A Suspension of Mercy

  There was no response from her.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed 999, then slammed it down again before the last 9 had time to register. What were they going to think of this? Bartleby reporting the death of a woman who had just reported his burying of a carpet? Wouldn’t they think he’d done her in, perhaps just by scaring her badly, because he knew of her heart condition? Wasn’t that exactly what had happened? Or, Sydney thought, turning to look at Mrs. Lilybanks again, had Mrs. Lilybanks chosen this moment to die, talked herself into being afraid or omitted some necessary dose of medicine, just so he would be blamed, so it would look as if he killed her in anger about the carpet? No, that was too much.

  For a few seconds, Sydney felt unable to do anything. He took his hand from the telephone. His fingerprints were on the cup of brandy, the back doorknob. What was the matter with telling them the truth? With this thought, however, his mind slipped into fantasy again: yes, he killed Mrs. Lilybanks by lifting an arm in a threat to strike her and scaring her out of her wits. Look at the picture. Wasn’t it obvious? Even if the police had found nothing in the carpet, Alicia was buried somewhere, and Sydney Bartleby was out of his head. Some of his best friends would say that.

  The telephone rang then. Sydney looked at it, and while it rang its double rings four times, he thought of telling no matter who it was that he had just walked into Mrs. Lilybanks’ house as she was having a fatal heart attack. Yes, he was just about to call the police himself, or a doctor, whatever was proper to do. Was it Prissie? Mrs. Hawkins who rang every day? Inspector Brockway? Possibly. Sydney picked up the telephone quickly.

  “Hello?” Then he realized he was speaking into a dead line. He pressed the cradle down, then let it up and dialed O. To the operator, he said, “Would you ring Ipswich Police Headquarters, please?”

  When he got them, he was told that Inspector Brockway had left headquarters just two minutes before. Could they take a message?

  “No,” Sydney said nervously. “No, thanks.” He hung up.

  If the Inspector were on his way here, it would take him twenty minutes more, assuming he’d left a couple of minutes ago, Sydney thought. Should he wait? He preferred to go home, but that would look worse: Was he retreating from a crime, and intending to deny it? He could, of course, call Ipswich and tell some other police officer. Sydney simply didn’t want to do that. What was the matter with waiting? Even if a neighbor knocked on the door, couldn’t he tell them the truth? Sydney avoided glancing at Mrs. Lilybanks’ horizontal form. He looked at his watch, and reckoned that the Inspector ought to be here by a quarter to eight, if he were on his way here. Sydney took a folded afghan from the arm of an easy chair, and spread it over Mrs. Lilybanks, drew it almost up to her chin, though without looking at her face and without touching her.

  Then he went quickly upstairs, simply to get away from the body. He went into the room where she painted, redolent of turpentine, as Alicia’s study had used to be, but the room had such an air of life, as if Mrs. Lilybanks had just stopped work and walked out of it, that Sydney turned from it and went through another open door. This was Mrs. Lilybanks’ bedroom. Pillows were piled high at the head of a comfortable-looking bed, under a vast crocheted bedspread. A book by Pamela Hansford Johnson lay on the night table. On the lower shelf of the night table were the brassbound binoculars. Sydney turned and went out of the room. He stood for several minutes in what looked like Mrs. Lilybanks’ guest room, which was clean, neat, and less personal. He began to breathe more easily, and realized how tense he had been.

  After a while, he went back into the bedroom and picked up the binoculars. It was the first time he had ever held them. He went to Mrs. Lilybanks’ window and focused them on the outdoors. They brought up his own house wonderfully close. He turned them on the back garden and the garage, and imagined himself that morning with the heavy—not so heavy as he was pretending—carpet over his right shoulder, emerging from the house with it, going the few yards to his waiting car, driving off in that dim dawn.

  Sydney heard a knock at the back door.

  “Mrs. Lilybanks?” called a woman’s voice.

  Oh, Christ, Mrs. Hawkins, he supposed. He heard her entering the kitchen. Old Hawkeye. He suddenly became cool as a cucumber, as she would say, as she did say, and he advanced toward the stairway. “Is that you, Mrs. Hawkins?” he called.

  Her outcry, nearly a scream, might have obliterated his words.

  “Mrs. Hawkins?” Sydney came quickly down the stairs.

  Mrs. Hawkins swung around to face him and let out a terrible yell. She took a step back, and knocked over the little wine table on which the cup of brandy stood. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!”

  “For God’s sake, shut up!” Sydney roared back at her, suddenly furious at her noise.

  Now she grappled, wide-eyed, her mind quite gone, for one of the porcelain dogs from Mrs. Lilybanks’ mantel.

  “Jesus, don’t throw that!” cried Sydney, horrified at the sacrilege of it.

  She threw it as he spoke.

  Sydney dropped the binoculars automatically, and caught the flying dog, which made a loud clink as it hit his ring. He glanced at it for a break or a chip, then glared at Mrs. Hawkins. “Calm down, you madwoman!”

  “Don’t come a step nearer?” Her hair looked wilder than ever, and her eyes were fairly crossed with terror. “What’re you doing ’ere? Mrs. Lilybanks is dead! What’re you doing ’ere?”

  “Waiting for the police, and if you don’t like it, why don’t you get the hell out?” Sydney replied, all his intended politeness dashed by the termagant in front of him. He started toward the mantel to replace the dog, but Mrs. Hawkins retreated another step and nearly sat down on Mrs. Lilybanks’ head. This made Sydney go hot with rage. He turned and carried the dog to a bookshelf on the other side of the room. Then he picked up the binoculars. “Harpy,” he muttered.

  “Get out!” said Mrs. Hawkins. “Get out of this house!”

  “I’m waiting for the police,” Sydney said without looking at her.

  There was the sound of a car outside. With a swooning movement and an “Ooooooh,” like a Victorian maiden in beldam guise, Mrs. Hawkins wafted herself clumsily to the front window and nearly fell against it. Her knees must have been weak.

  Sydney opened the door. Thank God, it was Inspector Brockway in the nick of time. “Inspector Brockway! I just tried to call you,” Sydney said. “Come in.”

  “What’s up?” asked the Inspector, quickening his steps.

  “Mrs. Lilybanks has had a heart attack,” Sydney said.

  “You’re the Inspector?” Mrs. Hawkins. “I come in five minutes ago, I find this one ’ere”—pointing to Sydney—“coming down the steps as cool as you please and ’e tells me to get out of the house, and ’er lyin’ there stone dead?” She pointed to Mrs. Lilybanks. “’E tells me—”

  “My good woman, will you calm down? And we’ll hear your story in a moment. Mrs. Lilybanks is dead?” Inspector Brockway went to Mrs. Lilybanks and gently raised the afghan, found her right wrist, and felt for a pulse. He shook his head once. “What happened?” he asked Sydney.

  Mrs. Hawkins started up again like a cacophonous machine.

  “Please—” said the Inspector, spreading his hands to her for silence, with more patience than Sydney could have shown under the circumstances.

  Mrs. Hawkins shut up.

  “I came here about seven fifteen,” Sydney said, “knocked and got no answer, so I came in the back door, calling to her. When I got to the living room, she was grabbing her heart—like this.” He illustrated. “I asked where her medicine was, but she was too far gone to tell me. She just sank down, and I pulled her onto the sofa. Then she died, I suppose. Just like that.” Sydney found his throat quite dry, “I tried to give her brandy. Mrs. Hawkins knocked the table over.”

  ?
??I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hawkins squawked.

  “When did you arrive, Mrs. Hawkins?” asked the Inspector.

  “Five minutes ago. I come in, and ’im ’ere, ’e’s upstairs, comin’ downstairs cool like, and ’er lyin’ ’ere all the time. What’s ’e doin’ upstairs? What’s ’e doin’ ’ere?”

  “Why did you come?” Inspector Brockway asked Sydney.

  “I came to see Mrs. Lilybanks, because I thought she might be thinking I was annoyed with her—for telling you about the carpet thing. I hadn’t seen her since before then, you see, and ordinarily she’d have dropped over or rung me. I wanted to reassure her—” He hesitated.

  And Mrs. Hawkins, took the opportunity to say, “Hah!”

  The Inspector looked at Sydney’s hand, and Sydney realized he was holding the binoculars he had picked up from the floor.

  “What were you doing with those?” the Inspector asked.

  “I went upstairs—I couldn’t stay down here, and I thought you might be on your way. I found them in her bedroom and I was looking out the window for a minute.”

  The Inspector made no comment. He pulled out a tablet and took some statements from Mrs. Hawkins, which she was pleased to give, then said that was all she would be needed for just now and he would get in touch with her later. Mrs. Hawkins then left with an air of importance and of duty well done, but when she reached the kitchen, she turned and came back.

  “Sir, what about Mrs. Lilybanks?” she asked.

  “Perhaps you can tell me her doctor’s name, Mrs. Hawkins. He’ll have to issue a certificate of death.”

  “It’s Dr. Thwaite. He lives just past the church in town, the house with the poona porch.”

  “Ah, yes, I know him. He’s done some work for us. Thank you, Mrs. Hawkins.”

  Sydney relaxed as soon as she was out of the house.

  The Inspector went to Mrs. Lilybanks, and slowly pulled the afghan higher, over her face. Then he consulted the telephone directory, no doubt to ring Dr. Thwaite, and Sydney walked out of the room, into the dining room, unable to stand there and listen to it. He had liked Mrs. Lilybanks very much. He looked at the binoculars in his hand, and successfully closed his ears to what Brockway was saying.

  Then the Inspector came into the dining room and said, “Now. Sit down and tell me calmly what happened.”

  Sydney sat down, and laid the binoculars on the table in front of him. Between him and the Inspector stood a pretty bouquet of mixed flowers in a vase, arranged by Mrs. Lilybanks, fresh-looking as if she had just done it. “I told you. It was exactly like that.”

  “You called headquarters?”

  “Yes.” The Inspector could verify that, Sydney thought.

  “Did you leave a message? That Mrs. Lilybanks was dead?”

  “No, I preferred to speak to you. I thought you might be on your way here.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “I thought you might be coming to tell Mrs. Lilybanks what was in the carpet—that she shouldn’t be worried,” Sydney replied.

  “That was exactly what I was coming to tell her. Then I was going to call on you.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  “To ask if you buried something else in the woods. Or some other woods?”

  Sydney felt his face grow a little warm. “No.”

  “I think you might have done. Think again.”

  “Do you think I would have forgotten?” Sydney asked with a smile.

  “Possibly. If you wanted to. Or you might have got it mixed up with a story you’re writing.”

  Sydney was briefly embarrassed, and irked, too, that the Inspector’s guess was so close. His notebook was at the back of a drawer in his work table, and had been since last night. Now it occurred to Sydney he had better carry it on him at all times, because the Inspector might choose to search his house for just such notes as these. A crate-breaking cough from the Inspector jolted Sydney out of his thoughts.

  “It occurred to me you could have staged the carpet burial elaborately, knowing Mrs. Lilybanks might see it—or even just to pretend to yourself—when you’d really buried a body before or after.” Inspector Brockway smiled, showing teeth as rugged as his face, and as tanned also, from tobacco. His was the kind of face some writers called craggy. “Nobody would bother burying a mothy carpet as deeply as you did unless they were pretending something.”

  The Inspector let this sink in. Like Mrs. Sneezum’s comment on what society demanded, expected, and would exact. “Nonsense.”

  “You can’t dismiss it with nonsense.”

  “Why can’t I?” Sydney asked, though not insolently.

  “Because I won’t.”

  Sink, sink, sink. Sydney shrugged a little. “So you’re still looking for a body in the woods?”

  “Not necessarily in those woods. What happened the next morning, Mr. Bartleby?”

  “Didn’t you ask Mrs. Lilybanks? She had the binoculars. She was probably watching the next morning.”

  “Did you go somewhere else the carpet morning and dig a hole? So the operation would be quicker the next morning?”

  “What operation?” Sydney really couldn’t figure it, if the Inspector was thinking he used the carpet to conceal Alicia’s body as he carried it out of the house. What had he done with the body the night of the carpet morning? “Why not the same day? Why waste time?” he asked quickly.

  “Because it was getting lighter . . . You hadn’t dug a second hole the day before, had you?”

  “No, sir,” Sydney said emphatically.

  “Must’ve taken you a good hour to bury the carpet.”

  “More,” Sydney admitted.

  “When did you realize that Mrs. Lilybanks had seen you with the carpet?”

  “The night you came over and asked me about it. Last night.” It seemed longer ago to Sydney.

  “Not before?”

  “No . . . Mrs. Lilybanks asked me for coffee and dessert just yesterday afternoon.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “Did you bury your wife, Mr. Bartleby?” Inspector Brockway asked as calmly as if he were asking Sydney if he would like a cigarette.

  Had to, dead you know, Sydney thought, but his face was tense. “No.” He realized he had been playing with the binoculars, turning them slowly over and over above the table. He put them gently down.

  “You’d probably like to have those, but I can’t let you. They’re part of the evidence now.” He got up from his chair. “You’re perfectly free to say my theories are a lot of rot any time you wish.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I like theories.”

  “I’ll have to stay until the doctor comes. I don’t want to keep you, Mr. Bartleby.”

  Sydney stood up and said, “Thank you.”

  The Inspector walked into the living room.

  Sydney followed him, and went on to the front door. At the door, he turned for a last look at Mrs. Lilybanks, only a soft-looking, elongated form under the pink afghan, already a corpse under a shroud. Sydney said to the Inspector, “You seem to be thinking that I caused Mrs. Lilybanks’ death, too.”

  “Why do you say that?” Inspector Brockway asked, frowning.

  “Why do you think I killed my wife?”

  “I didn’t say I thought that, I merely asked.”

  Sydney watched the Inspector trying to peer into his mind. But the Inspector was awaiting some important sign or betrayal from him, and of course he had none, unless he pretended, and Sydney at that moment did not feel like pretending. “Good night, Inspector.”

  “Good night, Mr. Bartleby.”

  Sydney went out.

  He heard the telephone, like an auditory hallucination, when he was several yards from his house, and broke into a run. He was right, the telephone w
as ringing, and it was Alex.

  “I rang you before. I didn’t know where you might be. Possibly in jail, I thought.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “This carpet story. We heard it on the seven o’clock news tonight. Just a few minutes before, they said, the police found the carpet they’d been digging for all day. Good God, Sydney, what next? Are you enacting the next Whip? Let me in on it, the plot sounds promising.”

  “Well, it’s not a plot, chum, it’s the truth.”

  “Oh. You buried a carpet. But an empty one.”

  “I buried a carpet.”

  “Oh. Maybe they’re hard up for news. They made sort of a joke of it. A lot of trouble to find it. It was the last thing the news announcer wound up with, if you know what I mean.”

  Sydney did. They always tried to wind up on a light note. “Maybe the joke is still to come,” Sydney said ominously.

  “Four feet deep, they said. Really, Syd, are you losing your mind? Or were you imagining the carpet was Alicia? Ah-hah-ah-hah-ah-haah!”

  “Alicia’s below the carpet. They just didn’t dig deep enough,” Sydney replied, and returned the laugh more ghoulishly. “Wait for tomorrow’s exciting episode.”

  “I have the strangest feeling you’re not kidding. Tipped off by a neighbor, they said, who saw you through field glasses. Would that be Mrs. Lilybanks?”

  “Yes, none other. She saw me along with a little bird. Well, Alex—what did you really call me up about? Surely not this trivial business.”

  “You sound nervy, Sydney. Are you really in some kind of trouble down there? Don’t be shy about telling me, you know. Hittie’s worried, too.”

  “Naturally, I’m in trouble. Alicia—” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Alicia was in the carpet, and Mrs. Lilybanks thinks she saw her. Saw her feet sticking out. Or maybe an arm or a head.”

  “Um. She took long enough to tell the police about it, didn’t she?”

  Sydney thought of Mrs. Lilybanks dead, and his joking was gone.