Suspension of Mercy Read online

  “Oh, Sydney! How awful! What a thing to think about!”

  “It could happen. Couldn’t it? She’s alone most of the time. Why should you think she’d be so obliging as to kick off when the daily or somebody else is there? . . . She’ll probably die in bed, like my grandfather. Died in an afternoon nap. Certainly must’ve been peaceful, because no one in the house knew it until they tried to wake him up.”

  Alicia felt uncomfortable and vaguely annoyed, also. “Do we have to keep talking about dying?”

  “Sorry. I’m a plotter,” Sydney said, slowing down to avoid hitting a rabbit that was zigzagging all over the road. The rabbit ran off to the left, up a grassy bank. “I think of a lot of things.”

  Alicia said nothing, not wanting to prolong the conversation. It would happen, of course, probably while she and Sydney were still living in their house. Alicia’s eyes filled with tears—sentimental and dramatic tears, she thought reproachfully. She’d never be able to look at Mrs. Lilybanks again without thinking she might die any minute, and it was thanks to Sydney’s unnecessary remarks. “I wish you could put some of your plotting into your work where it belongs,” she said. “Some in your novel, for instance.”

  “I’m working on the damned novel. What do you think I’m doing?”

  “You’re working on the back part. Maybe it needs a plot all the way through. If you’re going to work on it for a while, why not try putting some plot in all the way through?”

  “And why not stick to your painting and let me do the writing?”

  “All right, but something’s the matter with The Planners, or it’d sell. Isn’t there?” she asked, unable to stop herself now.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sydney said, speeding up a little.

  “Not too fast, Syd.”

  “First it’s a pep talk about the best of novels getting kicked around for years, then it’s ‘something’s the matter with it or it’d sell.’ What’m I supposed to believe? Or are you just trying to be nasty tonight?”

  “Nasty? I’m throwing out a suggestion about plotting. You say you’re so full of plotting—off paper.”

  It hit home, and Sydney smiled with a grim appreciation. “Yes,” he said emphatically. Yes, and sometimes he plotted the murders, the robbery, the blackmail of people he and Alicia knew, though the people themselves knew nothing about it. Alex had died five times at least in Sydney’s imagination. Alicia twenty times. She had died in a burning car, in a wrecked car, in the woods throttled by person or persons unknown, died falling down the stairs at home, drowned in her bath, died falling out the upstairs window while trying to rescue a bird in the eaves drain, died from poisoning that would leave no trace. But the best way, for him, was her dying by a blow in the house, and he removed her somewhere in the car, buried her somewhere, then told everyone that she had gone away for a few days, maybe to Brighton, maybe to London. Then Alicia wouldn’t come back. The police wouldn’t be able to find her. Sydney would admit to the police, to everyone, that their marriage hadn’t been perfect lately, and that perhaps Alicia had wanted to run away from him and change her name, maybe even go to France on a false passport—but the last was sort of wild, France involving complications not in character with Alicia.

  “Sydney!”

  “What?”

  “You went right past the house?”

  “Um.” Sydney braked and turned around.

  Mrs. Lilybanks’ house was a dark lump in the milky light of the half-moon, but to Sydney it did not seem blind. It seemed to be staring intently at their car as he drove it up the short driveway and into the shelter of their wooden garage. He’d have to plan his murder of Alicia more carefully and be far more cautious about removing the body because of Mrs. Lilybanks’ nearness, Sydney thought automatically and as impersonally as if he were thinking about the actions of a character in a story. Then in due time, he would get Alicia’s income, which would be nice. He would silence her voice permanently, that voice forever sabotaging him. Sydney thought of his rewards in a detached manner, too—freedom and a little more money—as if they were coming to someone else.

  SYDNEY’S AND ALEX’S JOINT NICKY CAMPBELL EFFORT, Mark of the Killer, the tattoo story, was turned down by the third and last possible buyer with a note saying, “It isn’t bad, but it’s been done before.” The tired, terse rejection churned in Sydney’s brain for days. He took aimless walks along roads, always wanting to find some woods, to walk into the fields, yet he found no woods, and the fields, deserted as they were, looked to him as if they belonged to some watchful farmer who would ask his business if he set foot in them. Well, what was his business? Nothing. That would sound more suspicious than anything, Sydney supposed. Better to have an answer like, “I’m interested in rabbits and I thought I saw one disappear down a hole here.” He finally did venture into a few fields, but was never challenged. He would walk for miles, slowly, not thinking of food until he became hungry, which was always after 2:30 P.M., when the pubs were closed and he could get nothing. Then sometimes he would find a small grocery store and buy a package of Kraft’s sliced Cheddar and an apple. It was out of anger and a sense of irony that his idea for The Whip came. When it came, Sydney turned and began to walk quickly toward home, thinking as he went.

  The Whip would be a criminal character who did something ghastly in every episode, and this wouldn’t be a serial, but something that could go on and on, a complete story in every program. The audience saw everything through The Whip’s eyes, did everything with him, finally plugged for him through thick and thin and hoped the police would fail, which they always did. He wouldn’t carry a whip or anything like that, but the nickname would be suggestive of depraved and secret habits. Might have a cigarette lighter with a whip design on it. Whip cuff links, S-shaped. His first exploit might be a robbery, the robbery of a plush house belonging to some moneybags with whom the audience wouldn’t be in sympathy, anyway. The police wouldn’t know his real name, but they suspect he is one of three known criminals whose dossiers they have. The Whip is none of them. He has no police record, because he has always been too clever for the police. And he started young, of course. No, that couldn’t be conveyed, because The Whip had no intimates with whom he talked. That would be part of the fascination: the audience wouldn’t know what was on The Whip’s mind until he started doing things. Satisfy the public’s appetite for corn, take-off, and violence beyond control of the law, all in one.

  Sydney’s thoughts collapsed and vanished suddenly, he smiled and looked up at the blue but sunless sky. He had decided that the disposal of Alicia’s body required a rug, which he would be carrying over his shoulder with the apparent intention of taking it to the cleaners, for instance, which meant he’d have to get one, because he couldn’t leave the floor of the living room or one bedroom naked. But his sensibilities balked at asking Alicia to come with him to choose one, and he thought of going to Abbott’s by himself and bringing one home on his own. He’d say he was tired of looking at the threadbare thing on the living-room floor, which he was. Sydney’s mind went back to The Whip again. Near the house, he began trotting, and once in the house, he went straight to his typewriter.

  He put a carbon in the machine, because he wanted to send a copy to Alex. Then he wrote:

  THE WHIP STRIKES

  The Whip: No one knows his real name. Even his bills come to his London flat addressed to six different people. He is 35, suave, slender, brown-haired, brown mustache, no distinguishing marks except those of a gentleman. Belongs to an exclusive club in Albemarle Street. Speaks French, German, Italian. He detests police and his gorge rises at the sight of any bobby, though The Whip has never killed one; he simply outwits and defies them. He has no partner, no confidant, though many in the underworld (and upperworld) are willing to cooperate with him because a) he has helped them in the past or b) he pays well for favors. These will be hour-long shows, each complete in its
elf.

  As our first story opens, The Whip is getting low in funds, as we see from his scanning of bills in his chic mews flat in St. John’s Wood. An amused smile plays over his face. His face is eloquent, but not hammy, and The Whip never stoops to soliloquies by way of making his intentions clear. The Whip acts. He goes out and hails a taxi, asks the driver to drive him through certain moneyed neighborhoods. His manner is relaxed as he cases these spots, making a note now and then in a small moroccan notebook. Driver chats with him. He has no destination, but says he is looking at places where he used to live, tells driver he has been in India for the past fifteen years. It dawns slowly on the audience that he is putting on an act of being an elderly man. He has aged thirty years since getting into the taxi. The Whip dismisses the driver, and we have the feeling the driver would not be able to identify him, if his life depended on it. The Whip walks two streets, gazes at house he intends to burgle. He has the man’s name in his little book: Rt. Hon. Dingleby Haight, Q.C. Fade-out.

  Fade-in on a mid-morning scene at tradesmen’s entrance of the Haight mansion. The Whip is now nearly unrecognizable in the guise of a plumber, and is quite amusing to look at. The butler at the Haight house insists that they didn’t send for a plumber, and The Whip insists just as firmly that they did. His workman’s accent is impeccable. The Whip is admitted, and is shown to the bathroom on first floor. Whip observes maid in milady’s boudoir. No matter, his kit contains chloroform, and his first victim is the butler, whom he conks with a spanner as the butler leaves bathroom. Maid comes to investigate reason for butler’s (slight) outcry, and The Whip steps from behind bathroom door with ready handkerchief full of chloroform which he claps over maid’s face. Maid swoons to ground. The Whip then takes his large kit, empty except for chloroform and

  “My, you’re going great guns this afternoon. A brainstorm?” Alicia stood in the doorway with a large bowl of strawberries.

  “Yep,” Sydney said over his shoulder, annoyed at being interrupted, but not as annoyed as usual.

  “Sorry I crashed in, but your door wasn’t shut, and Mrs. Lilybanks just brought these over. Isn’t that sweet of her? She got them in Fram. Want some now or wait till dinner?”

  Sydney stood up and smiled politely. He looked straight at Alicia, though he really didn’t see her. Even his eyes were still focused for the distance of the typewriter page. “Save them for after dinner. For me, anyway.”

  “Okay, darling. Sorry I bothered you.”

  Sydney worked until dinnertime, read his synopsis over, then took it to the post office in Roncy Noll, whence it wouldn’t get off till early tomorrow morning, but he wanted it in the post tonight. This was Tuesday, and Alex would get it in the early post Thursday. Sydney was pleased. The Whip had been taken by surprise by a man delivering wine, but had knocked him out on the way to the wine cellar. Then amused by three prostrate forms in the flat, The Whip had decided to make the robbery look like the work of a gang, and had soiled several glasses with beer and scotch, though without leaving fingerprints, and wadded a few linen napkins up on the kitchen table. Coolly he had walked out the front door with his bulging kit, entered a tube station, finally arrived at his own house. He had telephoned his fence, who came that evening, finding The Whip in dinner clothes, displaying his loot which presumably had come from someone else, and driving a good bargain. The Whip received a sizable sum, and the stolen jewelry and silver left the house via the fence.

  “Another Nicky Campbell?” Alicia asked.

  “No, something else,” Sydney answered. He was making the salad, rather hurriedly, as dinner was almost ready and it was soufflé tonight. Eggs were only one and six a dozen now in the country.

  “A new character? What kind?”

  “Well, just for luck—or superstition—maybe I shouldn’t talk about it. It’s so new. Born this afternoon at three o’clock.”

  “A serial?”

  “No, thank God. Complete episodes.” A crook this time, he started to say, but maybe it was bad luck to say even that much. “Anyway, Alex ought to be able to write the first story from what I sent him.”

  Then back again to The Planners, Sydney thought, which was going to have a plot now. He had never had much respect for plot, mainly because he thought in real life people were more separate than connected, and the connection of three or more people in a novel was an artifice of the author, who ruled out the rest of the world because it did not contribute. His first two books, however, had a bit of plot, he had to admit. Monkey’s Choice, his first, had gone into paperbacks, and he still occasionally got a royalty, like $4.19, from hard cover sales, as the book was only four years old. It was about his experiences in the Merchant Marine and involved some of the men he had met in the crew, but that was the kind of book one couldn’t repeat. His second, Shell Game, had to do with three married couples in Manhattan, all young, all jockeying for position in the discount house where they worked, and for one another’s wife or husband.

  When Sydney was in the middle of writing Shell Game, he had been invited to a party in Sutton Place. There had been six or seven people at the party who might have been called celebrities—a television actor, an actress, a best-seller writer, a Broadway producer—and Alicia Sneezum, whom Sydney had liked from the moment he saw her. He had asked her if she were free for dinner and the theater in the following week, but she wasn’t, she was here for such a short time, etc. It had been a brushoff, and also a snub. Sydney had retreated to a corner for a few minutes, trying to think what to do, and had come up with something that he thought would both impress her and secure her company for at least one more evening: a party of celebrities. He would go up to each of the important people at the party and say, “Excuse me, are you free for cocktails at my house next Wednesday at seven? So-and-so (naming someone like Mary Martin or Leonard Bernstein or Greta Garbo) will be coming, and she (or he) would like very much to see you, I know, because he (or she) told me so. So-and-so is coming, too.” The last named would be a celebrity at the party. Then by telephone or letter he would actually invite Mary Martin, Leonard Bernstein, and Greta Garbo, and hope. Then he would invite Alicia, and drop a few names of the people who were also invited. He almost dared carry out his plan, but not quite. He used the idea later as an incident in The Planners, a young man with one bold stroke building a circle of important acquaintances, none of whom ever got onto his scheme, because his social life rolled merrily on from there. However, that evening, he did pluck up his courage and approach Alicia again, this time with the tritest of ideas, a boat ride around Manhattan Island. This proposal might have reassured her as to his honorable intentions, since it had to take place in daylight among hundreds of people, or the tourism may have had some appeal to her, or his persistence might have tipped the scales—anyway, she accepted. Sydney feigned illness and took an afternoon off from his job in a discount house. From then on, Alicia was his, Sydney felt, though he took nothing for granted about her, and played everything very coolly for fear of losing her through a misstep. They were simply in love with each other. He did not try to start an affair with her. He proposed, just before Alicia was to go back to England. Alicia accepted, but said they had to wait much longer—maybe three months—and that her parents would have to find out all about him, and perhaps her father in England would want to meet him. Sydney had confessed that he hadn’t much money and that his ambition was to be a writer. He felt sure enough of himself to say that, and he was correct, because Alicia wanted to be a painter, “or at least try to be.” She said she had an income of fifty pounds a month. Sydney met her mother, Mrs. Clarissa Sneezum, and her American-based aunt, Mrs. Pembroke of East 80th Street, where Alicia and her mother were staying. Alicia arranged to stay on another month while her mother went back to Kent, and this period was taken up with planning where they would live (in England) and how, and with Alicia’s answering her father’s questions by letter about Sydney. Finally came the parental co
nsent, though Alicia had said she would marry him no matter what attitude her parents took. Her parents were not enthusiastic, Sydney knew. He felt he had just scraped by. Sydney and Alicia had decided to look for a house in the country rather than live in London. Both liked the country, and thought it would be better for writing and painting. On the honeymoon, Sydney continued to work on Shell Game, and when it was bought in America (but not in England), Sydney had felt rather established. Alicia praised him and so did her friends. But the advance had been only $1500 less agent’s commission, and there had been only about $300 in royalties after that, and no paperback edition.

  Sydney had started on The Planners in the glow of Shell Game’s acceptance. He felt that The Planners declined in spirit as his own spirits declined when Shell Game didn’t go into a second edition or sell to paperbacks. It was a kind of Human Comedy, with the planning of desirable experiences taking the place of Balzackian money-grubbing and social-climbing. The six characters made bets with each other, and the ones who threw in the sponge (abandoned their plans) had to pay a forfeit to the others. Some were total failures, some succeeded. One man wanted to become a doctor, and did, at fifty. An unpromising but determined woman shed her husband and nearly grown family and married the man she really loved. Another man, attaining what he had wanted, died of melancholia.

  On an afternoon when he went to Framlingham for white enamel paint, Sydney drove by Abbott’s in Debenham and bought a carpet. It cost eight pounds, four times as much as they paid for the threadbare red and blue one, but it was in much better condition. And its colors were dark red and dark brown, still just as good with the curtains. Sydney carried the rolled carpet in and laid it at one side of the living room. Alicia was evidently in her room painting, or perhaps visiting Mrs. Lilybanks.

  An hour later, when he was working, Sydney heard Alicia’s voice downstairs:

  “What’s this?”