Those Who Walk Away (12 page)

He thought of an improvement in the composition, and went back to his drawing pad and a new page. Before he had finished this, Inez returned, and entered by the other room. Coleman greeted her without turning round. By now one slipper was off, and he had pulled his shirt out of his trousers.

“Well, how was the afternoon?” Coleman asked, still drawing, as Inez came in.

“I couldn’t face the museum. Too cold. So we had another coffee, and I left them.” She turned away to hang up her coat.

Coleman heard her close a door, he thought the bathroom door, but glancing round, he saw that it was her room door. Faintly, he heard her saying something on the telephone. He went on with his work. She was probably trying the Seguso again for Ray, he thought, and who knew? Ray might answer.

A couple of minutes later, Inez came in, knocking perfunctorily on the bathroom door which stood open. “Listen, Edward—if you have a moment. I’m sorry to disturb you, but it is something important.”

Coleman turned round on the bed and sat up straighter. “What, dear?”

“I went to the Seguso this morning—to see if they had any news of Ray. They have not and he has left no message.”

“Well, you knew that,” Coleman interrupted.

“I know, but they were a little worried also, because all his things are there still. They had not packed up his things, but I think by now they have. And his passport was in his room.” Inez stood in her silk-stockinged feet, a small, straight, earnest figure framed in the open bathroom door.

“Well?—I’ve told you, I think he ran off, just chucked everything.” Coleman shrugged. “How am I to know?”

“I just rang the American Consulate,” Inez continued. “They know nothing about him, where he is, but the Pensione Seguso this morning telephoned them about the passport in his room. Not only passport but toothbrush. Traveller’s Cheques, every—little—thing.” She pumped with her arms for emphasis.

“It’s not my business,” Coleman said, “and I don’t see that it’s yours.”

Inez sighed. “You said you put him down at the Zattere quay.”

“Yes, right at the hotel. The hotel door wasn’t fifty feet away.” Coleman gesticulated also. “He obviously decided not to go home that night—if that was the night he didn’t turn up. Seems to be.”

“Yes. He wasn’t drunk, was he?”

“No, he wasn’t drunk. But I told you he was in a hell of a state of mind. He feels guilty. He feels awful.” Coleman stared in front of him for a moment, and longed to get back to his drawing. “I’m sure he was carrying some money. He always does. He could’ve gone to the railroad station and got the next train out. Stayed at some other hotel and just beat it the next day.”

“Beat it?”

“Vanished.” Another shrug. “But as I say, it does support what I think, doesn’t it? What I believe, what I know is true. Ray could’ve prevented Peggy’s death, and he didn’t take the trouble.”

Inez looked up at the ceiling, wrung her hands briefly. “You are obsessed by that. How can you know?”

Coleman smiled gently and impatiently. “I’ve talked to him. I know guilt when I see it.”

“The Consulate told me they are going to notify the parents in America. In—”

“St Louis, Missouri,” Coleman said.

“Yes.”

“Very good. So they should.” Coleman turned back to his drawing, then felt compelled to stand up, to give Inez his attention, because she expected it. She was upset. She had left the Smith-Peters to come back and talk to him. He went over and put his short, heavy hands lightly on her shoulders, kissed her cheek. She looked older, because she was worried, but she lifted her face to his expectantly, awaiting words of strength, even orders, and Coleman said, “Honey, I don’t see that it’s our business. Ray knows where
we
are. If he wants to go off by himself—vanish, even—isn’t that his business? Matter of fact, did you know the police have no right to interfere with a person who wants to disappear? I read that in an article somewhere the other day. Only if a man is deserting a family or has debts can they track him down and bring him back.” Coleman patted her shoulders and laughed, happily. “An individual’s got some rights still in this bureaucratic society,” he said, turning away back to the bed and his drawing.

“I think I saw Ray today,” Inez said.

“Oh? Where?” Coleman asked over his shoulder. He blinked to conceal a sudden annoyance.

“It was—oh, I don’t know, somewhere between Accademia and San Marco. One of the streets. I could be wrong. It looked like his head and shoulders. From the back.” She looked at Coleman.

Coleman shrugged. “Could be. Why not?” He knew she was thinking, asking herself again, or was about to ask him again, ‘Did you have a quarrel on the Lido that night? Did you fight on the boat?’ Inez knew—because Coleman had been wise enough to tell her outright before she found out from Corrado—that he had driven the boat back alone with Ray that night. And she had asked him two nights ago, after he had told her he had dropped Ray at the Zattere quay, if he had not had a fight with Ray on the boat, and Coleman had said no. A fight on the boat meant one thing, that he might have pushed Ray overboard, unconscious or dead. Coleman’s annoyance grew as he looked at Inez, and he wished he hadn’t thrown away the gun. He had bought the gun in Rome, had had it twelve hours only, and had thrown it away wrapped in a newspaper in a rubbish basket that night, after he thought he wouldn’t need it any longer, after he thought Ray was dead. Coleman tried to calm himself and asked, “I gather you didn’t go up and see if he was Ray?”

“He went down a street, the man. I lost him. Yes, I would have gone up to see if he was Ray.”

“My dear, your guess is as good as mine.” Coleman sat down on the bed, but on the other side of the bed so that he was more or less facing Inez. The body hadn’t been washed up, Coleman reminded himself. Bodies always were washed up. Of course only three days had passed. But with all the islands around Venice, the Lido, San Erasmo, San Francesco del Deserto (the cemetery island, bristling with cypresses), his body should have washed up by now if he were drowned. Coleman watched the papers daily, morning and evening. He wished now that he had made sure he was dead before pushing him off the boat. He had been in too much of a hurry. Very well, if it had to be done still again, it would be done again, Coleman thought with grim resignation, and looked at Inez. “What do you expect me to do? Why are you telling me all this?”

“Well—” Inez said, folding her arms. She put one stockinged foot atop the instep of the other, an awkward, untypical stance. “They will surely question you—the police, no? Maybe all of us, but you are the one who saw him last.”

“The police? I don’t know, dear. Maybe the porter at the Seguso saw him last.”

“I asked that. He didn’t come in at all Thursday night.”

“Let them question me,” Coleman said. Then he had a brief feeling that Ray was really dead. But he knew it was unfounded. He didn’t know, and that was what was so maddening. Ray could tell the police that he, Coleman, had made two attempts on his life. Coleman gave a splutter of laughter suddenly, and looked at Inez. Ray hadn’t the guts to do that. Ray wouldn’t.

“What is funny?”

“The seriousness with which we’re taking all this,” Coleman said. “Come here and see my new drawing. My new idea.”

Inez came towards him, arms still folded until she drew near him, and then she put her hand on his shoulder and looked at his drawing. “These are people?” she asked, smiling.

“Yes. Seen from overhead. There’s my first drawing.” He pointed, but the drawing had slipped flat from its prop against the paintbox. Coleman went round the foot of the bed and stood it up again. “I like them, don’t you? These people seen from the top?”

“It’s very funny. With the noses.”

Coleman nodded, pleased. “I want to try it in colour. Maybe from now on I’ll just paint people seen from above. An angel’s-eye view.”

“Edward, let’s go away. Let’s leave here.”

“Leave Venice? I thought you wanted to stay another week.”

“You don’t need Venice for painting. You’re not painting Venice.” She gestured towards his two drawings. “Let’s go to my house. Central heating, you know. Just installed. Not like the Smith-Peters, who will probably never get theirs.” She smiled at him.

She meant her house near Ste Maxime. The South of France. Coleman realized that he did not want to leave Venice until he knew about Ray, that he would not. “We’ve hardly been here a week.”

“The weather’s so awful.”

“So is it in France.”

“But at least it’s my place, our place.”

Coleman chuckled. “I’ve never seen it.”

“You can have a studio of your own there. It’s not like an hotel.” Inez circled his neck with her arms. “Please let’s go. Tomorrow.”

“Aren’t we going to that thing at the Fenice day after tomorrow?”

“That’s of no importance. Let’s see now if we can get a plane tomorrow to Nice.”

Coleman took her arms down gently from his neck. “What do you mean I’m not painting Venice? Look at that drawing.” He pointed to the first. “That’s a Venetian church.”

“I am not happy here. I feel uncomfortable.”

Coleman did not want to ask her why. He knew. He went to his jacket and took the next to last cigar from his tortoise-shell case. He must remember to buy more this evening, he thought. The telephone rang in Inez’s room, and Coleman was glad, because he could not think of anything to say to her.

Inez went to the telephone more quickly than she usually did. “‘Allo? Oh, ‘allo. Antonio!”

Coleman groaned mentally, started to shut the bathroom door, then thought perhaps Inez would think it rude if he did. Antonio was downstairs, Coleman learned from what Inez was saying.

“Oh, please don’t. Antonio. Not yet. Antonio, I would like to see you. Let me come down. I’ll just be a minute. We’ll have a coffee. I will see you in two minutes.”

Coleman watched her put on her shoes. He was getting a glass of water at the bathroom tap.

“Antonio’s downstairs,” she said. “I am going to see him for a few minutes.”

“Oh? What’s he up to?”

“Nothing. I just thought I would see him since he’s here.” She put on her fur coat, but not her hat, and glanced at herself in the mirror. “I won’t bother with lipstick,” she said to herself.

“When’ll you be back?”

“Maybe in fifteen minutes,” she said with a graceful backward turn of hand. “Bye-bye, Edward.”

Her air of urgency was unusual, and Coleman guessed what Antonio had said. Antonio was going back to Naples, or Amalfi, and Inez wanted to persuade him to stay on. Coleman did not like Antonio. He did not dislike him violently, he had seen worse parasites, but he disliked him. Coleman thought Antonio suspected that he had something to do with Ray’s disappearance—maybe even had killed him, and Antonio wanted to keep clear of any mess. Coleman had no doubt that Inez had arranged to see Antonio alone at least once since Thursday night, and that they had had a good chat. Coleman sighed, then took a reassuring puff of his cigar.

He walked to the window and looked out. It was a beautiful view, over the tops of some houses, towards the Grand Canal, with lights of ships and shore in the gathering darkness. And the rise of abundant steam heat into Coleman’s face from the radiator just below the window gave him a sense of security and luxury. All over Venice, he knew, people were huddled round stoves, or with chapped hands were doing their chores about the house or outdoors, and no doubt several artists were chafing their hands at wood stoves—stubborn bastards, that red tile variety which abounded in Italy-before going back to their canvases. But he had glorious heat and a beautiful woman to share it with. Coleman realized and admitted to himself, and to anyone who might ask him or imply a question on the subject, that he had not the least scruple about taking money from women like Inez. Antonio did, in a funny way. Antonio thought sponging was a fair game, one to do and get away with if one could, but he had a faintly skulking attitude about it. Not so Coleman.

And about the other thing, Coleman thought, bouncing his warm feet and puffing his cigar, Ray Garrett, he had no scruples about that. Ray Garrett was his fair game. If he got caught for it, too bad, a piece of bad luck, but Coleman considered the game worth it, because he didn’t give a goddam if he did get caught for murder. At least Garrett would be dead. And Garrett deserved to die. If not for Garrett, and his pusillanimous brain, and his upper-class American destiny, Peggy would be alive now.

Coleman started towards his jacket which hung over a chair, towards Peggy’s picture, then restrained himself. He had looked at it once today. Lately he had been in the habit of staring at it at least twice a day for several minutes; yet he knew every shade of light and dark in the photograph that made up the flat, fleshless image called ‘Peggy,’ could have drawn the photograph precisely from memory, and in fact on Friday had, as a kind of celebration of what he thought was Ray’s death. Well, he still thought Ray was dead. If he used his common sense, the logical thing was to assume that he was dead. The body would wash up a few days from now, that was all, maybe even tomorrow.

Then it dawned on him that Inez would guess that he wanted to stay on in Venice in order to find out from a firsthand position if Ray were dead or not. This made Coleman feel slightly uncomfortable, as if he had let Inez in on a little too much. Inez had always defended Ray. She kept talking about ‘being fair in the situation,’ but what it amounted to was a defence of Ray. Inez would not like him, might say good-bye to him, if she knew he had killed Ray. On the other hand, and Coleman had thought of this before, of course, if Ray’s body were to wash up anywhere, who was to say if he had been pushed in or had jumped off some fondamento of his own accord? A young man committing suicide a few weeks after his wife’s, practically his bride’s, suicide, was not unknown in the world.

But Coleman reminded himself that he didn’t care what Inez thought or what she did. Or what she said to the police, but he didn’t think she would say anything. What had happened on the boat simply could not be proven, because there had been no witnesses.

There flashed before Coleman’s mind the fight he had had with his father when he was sixteen. Coleman had won it. They had exchanged two blows each, and his father’s had been harder, but Coleman had won the fight. The fight was over whether Coleman would go to an architectural school or to a college that specialized in engineering. Coleman’s father had been a mediocre architect—doing bungalows for middle-class people in Vincennes, Indiana—and he had wanted his son to be an architect, too, a better one, of course, but still an architect. Coleman had always been more interested in machinery and in inventing. The thing had erupted when he was sixteen, because he had had to put himself down for one school or the other. Coleman had taken a stand, and won, and that had been a turning-point in his mother’s attitude towards him, Coleman remembered with some pleasure. His mother had respected him and treated him like a man from then on. Coleman was not proud of having hit his old pop, but he was proud of having stood up for himself. Just after that fight, he had stood up for his right to see a certain girl named Estelle, whom his father considered cheap. His father had forbidden him the car every time he had a date with Estelle, and finally had forbidden him the car entirely. One night, Coleman simply took the car and drove it out of the garage, not fast but steadily, towards his father who stood with arms outstretched in the driveway to stop him. His father had got out of the way, banged his fist in anger on the top of the car as Coleman drove by; but after that, there had been no argument about the car.