“Happy birthday, darling! . . . Don’t you like it?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair in a gay upward gesture.
“Yes, it’s all right. I gather you saw the papers. What’re you going to do, darling? . . . Why don’t you sit down?”
“You’re not sitting down. Of course I’ve seen the papers. I was going to make you a drink. I’ve got a surprise for dinner. I hope you can’t tell what it is from the smell.” She went off to the kitchen.
Edward laid his briefcase down. He had brought a brief to study, and was glad he had got through most of it on the train. He had hoped to find Alicia sobered and a little frightened, in which case he would have comforted her and tried to persuade her to go to her parents. She had had a couple of drinks, he could tell.
Alicia came back with a scotch and soda for him and for herself. “Cheers, darling. And happy returns.”
He stared at her reddish hair. He supposed it was what they called auburn. It was certainly on the red side.
“You’re not even going to kiss me?”
He kissed her, on the cheek, then the lips.
“How’s your foot, darling?”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Edward said, baring his teeth briefly in a grimace. He had trodden on a piece of glass Sunday on the beach. His foot wasn’t infected, he had made quite sure of that by frequent examinations and doctoring of it, but he had to limp a little to spare it, and at the office, he had had to say he trod on a drawing pin, barefoot, at home. “I gather you have no intention of—telling anybody where you are?”
“No, dear, I haven’t. But I would like to leave here. I was thinking of Angmering. It’s also on the sea and—a little closer to Brighton for the bus.” Alicia smiled.
“It certainly will look odd, your changing your hair. Just today.”
Alicia sat down on the brown velour sofa, and pulled Edward down beside her. “Don’t be nervy, darling. By the time people start looking for me, what do you think they’ll see? This.” She held a four-inch length of hair up from the top of her head.
“Alicia, I’m not so sure it’s wise. As for myself, I can’t afford to be dragged into some silly business of deceiving the police—for a love affair.”
“Is that all it is?”
“Oh, you know I want to marry you, but this isn’t the way to begin. You don’t want me to begin by losing my position, do you?” he asked with a nervous laugh. “I admit I was damned uneasy coming down here this evening.”
“Oh, Edward. I’ll give you courage. Now look, if we move from here tomorrow—I can move what little we’ve got here, never fear—we’ll lose only five days of the fortnight’s rent we’ve paid.”
“That’s of no importance.”
“Money is always important. I’ll ring you tomorrow in the office and tell you where I’ve—”
“Dearest, don’t ever ring me in the office. I’ve told you that before.”
“All right, I’ll meet you at the Brighton station tomorrow at seven. Or six thirty, or whenever.”
Edward said nothing, and tried to remain calm, or become calm. He had the feeling Alicia didn’t mean anything she was saying, or rather that she couldn’t carry through anything she was saying, even if she meant to. She would give him courage? When she was so full of anxieties, even about his driving, that she had made him stop driving down to Brighton? Alicia was afraid to go more than twenty miles an hour on the scooter, too, and he’d had a hard time convincing her that they needed one down here, though Alicia had a license to drive one that dated from when she was nineteen. The license was under the name of Alicia Sneezum. Edward took a deep pull on his drink, then said, “And how long is it going to go on?”
“Oh—maybe a few more weeks. Darling, don’t you think we have a happy life?” She caressed his right hand.
“It was happy.”
“Still is.” She leaned closer to him, put her arm around his neck, and kissed him.
It was a long, beautiful kiss. Edward relaxed. Yes, it still was a happy life, he supposed. Alicia was the most exciting woman he had ever been to bed with. Edward did not forget that. “It’s only the police that bother me,” he said when the kiss was over.
“But what do you want me to do about them?” Alicia asked helplessly.
“Can’t you—for instance—instead of going to Angmering tomorrow, go home to Kent, tell your parents you’ve been in some little towns around Brighton, painting, apologize for not writing to them, tell them you want a divorce from Sydney and then tell Sydney? And leave me out of it till then.”
Alicia felt vaguely hurt. Edward wasn’t in the spirit of the thing at all. “You’d think there was something illegal about what we’re doing.”
Edward gave a laugh. “Darling, there is. And it’s worse with the police in it.”
“If I do what you suggested, I won’t be able to see you or be with you for months and months.”
That was true. Edward was silenced for a moment, torn.
Alicia went into the kitchen to attend to the dinner.
16
By Saturday, August 6, the police had come a second time to Sydney’s house and also to Mrs. Lilybanks’, the same young constable plus an older man in plain clothes from Ipswich, Inspector Brockway. He was a tall, rugged man of about fifty who spoke softly but coughed every few minutes very loudly. By the first Saturday in August, it had dawned on Sydney that Alicia was playing her part, too, and with determination, in a make-believe drama in which he had done away with her. She was not going to be heard from by him or anyone else, if she could help it.
And Saturday, Sydney felt suspicion emanating from Inspector Brockway. Curiously, Sydney felt a bit guilty and nervous. Yet he also felt quite sure of himself, because he hadn’t done away with her. However, he quite genuinely dropped a cup in the kitchen as he was pouring a cup of coffee for himself (the Inspector and the constable had declined coffee), and both men had been watching from the dining room at the time. He stammered. He said first that he had put his wife on the train at Campsey Ash, then as the young constable corrected him on the basis of his first statement, Sydney changed it to Ipswich.
“Did you see anyone you knew that day at Ipswich? Anyone at the station?” asked the Inspector.
“Unfortunately, no,” Sydney had answered quickly, and he saw the Inspector catch the word “unfortunately.”
It was astonishing how naturally all the imaginary guilt came out.
The Inspector asked to see Alicia’s room upstairs, which meant the bedroom and her studio, and Sydney remarked that she had taken her paint box, the size of a small suitcase, but not her easel. The Inspector slid out the top drawer, which was Alicia’s, in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, perhaps looking for something no woman would have left behind, like a lipstick or a compact, but the drawer contained four lipsticks and two old compacts still, besides a stack of handkerchiefs and scarves, manicure scissors, a small sewing kit, and several belts. Inspector Brockway asked what kind of suitcase she had taken, and Sydney told him two, a navy blue one with brown leather corners, and a larger brown leather one with a strap. She had taken some winter suits and a cloth coat with fur collar. What had she been wearing? Sydney couldn’t remember. But she had carried her tan raincoat over her arm.
Then Inspector Brockway and the young constable walked out the back door without saying anything, and Sydney trailed after them, puzzled, until it occurred to him that the Inspector wanted to see if the backyard and garden showed any signs of digging. Sydney was somewhat interested, as it reminded him of Christie, and he did his best to imagine himself really guilty of having killed and buried his wife under a couple of square yards of grass, which he would have carefully replaced after cutting it up into six-inch-square divots, but he couldn’t really imagine much internally, and as for externally, he supposed a guilty man would have don
e the same as he, looked up at the sky and the birds, and let the police be. A guilty man would of course have kept a lookout for what the police might be finding, and Sydney had done this, casting a glance now and then from his distance of some forty feet. The Inspector had looked at the garage also, and noted that it had a wooden floor. It certainly wasn’t a thorough search, Sydney thought. A proper investigation would have meant going on hands and knees over every foot of the place, poking and even digging in spots, and tearing up the garage floorboards. But still, that was what the Inspector’s look around was for, a buried corpse, and closer inspection might come later. The two or three rains in the last month would have obliterated any signs of freshly turned earth since Alicia had been gone, and no doubt the Inspector was thinking this, too.
The Inspector’s good-bye, courteous but stiff, was without any cheery word about keeping his chin up, or any promise to ring him as soon as they found out anything.
Sydney lit a cigarette, and watched the two officers walking toward Mrs. Lilybanks’ house. The Inspector’s car was at the edge of the road in front of Sydney’s house. Mrs. Lilybanks, he supposed, would put in a good word for him and counteract some of the suspicion he had raised in the Inspector’s mind. On the other hand, the Inspector might hint at his suspicion and plant some in her mind. They’d be trying to get all they could out of Mrs. Lilybanks, naturally. She might mention the carpet, if she had seen it. Sydney wished very much that he could listen in on the conversation.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, around 5 P.M., Mrs. Lilybanks telephoned and asked Sydney if it would be convenient if she came over for a minute, or perhaps he would like to come to her and have a cup of tea or a drink?
“Either way. Why don’t you come here?” Sydney said. “I have both those things, too.”
Mrs. Lilybanks said she would come over. But it took her nearly ten minutes to get out of the house. She glanced at herself two or three times in the mirror to be sure she hadn’t any paint smudges on her face, as she had just been painting, or trying to. The visit from the Ipswich Inspector had shaken her terribly. She had taken a spoonful of the medicine that Dr. Underwood had told her to take only when she really felt fluttery, and then she had lain down for an hour, though without sleeping. We are obliged to consider the possibility that Mr. Bartleby may have killed his wife, Mrs. Lilybanks . . . Then he went on qualifying it, minimizing it, but the words had made Mrs. Lilybanks realize that she had a faint suspicion, too. It was possible, that was the awful thing. Then she realized that she had one way of finding out, if she had the courage. Courage it would take, but the doubt she felt now would be worse to live with, she thought. Doubt in a thing like this was like a horrible pain itself. And this was not something she could pass on to Inspector Brockway, because if she did, he’d attach perhaps too much importance to it. Sydney might be quite innocent.
At last Mrs. Lilybanks set out, and knocked on the Bartlebys’ front door at 5:15, and at the same moment she remembered, uncomfortably, Alex Polk-Faraday’s telephone call of two days ago that had been essentially to find out what she thought about Alicia’s being gone, and about Sydney. Yes, Mr. Polk-Faraday’s mind had been quite ready for any suggestion of guilt she might have offered, and since he was supposed to be a friend and a partner of Sydney, Mrs. Lilybanks hadn’t liked that in him at all.
Sydney swung the door open and greeted her with a smile.
“How are you, Sydney?”
“Oh—more police calls today. I saw they came to you, too. But no news, I’m afraid.”
“No. I’m sorry, Sydney.”
“I suppose she’s lying low—willing to stand the publicity to keep her seclusion, wherever she is. Her parents are going to be sore when she gets back. They’re very proper people. Sit down, Mrs. Lilybanks. Can I get you a scotch? Or would you prefer tea?”
“Neither, thanks.”
“Neither?” he said, disappointed.
“I really came over,” she said, turning a little from him, looking down at the rug under her feet, “to ask you where you bought this carpet. I need a carpet in my house. I wondered if you know a good place—”
Sydney’s face looked startled for an instant, then he said, “I got it at Abbott’s in Debenham. They had a few Orientals like this, not many, but you might give it a try. This was only—eight pounds, I think.”
Mrs. Lilybanks sat down slowly on the sofa, watching Sydney. “I really quite liked the old one you had here. I’d buy that from you,” she said, forcing a chuckle.
“But we haven’t got it. I took it—” He smiled. “I took that old carpet out and dumped it. We didn’t want to give it houseroom, and I doubt if anyone would’ve given ten shillings for it.”
Mrs. Lilybanks heard her heart pounding under her green coat sweater. Sydney had turned a little pale, she thought. He looked guilty. He acted guilty. Yet her unwillingness to believe he was guilty was keeping her from labeling him guilty, definitely. Now he was watching her carefully. “Well, it’s no matter,” Mrs. Lilybanks said. “I’ll try Abbott’s. I know it’s very popular with everyone in the neighborhood . . . Well, Sydney, I mustn’t keep you,” she said, getting up. “You’re probably still working.”
“Oh, I work off and on all the time,” he said more cheerfully. “No fixed schedule. Interruptions don’t bother me. In fact, I get a little lonely sometimes and enjoy an interruption.”
Now was the time to ask him for dinner tonight and let him see the binoculars, Mrs. Lilybanks thought, talk to him about bird-watching in the early hours and see his reaction to that, but she was simply not up to it, not tonight. “You must come again for dinner soon,” she said. She went to the door and turned. “I pray that Alicia’s all right, Sydney, wherever she is. And do let me know, won’t you, if—”
He was still watching her warily. “Oh, of course, Mrs. Lilybanks, if I hear from her. You bet I will.”
She went slowly back to her own house. It was strange, she thought, that he hadn’t asked her what the police had talked to her about. Wouldn’t anybody have wanted to know, anybody who wasn’t guilty?
Sydney at that moment was daydreaming over Alex’s final script of The Second Sir Quentin, which had come in the morning post, a very fast job on Alex’s part. Mrs. Lilybanks had seen him with the old carpet on his shoulder. His silly pantomime of a corpse removal that morning had actually had an audience of one. And how did he feel? A little guilty, to be sure. As if the playacting of other people had convinced him of the validity of their suspicions, not his own playacting.
The telephone rang. Sydney ran down to answer it, thinking it might be a London friend calling to report a police visit. Today Inspector Brockway had asked him for the names of Alicia’s closest friends, and he had given Inez and Carpie, the Polk-Faradays, and a couple of the school friends whose names he had looked up in the address book—the only address book they had between them, the Inspector had ascertained, and which Alicia had not taken.
“Hello, you scheming murderer,” a sinister voice said.
Sydney laughed. “Hello, Alex. I’m a happy, scheming murderer, thank you.”
“I’m just looking over your synopsis. Came in the afternoon post. Very nice.”
Sydney waited. This was about The Whip’s assassination of an incipient dictator.
“The police called on me a few minutes ago,” Alex said. “Good God, man, what’ve you been telling them down there? Or acting like?”
“What do you mean?”
“They act as if they suspect you of doing away with Alicia. What’ve you been doing, kidding them? That can be dangerous, you know. They were asking me about your character. You don’t want me to tell ’em duh troot, do you?”
“I hope you made it properly black, befitting the creator of The Whip?”
“I said you were a highly suspicious character, addicted to wife-beating, had a morbid imagination, we
re fond of making up sinister words to songs, and obviously you’d persuaded your young rich wife to take a house in the country in a lonely spot—Roncy Noll—so you could do her in and bury her in the woods somewhere.” Alex gave his falsetto laugh, “Ah-hah-ah-hah-ah-hah!” which he gave only when he was genuinely amused, and which sounded like an American take-off of an Englishman’s laugh.
Sydney smiled. “What did they really ask you?”
“Well, dear Sydney, I’m not far off the mark. They asked me how I thought you and Alicia were getting along. I said I thought quite well. Asked me if I thought Alicia were possibly seeing another man. I said I certainly didn’t think so. Do you?”
“No. No, I don’t,” Sydney said, but he did think it was possible. Alicia would have been most discreet, of course, and never have given him a hint. “You haven’t heard anything, have you? About any man in London?”
“Not a word, no. Not a breath of scandal.”
“Of course, you know she’s six feet under in the woods near here, so I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath talking about boy friends.”
“How did you kill her, Bartleby? You know everything’s up now. You may as well come clean.”
“Pushed her down the stairs. Broke her neck. Then I buried her the next morning before dawn. Never felt better in my life. I’m glad I did it. I’d do it again, if I could.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bartleby. I know our audience has enjoyed your firsthand—uh—straight-from-the-killer’s-mouth comments on a sport millions of us would like to take up. If we could afford it.” Pips sounded on his last words, and he said hastily, “Back to The Whip for both of us. Let’s clinch this thing.”
Suspension of Mercy Page 11
