The Suspect - L R Wright (27 page)

Carlyle had stopped driving, stopped going out to Old
Age Pensioners' things. There was some talk around the village about
his sudden inactivity, and George had believed when he
called
that there might be some truth to the rumor that he was failing.

So he'd gone. For Myra? For Audrey? He doubted it.
He'd gone out of a dark curiosity, a rancorous desire to see his own
good health substantiated by a pale and wraithlike Carlyle, dying.

It was hard to tell about these things, but he
certainly hadn't looked like he was failing.

He'd just wanted to vent his spleen, that's all,
thought George bitterly, lifting his head from his arms. He was
always a venomous bastard and maybe he finally got bored, having to
be always on his best behavior in a town the size of Sechelt. And
when Myra died, the buffer between him and George was suddenly gone.

Anyway, he'd called, and for whatever reason, George
had answered the summons.

He'd knocked on the half-open door and heard Carlyle
call to him from the living room. "Come!" he'd sung out,
like he was a king or some damn thing.

"What is it, Carlyle? What do you want from me?"

"
Oh, George, just look out there,” said
Carlyle from his rocking chair. "Did you ever think we'd be
living in a place like this, you and I, only half a mile apart,
looking out at such a beautiful sight?"

"We wouldn't have been,” said George, "if
I'd had anything to say about it. Not both of us."

Carlyle glanced over his shoulder. He gave him a grin
and one of his ludicrous winks. "Funny, isn't it," he said,
"the tricks that fate plays."

"Just say what you have to say, Carlyle, and
then I'll be getting on my way."

"I'd hoped you'd stay for lunch,” said
Carlyle. "I just bought a salmon."

"
I don't care for fish.”

Carlyle sighed. He seemed tired; perhaps that was why
he wasn't getting out of the rocking chair. "Well, at least have
the courtesy to sit down, George," he said.

"
I have no intention of sitting down. just say
what you've got to say, and if you don't say it fast, I'm going."

Carlyle, looking out at the sea, rocked, and nodded,
and rocked.

"Okay. That's it. I'm on my way."

"
Not so fast, George." Carlyle turned
around and hooked an arm around the back of the rocking chair. His
voice had lost its warmth. "I've gotten pretty sick of you over
the last five years. Everywhere I go, there you are with your long
face and that perpetual scowl. It wasn't so bad when Myra was
around—she kept you under control, Myra did. But ever since you
buried her, George, it's gotten to be a bit much. Oh, I know you talk
about me,” he said, turning back to the window.

"I've never said a goddamn word about you to
anyone," said George, furious. "I don't like the taste of
your name in my mouth."

Carlyle was silent for a moment, rocking gently.
"It's too bad we couldn't ever get to be friends, George. I
wanted that, you know, especially in the beginning. " He was
speaking quietly, almost to himself. "I thought you were a man I
could get to know, confide in—I thought I might have found a real
friend. Never had many of those. Never had any, when you come right
down to it. I haven't the faintest idea why I thought you might turn
out to be my friend. It was your eyes, I think. So stubborn and
unwavering. And something about the way you walked, aggressive and
hesitant, all at the same time.” He turned around again, slowly.
"But that never happened, did it, " he said bleakly. "I
ended up with your sister, instead." He threw back his head and
laughed. "Oh, God, that was the biggest mistake I ever made. ”

"It was a bigger one," said George huskily,
"for her.”

When Carlyle looked at him this time there was grief
on his face, and in his watery blue eyes. George didn't believe it
for an instant.

"
I didn't want her to die," said Carlyle,
heavily. "I loved her. As much as I could. You jumped to a lot
of conclusions about me, George. Some of them were accurate. But some
of them weren't.”

"
You killed her,” said George. He stared at
Carlyle, open-mouthed, hardly able to believe he'd said it. "You
killed her,” he said, more belligerently.

"
You do insist," said Carlyle coldly,
staring back at him. "on missing the point." He
deliberately turned his back on George. "She was a foul driver,
and she finally managed to kill herself. I'd never let her drive,
never, not while I was in the car. I tried to stop her that day, as a
matter of fact, but she was in a state, as usual, wouldn't listen to
me.”

"You made her go,” said George. "You
frightened her into going.”

Carlyle turned around again, slowly, smiling. "Ah,
George. Did you hear what you just said?”

George felt the earth shift beneath his feet.

"
I didn't make her do things, George,” said
Carlyle, petulant. "She made me do things." He shifted
himself around in the rocking chair, clumsily, it seemed to George,
and looked again out at his garden and the sea. "You should have
told me," he said. "You had a responsibility to tell me
what I was getting into. How was I supposed to know, for God's sake?
And then she told me, finally, when it was too late. Oh, she told me,
all right, she told me everything," said Carlyle, rapidly,
nodding, rocking.

George began looking desperately around the room. He
thought he was looking for something close enough to grab, hang on
to, something he could lean on while he made his painful passage out
of the house, away from the sound of Carlyle's voice.

Carlyle glanced over his shoulder at him. "I'm
talking about your sister, George. Your family. Pay some respect,
George. Pay some attention." He watched until George became
still, then smiled and once more arranged himself to face the sea.
"There was nothing much you could do about it, was there?
Although you certainly tried, like a good son, a good brother. But
that sort of thing is contagious, in a way—did you ever think of
that? It's ironic, but they get to like things that way. That's what
I think, anyway. Do you see what I mean? So the damage was already
done, George, long before she met me; probably before you decided to
take matters into your own clumsy hands .... "

George saw the shell casings sitting on the
bookshelf, and suddenly his feet were no longer nailed to the floor.
Carlyle shook his head regretfully at the ocean. "It must have
been a terrible scene," he said, "just dreadful, such an
awful thing you did, and all the time—you'll never know—maybe
they liked it! After all," he said, beginning to turn, "she
didn't let you save her in the end, did she, and Audrey—”

George struck him.

* * *

He sat upright, now, at his desk, his heart beating
fast, looking out the window, not seeing his garden. A long time
later he noticed that the sun was getting low, and he was hungry.

He forced other things from his mind and thought
about tomato soup.

Then he made himself think about his daughter. She
had sounded happy that he was coming. She'd been suggesting it for
months, ever since her mother died.

George tried to remember if she had a balcony. Maybe
he could grow things in pots.

But he knew he never would.
 

CHAPTER 29

For several minutes after he knocked on the door,
Alberg heard only silence within the house. He was just about to go
around to the garden and have a look there when the door opened and
George Wilcox was looking up at him.

"You know," said George, "I kind of
thought it might be you. The perfect end to a perfect day, as they
say.”

He looked disarranged. The deep waves in his hair
were askew, as though he'd been abstractedly running his hands
through it. The ubiquitous gray cardigan was absent. He was wearing
an open-necked white shirt which revealed the sagging flesh of his
neck, wide maroon suspenders, shapeless gray pants and scuffed
leather slippers.

"Cassandra been talking to you?” said George.

"
Cassandra?" said Alberg. "No. Why?”

"
Oh, I don't know. The two of you seem to be
pretty thick these days." He opened the door wider and gestured
to Alberg to come in. "I thought she might have told you about
my plans,” he said, as Alberg squeezed past him into the long,
narrow living room.
 
"What
plans?" His eyes went automatically to the place on the
windowsill where the shell casings had stood, and he felt a welcome
rush of anger. 'Nice old guy or not, the man had killed someone.

It was hard to believe, all right, he thought,
watching George shuffle slowly toward the kitchen.

"
What plans?" he said again, following the
old man into the den, where a large suitcase, half filled with
clothing, lay open on the desk.

"
I'm moving,” said George. "To Vancouver.
I'm going to live with my daughter. "

Alberg leaned against the doorway. He told himself to
remain calm. He told himself to be patient. He reminded himself that
George Wilcox was no fool.

"
What brought this on?" he said, watching
the old man stuff a couple of books into the suitcase. There was a
pile of them on the desk, next to a framed photograph, face down.

"People dying brought it on," said George.
He got two more books from the pile and fitted them in. "I
figure I'll be better off living with somebody who's still a long way
from crapping out."

"
What about your garden?"

"What about it? There's gardens in Stanley Park.
Stanley Park's practically across the street from Carol's place."
He glanced up at Alberg. "Sit yourself down in the chair, here.”

He pushed it toward him. "I don't like you
looming in the door like that. You're blocking some of my light."

Alberg sat. For a while they didn't speak. George
continued to pack, stuffing books in among pajamas and pants and
socks and underwear. Finally he picked up the photograph. He studied
it for several seconds, then abruptly held it out to Alberg. "This
is my sister," he said. "Audrey."

Alberg, accepting the photograph, saw something in
George's eyes: whether irony or amusement, he couldn't tell.

He looked at George's sister.

His shock was almost physical. The hair was shorter,
and done in a pageboy style now out of fashion, the nose was slightly
longer, the mouth was slightly smaller, but the resemblance to
Cassandra was striking.

Alberg looked from the photo to George; he knew his
astonishment was obvious. But George was busily packing more books,
looking, Alberg thought, like a squirrel creating his winter's cache.

"I thought you might like to have a look at her,
" said George, "seeing you've expressed such a curiosity. "
He took the photograph back and packed it carefully between two
flannel shirts.

"
I'd show you the one of Myra and Carol, too,”
he said, "but it's already packed away." He straightened up
and rubbed the small of his back. "Time to take a break. Bring
that chair into the kitchen. We'll sit in there for a while."

He looked at Alberg, waiting for him to stand and
pick up the chair, and Alberg realized that there was to be no
discussion of the resemblance between his sister and Cassandra
Mitchell. He got up and moved the chair and sat in it quickly, before
George had a chance to make him take the leather one.

"Now," said George, arranging his hands in
his lap, "since you didn't know I'm leaving, you haven't come to
say goodbye. And since you didn't find anything out there in the
ocean that's got to do with me, you haven't come to arrest me for
anything. So tell me, policeman. Why are you here?"

He would miss coming to this house, Alberg realized.
He would miss the flowers in the garden, and the sound of the sea on
the beach, and sitting like a benevolent hunter in George Wilcox's
kitchen, reluctantly enjoying his company.

"I've come to tell you a story,” he said, and
smiled, and stretched out his long legs.

"I'm a busy man," said George shortly. "Got
no time for stories. Not today.” '

"
It won't take long," said Alberg. "I
might get some of it wrong, but if I do, you can correct me."

"Ir's your story," said George. "Why
should I correct you?"

"
It's your story," said Alberg. "I'm
only telling it." He pulled cigarettes and a lighter from his
pocket and reached for the ashtray on the tobacco stand next to
George's chair. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he said politely.

George didn't answer, just stared at him, stubbornly.

"Last Tuesday morning, Carlyle Burke phoned
you," said Alberg. He lit a cigarette and put the package and
the lighter back in his jacket pocket. "He asked you to have
lunch with him. Now we both know how you felt about old Carlyle, so I
won't even speculate about how he persuaded you to go, but he did,
and you went." He leaned toward George. "You didn't intend
to kill him. I'm sure of that. You're not a killer, George.”