Suspension of Mercy (17 page)

“I don’t think so. Thanks, Inez.”

“That’s too bad. What’re you doing in Brighton? Just cruising the streets?”

“More or less.”

Their conversation trickled off and they hung up with no further words about Edward Tilbury.

Sydney patiently waited for a bus to Sumner Downs for ten minutes, still in a kind of fog, then realized he had another fifteen minutes to wait, and that he was supposed to ring Brighton police headquarters for his usual check-in. He went to a kiosk.

“I’m still at Sumner Downs,” he said, and almost said he’d be going back home tomorrow, but didn’t.

“Did you turn up anything today?”

“Not a thing—sorry to say.”

22

I
n his room in the inn at Sumner Downs, Sydney sank down tiredly in the one upholstered chair, and reached in his pocket for the brown notebook. Not finding it, he pulled out his wallet in panicky haste, and felt again. Not there. Hadn’t he had it when he left Roncy Noll? Still sitting in the chair, he looked around the room, but he knew it wasn’t in the room, because he hadn’t made any notes since he had been here. Now the note he had been going to make danced in his head:

I have seen A. and feel on the brink of schizophrenia.

And he had been going to elaborate on this. He could elaborate still further because of the missing notebook now. Had he ever had a notebook? Which half of him had it? Where was that half now?

Where was the notebook? Sydney had changed into his best suit before leaving Roncy Noll, but he had brought along his old tweed jacket. He leaped up and went to the wardrobe, felt in the old jacket, and found nothing. Could he have left the notebook absent-mindedly at home on the bed where he had spread his things when he packed? That was possible. Left it in some store? Today? He had broken a pound for cigarettes at a tobacconist’s. His name wasn’t in the notebook, and he wasn’t worried now about any implication of guilt the notebook might give rise to, he was only sorry to have lost his jotted thoughts.

He looked around for some paper, found none, and took from the drawer of the night table a rather soiled piece of tan wrapping paper on which he wrote his schizophrenic observation, which he continued:

Perhaps we are a quartet, Alicia a corpse and I a murderer somewhere, and Alicia all suntanned down here and I an anxious and cuckolded husband.
The Schizophrenic We
would make a rather good title.

Then he suddenly remembered that there was a name at the front of his notebook on a page by itself: Cliff Hanger. He had proposed it to Alex once as the name of their next television sleuth.

Sydney smiled grimly, and muttered, “God’s
teeth!
”

He looked at the map he had bought of Brighton and the district. In the direction in which Alicia had been going lay Shoreham, Lancing, and Worthing. Then Goring, Ferring, Angmering, Rustington, and Littlehampton. Hadn’t Alicia once mentioned Angmering? Sydney had been to Lancing and Worthing. He supposed the thing to do was to go to them again and to the four towns beyond. He had a small bitters and a Cheddar sandwich downstairs in the inn, went to bed and slept badly.

He got up at seven, and after shaving and dressing, went downstairs and asked for a London telephone directory. The inn had none. Sydney went to the kiosk outside, and from London information learned that there were several E. Tilburys, and that a middle initial would be helpful. Sydney asked them to ring the number of an Edward J. Tilbury in Maida Vale. There was no answer, though he let it ring many times. He wished he had thought of ringing Tilbury last evening, when he had been in Brighton, and could have taken a look at all the E. Tilburys in a London book.

A little after 10
A.M.
, Sydney got a bus that went in the direction of Worthing. He stayed on it until Angmering, where he got off. He had been here before, too. He remembered the Angmering post office, and also the thin, freckled man behind the window. Sydney walked on along the sea. There were four or five cottages in view, and Sydney looked them over for a scooter parked outside, for a glimpse of Alicia or of Tilbury at a window or outside the cottages, but without success. He wondered if they were cautious enough to take the scooter inside the house when they got it home?

Sydney went into the post office. “Morning,” he said to the man at the window.

“Afternoon,” replied the freckled man, smiling.

“Yes. I’d like to ask if you know anyone around named Tilbury? Summer guests?”

“Tilbury? . . . No, but I’ll take a look to make sure.” He referred to a list that he pulled from a drawer, and shook his head as he looked it over. “No Tilbury.”

“All right. Thank you.” Sydney felt suddenly tired and discouraged.

“You were asking about a girl before. That’s her name?”

“I’m not sure.” He smiled a little, shrugged, and went out. Then he came back. “I wonder if you know any people with scooters? A gray one with a seat in back? If you know a girl with short red hair who rides one?”

“Oh . . . That sounds like Mrs. Leamans.” The freckled man frowned. “Would you be looking for her?”

“She lives nearby?”

“Cottage down this way.” He gestured toward the sea, the opposite of the Brighton direction. “She’s there with her husband. He comes down weekends.”

“She’s a summer visitor? New here?”

“That’s right. She’s the purple house about four down the other side of the road.”

“Thank you,” Sydney said, and went out.

Sydney looked once, a long minute, at the house the man probably meant, a pale lavender cottage of which Sydney could see only one back corner. He had no desire to go any closer. Mrs. Leamons? Leamans? A clever name, if it were Alicia and Tilbury. It didn’t sound like a phony name, not as phony as Tilbury.

It was 3
P.M.
before Sydney got back to Sumner Downs and his inn, where he paid his bill and went upstairs to get his few belongings. Today’s newspaper was under his arm, and on the night table lay the newspapers of the past two days. Mrs. Lilybanks’ inquest had been adjourned sine die, and the funeral had been Wednesday morning. The post-mortem had disclosed no poison or medical dose whatsoever, but her heart showed the dilation or whatever it was that had caused its failure, and this in Dr. Thwaite’s opinion had been caused by a severe shock of some kind. And that would not have happened, Sydney thought, if Inspector Brockway had telephoned Mrs. Lilybanks just a few minutes before and told her there was nothing in the carpet. The Thursday paper also reported that Sydney Bartleby had gone to Brighton to assist the police in the search for his wife. No wonder Edward Tilbury had ducked his head on Friday evening. It was a wonder he had come at all.

Downstairs, Sydney engaged the inn’s taxi to take him to Brighton. With The Whip money coming, he felt he could afford the guinea it cost.

He called in at the police station. Mr. MacIntosh was there. Sydney told him he had had no luck, and that he was going back to Suffolk.

“Would you sign something for us before you go, Mr. Bartleby?” Mr. MacIntosh gave him a sheet of paper on which he had to fill in several blanks, his hour of arrival in Brighton, and hour of departure. The paper stated that he had come with the purpose of assisting the police in their search for his wife
ALICIA
, and below this he was to write in his results. Sydney wrote,
“No success.”

In the Brighton station, he looked at a London directory and thought that an Edward S. Tilbury in Sloane Street looked the most promising. There were only four E. Something Tilburys, after all. Sydney got some change and risked a call. No answer from Tilbury in Sloane Street.

He could stand outside the house in Sloane Street Sunday night and Monday morning to see if Dapper Dan came in, Sydney thought, but he balked at such snooping. He could also ask Inez and Carpie to find out where their Edward Tilbury lived, if he could swallow his pride. That jerky, muck-faced square! Alicia had fallen for that!

Sydney had twenty minutes before his train, so he rang Alex on the off chance he might be there, though Sydney expected that he had gone to Clacton by now. Alex answered.

“I’m arriving in London at five, and I wonder if I can see you for a few minutes,” Sydney said.

“Ugh. I was going to catch a six o’clock train, old pal.”

“Can’t you take a later one?”

“Did you hear anything about Alicia?”

“Not a thing, I’m sorry to say. Alex, I’ll get there as soon as I can. We’ve just sold The Whip and after all—” Sydney checked himself, realizing he was pleading. “What about contracts, for instance?”

“It’s here.”

Sydney said he was coming, and put the telephone down before Alex could start protesting.

He dozed on the train up to London, though it was the last thing he had thought he would be able to do. Just before Victoria, he splashed non-potable water on his face in the lavatory and combed his hair. Then he took a taxi to the Polk-Faradays’ flat in Notting Hill. It was the first floor of a white house. Sydney half-expected no answer when he rang the bell, but Alex came down the stairs to open the door.

“Hi,” said Alex.

“Hello. I won’t keep you long. It’s only five twenty and you might even make the six o’clock.”

Alex showed no interest in the time, and Sydney suddenly felt he had been faking the six o’clock train.

They climbed the stairs.

“Do they want any changes in the first script?” Sydney asked.

“Quite a few little things, but I’ll do those.”

“Changes in the plot?”

“No.” Alex opened the door of his flat, which led immediately into a large and now quite untidy living room that gave on the street.

A suitcase lay open on the sofa, only half-filled. Their main closet was in the living room, a great white wardrobe in the corner. There was a hobby horse and a soiled buff-colored giraffe on its side on the floor.

“Let’s see the contract,” Sydney said.

Alex got it from the pocket in the lid of his suitcase. “I haven’t signed it yet.”

Sydney read through its three sheets. The contract gave a fifty-fifty split. The series was to run for a minimum of six weeks, with a proviso for extension and increased payment in case of extension. “It looks all right, doesn’t it?” Sydney asked. “Nothing great, but they’re not cheating us anywhere.”

“No,” said Alex in a troubled way.

“What’s the trouble?”

“The trouble—” Alex fumbled with something in his suitcase, then straightened. “The trouble, Syd, is the trouble you’re in.”

“Oh, come off it. Alicia’s hale and hearty. Probably got a boy friend. I’m sick of it.”

Alex studied him, and took a step back, around the foot of the sofa.

Sydney realized he had walked a step toward Alex. He wondered if Alex were pretending to be afraid of him. “What’s on your mind, Alex?”

“What’s on my mind is—the series could be stopped, if this thing gets any worse.”

Sydney felt suddenly angry. He was angry because he thought Alex was faking. “Maybe what’s on your mind is, you’d like to have the series all to yourself. Especially as the first six stories are already invented and on paper. Already accepted, from the plumber story down to Paddington.”

“Don’t be mad! Want the series for myself!” Alex gave a laugh. “But Syd, there is a problem and you know it. Where’s Alicia? It’s all very well to say she’s alive and got a boy friend, but where is she? Do you think the public’s going to look at your name coming across the screen every week with mine without thinking about this or doing something about it?”

“Doing something about it?”

“Boycotting us. Writing in complaints.”

Sydney smiled. “Enjoyed the play, but I object to the author. Ha!”

“Don’t you know they can cut us off in midstream?”

“Don’t be vulgar, Alex.”

“Don’t be funny. Do you see any reason why I should run that risk? Just for you?”

Sydney frowned. “So what do you propose?”

“I think I ought to get sixty percent, and you forty. I think that’s only fair, considering the work I’ve put in and will put in. Considering it could be cut off any minute.”

Sydney sighed. He remembered Alex’s appetite for money, instilled in him by his family who prodded him constantly lest he forget. “I’m running the same risk. I’ve put time in on it, too.”

“But your work is finished. And you caused the risk.”

“Without me you wouldn’t have any of it . . . Oh, hell, Alex, I’m sick of the argument and I don’t agree to your terms.”

Alex gave a tight smile and walked to the coffee table for a cigarette. “You’re free now, relatively speaking, but how long do you think it’s going to last? What if the police knew what Hittie and I know, Syd, about your bumbling mistakes when you were trying to tell us where Alicia was? You couldn’t even remember the story you intended to stick to. All those—”

“That she was with her mother? That’s what she told me to tell people.”

“All those jokes, after you’d had a few drinks, about putting her six feet under and living on her income. All those fights you had with her. When we were there.”

“I don’t need a few drinks to make up stories like those. I can make up stories like those any time.”

“How do I know they were stories? Suppose they’re true?”

Now Sydney was merely irritated. Whether Alex was being stupid, or trying blackmail with a heavy hand, Sydney was bored. “All right, Alex, do you believe they’re true?”

“I dunno!” Alex replied.

Sydney watched him. Was he lying? “Get to the point. Do you? Or do you just want a bigger cut?”

“Syd, I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Did
you kill Alicia?”

He looked like an emoting character in one of his own plays, Sydney thought. “No, dear,” said Sydney. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“I don’t call it blackmail. I simply—”

“You probably don’t. Blackmail’s a plain word, it’s very clear what it means. And you don’t seem to care to be clear.” Sydney again took a step toward Alex without thinking, and Alex again retreated. “Are you afraid of me? Have you convinced yourself that I kill people?”

“Since you put it in the plural, we shouldn’t forget Mrs. Lilybanks. The doctor wouldn’t give a certificate of natural death. What sort of conclusion do you think people’ll draw? That you scared her to death, of course. Maybe deliberately.”

“If the police were drawing that conclusion, I’d be arrested. Come off it, Alex. If you don’t like the word blackmail, let’s call it greed. It’s greed you’re showing now.” Sydney took one of Alex’s cigarettes from the package on the coffee table. “Thanks,” he said, lifting the cigarette.

Alex was checked for a moment, but not defeated. He came back to the attack with a new will. “I’m holding out for sixty percent, Syd, for my own security. Take it or else, and you know what the else is.”