“Were you here when my husband visited?”
“No, I was in Greece,” Heloise replied. “I did not meet your husband.”
Mrs. Murchison stood up and looked at the paintings, and Tom turned on two lamps in addition to the other light, so she could see them better.
“I’m fondest of ‘Man in Chair,’” Tom said. “That’s why it’s over the fireplace.”
Mrs. Murchison seemed to like it, too.
Tom was expecting her to say something with regard to her husband’s theory about Derwatt being forged. She did not. She did not make a comment on the lavenders or the purples in either of the paintings. Mrs. Murchison asked the same questions that Inspector Webster had, whether her husband had been feeling well when he left, whether he had an appointment with anyone.
“He seemed in very good spirits,” Tom said, “and he didn’t mention any appointment, as I said to Inspector Webster. What is strange is that your husband’s painting was stolen. He had it with him at Orly, very well wrapped.”
“Yes, I know.” Mrs. Murchison was smoking one of her Chesterfields. “The painting hasn’t been found. But neither has my husband or his passport.” She smiled. She had a comfortable, kindly face, a little plump, which precluded any creases of age as yet.
Tom poured another cup of tea for her. Mrs. Murchison was looking at Heloise. An assessing glance? Wondering what Heloise thought of all this? Wondering how much Heloise knew? Wondering if there was anything to know in the first place? Or which side Heloise would be on if her husband were guilty of anything?
“Inspector Webster told me that you were a friend of Dickie Greenleaf, who was killed in Italy,” Mrs. Murchison said.
“Yes,” Tom said. “He wasn’t killed, he was a suicide. I’d known him about five months—maybe six.”
“If he was not a suicide—I think Inspector Webster seems doubtful about it—then who might have killed him? And why?” asked Mrs. Murchison. “Or have you any ideas on the subject?”
Tom was standing up, and he planted his feet firmly on the floor, and sipped his tea. “I have no ideas on the subject. Dickie killed himself. I don’t think he could find his way—as a painter, and certainly not in his father’s business. Shipbuilding or boatbuilding. Dickie had lots of friends, but not sinister friends.” Tom paused, and so did everyone else. “Dickie had no reason to have enemies,” Tom added.
“Nor did my husband—except possibly if there is some forging of Derwatts going on.”
“Well—that I wouldn’t know about, living here.”
“There may be a ring of some kind.” She looked at Heloise. “I hope you understand what we’re saying, Mme. Ripley.”
Tom said to Heloise in French, “Mme. Murchison wonders if there might be a gang of dishonest people—in regard to Derwatt’s paintings.”
“I understand,” Heloise said.
Heloise was dubious about the Dickie affair, Tom knew. But Tom knew he could count on her. Heloise was that curious bit of a crook herself. At any rate, before a stranger, Heloise would not appear doubtful of what Tom said.
“Would you like to see the upstairs of the house?” Tom asked Mrs. Murchison. “Or the grounds before it gets dark?”
Mrs. Murchison said she would.
She and Tom went upstairs. Mrs. Murchison wore a light-gray woolen dress. She was well-built—perhaps she rode horseback or golfed—though no one could have called her fat. People never did call these sturdy sportswomen fat, though what else were they? Heloise had declined to come with them. Tom showed Mrs. Murchison his guest room, opening the door widely and putting on the light. Then in a free and easy manner, he showed her the rest of his upstairs rooms, including Heloise’s, whose door he opened, without turning the light on, because Mrs. Murchison did not seem much interested in seeing it.
“I thank you,” said Mrs. Murchison, and they went downstairs.
Tom felt sorry for her. He felt sorry that he had killed her husband. But, he reminded himself, he could not afford to reproach himself for that now: if he did, he would be exactly like Bernard, who wanted to tell all at the expense of several other people. “Did you see Derwatt in London?”
“I saw him, yes,” said Mrs. Murchison, seating herself on the sofa again, but rather on the edge of it.
“What’s he like? I came within an inch of meeting him the day of the opening.”
“Oh, he has a beard— Pleasant enough but not talkative,” she finished, not interested in Derwatt. “He did say he didn’t think there was any forgery of his work going on—and that he’d said that to Tommy.”
“Yes, I think your husband told me that, too. And you believe Derwatt?”
“I think so. Derwatt seems sincere. What else can one say?” She leaned back on the sofa.
Tom stepped forward. “Some tea? How about a scotch?”
“I think I’d like a scotch, thank you.”
Tom went to the kitchen for ice. Heloise joined him and helped him.
“What is this about Dickie?” Heloise asked.
“Nothing,” Tom said. “I would tell you if it were something. She knows I was a friend of Dickie’s. Would you like some white wine?”
“Yes.”
They carried the ice and glasses in. Mrs. Murchison wanted a taxi. To Melun. She excused herself for asking for it just then, but she did not know how long it would take.
“I can drive you to Melun,” Tom said, “if you want a train to Paris.”
“No, I wanted to go to Melun to speak with the police there. I called them from Orly.”
“Then I’ll take you,” Tom said. “How’s your French? Mine’s not perfect, but—”
“Oh, I think I can get along. Thank you very much.” She smiled a little.
She wanted to speak with the police without him, Tom supposed.
“Was there anyone else at the house when my husband was here?” Mrs. Murchison asked.
“Only our housekeeper, Mme. Annette. Where is Mme. Annette, Heloise?”
She was perhaps in her room, perhaps out for some last minute shopping, Heloise thought, and Tom went to Mme. Annette’s room and knocked. Mme. Annette was sewing something. Tom asked if she could come in for a moment and meet Mme. Murchison.
In a moment or two, Mme. Annette came in, and her face showed interest because Mme. Murchison was the wife of the man who was missing. “The last time I saw him,” said Mme. Annette, “m’sieur had lunch and then he left with M. Tome.”
Mme. Annette had evidently forgot, Tom thought, that she had not actually seen M. Murchison walking out of the house.
“Is there something you wish, M. Tome?” Mme. Annette asked.
But they didn’t need anything, and Mrs. Murchison apparently had no more questions. Mme. Annette a bit reluctantly left the room.
“What do you think happened to my husband?” Mrs. Murchison asked, looking at Heloise, then back at Tom.
“If I were to guess anything,” Tom said, “it would be that someone knew he was carrying a valuable painting. Not a very valuable painting, to be sure, but a Derwatt. I gather that he spoke to a few people about it in London. If someone tried to kidnap him and the painting, they might have gone too far and killed him. Then they would have to hide his body somewhere. Or else—he’s being held alive somewhere.”
“But that sounds as if my husband is right in thinking ‘The Clock’ is a forgery. As you say, the picture wasn’t very valuable, maybe because it isn’t very big. But maybe they’re trying to hush up the whole idea of Derwatt’s being forged.”
“But I don’t believe your husband’s picture was a forgery. And he was dubious when he left. As I said to Webster, I don’t think Tommy was going to bother showing ‘The Clock’ to the expert in London. I didn’t ask him, as I recall. But I had the idea he had second thoughts after seeing my two. I may be wrong.”
A silence. Mrs. Murchison was wondering what to say or ask next. The only important thing was the people around the Buckmaster Gallery, Tom supposed. And how coul
d she ask him about them?
The taxi arrived.
“Thank you, Mr. Ripley,” Mrs. Murchison said. “And Madame. I may see you again if—”
“Any time,” Tom said. He saw her out to the taxi.
When he came back into the living room, Tom walked slowly to the sofa and sank down in it. The Melun police couldn’t tell Mrs. Murchison anything new, or they would certainly have told him something by now, Tom thought. Heloise had said they had not rung while he had been gone. If the police had found Murchison’s body in the Loing or wherever it was—
“Chéri, you are so nervous,” Heloise said. “Take a drink.”
“I might,” Tom said, pouring it. There had been no item in the London papers that Tom had seen on the plane about Derwatt turning up again in London. The English didn’t think it important apparently. Tom was glad, because he did not want Bernard, wherever he was, to know that he had somehow climbed out of the grave. Just why Tom didn’t want Bernard to know this was hazy in Tom’s mind. But it had something to do with what Tom felt was Bernard’s destiny.
“You know, Tome, the Berthelins want us to come for an apéritif tonight at seven. It would do you good. I said you might be here tonight.”
The Berthelins lived in a town seven kilometers away. “Can I—” The telephone interrupted Tom. He motioned for Heloise to answer it.
“Shall I say to anyone that you are here?”
He smiled, pleased at her concern. “Yes. And maybe it’s Noëlle asking your advice about what to wear Tuesday.”
“Oui. Yes. Bonjour.” She smiled at Tom. “One moment.” She handed him the telephone. “An English trying to speak French.”
“Hello, Tom, this is Jeff. Are you all right?”
“Oh, perfectly.”
Jeff wasn’t, quite. His stutter had come back, and he was talking quickly and softly. Tom had to ask him to speak up.
“I said Webster is asking about Derwatt again, where he is. If he’s left.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said we didn’t know if he’d left or not.”
“You might say to Webster that—he seemed depressed and might want to be by himself for a while.”
“I think Webster might want to see you again. He’s coming over to join Mrs. Murchison. That’s the reason I’m ringing.”
Tom sighed. “When?”
“It could be today. I can’t tell what he’s up to. . . .”
When they had hung up, Tom felt stunned, and also angry, or irritated. Face Webster again for what? Tom preferred to leave the house.
“Chéri, what is it?”
“I can’t go to the Berthelins,” Tom said, and laughed. The Berthelins were the least of his problems. “Darling, I must go to Paris tonight, to Salzburg tomorrow. Maybe Salzburg tonight, if there is a plane. The English Inspector Webster may telephone this evening. You must say I went to Paris on business, to talk to my accountant, anything. You don’t know where I’m staying. At some hotel, you don’t know which hotel.”
“But what are you running from, Tome?”
Tom gasped. Running? Running from? Running to? “I don’t know.” He had begun to sweat. He wanted another shower, but was afraid to take the time. “Tell Mme. Annette also that I had to dash up to Paris.”
Tom went upstairs and took his suitcase out of the closet. He would wear the ugly new raincoat again, repart his hair, and become Robert Mackay again. Heloise came in to help him.
“I’d love a shower,” Tom said, and at that instant heard Heloise turn on the shower in his bathroom. Tom jumped out of his clothes and stepped under the shower, which was lukewarm, just right.
“Can I come with you?”
How he wished she could! “Darling, it’s the passport thing. I can’t have Mme. Ripley crossing the French-German or Austrian border with Robert Mackay. Mackay, that swine!” Tom got out of the shower.
“The English inspector is coming because of Murchison? Did you kill him, Tome?” Heloise looked at him, frowning, anxious, but far from hysteria, Tom saw.
She knew about Dickie, Tom realized. Heloise had never said it in so many words, but she knew. He might as well tell her, Tom thought, because she might be of help, and in any case the state of affairs was so desperate that if he lost, or tripped anywhere, everything was up, including his marriage. It occurred to him, couldn’t he go as Tom Ripley to Salzburg? Take Heloise with him? But much as he would have liked to, he didn’t know what he would have to do in Salzburg, or where the trail would lead from there. He should take both passports, however, his own and Mackay’s.
“You killed him, Tome? Here?”
“I had to kill him to save a lot of other people.”
“The Derwatt people? Why?” She began to speak in French. “Why are those people so important?”
“It’s Derwatt who is dead—for years,” Tom said. “Murchison was going to—to expose that fact.”
“He is dead?”
“Yes, and I impersonated him twice in London,” Tom said. The word in French sounded so innocent and gay: he had “représenté” Derwatt twice in London. “Now they are looking for Derwatt—maybe not desperately just now. But nothing falls into place just yet.”
“You have not been forging his paintings, too?”
Tom laughed. “Heloise, you do me credit. It is Bernard the fou who has been forging. He wants to stop it. Oh, it is very complicated to explain.”
“Why must you look for the fou Bernard? Oh, Tome, stay away from it. . . .”
Tom did not listen to the rest of what she said. He suddenly knew why he must find Bernard. He had suddenly a vision. Tom picked up his suitcase. “Good-bye, my angel. Can you drive me to Melun? And avoid the police station, please?”
Downstairs, Mme. Annette was in the kitchen, and Tom said a hasty good-bye from the front hall, averting his head so she might not notice the different parting in his hair. The ugly, but perhaps lucky, raincoat was over his arm.
Tom promised to keep in touch with Heloise, though he said he would sign a different name to any telegram that he sent. They kissed good-bye in the Alfa Romeo. And Tom left the comfort of her arms and boarded a first-class carriage for Paris.
In Paris, he discovered that there was no direct plane for Salzburg, and only one daily flight of use, on which one had to change planes at Frankfurt to get to Salzburg. The plane to Frankfurt left at 2:40 p.m. every day. Tom stayed in a hotel not far from the Gare de Lyon. Just before midnight, he risked a telephone call to Heloise. He could not bear to think of her there at the house alone, possibly facing Webster, not knowing where he was. She had said she was not going to the Berthelins.
“Darling, hello. If Webster is there, say I have got the wrong number, and hang up,” Tom said.
“M’sieur, I think you have made a mistake,” Heloise’s voice said, and the telephone was hung up.
Tom’s spirit sank, his knees sank, and he sat down on his hotel room bed. He reproached himself for having rung her. It was better to work alone, always. Surely Webster would realize, or very much suspect, that it was he who had rung.
What was Heloise going through now? Was it better that he had told her the truth or not?
22
In the morning, Tom bought his airline ticket, and by 2:20 p.m. was at Orly. If Bernard were not in Salzburg, where then? Rome? Tom hoped not. It would be difficult to find anyone in Rome. Tom kept his head down and did not look around at Orly, because it was possible that Webster had called someone over from London to look out for him. That depended on how hot things were, and Tom didn’t know. Why was Webster calling on him again? Did Webster suspect he had impersonated Derwatt? If so, his second impersonation with a different passport to enter and leave England was a slight point in his favor: at least Tom Ripley hadn’t been in London during the second impersonation.
There was a wait of an hour in the Frankfurt terminus, then Tom boarded a four-engined plane of the Austrian Airlines with the charming name of Johann Strauss on its fus
elage. At the Salzburg terminus, he began to feel safer. Tom rode in on the bus to Mirabeleplatz, and since he wanted to stay at the Goldener Hirsch, he thought it best to ring first, because it was the best hotel and often full. They had a room with bath to offer. Tom gave his name as Thomas Ripley. Tom decided to walk to the hotel, because the distance was short. He had been to Salzburg twice before, once with Heloise. On the pavements, there were a few men in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats, their costume complete down to the hunting knives in their knee-high stockings. Rather large old hotels, which Tom recalled vaguely from other trips, displayed their menus on big placards propped beside their front doors: full meals featuring Wiener schnitzel at twenty-five and thirty schillings.
Then there was the River Salzach and the main bridge—the Staatsbrücke was it called?—and a couple of smaller bridges in view. Tom took the main bridge. He was watching everywhere for the gaunt and probably stooping figure of Bernard. The gray river flowed quickly, and there were sizable rocks along either green bank over which the water frothed. It was dusk, just after 6 p.m. Lights began to come on irregularly in the older half of the city that he was approaching, lights that jumped higher like constellations onto the great hill of the Feste Hohensalzburg and onto the Mönchsberg. Tom entered a narrow short street that led to the Getreidegasse.
Tom’s room had a view on the Sigmundsplatz at the rear of the hotel: to the right was the “horse bath” fountain backed by a small rocky cliff, and in front was an ornate well. In the morning, they sold fruit and vegetables from pushcarts here, Tom remembered. Tom took a few minutes to breathe, to open his suitcase, and walk in socked feet on the immaculately polished pinewood floors of his room. The furnishings were predominantly Austrian green, the walls white, the windows double-glazed with deep embrasures. Ah, Austria! Now to go down and have a Doppelespresso at the Café Tomaselli just a few steps away. And this might not be a bad idea, as it was a big coffee house and Bernard might be there.
But Tom had a slivowitz instead at Tomaselli’s, because it wasn’t the hour for coffee. Bernard was not here. Newspapers in several languages hung on rotating racks, and Tom browsed in the London Times and the Paris Herald-Tribune, without finding anything about Bernard (not that he expected to in the Herald-Tribune) or about Thomas Murchison or his wife’s visit to London or France. Good.