to someone, and behind it the heavy rhythm of calypso music. “Hail-o!” said Inez gaily.

“Hello, Inez. Sydney here. How are you? Besides musical.”

“
Me
musical?” And she giggled as if someone were tickling her.

“I wondered—” Sydney began and stopped. He couldn’t tell them he had found Alicia, and under what circumstances. “I saw Carpie Wednesday for a few minutes, you know. Asked her about a—a certain man I saw at one of your parties.”

“Oh-h, yes,” said Inez, suddenly sobering. “Carpie! What was that man’s name again? . . . Oh, yeah. She thinks—
we
thinks—it might be Edward Tilbury, but don’t quote us on that. He’s a lawyer, friend of Vassily’s. You know Vassily, from the picnic at your place.”

Sydney remembered Vassily with the station wagon. “You think. Is he about five eight, well dressed? Rolled umbrella type?”

“He is. And I remember him, too, a little, but I didn’t know his name until we both sort of came up with it.”

Sydney could easily ask them to check on what Edward Tilbury was doing with his spare time lately, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “Thanks a lot, Inez.”

“You’re welcome, Syd, but I only think this is the guy you’re talking about, and I don’t know a thing about him seeing Alicia. Naturally.”

“Sure, I understand, Inez. I’m very grateful. And don’t worry. It’s only an idea. On my part. She could be seeing—anyone else, for that matter.”

“You think she’s alive, Syd,” Inez said like a statement. “You don’t think she’s killed herself or anything.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, all this talk about
you
killing her—makes you think somebody did, because they’re acting like she’s dead.”

“Hogwash,” said Sydney.

Inez shrieked. “Hogwash! You tellin’ me! I can just see you buryin’ a carpet, you old nut, with nothin’ in it. Hah-ha-ah!”

Inez’s good spirits picked Sydney up suddenly. “Inez, I sold The Whip series with Alex. Just heard a couple of days ago.”

“No kidding! Well, isn’t that great! I’ll spread the news, Syd. Funny Alex didn’t tell us. Carpie called them last night for a wine party tomorrow. You back tomorrow night, Syd?”