A Suspension of Mercy

by Patricia Highsmith

  “She lives nearby?”

  “Cottage down this way.” He gestured toward the sea, the opposite of the Brighton direction. “She’s there with her husband. He comes down weekends.”

  “She’s a summer visitor? New here?”

  “That’s right. She’s the purple house about four down the other side of the road.”

  “Thank you,” Sydney said, and went out.

  Sydney looked once, a long minute, at the house the man probably meant, a pale lavender cottage of which Sydney could see only one back corner. He had no desire to go any closer. Mrs. Leamons? Leamans? A clever name, if it were Alicia and Tilbury. It didn’t sound like a phony name, not as phony as Tilbury.

  It was 3 P.M. before Sydney got back to Sumner Downs and his inn, where he paid his bill and went upstairs to get his few belongings. Today’s newspaper was under his arm, and on the night table lay the newspapers of the past two days. Mrs. Lilybanks’ inquest had been adjourned sine die, and the funeral had been Wednesday morning. The post-mortem had disclosed no poison or medical dose whatsoever, but her heart showed the dilation or whatever it was that had caused its failure, and this in Dr. Thwaite’s opinion had been caused by a severe shock of some kind. And that would not have happened, Sydney thought, if Inspector Brockway had telephoned Mrs. Lilybanks just a few minutes before and told her there was nothing in the carpet. The Thursday paper also reported that Sydney Bartleby had gone to Brighton to assist the police in the search for his wife. No wonder Edward Tilbury had ducked his head on Friday evening. It was a wonder he had come at all.

  Downstairs, Sydney engaged the inn’s taxi to take him to Brighton. With The Whip money coming, he felt he could afford the guinea it cost.

  He called in at the police station. Mr. MacIntosh was there. Sydney told him he had had no luck, and that he was going back to Suffolk.

  “Would you sign something for us before you go, Mr. Bartleby?” Mr. MacIntosh gave him a sheet of paper on which he had to fill in several blanks, his hour of arrival in Brighton, and hour of departure. The paper stated that he had come with the purpose of assisting the police in their search for his wife ALICIA, and below this he was to write in his results. Sydney wrote, “No success.”

  In the Brighton station, he looked at a London directory and thought that an Edward S. Tilbury in Sloane Street looked the most promising. There were only four E. Something Tilburys, after all. Sydney got some change and risked a call. No answer from Tilbury in Sloane Street.

  He could stand outside the house in Sloane Street Sunday night and Monday morning to see if Dapper Dan came in, Sydney thought, but he balked at such snooping. He could also ask Inez and Carpie to find out where their Edward Tilbury lived, if he could swallow his pride. That jerky, muck-faced square! Alicia had fallen for that!

  Sydney had twenty minutes before his train, so he rang Alex on the off chance he might be there, though Sydney expected that he had gone to Clacton by now. Alex answered.

  “I’m arriving in London at five, and I wonder if I can see you for a few minutes,” Sydney said.

  “Ugh. I was going to catch a six o’clock train, old pal.”

  “Can’t you take a later one?”

  “Did you hear anything about Alicia?”

  “Not a thing, I’m sorry to say. Alex, I’ll get there as soon as I can. We’ve just sold The Whip and after all—” Sydney checked himself, realizing he was pleading. “What about contracts, for instance?”

  “It’s here.”

  Sydney said he was coming, and put the telephone down before Alex could start protesting.

  He dozed on the train up to London, though it was the last thing he had thought he would be able to do. Just before Victoria, he splashed non-potable water on his face in the lavatory and combed his hair. Then he took a taxi to the Polk-Faradays’ flat in Notting Hill. It was the first floor of a white house. Sydney half-expected no answer when he rang the bell, but Alex came down the stairs to open the door.

  “Hi,” said Alex.

  “Hello. I won’t keep you long. It’s only five twenty and you might even make the six o’clock.”

  Alex showed no interest in the time, and Sydney suddenly felt he had been faking the six o’clock train.

  They climbed the stairs.

  “Do they want any changes in the first script?” Sydney asked.

  “Quite a few little things, but I’ll do those.”

  “Changes in the plot?”

  “No.” Alex opened the door of his flat, which led immediately into a large and now quite untidy living room that gave on the street.

  A suitcase lay open on the sofa, only half-filled. Their main closet was in the living room, a great white wardrobe in the corner. There was a hobby horse and a soiled buff-colored giraffe on its side on the floor.

  “Let’s see the contract,” Sydney said.

  Alex got it from the pocket in the lid of his suitcase. “I haven’t signed it yet.”

  Sydney read through its three sheets. The contract gave a fifty-fifty split. The series was to run for a minimum of six weeks, with a proviso for extension and increased payment in case of extension. “It looks all right, doesn’t it?” Sydney asked. “Nothing great, but they’re not cheating us anywhere.”

  “No,” said Alex in a troubled way.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “The trouble—” Alex fumbled with something in his suitcase, then straightened. “The trouble, Syd, is the trouble you’re in.”

  “Oh, come off it. Alicia’s hale and hearty. Probably got a boy friend. I’m sick of it.”

  Alex studied him, and took a step back, around the foot of the sofa.

  Sydney realized he had walked a step toward Alex. He wondered if Alex were pretending to be afraid of him. “What’s on your mind, Alex?”

  “What’s on my mind is—the series could be stopped, if this thing gets any worse.”

  Sydney felt suddenly angry. He was angry because he thought Alex was faking. “Maybe what’s on your mind is, you’d like to have the series all to yourself. Especially as the first six stories are already invented and on paper. Already accepted, from the plumber story down to Paddington.”

  “Don’t be mad! Want the series for myself!” Alex gave a laugh. “But Syd, there is a problem and you know it. Where’s Alicia? It’s all very well to say she’s alive and got a boy friend, but where is she? Do you think the public’s going to look at your name coming across the screen every week with mine without thinking about this or doing something about it?”

  “Doing something about it?”

  “Boycotting us. Writing in complaints.”

  Sydney smiled. “Enjoyed the play, but I object to the author. Ha!”

  “Don’t you know they can cut us off in midstream?”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Alex.”

  “Don’t be funny. Do you see any reason why I should run that risk? Just for you?”

  Sydney frowned. “So what do you propose?”

  “I think I ought to get sixty percent, and you forty. I think that’s only fair, considering the work I’ve put in and will put in. Considering it could be cut off any minute.”

  Sydney sighed. He remembered Alex’s appetite for money, instilled in him by his family who prodded him constantly lest he forget. “I’m running the same risk. I’ve put time in on it, too.”

  “But your work is finished. And you caused the risk.”

  “Without me you wouldn’t have any of it . . . Oh, hell, Alex, I’m sick of the argument and I don’t agree to your terms.”

  Alex gave a tight smile and walked to the coffee table for a cigarette. “You’re free now, relatively speaking, but how long do you think it’s going to last? What if the police knew what Hittie and I know, Syd, about your bumbling mistakes when you were tryin
g to tell us where Alicia was? You couldn’t even remember the story you intended to stick to. All those—”

  “That she was with her mother? That’s what she told me to tell people.”

  “All those jokes, after you’d had a few drinks, about putting her six feet under and living on her income. All those fights you had with her. When we were there.”

  “I don’t need a few drinks to make up stories like those. I can make up stories like those any time.”

  “How do I know they were stories? Suppose they’re true?”

  Now Sydney was merely irritated. Whether Alex was being stupid, or trying blackmail with a heavy hand, Sydney was bored. “All right, Alex, do you believe they’re true?”

  “I dunno!” Alex replied.

  Sydney watched him. Was he lying? “Get to the point. Do you? Or do you just want a bigger cut?”

  “Syd, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Did you kill Alicia?”

  He looked like an emoting character in one of his own plays, Sydney thought. “No, dear,” said Sydney. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “I don’t call it blackmail. I simply—”

  “You probably don’t. Blackmail’s a plain word, it’s very clear what it means. And you don’t seem to care to be clear.” Sydney again took a step toward Alex without thinking, and Alex again retreated. “Are you afraid of me? Have you convinced yourself that I kill people?”

  “Since you put it in the plural, we shouldn’t forget Mrs. Lilybanks. The doctor wouldn’t give a certificate of natural death. What sort of conclusion do you think people’ll draw? That you scared her to death, of course. Maybe deliberately.”

  “If the police were drawing that conclusion, I’d be arrested. Come off it, Alex. If you don’t like the word blackmail, let’s call it greed. It’s greed you’re showing now.” Sydney took one of Alex’s cigarettes from the package on the coffee table. “Thanks,” he said, lifting the cigarette.

  Alex was checked for a moment, but not defeated. He came back to the attack with a new will. “I’m holding out for sixty percent, Syd, for my own security. Take it or else, and you know what the else is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I can tell the police a great deal. A great deal that isn’t nice, and a great deal of what went on before Alicia disappeared. Those nasty quarrels you used to have—”

  “Oh, throwing a teacup?” Sydney laughed. “If you believe what you’re saying, you should say these things anyway—to the police.”

  “I don’t really know what to believe,” Alex said. “And I’m trying to protect my interests. It’s as simple as that.”

  His logic reminded Sydney of some of Alicia’s, but Alicia’s was always naïve, and Alex’s was full of self-interest. But Sydney could see that Alex was sincere. Alex had simply blinded himself, like a squid behind its own ink.

  “You’re in no position to laugh.” Alex walked toward his suitcase. “I’m tired of arguing, too, and I’m going to take off.”

  “Not waiting for my answer? My answer is that I don’t accept.”

  “That’s not at all wise of you,” Alex said. “I’ll give you till Monday to make up your mind. By Monday you might be in custody, anyway, but if you’re not, my address is Clacton-on-Sea, the Sea Winds Hotel.”

  “My love to Hittie,” Sydney said, then crossed the living room with his overnight bag and went out the door.

  On the train to Ipswich, Sydney had planned to think, to decide what to do, but as soon as he tried, his problems seemed like one huge mountain hurled at his brain, and he collapsed under its weight—figuratively speaking. His brain was benumbed, and sought escape in sleep. He recovered his car in Ipswich, and drove home in the gathering darkness.

  23

  On Saturday, August 20, Alicia and Edward were relieved to see a tiny item in the Evening Argus saying that Sydney Bartleby had left Brighton after a search for his missing wife which had netted him nothing.

  By now, they were in Lancing, where, still as Mr. and Mrs. Eric Leamans, they had rented very cheaply a house much too big for them. The house was called a villa. Since the death of Mrs. Lilybanks, Edward was more than ever for stopping the game, since he thought it cast an unfair suspicion upon Sydney in regard to Alicia. Edward wanted to go quietly back to London and stay there, and wanted Alicia to go quietly to her parents’ home and announce herself, but Alicia couldn’t face admitting to her family and to Sydney that she had been living with a man for more than a month under another name. It was Edward’s idea to marry her, once she got divorced in an ordinary manner, and Alicia wanted this, too, but each day, for all her efforts to think and act, bogged her deeper in guilt and embarrassment, as if the whole situation were a quagmire. She had said many times to Edward, in the earlier part of their liaison, and when Mrs. Lilybanks had rather mysteriously died, “Syd’s not really right in the head, Edward. I’ve known it for a long while. Look at the way he acted with Mrs. Lilybanks. Acted is the word. That carpet performance! And then his nervousness about the binoculars, the papers said. He doesn’t know what’s truth or fiction any longer.”

  “Then it’s time you acted, darling, before he gets himself in any deeper. They can’t arrest you for what you’ve done. You’re not the first woman to have an affair extramaritally.”

  Edward’s words, meant to be bracing, only made Alicia feel more frightened and cowardly. “I can never face him now,” she said flatly. “He’ll kill me on sight, or at very least think I’m a ghost. He’s lost his mind, Edward . . . I certainly can’t face him the way things are now.”

  “I don’t think he’s lost his mind,” Edward murmured nervously. “I think he’s somehow waiting—for you to come back.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Edward didn’t know, but he felt he had a glimmer of what Sydney was all about. He could hardly have put it into words. It was quite in character for Sydney to come down to Brighton and spend four days looking for Alicia—and not find her. “I can’t imagine,” Edward said and not for the first time, “that if he really roamed around in this area, he didn’t see one of us at some point. In the street or in some shop.”

  Alicia was silent for a moment, afraid that Sydney might have seen her and done nothing about it. That would have been like him—rather mad. “It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d seen you. He wouldn’t have remembered you from that party that night, I know.”

  Then Edward would be silent (they had had this conversation three times), because he was not so sure Sydney didn’t know about him and Alicia, while if he told Alicia this, she’d lose her last shred of courage and say good-bye to him forever in a chaos of shattered pride. Vassily had said something to Edward about Inez and Carpie asking what he had been doing lately. Vassily had repeated to them Edward’s answer, that he had been visiting friends in Surrey quite a bit. Good old Vassily. Vassily could be trusted to keep his White Russian discretion, even if he suspected the truth. But Edward had the feeling Sydney would quiz Inez and Carpie and get them to make inquiries for him, and that therefore Inez and Carpie might know the truth now, too. And they might tell it, Edward thought. Departures from London were increasingly torturous to Edward. He felt he was definitely being spied upon, spied upon when he set foot on the Brighton platform, spied upon as he pressed the first kiss on Alicia’s cheek, if she were there to meet him. It was making him horribly nervous, and he had to take a sleeping pill almost every night in London. And he felt that an ax was due to fall, if he didn’t get back to his customary, respectable bachelor’s routine in London, where he spent his weekends reading and playing music and perhaps going to a little dinner party—to which he usually escorted no one—on Saturday evenings. That was the kind of life Alicia said she was wanted, too.

  “We’ll never budge from where we are now, if you don’t make a move, darling,” Edward said to her. “You’ve go
t to get in touch with Sydney eventually, if only to get your divorce.”

  Alicia only looked into space and bit her lower lip. Why did things have to be like this, in such a God-awful muddle? Well, mainly because of Sydney. If he hadn’t stupidly, asininely buried the carpet, and probably asininely, like a clown, pretended to be nervous and guilty when their friends or the police asked him where she was, she and Edward wouldn’t be in the position they were in. She’d just have gone away for a few months, as she had told Sydney she was going to do, and as he agreed to let her do. She could have seen Edward, enjoyed his company for a while, and quietly come back and told Sydney she wanted to divorce him. Now she had a faint desire to get back at Sydney, to let him sink as deeply into a mess as he wished to, and perhaps more deeply.

  “I think, too,” she said to Edward, “it’s very likely Sydney saw me somewhere, even though I was being careful those days, naturally. But I had to do a little shopping for us . . . Anyway, you said you didn’t see him at the station on Friday.”

  “I wasn’t looking around, naturally. That only attracts attention. He might have seen me.” Edward was sitting on the shabby straw chaise longue on their terrace, putting white on his shoes.

  “Well, if he saw me, he can say he saw me, can’t he? What’s stopping him? It’s not as if I were contributing to getting him blamed for murder.”

  Now she sounded more sure of herself, but her logic was faulty. “No, dear, if we know he saw you. But we’re not sure of that. It’s no good saying there’s a fifty-fifty chance he did, or more than likely he did. How do we know? I’m bound to say it’s more logical to assume he didn’t see you and therefore can’t save himself by saying he did.” Edward left this on an expectant note, and Alicia looked at him.

  Her eyes filled with nervous tears. “I know what you’re going to say, that I ought to go back and face things. Well, I can’t. I’d really rather kill myself.”

  “Nonsense,” Edward said in a solid tone. “But look, darling, whether you like Sydney or not, whether he’s treated you well or ill, he’s going to lose even his professional standing if this goes on.”