Those Who Walk Away (17 page)

That night, Inez was very cool and rejected even his touch on her shoulder, his attempted kiss on her cheek. Coleman, resentful, slept in his own bed for the first time.

Then the next morning, Saturday, there came a telephone call from the police while Coleman and Inez were breakfasting. Would Signor Coleman be so kind as to come to the office of police at Piazzale Roma that afternoon at four o’clock? Coleman had to say that he would. It would be a long, nasty ride as it was a rainy day. Gusts of wind hurled the rain at their windows in the Bauer-Gruenwald, and it sounded like buckshot when it hit.

Coleman told Inez what he had to do. Then he said, “Let’s get out of this hotel today. Change it, I mean.”

“To what?” Inez asked in a tone of rhetorical indifference.

“The Gritti Palace, for instance. That’s a nice place. I’ve stayed there.” Coleman had not; he had only eaten there once with friends, he recalled. But no matter, it was a good place. It irked him that Ray knew where he was based, and that he did not know where Ray was.

“If you wish,” Inez said, as if she were humouring a child.

Coleman was glad, at least, that she didn’t propose leaving Venice. He was not at all sure he would be allowed to leave Venice now, anyway, and perhaps Inez realized this, too. “We can get out by twelve easily, I should think. That’s probably checking-out time.”

“You had better see first if they have rooms there.”

“This time of year? Sure.” But Coleman went to the telephone. He booked two rooms, each with a separate bath, as there was no two rooms with one bath available. Inez wanted a room of her own, even if they spent all their time in his or hers.

A few minutes later, a boy brought a letter on a tray. Coleman saw that it was for him. He gave the boy a hundred-lire coin.

“From Rome,” Coleman said.

Inez was across the room and did not see the black ink writing—angular and mostly printed—which Coleman recognized as Ray’s.

He strolled slowly into his room as he opened the letter, then said, “Yep, from Dick Purcell,” in a casual tone. Coleman had introduced Inez to Dick Purcell in Rome. Purcell was an American architect and a neighbour of his.

Coleman stood by his reading-lamp on the other side of the bed from the bathroom door, and stood sideways so he would know if Inez came in. He read the letter, and his heart beat a trifle faster at every paragraph. “…whatever you may think…” Ha! Not all the excuses and explanations in the world could explain away Ray’s guilt, not even to Ray himself. The paragraph beginning, ‘It seems too obvious to say that we are both still in a state of trauma from her death’ made Coleman sneer. It sounded like something from an etiquette book on how to write a letter of condolence. Ray picked up a little in the last paragraph:

Another attempt by you to kill me might succeed. Though it’s evident you want this, you must realize I could—now—tell someone or several people that you may try to do this. In which case you would suffer later, if anything happens to me. It is an absurd game, Ed. I am willing to see you and try to talk again, if you are willing. You may write to me Posta Restante, San Marco post office.

Yours,

Ray Garrett

Coleman chuckled loudly, partly because he felt like it, partly for Inez’s benefit, since Dick Purcell was witty. Ray grovelling in the first paragraph, saying he wouldn’t tell the police anything, then coming out with what amounted to a threat at the end! Coleman tore the letter into small pieces. He stuffed the pieces into a pocket with a view to disposing of them somewhere outside. He tore up the envelope, too.

“Is my red dressing-gown in there?” Inez called to him.

Coleman found it on the back of the door. Coleman was thinking that it would be amusing to see Ray calling daily, maybe twice a day, at the post office at the west end of the Piazza, and being disappointed. But Coleman had no intention of wasting time in watching him. And a fresh resentment went through him, painfully tangled with grief, at the memory of Peggy, of her soft young flesh, his flesh, her bright young eyes, her long dark hair. She had not begun to live before she died. If she had not married Garrett, she would be alive now. That was a fact, and no one in the world could dispute it. His grief frightened him, and he felt he was spinning in a whirlpool, being sucked down. Gone now the hope of seeing Peggy mature into a happy woman, dreams of taking her and a couple of small grandchildren to St Moritz or Ascona for a holiday, or playing with them all in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Ray Garrett’s
children? Well, never, thank God!

Coleman made a great effort to get himself in hand again. It took him some thirty seconds. He straightened up, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to think of the next thing he had to do in the present. He had to pack.

By twelve-thirty they were installed in the Gritti Palace with a much nicer view from their fourth-floor windows of the hotel’s lovely terrace, which ended in steps down to the Grand Canal. Two motor-boats like the
Marianna II
bobbed in the water in front of the steps, snug under canvas in the lashing rain. Because of the bad weather, they lunched in the hotel and drank a good claret with their meal. Coleman was uneasy, especially in regard to what Inez was thinking, and tried to conceal it by joviality. It also occurred to him that Ray might have spoken to the police this morning, after he posted the letter, and that the police might be ready to arrest him, or deport him, or whatever they did with an American under such circumstances. But Coleman did not really believe this. This would end Ray’s guilt feelings, and in his way, Ray knew he deserved to suffer those feelings, and he was not going to end them so soon, Coleman thought.

“The police have probably heard something more from Ray’s parents,” Coleman said to Inez, “and they want to talk to me about that.”

“You said you met them?”

“Oh, yes. They were vacationing in Rome the spring Ray met Peggy. Nice people, a little stuffy. She’s less stuffy than he is.”

“Don’t be late for the police. That will annoy them.”

Coleman chuckled, and clipped the end of a cigar. “They annoy me, dragging me out on a day like this.”

Coleman set out at three-thirty. The journey, or voyage, once he was on a boat, took only fifteen or twenty minutes.

The Capitano Dell’ Isola was at the police station in the Piazzale Roma. He introduced Coleman to a small, thin man with grey hair who he said was the Public Prosecutor of Venice. He was a tiny man in a loose grey suit, but Coleman felt a proper awe for the unknown powers that he might be able to wield.

“It is his duty,” Capitano Dell’ Isola said, “to determine if there is a foundation for your detainment.”

So the questions began again about the night of the Lido. If Dell’ Isola or anyone else had questioned the Smith-Peters or Mrs Perry, Coleman thought, they evidently had not said anything about his dislike of Ray Garrett. He knew they had not questioned Inez. Coleman was not asked his feelings. It was all cold fact, or rather cold lying, which Coleman thought he did with customary assurance.

In a pause in the Public Prosecutor’s questioning, Dell’ Isola said, “We have spoken with Corrado Mancini, owner of the
Marianna Due
, and we have also examined the boat.”

“Oh? And what did you learn?” asked Coleman.

“He corroborates your story, that he was asleep at one o’clock when you left the Lido.” Dell’ Isola’s tone seemed more courteous in the presence of the Public Prosecutor.

Coleman waited for a remark about the boat—a dent, a new scratch?—but none was forthcoming.

“It may be necessary,” the Public Prosecutor said in his slow, grating voice, speaking in Italian, “to issue a…[Coleman took this phrase to mean a legal order for detainment] but I think that is not required at the moment, if we know where to find you and you do not leave Venice. You are at the Hotel Bauer-Gruenwald?”

“I am at the Gritti Palace now,” Coleman answered. “I was going to inform you that I moved this morning.”

This was taken down by a clerk.

The Public Prosecutor murmured something to Dell’ Isola about informing the American Consulate. Dell’ Isola assured him that this had been done.

“The father of Signor Garrett has telephoned,” Dell’ Isola said to Coleman, “to say that you were in Venice and might be of help. I told him we knew this and had spoken to you. I told them you were the last person we have been able to find who saw their son. I recounted the story of that night on the Lido as you told it to me, and they asked me to ask you again for anything—anything you can remember that Signor Garrett said about travelling, going anywhere. Anything about what he might have done. Because I must cable an answer to them.”

Coleman took his time, sat very coolly in his chair, and said, “If I knew a single thing, I would have told you before.” He mixed his subjunctives, perhaps, but the idea was clear enough. “Perhaps he went back to Mallorca.”

“No, we have inquired of the police in Palma and Xanaunx,” said the Capitano, mispronouncing the town name. “He is not there. Signor Garrett’s father also asked me to ask you if you know anyone in Mallorca who might know what Signor Garrett planned to do next. The father has also written to one of his son’s friends in Mallorca, but there is not yet time for an answer. You have just been in Mallorca with Signor Garrett, have you not?”

“Sorry, I can’t remember any names of the friends of Garrett in Mallorca. I met a few, but—I was there only a few days. For the funeral of my daughter, you know.”

“Yes, I understand,” the Capitano murmured. “Do you think Signor Garrett was a suicide, Signor Col-e-man?”

“I think it is possible,” Coleman said. “Where could he have gone without a passport?”

Coleman was glad to make the trip by vaporetto back to the Gritti, and stood outdoors on the deck despite the rain. The police had also asked Garrett Senior if he thought his son could have committed suicide. (Dell’ Isola had not said what Garrett Senior’s reply to this had been.) Ray must have written several days ago that he, Coleman, was in Venice also. Obviously the Garretts had no suspicions about him, which meant that Ray had not told his parents that his former father-in-law detested him. Ray wouldn’t. People who deserved detesting seldom announced that they were detested. Coleman wished Ray would leave Venice, and he thought if he kept a cold silence Ray would finally skulk away, maybe in two or three days. But it was funny about his abandoning his things at the Seguso. Neurotic, Coleman thought. He couldn’t really work it out, though he supposed he was on the right track when he explained it as Ray’s wanting to put the blame on him for possibly having killed him, and also Ray’s wanting to feel dead.

To Coleman’s disappointment, Inez was not in when he got back to the Gritti, and it crossed Coleman’s mind at once that she was keeping an appointment with the police, too. But there was a note for him at the desk, in one of the boxes where their two keys hung.

“Went out to do some shopping for Charlotte. Back between 6-7. I.”

Charlotte was her sixteen-year-old daughter, now going to school in France. A ghastly day for shopping, Coleman thought, but Inez was probably preparing for Christmas. He went up to his room, made sure the radiators in bedroom and bath were turned as high as possible (the room was quite comfortable, however), then lost himself in another pencil drawing of his figures seen from above. One of the figures had a face upturned, a hand held out—for alms or for rain, people could think what they wished.

He had a Scotch at six, and tried his composition in pastels on a larger piece of drawing-paper.

Inez knocked and came in just before seven. By now it had stopped raining, and was dark and gloomy beyond the windows.

Well, she said, smiling. “How was it at the police?”

Coleman took a deep breath. “Oh, they’d spoken to Ray’s father. Just wanted to know if I had any new ideas as to where Ray might be. Told them I hadn’t.” Coleman was sitting on the edge of his bed. He preferred beds to tables for drawing, “Like a Scotch, dear?”

“Yes, I will, thank you.” She slipped off her high-heeled shoes, which were now covered in transparent rain boots. “What a day! I like to think that the weather was better in the days when Venice had her glory, otherwise I cannot see how life could have been so glamorous here.”

“A truer word was never spoke. But it wasn’t any better,” Coleman said, pouring her drink into a tumbler. He added exactly twice the amount in water from the tap in the bathroom. “Did you find anything for Charlotte?”

“A most beautiful sweater I found, of a yellow like a Cezanne, and for her desk a leather case to hold paper and stamps. It is green morocco. Very pretty. And I wanted to say to her it is from Venice, you know.”

Coleman gave her her drink, and picked up his own. “Salute.”

Inez drank some, sat down on the other side of Coleman’s bed, and asked, “What do the parents of Ray say?” She sat upright, her body turned, as if she rode side-saddle.

Coleman saw she was worried. “They’re interested in whether anyone in Mallorca knows anything. His friends there. I can’t remember any of their names, but that village isn’t big, if they want to send someone down there. He’s not in Mallorca. They’ve looked—or asked.”

“And what do they say about you?”

“About me?”

“Do they think you might have done him any harm?”

The question was spoken in a calm and clinical tone, not at all like Inez. “They didn’t give me a hint of that.”

“What did you do, Edward? Did you tell me the truth?”

He didn’t give a damn, Coleman reminded himself, what Inez thought, or if she knew the truth. “I did what I told you.”

Inez only looked at him.

Coleman said carelessly, pulling a handkerchief from his hip pocket and blowing his nose, “You look as if you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t know what to believe. I saw the Smith-Peters for a while this—”

“I sometimes think there’re eight of them—instead of simply two. The biggest bores I’ve ever met, and they’re underfoot all the time.”

“You know, Edward,” Inez said in a softer voice, “they think you might have killed Ray—pushed him overboard unconscious or something like that.”