A Suspension of Mercy

by Patricia Highsmith

  Inspector Brockway rang at 7:20, and came to Mrs. Lilybanks’ house at a quarter to nine.

  From Mrs. Lilybanks’ house, he went next door to speak to Sydney Bartleby.

  20

  Sitting on the living-room sofa, with the gramophone playing Sacre du Printemps, Sydney wrote in his little brown notebook:

  Aug. 13

  I can’t really imagine it to my satisfaction. Something always seems to be missing. I think the murderer is not within us all, as I feel too awful imagining even as far as I can get. Or does this mean I’m getting near the truth? A combination of mental, even physical discomfort, extreme malaise, sordidness, disconnection with the human race, a sense of showing a mask to the world, of shame at one’s own cruelty, which cannot entirely be assuaged by thinking of or inventing childhood experiences that may have led to it. Some killers are cocky. Or do they just try not to think, or are they incapable? I am not satisfied with my imaginings, and I suppose the trouble is, I am not really a killer. I don’t suppose a real killer would have the same thoughts and feelings as I. Why should he? My reactions are the result of conditioning, and I prefer to call conditioning sets of attitudes. I have more than I thought.

  He was looking into space with his pen poised, when an unexpected knock came at the door, a solid knock, not Mrs. Lilybanks’. Sydney put his pen down, closed his notebook and went to the door. He was surprised to see Brockway’s huge form.

  “Professor Brockway! Inspector—excuse me,” Sydney said. Mrs. Lilybanks had told the Sneezums about the carpet burial, Sydney thought, but the realization did not bring his usual seizure of guilt.

  “Good evening,” said Inspector Brockway, bringing his fist up to his mouth and coughing explosively. “Hope I’m not intruding.”

  Sydney was so close, he jumped at the cough. “Not at all. Come in. I’ll turn this off.” He went to the gramophone and stopped it.

  The Inspector unbuttoned the jacket of his blue and brown tweed suit, removed his hat and took a chair. “I understand you saw the Sneezums today.”

  “Yes, I did. They came by around three.”

  “No news, I take it?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve had none either?” Inspector Brockway’s eyes looked somewhat troubledly about the room, the coffee table, alighted for an instant on the brown notebook which was worn flabby from time more than use, then lifted to Sydney’s face again.

  “No.” Sydney wished the notebook were upstairs, out of sight. Now the Inspector was actually touching it with the fingertips of his right hand, pushing it a couple of inches away from him.

  “Mrs. Lilybanks told me this evening of seeing you with a carpet that you said you buried somewhere. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Sydney said, his voice dramatically and quite accidentally breaking. “An old carpet with moth eggs in it. I didn’t want to burn it, and the garbage gets taken away only once a fortnight, so I buried it.”

  “When did you bury it?” the Inspector asked.

  “Oh—weeks ago.”

  “In July?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember exactly when in July?”

  “Yes, it was just after my wife left, I remember. I woke up early—the day after she left.”

  “Almost before dawn?”

  “Yes.” Go straight through, he told himself. The facts, damning though they might be.

  “Where did you bury it?”

  “Somewhere near Parham. On the Parham road from here, in the woods.”

  The Inspector frowned and looked at him. “Tell me how you did it.”

  Sydney took a deep and genuinely painful breath. I pushed her down the stairs first, he thought. Kept her body overnight. He smoothed his hair with his hand, and stared blankly at the opposite side of the room, then looked at Brockway. “I just dug a hole with a pitchfork.”

  Inspector Brockway produced a package of cigarettes, and extended it to Sydney, but Sydney shook his head. It was the first time the Inspector had smoked in his presence. Was he relaxing, now that the case was solved? “I suppose you could find the spot again?”

  “I think so. Have a go at it, anyway,” Sydney said with a weak smile. It was indeed all coming true.

  “Good.” The Inspector exhaled his first draft, stood up and approached the window, then coughed in the explosive way that made Sydney jump again, and suddenly he knew what the cough reminded him of: a foot smashing down on an empty pine crate, splintering it. “It’s not dark yet. Shall we give it a try?” asked the Inspector.

  “Certainly.”

  The Inspector’s car was in front of Mrs. Lilybanks’ house. He knew the road to Parham, and Sydney guided him only as they approached the straight section of road where the woods lay.

  “It’s on the left,” said Sydney. “Slow down a bit.”

  The Inspector did.

  Sydney led him into the forest, looking all around him and trying to remember certain trees, clumps of bush, and failing. Well, if he failed, so what? Sydney looked behind him, trying to recall the distance the spot had been from the road and his car. “There’s more undergrowth since I was here.”

  “Very likely, but do your best.”

  Sydney advanced slowly. At a small clearing, or emptyish place, he stopped and looked at the ground. “This could be the spot.”

  The Inspector was looking at the ground which showed no sign of having been dug up anywhere. “All right. I’ll put a marker on this and we’ll come back tomorrow.” He tore a leaf from his notebook, and set a stone on it.

  They made their way back to the Inspector’s car. He drove in silence back to Sydney’s house, and dropped him off with a good night.

  That was the cool English way of doing things, Sydney thought. Let the murderer sleep in his own bed once more. Drop him at his house, bid him good night, the rope would jerk soon enough on his neck. Sydney imagined a corpse in the rug, Alicia barely recognizable, and himself, now, trying to sleep on this climactic night, writhing with terror, because Mrs. Lilybanks had seen him with the carpet and put the police onto him. He had only hours more of freedom. A murderer, Sydney thought, a psychopath might go now to Mrs. Lilybanks and strangle her while he could, in revenge and anger. It was a wonder, in fact, the police hadn’t put a guard on Mrs. Lilybanks’ house, or advised her to leave, and this thought made him get out of bed and look.

  It was so black, he could not have seen a parked car, or a standing man, if there had been one on the road. Mrs. Lilybanks might be staying with a friend in the neighborhood. Or a man might be inside the house, installed in Mrs. Lilybanks’ guest room. Sydney went back to bed. He tried to do some more imagining, but since he was tired, he soon fell asleep.

  The next morning around eight, Sydney saw Mrs. Lilybanks pouring water as usual into the birdbath on her back lawn. He thought briefly of the police digging away, uncovering an empty and quite unbloodstained carpet, then started making his coffee. Before he sat down to work upstairs, he looked out his window again at Mrs. Lilybanks’ house. Her windows sparkled, but there was no sign of her now. Ordinarily, she did a bit of gardening at this time. She was probably feeling very uneasy, Sydney thought, might even be in an agony of anxiety, and he ought to say something to reassure her. She would be thinking he was resentful of her talking to the Inspector, of her breaking her promise to him. But Sydney thought he would wait to speak to her until the police had told him they had found nothing in the carpet. Of course she would think him a fool for implying Saturday night that there was something in the carpet, and he’d have to explain that by saying he had let his imagination run away with him, that he had been joking (a too grim joke, Mrs. Lilybanks would dislike him for that, but so be it), or he could say he had been a victim of temporary aberration, hallucination, terror, worry, and he had really felt that night that he had done away
with Alicia. All his explanations would be unsatisfactory, but the important thing was to tell her as soon as possible that there wasn’t anything in the carpet. (What? I don’t believe it, he’d say to the police. Somebody’s stolen my corpse? I won’t have it! Look again.) Sydney turned his attention to his new Whip idea.

  The telephone rang a little after 10 A.M.

  “Inspector Brockway here. There’s no carpet buried in that area you pointed out last night. Can you come over now, Mr. Bartleby? Maybe you’ll do better in daylight.”

  Sydney left the house within three minutes. What a pity, the poor boys digging all morning in that tough ground! They had probably been at it since 6 A.M.

  He found the Inspector smoking a cigarette and talking to the young blond constable of Roncy Noll beside the Inspector’s car. Sydney drew up behind them. “Good morning, Inspector. Good morning,” to the constable. “I’m sorry I misdirected you. It might be a good idea if I walk up the road a little. Maybe I’ll recognize something.”

  “Just as you like,” said the Inspector.

  Sydney walked on, along the left side of the road, paying attention to the woods, but every yard of them looked like the next. He began to walk back. When he reached the Inspector, who was now leaning against his car, he said:

  “Sorry, Inspector, I don’t think it’s up there. I still think it’s around here, so I’ll walk in a ways.”

  “Go ahead,” said the Inspector, and began to follow Sydney.

  After twenty or thirty paces, Sydney saw the black figures of a couple of police, one seated on something, one knocking his pitchfork against a tree to get the dirt off. Sydney headed toward them. “No luck, I hear,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

  The ground was torn up as if they had started to make a square dugout. Both officers had unbuttoned their tunics.

  “Ground’s firm as anything here,” said the standing officer.

  “But I’m sure it’s around here,” Sydney said, and went on, a bit to his right and parallel with the road that was now out of sight. Clinging vines clutched at his trousers. He slipped on something, and saw with revulsion that it was a black slug five inches long. He reached a small clear area and hesitated. “It could have been here,” he said to the constable who was just behind him.

  The constable drew a penknife and made two downward strokes in a young tree, then peeled off the bark so it showed white. The Inspector was looking at the ground and stamping on it.

  Sydney cut in toward the road. He came to another spot that might have been it, but he favored the last spot. “It’s a pity the grass grew up so much. That’s why it’s hard to find.”

  “A lot of time passed. Nearly two months,” said the constable.

  The body would be in foul condition, Sydney supposed he was thinking. “I can’t do any better than this,” Sydney said, stopping again at the place where the constable had marked the tree. He started as Inspector Brockway appeared through the woods in front of him.

  “How deep is it?” asked the Inspector.

  “About four feet, I think,” Sydney replied. “That may be why they didn’t find it at the first place. I’d like to see how deep they went.” He walked on past the Inspector.

  The constable and the Inspector followed him.

  At the first site, Sydney asked permission, and took a pitchfork. He began poking at the soil near a big tree, and tossed several forkfuls of dark earth to one side. But below where the officers had dug, the ground was firm, the roots looked undisturbed, and that was all there was to it. “I can’t understand it,” Sydney said.

  The four men were standing about, watching him.

  “Well, boys, I think we’d better go a little deeper here, just where Mr. Bartleby was digging,” the Inspector said, “and there’s another spot farther on.”

  The officers returned gloomily to their task, and the second pitchfork was put to use.

  Sydney watched them a few moments, then said to the Inspector, “Is there any reason for me to stay? I have some work to do at home.”

  The Inspector said there wasn’t, and told Sydney he would give him a ring later.

  Sydney made his way back to the car. By now, there was a faint trail in the grass to where the men were digging.

  At one o’clock, the Inspector rang to say they had dug in the second spot also and found nothing.

  Sydney pushed his fingers through his hair and thought, murderer imagines murder, carpet, corpse, burial, everything. “That’s strange. The carpet’s at full length—a roll—it should be easy to find.”

  The Inspector said they would try again after lunch, in the third spot Sydney had led them to.

  Give them time, Sydney thought, they’d find it, because he was sure it was there. He went back to his synopsis. The Whip had been summoned by the police (who remained ignorant of his criminal activities) to help in capturing a Paddington-based gang of big-money robbers. Pretending to be a recently sprung jailbird, The Whip had joined the Paddington band in order to work from the inside, and was now making himself familiar with the band’s fences, preparatory to turning some in to the police and keeping the cleverest one of them for his personal use.

  By four, there was no ring from Brockway.

  His thoughts moved suddenly to Alicia. Where the hell was she? What was she doing? Who was keeping her? There must be somebody keeping her. She had rich friends, but would she ask them for fifty pounds in a situation like this? No. If a man were keeping her, she must be sleeping with him. Sydney frowned, wounded and puzzled. He got up then from his desk and did no more work that day.

  Around five o’clock, Sydney heard the telephone from the backyard, where he was mucking about in the compost heap, and went running into the house to get it.

  “Hello, Sydney. This is Elspeth Cragge. How are you?”

  “Oh. All right, thanks. And you?”

  “Any news from Alicia? . . .”

  And so it went for five minutes or so. Elspeth Cragge had rung once before. She had just had a baby. She and her husband lived in Woodbridge, and they were rather boring people. Her questions and remarks were boring, and to liven things up, Sydney was tempted to say that the police were digging for an old carpet he had buried, with the idea that Alicia’s body might be in it, but Elspeth didn’t deserve this interesting information, and he might hold up a call from the police if he went into it with her, so he concluded the conversation as quickly as he politely could.

  “Whew!” he said, after he had hung up.

  The police telephoned just after six. Inspector Brockway said:

  “Well! We finally found it, Mr. Bartleby. In the fifth spot we tried.”

  “Good heavens. I am sorry.”

  “Yes. Well, all in a day’s work.” He chuckled. “You’re quite right, it’s an old mothy carpet, more mildew than moths just now, I’d say.”

  “Ha-ha. Yes. I can imagine.”

  “You must have been in an energetic mood that day.”

  Yes. Go a little deeper and you’ll find the corpse, Sydney thought of saying. The carpet is just a blind. “Yes. Actually—I wanted to dig as deeply as if I were really burying something, because I need it for one of my stories. How many roots does one strike, how long does it take—you know.”

  “The problems of a fiction writer,” the Inspector said.

  “Yes. For television . . . Thank you very much for ringing me, Inspector.”

  “You’ll be in sometime tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow was Monday. “Oh, yes. All day in principle, except for a little shopping.”

  “I’ll drop in sometime in the afternoon.”

  Sydney took a bath and changed into a better pressed pair of trousers and a clean shirt. He hurried, not wanting Brockway to beat him in telling Mrs. Lilybanks the news, a possibility that occurre
d to Sydney in the middle of his bath. Take her some flowers, a rose from the garden? A cauliflower? No, don’t be silly about it. He had taken her some Brussels sprouts last week. Just a quiet visit, and he’d say he hadn’t come over earlier because he had been helping the police and awaiting their telephone call.

  He walked to Mrs. Lilybanks’ house with a serious, upright air, turned in at her front walk, tried to see from several yards away if she were in the living room, then decided to go to the kitchen door. “Mrs. Lilybanks?” He tried the door, which opened. She was not in the kitchen. “Mrs. Lilybanks?” He walked on into the dining room.

  Mrs. Lilybanks stood in the living room facing him with her back to the sofa, clutching her fist against her chest. For an instant, Sydney thought she was holding something in her hand, but her fist was only pressed against her body under her left breast.

  “Mrs. Lilybanks? What’s the matter?” Sydney came toward her.

  Her face was ghastly pale, her mouth open, as if she’d just had a terrible shock. She made a shrill, quavering sound, collapsed backward on the sofa, and slid off it to the floor before Sydney could reach her.

  “Here. Let me lift you on the sofa.”

  She was absolutely limp, and he had difficulty raising her.

  “Have you some medicine? Tell me where it is . . . Your medicine, Mrs. Lilybanks.” Sydney left her and went to the kitchen, wet a dishcloth and came running back with it. He thought of giving her water, but that might have been dangerous, as she looked in no condition even to swallow. He found some brandy in the kitchen, and brought some in a teacup, thinking the smell might revive her, and held it under her nose.

  By then, he realized that Mrs. Lilybanks was dead. The hand clenched under her breast had dropped to her side on the sofa, a hand curiously young and beautiful, its skin only very finely wrinkled. Sydney was tempted to take a sip of the brandy himself, but he set it down, pushed his hands down the sides of his trousers as if to wipe them clean, then started for the telephone. At the telephone, he turned and called loudly, “Mrs. Lilybanks!”