Suspension of Mercy (19 page)

“No, thank you very much. I must be off. Golf appointment at four o’clock over at Aldeburgh.” He stood up also. “I’ll say good afternoon, Mr. Bartleby, and thank you for the tea.”

“Good afternoon, Inspector.” Sydney watched him walk along the short stretch of driveway to the road where his conservative black car stood, a bag of golf clubs visible in the back seat. Sydney closed his own door.

An hour later, Inez called. “I had a hunch you’d be home. When’d you get back?”

“Last night. In answer to your first question, I had no luck,” Sydney said, feeling he had to ward off the question.

“Oh, Syd,” she said sympathetically. “Well, my gosh, if the police can’t find her and they’ve got a whole platoon at work . . . You didn’t happen to see Edward Tilbury?”

Sydney laughed. “If I’d seen him, I’d have followed him.”

“Because Carpie and I found out he’s not home much lately. Especially weekends.”

“Really. Tell me, is he the Tilbury in Sloane Street?”

“Yes, I think so. I remember Vassily mentioning Sloane Street. Carpie and I didn’t make a big point of it, but we asked a couple of people how he was, because we hadn’t seen him in quite a while, and we heard he’s away every weekend. He told Vassily he’s visiting friends in Surrey or Sussex somewhere. It’s like playing detective, you know?” Inez chuckled. “And as Sherlock Holmes would say, maybe it isn’t logical to draw a conclusion just from this, but there’s something you could do, Syd, if you’re really interested, and that’s trail him from his house one weekend, see what train he catches and maybe go with him. Or trail him from his office. They can’t arrest you for trailing somebody.”

“No.” Sydney hated the conversation. “Inez, if the police talk to you and Carpie again, I’d just as soon you wouldn’t mention Tilbury. First of all, we don’t
know
, and it isn’t at all wise to—”

“But they could find out if it’s true. Easier than we could. It’d help you.”

“I realize that, but—it’s hard to explain over the telephone, and I don’t mean to be telling you what to do, but—” Now he was almost in a sweat. “I’d just appreciate it if you say you still don’t know any more than you did a month ago.”

Inez reluctantly promised, and a few seconds later their three minutes were up.

Sydney went out for a walk. He walked toward the setting sun, and wondered if Alicia and Tilbury were walking together on some beach now. Good Lord, he thought, they could have been together nearly two months now. That was long enough for them to get to know each other well. What on earth were Alicia’s intentions? Why didn’t she write to him and have it posted from London, if she didn’t want him to know where she was? Sydney had an almost overpowering desire to write to Mrs. Leamans in Angmering and simply ask her what she wanted, let her know he could explode her game any time he chose. But he shrank from it with a feeling akin to the qualms he might have about invading someone’s privacy. Pride was mixed up with it, too, and now he didn’t want Alicia to know her actions bothered him enough for him to ask her intentions. Alicia would go to pieces, anyway, if she knew the world knew about her lover. And the other thing that held him back was the fact that the situation was becoming more interesting because of its duration. He was curious, too, to know how far Alex Polk-Faraday would dare to go.

On Monday morning at 7:15, with a cigarette and a cup of coffee beside him, he rang the Sea Winds Hotel in Clacton-on-Sea.

“Would you ring the Polk-Faradays’ room, please?”

Hittie answered, sounding more sleepy than the operator.

“Hittie, I’m sorry to wake you at this hour,” Sydney said, and he really was, “but I wanted to be sure and catch you in. Could I speak to Alex?”

“Oh, yes, Syd, just a minute . . . Wake up, darling. It’s Syd.”

Sydney heard Alex mumbling, then he came on. “Hello, Alex. I just wanted to tell you that I don’t accept your forty-sixty split. I accept a fifty-fifty. Is that clear? You asked me to tell you today.”

“Very well,” Alex said more crisply. “We’ll see about that.”

“Have you told Hittie? About the forty-sixty?”

Alex didn’t answer for a moment. “Sydney, I don’t mean to be unfriendly, but I think you’d better do some serious thinking.”

“That’s all I wanted to say, Alex. Good-bye.” Sydney hung up.

So Alex didn’t want to be unfriendly. That was a nice line, of course, for Hittie to hear. Sydney concluded that he hadn’t told her of his plans. Sydney stood on tiptoe in the living room with his coffee cup and laughed out loud. The sun was already shining through the window, and it promised to be a lovely day.

Moreover, the post a few minutes later brought a letter from Potter and Desch, the London publishers to whom Sydney had sent
The Planners
three weeks ago. They would buy the book. Sydney felt redeemed. He stood holding his breath and staring at the short, typewritten note.
“We are pleased . . . Could you come in to our offices soon to discuss a few . . . Our contract will be following after . . .”
He walked to the junkroom end of the house, then turned and walked back, in a daze, into the kitchen. He was smiling foolishly. He’d have a book out. And a good one.

And he had no one to tell the news to. Or rather, no one he wanted to tell the news to. He wouldn’t tell anyone, he thought, until someone asked, “Well, Syd, what’s new these days? What’re you working on?” Then he’d say casually, “I have a book called
The Planners
out soon from Potter and Desch. It’s a good book. Or they seem to think so.”

And certain brilliant paragraphs and sentences went through his mind as he bathed and shaved.

25

A
round two that afternoon, as Sydney was attacking the junkroom with an objective of throwing away and tidying, Inspector Brockway rang up and asked if Sydney could come to Ipswich at four.

“Well—” It was the last thing Sydney wanted to do.

“It’s rather important, or I wouldn’t ask you. Inspector Hill is coming down from London. Mr. Polk-Faraday has spoken to him, so if you don’t mind, Mr. Bartleby—”

He set out at a quarter past three, in order not to antagonize Inspector Hill by being a bit late. He half-expected to see Alex, who must have whisked himself to London that morning to speak to the higher-ups, and so might have come up with Hill to Ipswich, but Alex was not in view. Sydney was introduced to Inspector Hill, a tall, slender, handsome man in his late forties. Inspector Brockway introduced them, looking stiff and serious and on his best behavior for London. The three of them went into an office that might have been borrowed for their conversation, or might have been Inspector Brockway’s, Sydney could not tell, as Brockway did not choose to sit behind the desk.

Inspector Hill began with a few minutes of relaxing comment on the difficulties of finding people who wanted to hide, and expressed disappointment that Sydney’s four-day search in Brighton had not been successful. Inspector Hill lit a cigarette, and so did Sydney.

“Mr. Polk-Faraday spoke to me this morning in London. He mentioned several things that I thought I should take up with you.” Inspector Hill’s tone was pleasant, and he gathered three or four small pages of notes together in one hand. “This carpet story—” he began with a smile. “It seems the Polk-Faradays visited you one weekend shortly after your wife left. Mrs. Polk-Faraday noticed there was a new carpet in the living room. And they said—rather Mr. Polk-Faraday said you reacted strangely when his wife mentioned it.”

“How strangely?”

“You looked worried—according to Mr. Polk-Faraday.”

“I don’t know what they mean. I told them I bought the new one very cheaply, and got rid of the old one.”

“Did you tell them how you got rid of it?”

“No,” Sydney said.

“The next point. Mr. Polk-Faraday says that you acted strangely on the telephone with him, when he rang you from London one day, after the weekend. You were talking about the way you’d gotten rid of your wife. Mr. Polk-Faraday says you might have been joking. Or maybe you weren’t. ‘Pushed her down the stairs,’ he said you said. ‘Never felt better in my life.’” Inspector Hill smiled.

Sydney did not smile. “Yes, I said that. Is Alex trying to make something serious out of it?”

“We don’t know. He’s reporting it. And it’s correct, is it?”

“Yes,” said Sydney. He had no doubt Inspector Hill had seen his notebook, probably in the last half hour, so it was very fresh in his mind.

“He speaks also,” Inspector Hill went on, and Sydney had the feeling he wanted to throw everything at him at once for a reaction, “of an atmosphere of hysterical gaiety about you. On that weekend. Bachelor life was agreeing with you and all that.”

“That was Alex’s comment.”

“You were talking about living on your wife’s income—or that you soon would.”

“Another remark of Alex’s. I joked about it later. We make up plots like this, you know. We’re always making macabre jokes.” Sydney’s voice cracked on his last word. His palms, pressed together between his knees, were actually moist now. “I’ve done nothing about trying to get my wife’s income. I’m not at all sure I could. I should think her parents could stop that.”

“No, they couldn’t. Not the fifty pounds a month part of it,” said Inspector Hill, “if she were dead. They could of course not pass on to you what would have gone to Alicia once they’re dead.”

Sydney drew on his cigarette. He glanced at Inspector Brockway, who was leaning against the desk, listening.

“And—” said Inspector Hill musingly, sitting very still in his chair with his legs crossed, “the Polk-Faradays think you went out of your way to tell people that you didn’t know when your wife would be back, and that it would be a very long time. Six months or so.”

“I told people that when I was asked.”

“You didn’t make a point of saying it?”

“No.”

“The Polk-Faradays say you did.”

Sydney wondered if Hittie had come to London, and decided she hadn’t, because of the children. Alex had probably just been reporting “what my wife and I think.” “The Polk-Faradays are wrong,” said Sydney.

“Another point.” Inspector Hill looked at his notes. “Your friends Inez Haggard and Carpie Dunne. Mr. Polk-Faraday seems to know them, too. He says he spoke to them, and they described a Saturday afternoon on which they came to your house for a picnic. Your wife had then been gone about three weeks. According to Mr. Polk-Faraday, you told them and everyone that your wife was at her mother’s house in Kent, and that afternoon, Mrs. Haggard told you that she had not been able to reach your wife at her mother’s house, her mother didn’t know where she was or even that she was away from home, and this took you by surprise. Or you were rattled.”

“Rattled? I was surprised. Since my wife told me she was going to her mother’s.”

Inspector Hill leaned back and watched Sydney.

Sydney also leaned back, and folded his arms. He saw a babbling, maniacal Alex, eyes bulging, yakking away at Inspector Hill in London that morning, but silent, like a television picture with the sound turned off. “Didn’t Mr. Polk-Faraday talk to you about The Whip series for Granada television?”

“No,” said Inspector Hill.

“He should have. That’s what all this is about. We’ve just had a series of six stories accepted, and Mr. Polk-Faraday proposed a forty-sixty split in his favor instead of the fifty-fifty the contract calls for. I think, too, that Mr. Polk-Faraday thinks if he can throw enough suspicion on me, he might squeeze me out entirely. I would’ve thought Inspector Brockway would have mentioned this to you.” Sydney glanced at Inspector Brockway.

“No, he didn’t. Neither did Mr. Polk-Faraday,” said Inspector Hill. “Yes, I can see why you’re piqued, but—you tell me Mr. Polk-Faraday’s statements to me are essentially true. Or do you not?”

Sydney shifted in his chair. “They are exaggerated—the jokes. Alex reports them all as statements from me, it seems.”

Inspector Hill smiled and rubbed his chin. “I appreciate writers’ fantasies. I’ve just seen your notebook—which I will assume is a notebook of ideas—not truths.”

Truths? Ideas? Sydney passed a hand across his forehead. “The narrative—description in the notebook is not true. You might say the ideas in it are true. I mean, it’s not a diary of facts.”

“It’s a dangerous kind of thing to write just now—for you.”

“I had no idea anyone but me would see it. That’s why I carried the notebook with me. I pulled it out by mistake with my wallet.” A murderer’s Freudian slip, Sydney supposed. He looked down at the floor. He was thirsty.

“We’ll take your word for it for the time being. But we must keep the notebook until this matter is cleared up,” Inspector Hill said. “Now if these things were said by you—to Mr. Polk-Faraday—and, by the way, did you say such things to anyone else?”

“No. I only joke that way with Alex.”

“It was still a strange situation, your wife leaving for such a long time. Much longer than any of her previous trips. Isn’t that true?”

Did they expect him to break down, Sydney wondered, just by pointing out obvious facts? “Yes,” said Sydney.
Did you kill her?
Sydney could practically read the question in Inspector Hill’s calm eyes, and Sydney imagined his brain busy with the suspicions the Sneezums had put there. Meanwhile, Alicia was sleeping with Edward Tilbury. “Why don’t you find her, if you think I killed her? Underground or overground?” Sydney said in a tone as calm as Inspector Hill’s.

“We are looking. It’s not easy, as you see.”

“Meanwhile, I’m exposed to attacks such as Polk-Faraday’s putting on. It’s not easy for me, Inspector.”

“The attacks won’t be in the newspapers, at least. That’s not the way we do things here.” Inspector Hill glanced at the motionless, attentive Inspector Brockway. “On the other hand, you could hardly do better at incriminating yourself, and I don’t mean only the notebook—which by the way Mr. and Mrs. Sneezum don’t know about. What about the binoculars? Your neighbor Mrs. Lilybanks told Inspector Brockway you reacted with—what seemed to her extreme uneasiness when you saw the binoculars in her house, and when she told you she had seen you the morning you buried the carpet.”

“But you’ve dug up the carpet.”

“Answer the question, please, Mr. Bartleby. Why were you uneasy when Mrs. Lilybanks mentioned seeing you through the binoculars?”

“Because—I knew what she was imagining. Thinking.”

“Really?” Inspector Hill asked earnestly. “Why did you think Mrs. Lilybanks would think a thing like that?”

“Well, I didn’t—at first. But when my wife didn’t write to Mrs. Lilybanks, which Mrs. Lilybanks mentioned to me, I began to see what she was thinking.”

Inspector Hill said, “M-m,” and glanced at Brockway, who was still leaning quietly against the desk. Hill stood up. “I have nothing more to ask at the moment, Mr. Bartleby, except—have you ever had any treatment for mental disorder?”

“No.”

“No breakdown ever?”

“No.” Sydney stood up also. Alex had probably told them he was cracked, Sydney thought. Dear old Alex.

“I’d like to go back with you to your house for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” said Inspector Hill.

Of course Sydney didn’t mind.

“We can go in one of our cars,” said Inspector Brockway. “Are you going home now?”

Sydney had thought to go by the library, but he obligingly said he was going home.

“I’ll drive him,” Inspector Brockway added. “You won’t have to lead the way.”

Sydney drove home at his usual rate of about forty miles per hour. The Inspectors arrived in Brockway’s black car less than five minutes after Sydney.

They came into the living room, and Inspector Hill looked around, at the staircase and at its top, as if measuring its lethal distance with his eyes. It was covered with a rather thick carpeting that would have been a help in any fall. Or rather a hindrance for a murderer. They went upstairs, and Sydney showed them Alicia’s painting room with its dried palette becoming dusty now, though Sydney Hoovered and dusted the room like any other, when he cleaned. They looked into the room where he worked, and into the bedroom. They went outside, and Inspector Brockway pointed out Mrs. Lilybanks’ house from the front, and then they walked to the back of the house. Sydney had not been asked to come with them, so he stayed behind, and re-entered the house through the front door. Inspector Hill of course wanted to see how far the driveway and back door were from Mrs. Lilybanks’ windows.

Sydney looked out his workroom window and saw Inspector Hill gazing at the ground as he walked around the rectangle of the garden. He also went into the garage, opened the doors wide to let light in, and disappeared in the garage for several minutes. Then the two men stood between the garage and the garden, talking together for so long that Sydney stopped watching them and sat down at his desk. A milk bill had come that morning, so Sydney got out his check book and wrote a check for one pound three shillings and ninepence to be put into an empty bottle tomorrow morning.

When he heard the men come in through the back door, Sydney went down.

Inspector Hill smiled at him and said, “Thank you, Mr. Bartleby, for letting me look round. May I ask what your plans are about the house? You intend to stay on here?”

“Yes,” Sydney said.

“You don’t find it lonely?”

“A little. But I don’t mind being alone. Not as much as most people.” He was annoyed with himself for his pleasant tone. He was talking to a man who had swallowed everything Alex had said.

The Inspectors left.

It was after six. Sydney got into his car and went to Roncy Noll for the
Evening Standard
. Mrs. Hawkins was in the newspaper shop. But Sydney had decided to face them all for his paper, and not drive four extra miles to Framlingham for it just to avoid Buttonlip. Mrs. Hawkins drew back deep among the candies at the far end of the shop, darting glances as if for support to the two other people who stood between her and Sydney, but they were musing over the long glass counter of sweets. Buttonlip rolled toward him, and Sydney got four pennies from his change, reached for the
Evening Standard
, and was surprised to see the old picture of himself—cut to just the head and shoulders—on the front page, one column wide. It was a picture of him in a white, open-collared shirt that Alicia had taken at her parents’ house shortly after they came to England, and Sydney supposed the Sneezums had given it to the press.

“Good evening,” Sydney said semi-pleasantly to Buttonlip, and got a sort of grunt in reply.

He did not look at the paper until he was home. The write-up beneath the picture was extremely short and vague.

MYSTERY MAN?

Authoritative sources said today that a close acquaintance of Sydney (missing wife) Bartleby has shed a good deal of light on the personality of the young American. No details were given, but Bartleby was reportedly called “far out in every respect.”

Damn them all, Sydney thought, and it occurred to him that the mess could cross the ocean and spoil
The Planners
as well as The Whip. He tossed the newspaper down on the floor, where it sprawled with a faint plop. Alex had very likely said that he made up most of The Whip plots, that he had to steer Bartleby’s kookie (kinky, Alex would say) mind back onto the track time and time again in their plotting.

Sydney went out to the garage with a sudden idea. He turned on the garage light, and dumped a tall paper bag of wastepaper onto the ground by the open garage doors. Fortunately, he hadn’t burned any paper in nearly a month. Now he picked out certain used typewritten sheets on the backs of which, folded once across, he invariably made his notes for Whip synopses, and for chapters in his books when he was writing. He found fourteen such folded papers, all scribbled over in his small handwriting, with diagrammatic outlines and numbered scenes. Of course, he had his synopses carbons in the house, but these papers were the real beginnings, and they were all his. He went into the house to sort them out and see what he had to go on, in case he had to fight.