Tom walked in a straight line toward the rue de Rivoli. It was dull and dark at this time of night, and shop windows were barred with steel bands and chains against the theft of tourist-aimed crap they displayed—silk handkerchiefs with “Paris” printed on them, overpriced silk ties and shirts. He thought of taking a taxi to the sixth arrondissement, strolling about in that more cheerful atmosphere and having a beer at Lippe’s. But he did not want possibly to run into Chris. He went back to his hotel, and put in a call to Jeff’s studio.
This call (the operator said) would take forty-five minutes, the lines were crowded, but it came through in half an hour.
“Hello?— Paris?” Jeff’s voice came like that of a drowning dolphin.
“It’s Tom in Paris! Can you hear me?”
“Badly!”
It was not bad enough for Tom to attempt a second call. He pursued: “I don’t know where Bernard is. Have you heard from him?”
“Why are you in Paris?”
Rather useless, under the circumstances of near inaudibility, to explain that. Tom managed to learn that Jeff and Ed had not heard anything from Bernard.
Then Jeff said, “They’re trying to find Derwatt . . .” (Muttered English curses.) “My God, if I can’t hear you, I doubt if anybody in between can hear a bloody . . .”
“D’accord!” Tom responded. “Tell me all your troubles.”
“Murchison’s wife may . . .”
“What?” Good God, the telephone was a maddening device. People should revert to pen and paper and the packet-boat. “Can’t hear a damned word!”
“We sold ‘The Tub’ . . . They are asking . . . for Derwatt! Tom, if you’d only . . .”
They were suddenly cut off.
Tom banged the telephone down in anger, gripped it and lifted it again, ready to blast at the operator downstairs. But he put the telephone down. It wasn’t her fault. It was nobody’s fault, nobody who could be found.
Well, Mrs. Murchison was coming over, as Tom had foreseen. And maybe she knew about the lavender theory. And “The Tub” was sold, to whom? And Bernard was—where? Athens? Would he repeat Derwatt’s act and drown himself off a Greek island? Tom saw himself going to Athens. What was that island of Derwatt’s? Icaria? Where was it? Find out tomorrow in a tourist agency.
Tom sat down at the writing table and dashed off a note:
Dear Jeff,
In case you see Bernard, I am supposed to be dead. Bernard thinks he has killed me. I will explain later. Don’t pass this on to anyone, it is only in case you see Bernard and he says he has killed me—pretend to believe him and don’t do anything. Stall Bernard, please.
All the best,
Tom
Tom went downstairs and posted the letter with a seventy-centime stamp bought at the desk. Jeff probably wouldn’t get it till Tuesday. But it was not the kind of message he dared send by cable. Or did he? I must lie low even under ground re Bernard. No, that wasn’t clear enough. He was still pondering when Heloise came in the door. Tom was glad to see that she had her small Gucci valise with her.
“Good evening, Mme. Stevens,” Tom said in French. “You are Mme. Stevens this evening.” Tom thought of steering her to the desk to register, then decided not to bother, and led Heloise to the lift.
Three pairs of eyes followed them. Was she really his wife?
“Tome, you are pale!”
“I’ve had a busy day.”
“Ah, what is that—”
“Sh-h” She meant the back of his head. Heloise noticed everything. Tom thought he could tell her a few things, but not everything. The grave—that would be too horrible. Besides, it would make Bernard out a killer, which he wasn’t. Tom tipped the lift man, who insisted on carrying Heloise’s valise.
“What happened to your head?”
Tom took off the dark green and blue muffler that he had been wearing high around his neck to catch the blood. “Bernard hit me. Now don’t be worried, darling. Take off your shoes. Your clothes. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like some champagne?”
“Yes. Why not?”
Tom ordered it by telephone. Tom felt light-headed, as if he had a fever, but he knew it was only fatigue and loss of blood. Had he checked over the house for blood drops? Yes, he remembered going upstairs at the last minute especially to look for blood anywhere.
“Where is Bernard?” Heloise had slipped off her shoes and was barefoot.
“I really don’t know. Maybe Paris.”
“You had a fight? He wouldn’t leave?”
“Oh—a slight fight. He is very nervous just now. It is nothing serious, nothing.”
“But why did you come to Paris? Is he still at the house?”
That was a possibility, Tom realized, though Bernard’s things had been gone from the house. Tom had looked. And Bernard couldn’t get back into the house without breaking a French window. “He’s not at the house, no.”
“I want to see your head. Come into the bathroom where there is more light.”
A knock came at the door. They were quick with the champagne. The portly, gray-haired waiter grinned as the cork popped. The bottle crunched pleasantly into a bucket of ice.
“Merci, m’sieur,” said the waiter, taking Tom’s banknote.
Tom and Heloise lifted their glasses, Heloise a little uncertainly, and drank. She had to see his head. Tom submitted. He took off his shirt, and bent over and closed his eyes, as Heloise washed the back of his head in the basin with a face towel. He closed his ears, or tried to, to her exclamations which he had anticipated.
“It isn’t a big cut, or it would’ve kept on bleeding!” Tom said. The washing was making it bleed again, of course. “Get another towel—get something,” Tom said, and returned to the bedroom, where he sank gently to the floor. He was not out, so he crawled to the bathroom where the floor was of tile.
Heloise was talking about adhesive tape.
Tom fainted for a minute, though he didn’t mention it. He crawled to the toilet and threw up briefly. He used some of Heloise’s wet towels for his face and forehead. Then a couple of minutes later, he was standing at the basin, sipping champagne, while Heloise made a bandage out of a small white handkerchief. “Why do you carry adhesive tape?” Tom asked.
“I use it for my nails.”
How, Tom wondered? He held the tape while she cut it. “Pink adhesive tape,” Tom said, “is a sign of racial discrimination. Black Power in the States ought to get onto that—and stop it.”
Heloise didn’t understand. Tom had spoken in English.
“I will explain it tomorrow—maybe.”
Then they were in bed, in the luxurious wide bed with four thick pillows, and Heloise had donated her pajamas to put under Tom’s head, in case he bled anymore, but he thought he had almost stopped. Heloise was naked, and she felt unbelievably smooth, like something of polished marble, only of course she was soft, and even warm. It was not an evening for making love, but Tom felt very happy, and not at all worried about tomorrow—which was perhaps unwise of him, but that night, or rather early morning, he indulged himself. In the darkness, he heard the hiss of champagne bubbles as Heloise sipped her glass, and the click as she set it down on the night table. Then his cheek was against her breast. Heloise, you’re the only woman in the world who has ever made me think of now, Tom wanted to say, but he was too tired, and the remark was probably not important.
In the morning, Tom had some explaining to do to Heloise, and he had to do it subtly. He said that Bernard Tufts was upset because of his English girlfriend, that he might kill himself, and Tom wanted to find him. He might be in Athens. And since the police wanted to keep Tom in their sight because of Murchison’s disappearance, it was best that the police thought he was in Paris, staying with friends, perhaps. Tom explained that he was awaiting a passport which could come only by Monday evening at best. Tom and Heloise were breakfasting in bed.
“I don’t understand why you bother about this fou who even hit you.”
“Friendship,” Tom said. “Now, darling, why don’t you go back to Belle Ombre and keep Mme. Annette company? Or—we can ring her and you can spend today and tonight with me,” Tom said more cheerfully. “But we’d better change hotels today, just for safety.”
“Oh, Tome—” But Heloise didn’t mean her disappointed tone, Tom knew. She liked doing things that were a little sly, keeping secrets when secrets were unnecessary. The stories she’d told Tom about her adolescent intrigues with girl schoolmates, and boys, too, to evade her parents’ surveillance, matched the inventions of Cocteau.
“We’ll have another name today. What name would you like? Got to be something American or English, because of me. You’re just my French wife, you see?” Tom was speaking in English.
“Hm-m. Gladstone?”
Tom laughed.
“Is there something funny about Gladstone?”
How Heloise hated the English language, because she thought it was full of dirty double meanings that she could never master. “No, it’s just that he invented a suitcase.”
“He invented the suitcase! I don’t believe you! Who could invent a suitcase? It is too simple! Really, Tome!”
They moved to the Hotel Ambassadeur, in the boulevard Haussmann, in the ninth arrondissement. Conservative and respectable. Here, Tom registered as William Tenyck, with wife Mireille. Tom made a second call to Reeves, and left his new name, address, and telephone number, PRO 72-21, with the man with the German accent who frequently answered Reeves’s telephone.
Tom and Heloise went to a film in the afternoon, and returned to the hotel at 6 p.m. No message as yet from Reeves. Heloise rang Mme. Annette, at Tom’s suggestion, and Tom spoke with Madame also.
“Yes, we are in Paris,” Tom said. “I am sorry I didn’t leave you a note. . . . Perhaps Mme. Heloise will return late tomorrow night, I am not sure.” He handed the phone back to Heloise.
Bernard had certainly not been in evidence at Belle Ombre, or Mme. Annette would have mentioned him.
They went to bed early. Tom had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Heloise to cut away the silly strips of adhesive on the back of his head, and she had even bought some lavender-colored French antiseptic with which she soaked the patch of bandage. She had rinsed his muffler out at the Ritz, and it had been dry by morning. Just before midnight, their telephone rang. Reeves said that a friend would bring him what he needed tomorrow night Monday on Lufthansa flight 311 due at Orly at 12:15 a.m.
“And his name?” Tom asked.
“It’s a woman. Gerda Schneider. She knows what you look like.”
“Okay,” Tom said, quite pleased with the service in view of the fact Reeves hadn’t yet received his photographs. “Want to come with me tomorrow night to Orly?” Tom asked Heloise when he had hung up.
“I will drive you. I want to know if you are safe.”
Tom told her that the station wagon was at the Melun station. She perhaps could get André, a gardener they sometimes used, to go with her to fetch it.
They decided to stay another night at the Ambassadeur, in case there was any hitch about the passport on Monday night. Tom thought of catching a night flight to Greece in the small hours of Tuesday, but this couldn’t be determined until he had the passport in hand. There was also the matter of acquainting himself with the signature on the passport. All this, he realized, to save Bernard’s life. Tom wished he could share his thoughts, his feelings, with Heloise, but he was afraid he could not make her understand. Would she understand if she knew about the forgeries? Yes, she might, intellectually, if he could use such a word. But Heloise would say, “Why is it all on your shoulders? Can’t Jeff and Ed look for their friend—their breadwinner?” Tom did not begin the story to her. It was best to be alone, stripped for action, in a sense. Stripped of sympathy, even of tender thoughts from home.
And all went well. Tom and Heloise arrived at Orly at midnight Monday, and the flight came in on time, and Gerda Schneider—or a woman who used that name—accosted Tom at the upstairs gate where he waited.
“Tom Ripley” she said, smiling.
“Yes. Frau Schneider?”
She was a woman of about thirty, blonde, quite handsome and intelligent looking, and quite unmade-up, as if she had just washed her face in cold water and put on some clothes. “Mr. Ripley, I am indeed honored to meet you,” she said in English. “I have heard so much about you.”
Tom laughed out loud at her polite and amused tone. It was a surprise to him that Reeves could muster such interesting people to work for him. “I’m with my wife. She’s downstairs. You’re staying the night in Paris?”
She was. She even had a hotel room booked, at the Pont-Royal in the rue Montalembert. Tom introduced her to Heloise. Tom fetched the car, while Heloise and Frau Schneider waited for him not far from where Tom had deposited Murchison’s suitcase. They drove all the way to Paris, to the Pont-Royal, before Frau Schneider said:
“I shall give you the package here.”
They were still in the car. Gerda Schneider opened her large handbag and removed a white envelope which was rather thick.
Tom was parked, and it was somewhat dark. He took out the green American passport and stuck it in his jacket pocket. The passport had been wrapped in apparently blank sheets of paper. “Thank you,” Tom said. “I’ll be in touch with Reeves. How is he? . . .”
A few minutes later, Tom and Heloise were driving toward the Hotel Ambassadeur.
“She is quite pretty, for a German,” Heloise said.
In their room, Tom took a look at the passport. It was a well-worn thing, and Reeves had abrased his photograph to match it. Robert Fiedler Mackay was his name, age 31, born in Salt Lake City, Utah, occupation engineer, dependants none. The signature was slender and high, all the letters connected, a handwriting Tom associated with a couple of boring characters, American men, he had known.
“Darling—Heloise—I am now Robert,” Tom said in French. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to practice my signature for a while.”
Heloise was leaning against the commode, watching him.
“Oh, darling! Don’t worry!” Tom put his arms around her. “Let’s have champagne! All goes well!”
BY 2 P.M. ON TUESDAY, Tom was in Athens—more chromed, cleaner than the Athens he had seen last, five or six years ago. Tom registered at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, titied up a little in his room, which gave onto Constitution Square, then went out to look around and to inquire at a few other hotels for Bernard Tufts. Impossible to believe Bernard had registered at the Grande Bretagne, Tom thought, the most expensive hotel in Athens. Tom was even sixty percent sure Bernard was not in Athens, but had made his way to Derwatt’s island, or to some island; even so Tom felt it would be stupid not to ask at a few Athens hotels.
Tom’s story was that he had been separated from a friend whom he was supposed to meet—Bernard Tufts. No, his own name didn’t matter, but when asked it, Tom gave it—Robert Mackay.
“What is the situation now with the islands?” Tom asked at one reasonably decent hotel, where he thought they might know something about tourism. Tom spoke in French here, though in other hotels, English had been spoken, a little. “Icaria, in particular.”
“Icaria?” with surprise.
It was considerably east, one of the northernmost of the Dodecanese. No airport. There were boats, but the man was not sure how frequently they went.
Tom got there on Wednesday. He had to hire a speedboat with a skipper from Mykonos. Icaria—after Tom’s brief and instantaneous optimism about it—was a crashing disappointment. The town of Armemisti (or something like that) was sleepy-looking, and Tom saw no Westerners at all, only sailors mending nets, and locals sitting in tiny cafés. From here, after inquiring if there had been an Englishman named Bernard Tufts, dark-haired, slender, etc., Tom made a telephone call to another town on the island called Agios Kirycos. A hotelkeeper there checked for him, and said he would check at another hostelry and ring back. He did not ring back. Tom gave
it up. A needle in a haystack, Tom thought. Maybe Bernard had chosen another island.
Still, this island, because it had been the scene of Derwatt’s suicide, had a faint and filtered mystery for Tom. On these yellow-white beaches, somewhere, Philip Derwatt had taken a walk out to sea and had never returned. Tom doubted that any inhabitant of Icaria would react to the name Derwatt, but Tom tried it with the café proprietor, without success. Derwatt had been here scarcely a month, Tom thought, and that six long years ago. Tom refreshed himself at a little restaurant with a plate of stewed tomato and rice and lamb, then extricated the skipper from another bar-restaurant where the skipper had said he would be until 4 p.m., in case Tom wanted him.
They sped back to Mykonos, where the skipper was based. Tom had his suitcase with him. Tom felt restless, exhausted and frustrated. He decided to go back to Athens tonight. He sat in a café, dejectedly drinking a cup of sweet coffee. Then he went back to the dock where he had met the Greek skipper, and found him after going to his house, where he was having supper.
“How much to take me to Piraeus tonight?” Tom asked. Tom still had some American traveler’s checks.
Much to-do, a recitation of difficulties, but money solved everything. Tom slept part of the way, tied onto a wooden bench in the small cabin of the boat. It was 5 a.m. or so when they got to the Piraeus. The skipper Antinou was giddy with joy or money or fatigue, or maybe ouzo, Tom didn’t know. Antinou said he had friends in Piraeus who were going to be happy to see him.
The dawn cold was cutting. Tom bludgeoned a taxi driver, verbally, by promising handfuls of money, to take him to Constitution Square in Athens, and to the door of the Grande Bretagne.
Tom was given a room, not the same one he had had. They had not finished cleaning that, the night porter told him quite honestly. Tom wrote Jeff’s studio number on a piece of paper and asked the porter to put the call through to London.
Then he went upstairs to his room and had a bath, listening all the while for the telephone’s ringing. It was a quarter to 8 a.m. before the call came through.
“This is Tom in Athens,” Tom said. He had been almost asleep in his bed.