“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.
Coleman had never thought he was violent, but perhaps he was, compared to most men. He wondered what had happened to the five or six fellows he used to go around with at engineering school? Maybe they were a little more violent than most men, too. Coleman had lost touch with all of them in the last fifteen years since he had become a painter. But when they were all about twenty, they had menaced an old watchman at school. Denis had hit him in the ribs once, Coleman remembered, and that was what had liberated them. The old watchman had guarded a certain back door of the dorm, and he sat inside or outside the door, depending on the weather. But Coleman’s group, if they wanted to get out and go on the town around midnight, did. They simply demanded that the door be unlocked. The old man opened it always. And he had never reported them to the dean for fear of another blow.
Then there was one occasion of near-violence, Coleman remembered, and smiled, then chuckled. A certain Quentin Doyle in Chicago, who had played around with Coleman’s wife Louise, trying to start an affair. Coleman simply acquired a pistol, and one evening casually showed it to Doyle. Doyle had let Louise strictly alone after that.
And it had been so easy, Coleman thought with amusement. He hadn’t fired the pistol, he had had a legal permit for it, and the mere showing of it had had such splendid effect.
Coleman opened a flat drawer in the wardrobe and took from below a stack of handkerchiefs (brand new, given him by Inez) the scarf of Peggy’s. He glanced at the door and listened, then opened the scarf and held it so the light made its colours their brightest. He imagined it round Peggy’s smooth, slender neck, and around her head when the wind blew in Mallorca. He saw her grace when she walked, heard even her voice, when he looked at the Florentine-Art-Nouveau design. The black in the scarf added drama, but suggested death to Coleman. Nevertheless, it was Peggy. He pressed it gently to his face, kissed it. But no scent was on it. Coleman had washed it once, Thursday night late after returning from the Lido, to remove Ray’s touch from it. He had hung it at the back of the wardrobe in his room, from a hook. It was not ironed, but at least it was clean. He folded the scarf quickly, his back to the door, and replaced it where it had been.
He might, of course, marry and have another child—a son or another daughter, it didn’t matter. Coleman admitted that he was as paternal as any mother was ever maternal. But a daughter, for instance, would never be another Peggy. And there simply wasn’t time any longer to watch her grow up. No, never, never would there be anything for him like Peggy.
From the floor of the wardrobe, Coleman got a bottle of Scotch. He did not permit himself a Scotch before 6 p.m., but now it was 6.05. He poured some in a bathroom tumbler and sipped it straight, enjoying its burn in his mouth. He stood again at the window. And by God, he swore to himself, if that bastard is still alive and hanging around Venice, I’ll get him. Ray Garrett was asking for it, that was the funny part.
His eyes were begging for it. Coleman rocked back on his slippered heels and laughed, and felt pleased and comforted by the richness of his own laughter.
Then he heard behind him the closing of a door, and stopped.
Inez had come in, and had put on the light. “What were you laughing at?”
“I was thinking—of another painting. With my aerial view. You weren’t very long with Antonio.”
“He had a date at seven.”
“Oh, with a girl? That’s nice.”
“No, two young men he met in Venice.”
More talking, Coleman supposed. Antonio would tell his friends about his American painter friend Edward Coleman and the woman Antonio would claim he shared with him, and the interesting disappearance of Ray Garrett. But they wouldn’t do anything about it, Coleman thought. It would be as remote from them as an item in the newspaper about people they didn’t know.
Inez had removed her blouse and skirt, put on her dressing-gown, and was washing her face at the bathroom basin.
Coleman could not understand her maternal tolerance for crumbs like Antonio—men she’d sleep with only two or three times, yet was so slow to get rid of. There’d been one hanging about when he’d first met Inez in Ascona a year ago. “I hope you didn’t give him any more money,” Coleman said.
“Edward, I gave him just a few thousand lire,” Inez said patiently, but in her tone Coleman heard her irritation with him, the start of resistance. “After all, he has no money and I did invite him on this trip.”
“It’s quite natural that if a person doesn’t work, he has no money. Just wondering how long it’s going to go on, that’s all.”
“Antonio said he was leaving in a few days. Meanwhile he is at a very cheap hotel.”
Coleman thought of saying that if Antonio met another rich woman, he’d move out of the cheap hotel and into her palazzo or whatever, and that would be the last Inez ever saw of him, but he decided not to say this.
Inez was putting lotion on her face. Coleman liked the smell of it. It reminded him of a bouquet of old-fashioned flowers. He went up behind her and put his arms around her, pulled her against his body. “You’re looking very ravishing today,” he said, and put his lips to her ear. “How about a nice little split of champagne?” That was Coleman’s phrase for going to bed. Sometimes Inez ordered a split of champagne, sometimes not.
A moment later, Coleman was stubbing out the cigar he had left in the ashtray in his room. It was a lovely time to go to bed, six-thirty in the evening, before dinner, and Inez’s little smile as she said, “Yes, let’s,” made Coleman feel very happy, cheerful, contented. Coleman removed his clothes in his own room. “Come into my room,” Coleman said.
Inez did.
9
During the next two days, Coleman more than once—in fact, three times—felt that Ray’s eyes were on him. Once it was while crossing San Marco’s, though in that open space maybe anybody would have felt obs
erved, if he suspected the presence, the observant presence, of someone like Ray Garrett. No place for an agoraphobe, San Marco’s Square. Another time was at lunch in the Graspo di Ua. Coleman had looked over both shoulders—if Ray had been there, he was behind him, because he was not among the people in front of Coleman—and Inez had noticed his looking. From then on, Coleman had been careful not to appear to be looking for Ray. If he were alive and in Venice, Coleman wondered what he was waiting for, or hiding for?
On another occasion, Coleman had felt while walking past a tobacconist’s, that Ray was inside, that Ray had seen him as he walked by. Coleman had turned and walked back and looked directly into the shop through the door. Ray had not been inside. Then there was what Inez had said about the head and shoulders of some man in the street resembling Ray. Coleman did not know what to make of his feelings, but he knew he was not inclined to imagine things that weren’t there. And Ray could, of course, be spying on the Bauer-Gruenwald. If Coleman had been alone, he would have moved, but he did not want to propose moving to Inez.
Meanwhile, Coleman waited for a new development because of the American Consulate’s notifying Ray’s parents. It was a wealthy family. They would do something.
Those Who Walk Away Page 10
