Suspension of Mercy (12 page)

18

T
he following morning, Mrs. Sneezum telephoned Sydney and said that she and her husband would like to drop in and see him in the afternoon. Just that, brief and crisp. Sydney of course said he would be very glad to see them. They would arrive around 3
P.M.
, said Mrs. Sneezum.

After they had hung up, Sydney wandered about the house, straightening things, though the place looked quite presentable, he thought. Sydney did remove the newspaper-photograph-with-balloon from the bathroom wall, which he realized Mrs. Lilybanks must have seen on the one or two occasions she had gone upstairs. He supposed the Sneezums, if they were doing a good job of casing the place, might call on Mrs. Lilybanks, too. Alicia must have told her mother a great deal about her.

This was Saturday, Sydney realized, the day Mrs. Lilybanks’ granddaughter Prissie would arrive. A busy day. Reluctantly, he left a Whip synopsis he was stewing over, and took the car to Roncy Noll for some shopping. His synopsis was nearly done, and needed only one more twist to complete it. In this story, his fifth, The Whip assumed a feminine dress in order to impersonate a wealthy elderly woman who had been presumed dead. The Whip managed to fool even the woman’s husband, not to mention the lawyers, and got his hands on a great deal of cash and jewels before disappearing. It was a lively plot, full of laughs, and Sydney was ready to chalk up his fifth Whip winner. He needed a title.
Skirting the Issue?
Ugh.

“Morning, Mr. Veery,” Sydney said to the butcher.

“Morning.” Mr. Veery gave a glum nod, then proceeded to look at Sydney’s face, his hands, his clothes with a stunned expression, as if he might not hear Sydney’s order when it came.

“Any nice steaks today?” Sydney asked.

Sydney bought two steaks and a half pound of streaky bacon, and Mr. Veery handed him the package, then his change, as if fearful his fingertips might come in contact with Sydney’s palm. A customer edged away as Sydney went to the door, yet stared at him all the while, too. Sydney looked back through the window, and saw Mr. Veery and the woman already in animated conversation.

Mrs. Lilybanks rang and asked if he would come for strawberries and coffee with her and Prissie around 2:30 that afternoon. Sydney had noticed a red Triumph convertible, which had arrived while he was at the butcher’s, in front of Mrs. Lilybanks’ house.

“Yes, thanks, I’d like to,” Sydney said. “I can’t stay long, because Mr. and Mrs. Sneezum are coming at three. Alicia’s parents.” His voice was as open and cheerful as if Thursday night had never happened.

Mrs. Lilybanks sounded just as usual also.

He supposed he had frightened Mrs. Lilybanks that night, but she had also frightened him. His pretending, which he had meant to be comical or amusing, only to himself, had suddenly become real. No one could produce a cold sweat on the forehead just by trying to, Sydney thought, not the greatest actor. Well, he knew what it felt like, all right, to be suspected of murder by a nice old lady. It felt awful, unspeakably embarrassing, shameful, bizarre, even mad.

At 2:15, he finished his synopsis, then went over to Mrs. Lilybanks’. Priscilla Holloway was what Sydney thought a knock-out, a smallish, slender but well-rounded girl with long straight brown hair, almond eyes, a smooth olive complexion, and a fantastic sex appeal that perhaps she, and probably Mrs. Lilybanks, was unaware of. Prissie affected an extremely calm and poised manner, perhaps because she was trying to look older and more sophisticated than she was. And also perhaps because Mrs. Lilybanks had told her something about him and about Alicia’s disappearance, but Sydney did not think Mrs. Lilybanks had told her of her suspicions. Prissie looked at him as if she thought he were a man of mystery, but not a criminal.

Alicia was not mentioned in the half hour he spent with them. They talked about London, a play Prissie had a bit part in now called
A Cup of Summer
, and she asked Sydney about his television series which she had heard about from her grandmother.

“Grannie, you haven’t shown me your paintings yet,” Prissie said.

“Oh, I will, but not now, because Sydney can’t stay very long, and he’s seen most of them anyway.”

“Yes, I must go,” said Sydney, getting up. “You haven’t met the Sneezums, have you, Mrs. Lilybanks?”

“No. I’d like to. Would you like to ask them over for some tea?”

“Oh, thanks, I was going to give them tea myself. I’ll give you a ring later and we’ll see how things are.” He looked at Mrs. Lilybanks in a frank, pleasant way. “Thanks so much for the strawberries. Nice to have met you, Miss Holloway.” He left.

The Sneezums were ten minutes early. Looking at them as they got out of their gray Mercedes-Benz, Sydney thought they both looked older, that the strain of anxiety showed in both their faces. Mr. Sneezum was a smallish, slight man with thin red hair and a pale complexion. His wife was as tall if not taller, blond and a bit chinless, though with determined nose and eyes. Alicia was a luckily handsome combination of both of them.

“Hello, Sydney,” Mrs. Sneezum said as she came through the gate, though without extending her hand. “How are you?”

Sydney stood midway on the flagstones of the front walk. “Well enough, thank you. How are you?”

They went into the house. Sydney offered them sherry, which they declined, then tea, which they also refused, saying it was a bit early. They both looked around the living room as if for clues to the mystery of Alicia’s departure. For the next five minutes or so, Mrs. Sneezum went over the questions she had been asking Sydney for the past weeks on the telephone, but now Sydney realized that she was mainly interested in seeing his face as he gave his answers. Mr. Sneezum sat quietly, concentrating upon Sydney also, and looking like a smaller and more wizened effigy of Sinclair Lewis.

“You’re sure she didn’t
change
trains at Ipswich,” said Mrs. Sneezum, “get off the one she was on and take another northbound, for instance?”

“I saw the train move off,” Sydney replied. “We—waved to each other.” They hadn’t waved, but he had seen the train move off.

Mrs. Sneezum rested her cool, calculating gray eyes on him. “Um-hm. The police have tried to find a railway official who remembered seeing Alicia getting on that morning or—”

“Oh, that would be difficult, I suppose,” Sydney interrupted with a smile.

“Yes. No one does remember.” Mrs. Sneezum glanced at her husband, who only looked glum and rubbed a forefinger along his nose. She sat up on the sofa and recrossed her slender legs. She wore a black and blue printed silk dress, and gave off a scent of perfume Sydney could not identify, probably because its costliness was out of the range of his acquaintance. “I must ask you, Sydney, if you’d had any serious quarrel with Alicia just before she left?”

“No. Honestly, Mrs. Sneezum.” He moistened his lips and raised his hands from his knees and brought them gently down again. “She wanted to be alone for a while and paint, and she said she’d get in touch with me when she wanted to see me again—or come home. That’s why I’m staying here when I could go to a little town for a change of scene myself. I’d like to be here when she writes or telephones.” He was rattling on again, he realized, and he could feel the disbelief his overexplaining had generated. He wondered if they were thinking, “Sydney is staying close to home, because he wants to guard the body in the garden. Look how long Christie lived at his place.” Sydney shrugged involuntarily, and saw Mrs. Sneezum notice it.

“Writers and painters. They think they know it all.” Mrs. Sneezum looked to her husband for support.

“Oh, so do all young people,” he said feebly and grumpily.

“They refuse to live the way the rest of society lives, quietly and calmly, taking the ups with the downs, and then they’re thrown by the strains their bizarre lives put upon them. You know what I mean, Hartley.” She looked at him again.

But Hartley wasn’t saying anything this time, only looking at the carpet with pursed lips and raised eyebrows.

“In my opinion, the bohemian life has no place in ordinary, everyday society. The people who lead it know that they are not behaving the way society means them to behave, means and intends them to behave, and consequently they crack up under their own philosophy—because it’s false and pretended.”

A false God, Sydney thought, as he listened with solemn respect, like someone at a church sermon. Society to Mrs. Sneezum was like some abstract god—very abstract—to whom unquestioning devotion and dedication was due.

“Therefore Alicia is paying,” Mrs. Sneezum said heavily, still sitting up straight, and looking at Sydney.

“Yes,” Sydney murmured automatically.

“She was unhappy—naturally.” Mrs. Sneezum looked at Sydney with satisfaction, upholder of her way of life, of her daughter’s natural way of life, which her daughter had gone against.

“Yes,” Sydney said.

They all pondered this in a moment of silent prayer.

Then Sydney said, “My neighbor, Mrs. Lilybanks, asked me to ask you both if you’d like to come over for tea around four. She got to know Alicia quite well. Probably Alicia’s mentioned her.”

Mrs. Sneezum lifted her head quizzically to her husband. “I don’t know, Hartley. What do you think? Of course we should let Mrs. Lilybanks know. Yes, I have heard Alicia speak of her,” she added to Sydney.

“Might have to be getting back a little sooner than that,” Hartley Sneezum put in.

Sydney showed them Alicia’s room upstairs, at Mrs. Sneezum’s request, and Mrs. Sneezum commented indifferently and negatively on some of Alicia’s latest abstracts.

“She did quite a good portrait of Mrs. Lilybanks,” Sydney said. “It’s downstairs in the living room. Maybe you didn’t notice it.”

Mrs. Sneezum hadn’t, but covered up the fact by saying, “Oh, yes. I must look at that again.”

They left the house at ten of four. On the front walk, Mrs. Sneezum looked toward Mrs. Lilybanks’ house and said vaguely, “We might drop in at Mrs. Lilybanks’, Hartley, just to meet her, but we mustn’t stay for tea.”

“No,” Hartley agreed.

They all said good-bye politely, promised to get in touch at once in case of news, and then Sydney went back into the house. He knew the Sneezums would stay at Mrs. Lilybanks’ for at least half an hour, and would certainly accept tea. They had simply eased him out of it so they could speak to Mrs. Lilybanks alone. But since Prissie was there, Sydney thought, there would be a limit to what Mrs. Lilybanks would tell them. He didn’t think she would tell them about the carpet, however, whether Prissie was there or not.

Fifteen minutes later, a car motor started, and Sydney stood up to see out the window. Prissie’s red Triumph was moving off, in the direction of Ipswich and London.

19

M
rs. Lilybanks had been a little surprised to see the Sneezums without Sydney, and she immediately grasped the import. The first few minutes, while Prissie had been with them, had gone easily enough, but the tension began when Prissie left. The Sneezums pumped her, slowly, gently, and inexorably. What did she really think of Sydney’s and Alicia’s bohemian life? Of that unkempt front lawn, so bad for the morale, really? Mrs. Lilybanks managed to get a polite smile from the Sneezums with some of her tolerant replies, but the smiles were brief, and Mrs. Sneezum returned to the attack.

“I never trusted Sydney to make her happy,” said Mrs. Sneezum. “The marriage was quite without our whole-hearted approval, you know, but we didn’t want to stand in the way like a pair of grim, old-fashioned parents. But we feared the worst, didn’t we, Hartley?”

“Yes, we did,” Hartley Sneezum confirmed.

“Alicia’s always thought she wanted her own way, and she’s usually had it. She had her own way when she married Sydney. She can go along all right just so far and then—” Mrs. Sneezum slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “She is
not
capable of strain, whatever she may think. She needs a stable life, the life she was brought up to lead. I didn’t care much for Sydney Bartleby when she married him, and I don’t like his manner now, quite frankly,” said Mrs. Sneezum, looking quite frankly at Mrs. Lilybanks.

“What do you mean by his manner now?” asked Mrs. Lilybanks.

“He doesn’t act like a man whose wife is missing,” Mrs. Sneezum asserted. “Not like my idea of the way a husband should react. He’s so cool about it. It’s as if he knows where she is and isn’t saying. But I don’t think he does. I don’t think he
cares
, that’s what I mean to say. I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking so frankly, Mrs. Lilybanks, but this is a serious matter and we’ve both been upset for a month. Do you think Alicia and Sydney have some secret agreement they’re not letting anybody in on?”

Mrs. Lilybanks lifted the teapot to pour more tea, but was met by a small shake of the head from Mrs. Sneezum. “Sydney told me—and so did Alicia—they wanted to be apart for a while.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that till I’m quite sick of it. So is Hartley. I meant a more serious agreement—like a divorce.”

“Oh, certainly not that I know of,” Mrs. Lilybanks said. “But then, Alicia wouldn’t have told me of anything like that, I think.”

“She never mentioned any other man?” asked Mrs. Sneezum.

“No, indeed.”

“We have to think of all sorts of unpleasant possibilities,” Mrs. Sneezum said. Then after a pause, “Even that Sydney might have killed her.”

Mrs. Lilybanks looked at Mrs. Sneezum, who was watching her, plainly to see if the same idea had occurred to her. Mr. Sneezum showed no reaction, so he and his wife must have talked about this before.

“Has that crossed your mind?” asked Mrs. Sneezum.

“Clarissa,” said Mr. Sneezum gently, “don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

“Look at the facts,” said his wife with grim calm. “The police haven’t found Alicia in Brighton or anywhere else. She hasn’t come forth, though her pictures were in every newspaper in England more than
a week
ago. Sydney Bartleby never had a bean in his life, and he stands to gain a good deal if Alicia’s dead.”

“Really, my dear, it’s too much like a detective story.”

“That’s what they all say until it’s too late,” his wife replied. “I think it’s time for a good detective myself.” She waited for Mrs. Lilybanks to say something.

Mrs. Lilybanks could not speak, and several seconds passed.

“I hope you can feel free and will be honest enough to tell me if you suspect Sydney of any foul play, Mrs. Lilybanks. If you’ve noticed anything—even a quarrel they had—”

Mrs. Lilybanks could see the tears in Alicia’s mother’s eyes. She felt kindly toward her then, as she had not before. “I’m sure they had their small quarrels, like any other married couple.”

“You sound as if you saw some. When?”

“Oh—” Mrs. Lilybanks floundered. “A raised voice in the kitchen one night when I was there for dinner. It was nothing, it lasted a second. I’m sure every couple does it.”

“Whose voice?”

“Sydney’s. It was only for an instant.”

Mrs. Sneezum did not appear satisfied with this. “And a quarrel just before Alicia left?”

“No. I certainly didn’t hear of any,” Mrs. Lilybanks replied.

“Did you ever see him strike her?” asked Mrs. Sneezum.

“Oh, dear, no.”

“So you—like Sydney?”

Mrs. Lilybanks took a breath and said carefully, “I find him interesting—and very amusing sometimes. He’s full of ideas.”

“For stories that he can’t sell.”

“Well—there’s some hope about his Whip series. Didn’t he mention it? They’re television plays.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Sneezum glanced at her husband, who showed no interest in this information. “I suppose he’s doing them with Alex Polk-Faraday.”

“Yes, I think he is,” said Mrs. Lilybanks.

“There’s a nice young man. Not too proud to take a job, even if he does want to be a writer.”

Mrs. Lilybanks said nothing, and felt her liking for Mrs. Sneezum ebb again. But shouldn’t she, in all fairness, tell her about the carpet incident, she wondered. It would be breaking her promise to Sydney, but wasn’t it cowardly to withhold information just for fear of being hated by a guilty man? Or called a trouble-maker by an innocent one? If Mrs. Sneezum hadn’t been such an emotional type, Mrs. Lilybanks might have told the Sneezums, cautioning them to speak quietly to the police about it, to present the facts—blurred as they were by the dawn light and her own failing eyes—and let the police do the rest, but Mrs. Lilybanks knew she could not trust Mrs. Sneezum to do it coolly.

“So you like Sydney,” Mrs. Sneezum said.

“My dear, I don’t think you should quiz our hostess so thoroughly,” said Mr. Sneezum, coming down on the last word.

The Sneezums got up a few moments later and took their leave, thanking Mrs. Lilybanks for her tea. Mrs. Lilybanks was touched by the fact Mrs. Sneezum had an impulse to kiss her on the cheek, and just restrained herself. Even Mr. Sneezum held her hand warmly in both of his for an instant.

“Alicia speaks so well of you,” Mr. Sneezum said. “She’s very fond of you.”

“That’s why I think it’s strange she hasn’t written to her, dear,” said Mrs. Sneezum.

They went out to their car, which was near Sydney’s front door.

Mrs. Lilybanks put away the tea things, put the dishes in the sink ready for washing, then forced herself to the telephone. She had come to a decision while talking to the Sneezums, and didn’t want to backslide about it. She called the police in Ipswich and asked to speak to Inspector Brockway. Inspector Brockway was not in.

“I have something to tell him that I think may be of importance,” she said. “It’s about Alicia Bartleby.”

“Yes? Well, can I take the message for you, Mrs. Lilybanks?”

“No. Thank you. I don’t want to give it over the telephone. I’d like to speak to the Inspector in person.”

They said they could get a message to him by 7
P.M.
, and if he were not able to come to her house then, they would ask him to ring her. Mrs. Lilybanks told them she would be in all evening.

When she hung up, she realized that in order to tell the whole truth, she would have to tell Inspector Brockway about the sudden uproar from Sydney the evening Alicia dropped a glass. It may have ended there, but it certainly showed that Sydney had some violence in him. Alicia had told her of two occasions when Sydney had struck her.
Sydney can get into an absolute fury—just like that,
Alicia had said, and snapped her finger. It had crossed Mrs. Lilybanks’ mind that Alicia might be off on some spree of her own, perhaps even with a man friend, by way of bolstering her ego and getting back at Sydney. After the visit from the Sneezums, this somehow seemed less likely to Mrs. Lilybanks, and it seemed more likely that Sydney had gone too far in one of his tempers. Inspector Brockway had asked her what she thought of Sydney’s character, or rather his temperament. She could imagine Sydney angry enough to kill someone, and imagine him cool enough afterward to carry it off, at least as well as he was carrying it off now.

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.