A Suspension of Mercy

by Patricia Highsmith

  Edward was in, rather to her surprise, and she took it as a favorable omen.

  It was all arranged in an incredibly short time, even before the first three minutes had run out. Edward would come down the following Saturday morning, on the 10 A.M. train which arrived at 11, and he would stay over Saturday night and Sunday. He sounded extremely pleased that she had rung him.

  She met him at the railway station, nearly missed him among the people getting off, because he seemed to be ducking his head, and he also seemed shorter than she remembered. But his happy, open smile was the same when he saw her. He swept his hat off, and kissed her on one cheek. They had a drink in the buffet of the station.

  “I suppose you think I’m mad,” Alicia said, “but I’m taking another vacation, a longer one this time, and doing quite a bit of drawing. I brought my oil paints, too.”

  “My dear, I think you’re delightful,” Edward said. “What’s mad about it?”

  From that, and his tone, she knew he would not tell any of his London friends he had seen her, and would not ask anything about Sydney.

  “Where’re you stopping?”

  “At the Hotel Sinclair,” Alicia answered. “Nothing grand, but it’s quite adequate.”

  “Would you object if I took a room there? Or would you prefer me to go to another hotel?” He smiled his boyish, shy smile. “It’s so much easier for us to meet, if we’re under the same roof.”

  “Of course, I don’t mind. I should think the Sinclair’s big enough for both of us.”

  Edward had a hold-all with him, which contained a shirt, swimming trunks, and pajamas, he said. So they went to the hotel from the station, and Alicia explained that because she didn’t want Sydney or her parents to know where she was, she had registered under another name, Mrs. Edward Ponsonby.

  “I hope you don’t mind the Edward,” she said.

  “I’m pleased,” said Edward Tilbury.

  Alicia had no intention of starting an affair with Edward, really, so she didn’t. Edward was obviously willing. She felt guilty about having asked him down to Brighton without sleeping with him, but curiously he seemed to be content with the situation. They spent a Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday as pleasant as their first Sunday, and Alicia gave him an antique tie pin which she had bought in a spare moment on Saturday afternoon. She did not say anything about when they might see each other next, but Edward asked if she would be in Brighton next weekend. Alicia said she thought she would be, and Edward asked if he might come down again.

  “Yes, I’d love it. If you’ve nothing better to do,” she added automatically, but she loved Edward at that moment, and he had never come nearer to possessing her.

  13

  At the end of July, when Alicia had been gone nearly four weeks, the Polk-Faradays came up to Suffolk for a weekend with Sydney. Sydney was working out the plot of his third Whip story, The Second Sir Quentin, which concerned The Whip’s impersonation of an English diplomat. It was Sydney’s first entertaining, apart from the Inez and Carpie picnic, since Alicia had left, and with unwonted enthusiasm, he bought a chicken, a roast, a bottle of Haig, several bottles of wine, and all kinds of delicatessen from a shop in Ipswich.

  The Polk-Faradays arrived at 8:30 P.M. Friday, and Sydney greeted them at the back door. They contributed ale, wine, and a couple of custard pies made by Hittie.

  “This is going to be a great weekend,” Sydney said, fixing the first drinks in the kitchen.

  “Yes, it’s raining already,” Alex said, though not gloomily.

  Hittie said, “May I? It smells super!” and opened the oven door. “Umm-m. Want me to mash some potatoes?”

  Sydney was cooking the roast beef. “The potatoes are done, if you want to mash them.”

  Hittie did.

  “You’re looking well,” Alex said. “Bachelor life agrees with you.”

  “Oh, I dunno.” Sydney recalled that Mrs. Lilybanks had said the same thing a few days ago. The prospect of the sale of The Whip had picked him up tremendously, but he didn’t want to say that to Alex for fear it would bring bad luck.

  Hittie came in with her drink, looked around the living room, and bent to admire the yellow roses Sydney had put into the cracked white vase in front of the fireplace. “Oh—isn’t this a different carpet?” Hittie asked.

  Sydney started a little, as he had when Mrs. Lilybanks mentioned the carpet. “Yes, I—we thought the other was getting pretty cruddy.” He glanced at Alex, causing Alex to look at him. “We picked this up very cheaply at a secondhand place.”

  “It’s nice.” Hittie looked from the carpet up at Sydney. “Any news from Alicia?”

  “No. I’m not expecting to hear from her, you know. She really does want to be alone for a while. It’s annoying in a way, because her mother keeps expecting me to hear from her, and apparently Alicia isn’t writing to her mother either.” Sydney shrugged, aware he was talking at too great a length, simply because it had been three or four days—since the last time he had seen Mrs. Lilybanks—since he had said twenty consecutive words to anyone, even shopkeepers.

  “Where do you think she is?” Hittie asked.

  “Brighton,” Sydney said.

  “He’s done away with her,” said Alex, getting up with his empty glass, going toward the kitchen. He winked one eye and kept it shut, peering with the other into Sydney’s face. “He’s done her in, he’s going to live off her income, and he’s going to stick the story of the murder in The Whip series and make a mint on it.”

  Sydney laughed politely.

  “You’re not worried about Alicia?” Hittie said rather than asked, but her blond-Chinese face looked worried, her brown-penciled brows moved in straight, slanting lines and nearly met over her nose.

  “No. I don’t see any reason to be,” Sydney said.

  “And how long will she be gone?”

  Sydney had a feeling Hittie was pumping him for information she intended to pass on to interested parties in London. “I suppose,” he said, “it could be six months. Alicia said she wasn’t sure how long she wanted to be away. I don’t want to say that to her mother, because the Sneezums—ah-choo!—might really get worried. They don’t understand the younger generation.” Sydney took Hittie’s glass and went off to the kitchen with it. It wasn’t empty, but he wanted to be a good host.

  Sydney spent the last part of the dinner telling them about The Second Sir Quentin.

  “When the story opens,” Sydney said, “Sir Quentin Ogilvie, K.C.M.G., G.C.B.—which stands for Grand Crashing Bore—is assassinated by a bomb thrown at him in a dark street in Ankara. We’ll show the bomb sequence first, before we know anything about anybody. Bang. Sir Quentin is just leaving the house of one of his mistresses. It’s crucial that Sir Quentin make an appearance in London at a diplomatic conference, therefore crucial that neither the Turkish nor the English officials know he’s been killed. This is where The Whip—”

  “Why?” asked Alex, sitting sideways in his chair, legs crossed.

  “Because of diplomatic conditions in Turkey—versus England—at that moment. The valet of Sir Quentin, who is no fool, hears about the death through a street urchin, who comes to Sir Quentin’s house. The valet and the urchin get the body off the street in the darkness and hide it in Sir Quentin’s garage under some tarpaulins. Then the valet makes a call to London to the C.I.D. The C.I.D. contacts one of their middlemen—that is with whom they have no further connection, a blind alley—”

  “Um-m,” Alex said, looking down sleepily and dubiously at his plate, mopping the last sauce with a last bite of roast beef.

  Hittie at least seemed to be following him, so Sydney continued. “We see The Whip in his London flat, talking to the middleman who’s just rung up. The Whip smiles and says he’ll do the job, though we don’t know what the job is. Meanwhile, back in Ankara, we
see the Turkish assassins looking sore and puzzled, because their assassination plan has apparently failed. There’s Sir Quentin walking around town hale as ever except for a bandage over part of his head and one eye, presumably from the bomb. It’s The Whip, assuming a perfect disguise as the old G.C.B., Sir Quentin.”

  Hittie was taking away the dishes on tiptoe, listening, bringing in the pie. Sydney heard the coffee perking behind him in the kitchen. He went on:

  “Plenty of opportunity for comedy in this, Alex. We can have one of Sir Quentin’s luscious mistresses turning up on his threshold, missing him, you know, and not taking no for an answer, but if The Whip sleeps with her, he’s afraid it might reveal the fact he’s not the old Grand Crashing Bore, as indeed it might.” Sydney gave a clap of laughter, and was pleased by Hittie’s giggle.

  “Umm-hm,” said Alex, smiling but close-mouthed. His eyes looked a trifle drunk, or perhaps were merely bloodshot from driving.

  “Every now and then, we flash to the tarpaulins in Sir Quentin’s garage. The garageman comes to correct a faulty taillight on the Rolls, for instance. The valet hovers around, stopping the garageman from taking one of the tarpaulins to lie on when he’s crawling under the car, something like that.”

  “I’m lost,” Alex complained.

  “Oh, it’ll be better on paper. You won’t be lost then. It’s a simple story—like all good stories,” Sydney said.

  “I’m not lost. Go on,” Hittie said, sitting down at her place. She had distributed the pie on plates with fresh forks.

  “Well—Ogilvie, alias The Whip—”

  “You mean, The Whip alias Ogilvie,” said Alex.

  “Any way you like,” said Sydney. “He comes to London with pomp and protocol for the conference, does his part brilliantly, saves the conference, averts war and so forth—” Sydney trailed off, for in fact he hadn’t gotten beyond this. “It needs a good wind-up at the end. And the tarpaulins in the garage—” Sydney stared at the center of the table for a moment, thought of the red and blue rug he had buried, the inside-out-rolled rug with Alicia’s body in it. What did one do with a body besides bury it? “I suppose it’ll have to be buried somewhere finally.”

  “M-m. By whom?” asked Alex, starting on his pie.

  “By the valet and a couple of chums like the street urchins. They all know an international crisis has been averted. They’ll play along with a little thing like getting rid of the body.”

  “Of course, later, Ogilvie’ll be missed. I presume The Whip stays on in London?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, sure. Ready for our next story,” Sydney said. “Ogilvie’ll finally be missed, but we don’t have to show that. By then the crisis is over.”

  “What crisis?”

  “Alex!” Hittie said reproachfully. “You might give Sydney the courtesy of listening.”

  “I am listening. I didn’t get the crisis,” Alex said, lifting his long pale face, one black brow frowning as he looked at his wife. “I haven’t the foggiest what the crisis is about, and I don’t think Sydney has.”

  Hittie sighed deploringly, with a glance at Sydney.

  They were all tired, even with the second pot of coffee which Sydney made to help Hittie and him get through the dishes. Alex was plainly too exhausted to help. In the kitchen, Hittie said:

  “I hope you’ll forgive Alex for being grumpy tonight. He’s had a hard week, working late three nights, and then the drive.”

  “Oh, think nothing of it,” Sydney said cheerfully. “He was kidding me, I know.” His hands were deep in soap suds.

  “The big bowls go here?” Hittie asked. She was drying and putting away at the same time.

  “Dear girl, I don’t give a damn where you put them. I’d like them in a different place for a change.”

  When Hittie returned for the next dish in the rack, she said, “It must be awfully lonely for you here without Alicia. I think you’re bearing up wonderfully.”

  Sydney turned his still slightly smiling face toward her. He was bearing up superbly, but he realized that with extroverts and togetherness people like the Polk-Faradays, one wasn’t supposed to be superbly happy alone. “No, I like it. I’m not lonely. Don’t forget, I was an only child. I’m used to being alone.” And it was hard for Sydney to understand why people chose to live in groups sometimes, like big Italian families, for example, unless out of economic necessity. Crowds troubled him, a mass of people standing in a cinema lobby waiting to go inside troubled him emotionally. Their assemblage seemed to have some hostile intent, like the assemblage of men for an army. Assembly did not seem to Sydney a condition normal people should desire. He was an ochlophobe.

  But Hittie’s face still registered sympathetic concern. “Alex was saying—Alicia gets a monthly income, doesn’t she?”

  She was about to say, Sydney thought, “If Alicia’s dead, it’ll go to you, won’t it?” He smiled a little. “Yes. It’s due the first of August. Monday.”

  “It comes through the post to her?”

  “Yes. Comes in the second.”

  Hittie stood on one foot and scratched the bottom of her other foot. She had removed her new sandals after dinner because they pinched, and now she was barelegged and barefooted. “If it doesn’t come, Alex was saying, you could write the bank or ring them and ask where Alicia told them to forward it. I suppose she’s told them.”

  “I’m sure she has, but I don’t think Alicia wants me to know where she is. It was an agreement between us. She wanted absolute privacy. You see?” Sydney hoped that was the end of it.

  “But aren’t you curious?”

  “No,” Sydney said, and pulled the plug out of the sink. He remembered the dirty coffeepot and quickly put the plug in again. He banged the grounds out in the box destined for the compost heap, washed the pot, scoured the sink with Ajax, dried his hands, then lifted one of Hittie’s hands to his lips and said, “Thank you, my sweet. How about a nightcap?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Thanks.”

  Sydney didn’t have one either. Fifteen minutes later, he was asleep in the double bed in the bedroom.

  He woke up at the sound of an amorous pigeon—”Oo-oo-ooo-oo-oo”—so loud that it might have been in the room with him. He went downstairs and put on coffee. Then he went up to his study, put a sheet of paper into the typewriter, and wrote: “The Second Sir Quentin, Act One,” and began to bang away. After twenty minutes and two cups of coffee, he had three and a half pages of synopsis with a crystal-clear government crisis. Around nine, he woke the Polk-Faradays up with cups of coffee on a tray, then got his synopsis from his study.

  “Take a look at this, if you like. I think it’s clearer.”

  Sydney had perceived, by the dawn’s early light, that his story lacked a middle part, so he provided it by having the assassins make further attempts on The Whip, who they of course thought to be the real Sir Quentin. The Whip outwitted and at last captured the little band of assassins before flying off for the London conference. Sydney went down to see about breakfast.

  Alex came down a few minutes later, and said he thought the story was quite interesting. “I didn’t really get it last night. Sorry, old boy. I was bushed. It might be the best of the three so far.”

  After breakfast, Sydney and Alex drove off to Framlingham, and Sydney bought charcoal and a thick steak. He was inspired to make a charcoal pit. Hittie put their grocery purchases away when they got home, and Sydney went out to the toolhouse for the pitchfork. Alex followed him, curious to see how a pit was made.

  Sydney plunged the pitchfork into the tough, grassy soil, and prized up the first clump. The pitchfork, Sydney noticed, had darker colored and now dry lumps of earth stuck high up between its tines—soil from the place where he had buried Alicia—and it seemed to him Alex was looking at the pitchfork with a speculative frown, and that he was going to make some c
omment about it in the next moment.

  “How deep do they have to be?” Alex asked.

  “About a foot. They can be very deep, but then they’re big, for roasting whole animals. I’m just making this for steaks.”

  Alex was just as amiable all day as he had been grouchy the previous evening. They spent a productive couple of hours in the sun after lunch, talking over the story and arranging it in three acts and about twenty scenes. Meanwhile, Alex was ready to start typing up the second Whip script. Sydney knew he’d be a good two weeks in the typing.

  “If you’d post it to me,” Sydney said, “I’ll type it.”

  “Oh, there’re always little last-minute changes I have to make. You know how it is.”

  Sydney sighed, impatient for the acceptance. “We really won’t know anything before the end of August, will we?”

  “You mean from Plummer. Probably not. I don’t think I can get this third one done before the end of August, and he wanted three finished.”

  Sydney swatted a gnat that had just stung his forearm. “How about me trying to write Sir Quentin? We’ve got it so well laid out.”

  “Um-m. Better not, Syd. We’re doing so well like this. Let’s not take a chance.”

  Sydney said nothing. He was a little annoyed by Alex’s proprietary attitude. The ideas, after all, came from him. And why should Alex have a monopoly on playwrighting? Sydney got up and said, “Let’s have a drink. Sun’s way over the yardarm and practically in the sea.”

  They were all on second drinks by the time Sydney struck a match to his charcoal, on which he had poured some fuel to make it light instantly. It did light instantly, and the flaming bowl in the earth pleased him tremendously. Hittie wrapped the potatoes in foil and baked them on the coals. They were all very merry, and Sydney sang for them: