Ripley Under Water

  Tom listened. Antoine waxed almost poetic as he described his father’s love of Tangier and Casablanca.

  “It is the people, of course it is,” said Antoine, “who make the country. They rightly possess their country—and yet they make such a mess from a French point of view.”

  Ah, yes. What to say about that? Only sigh. Tom ventured: “To change the subject”—he swirled his tall gin and tonic and the ice rattled—“are your neighbors here quiet?” He nodded toward the Pritchard estate.

  “Quiet?” Antoine’s lower lip came out. “Since you ask,” he said with a chuckle, “they were twice playing loud music. Late, around midnight. After! Pop music.” He said pop music as if it was amazing that anyone over twelve would play pop music. “But not for long. One half-hour.”

  Suspicious length of time, Tom thought, and Antoine Grais was just the man to time such a phenomenon by his watch. “You can hear it here, you mean?”

  “Oh, yes. And we’re nearly half a kilometer away! They had it really loud!”

  Tom smiled. “Other complaints? They are not borrowing your lawnmower yet?”

  “Non-n,” Antoine growled, and drank his Campari.

  Tom was not going to say a word about Pritchard photographing Belle Ombre. Antoine’s vague suspicion of Tom would congeal a bit, the last thing Tom wanted. The whole village had finally known that the police, both French and English, had come to speak with Tom at Belle Ombre just after Murchison’s disappearance. The police had not made a noise about it, no cars with sirens, but in a small town everyone knew everything, and Tom could not afford more. He had warned Heloise before coming to the Grais that she was not to mention seeing Pritchard taking pictures.

  The boy and girl came in, back from swimming somewhere, smiling, damp-haired and barefoot, but still not obstreperous: the Grais wouldn’t have permitted that. Edouard and his sister said their “Bon soir” and departed for the kitchen, Agnes following.

  “A friend in Moret has a pool,” Antoine explained to Tom. “Very nice for us. He has kids too. And he brings ours back. I take them.” Antoine gave another rare smile that creased his well-fed face.

  “When are you back?” asked Agnes, pushing her fingers through her hair. The question was for Heloise and Tom. Antoine had gone off somewhere.

  Heloise said, “Perhaps in three weeks? It is not fixed.”

  “Back again,” said Antoine, coming down the curving staircase with something in each hand. “Agnes cherie, some small glasses? Here is a fine map, Tom. Old but—you know!” His tone implied that old was best.

  It was a much used roadmap of Morocco, Tom saw, folded many a time and repaired with transparent tape.

  “I’ll be most careful with it,” Tom said.

  “You should rent a car. No doubt about it. Get around to the little places.” Then Antoine attended to his specialty, Holland gin from a cold crock bottle.

  Tom recalled that Antoine had a small fridge up in his atelier here.

  Antoine poured and then passed the tray of four small glasses first to the ladies.

  “Oooh!” Heloise exclaimed politely, though she was not fond of gin.

  “Sante!” said Antoine as they all raised their glasses. “A happy trip and safe return!”

  Bottoms up.

  The Holland gin was particularly smooth, Tom had to admit, but Antoine acted as if he had made the stuff, and Tom had never known him to offer a second nip. Tom realized that the Pritchards had not yet tried to make acquaintance with the Grais, perhaps because Pritchard didn’t know that the Ripleys were old friends of the Grais. And that house between the Grais and the Pritchards? Empty for years, as far as Tom knew, maybe for sale; of no matter, no importance, Tom thought.

  Tom and Heloise took their leave, promising a postcard, which prompted Antoine to warn that the post in Maroc was abominable. Tom thought of Reeves’s tape.

  They had just got home when the telephone rang.

  “I’m expecting a call, dear, so—” Tom picked up the telephone on the hall table, prepared to have to go up to his own room, in case it was Jeff and the conversation became complex.

  “Cheri, I want some yogurt, I don’t like that gin,” Heloise said, and went off in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Tom, this is Ed,” said Ed Banbury’s voice. “I got through to Cynthia. Jeff and I were sharing—efforts. I couldn’t make a date, but I learned a few things.”

  “Yes?”

  “It seems Cynthia was at a party some time ago for journalists, a big stand-up thing where nearly anybody could get in and—it seems this Pritchard was there.”

  “One minute, Ed, I think I’ll take this on another phone. Hang on.” Tom leapt up the stairs to his room, took the telephone off the hook, and ran down again to hang up the hall telephone. Heloise, paying no attention, was turning on the TV in the living room. But Tom did not want to say the name Cynthia within her hearing, lest she remember that Cynthia had been the fiancee of Bernard Tufts, le you, as Heloise called him. Bernard had frightened Heloise when she had met him here at Belle Ombre. “Back again,” said Tom. “You talked with Cynthia.”

  “By telephone. This afternoon. A man at the party whom Cynthia knew came over and told her there was an American there, asking if he knew Tom Ripley. Just out of the blue, it seems. So this man—”

  “American also?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, Cynthia told her friend—this man—to tell the American to look into Ripley’s connection with Murchison. That’s how it all came about, Tom.”

  Tom found it extremely fuzzy. “You don’t know the go-between’s name? Cynthia’s friend who spoke with Pritchard?”

  “Cynthia didn’t drop it and I didn’t want to—to press it too much. What was my excuse for ringing her in the first place? That a rather gauche type of American knows her name? I didn’t say that you’d told me that. Talk about out of the blue! I had to play it that way. I think we learned at least something, Tom.”

  True, Tom thought. “But Cynthia never met Pritchard? That night?”

  “I gather not.”

  “The go-between must’ve said to Pritchard, ‘Let me ask my friend Cynthia Gradnor about Ripley.’ Pritchard had her name right and it’s not an everyday name.” Maybe Cynthia had taken the trouble, via her go-between, Tom thought, to give her name like a calling card, thinking it might strike the fear of God into Tom Ripley, if it ever got to him.

  “You still there, Tom?”

  “Yep. Cynthia means us no good, my friend. And neither does Pritchard. But he’s simply cracked.”

  “Cracked?”

  “Some kind of mental case, don’t ask me what.” Tom took a deep breath. “Ed, I thank you for your trouble. Tell Jeff thanks too.”

  When they had hung up, Tom suffered a shaky few moments. Cynthia had her suspicions with regard to Thomas Murchison’s disappearance, that was certain. And she had the courage to stick her neck out about it. She must know that if anyone were a candidate for elimination on Tom’s agenda, it would be herself, because she knew all about the forgeries, down to the first picture Bernard Tufts ever forged (which not even Tom was sure of) and its date, very likely.

  Tom was thinking that Pritchard would have come across the name Murchison while reading up on Tom Ripley in newspaper archives, probably. Tom’s name had been mentioned only one day that Tom knew of in the American newspapers. Mme Annette had seen Tom carrying Murchison’s suitcase out to his (Tom’s) car at the right time to reach Orly for Murchison’s flight, and had mistakenly but innocently told the police that she had seen M. Ripley and M. Murchison going out to M. Ripley’s car with the luggage. Such was the power of suggestion, of acting, Tom thought. At that moment Murchison had been clumsily wrapped in an old canvas in Tom’s cellar, and Tom had been terrified that Mme Annette might go down for wine before he could do something about the corpse.

  Cynthia’s bringing Murchison’s name up might well have given the Pritchards new enthusiasm. Tom had no doubt that Cynthia knew Murchi
son had “disappeared” just after visiting Tom. That had been in the newspapers in England, as Tom recalled, even if the items had been small. Murchison had had a conviction that all the late Derwatts were forgeries. As if Murchison’s belief wasn’t strong enough, Bernard Tufts had further strengthened it by telling Murchison to his face in London, at Murchison’s hotel, “Don’t buy any more Derwatts.” Murchison had told Tom of this curious meeting with a stranger in the bar of the hotel. Bernard had not told Murchison his name, Murchison had said to Tom. Tom, himself spying on Murchison just then, had seen him and Bernard tete-a-tete, viewing it with a horror Tom could still feel: Tom had known what Bernard must be saying.

  Tom had often wondered if Bernard Tufts had then gone to Cynthia and tried to win her back, on the grounds that he had sworn to himself not to paint any more forgeries. But if Bernard had, Cynthia hadn’t taken him back.

  Chapter 6

  Tom had thought that Janice Pritchard might make another effort to “contact” him, as she would put it, and so she did, on Tuesday afternoon. The telephone rang at Belle Ombre around 2:30 p.m. Tom heard it faintly. He was then weeding in one of the rose beds near the house. Heloise answered, and after a few seconds called, “Tome! Telephone!” She had come to the open French window.

  “Thank you, my sweet.” He dropped the hoe. “And who is it?”

  “The wife of Prickard.”

  “Aha! Pritchard, dear.” Annoyed but curious, Tom took it in the hall. This time he would not be able to go upstairs to talk without explaining that move to Heloise . “Hello?”

  “Hello, Mr. Ripley! I’m so glad you’re home. I was wondering—you may think this presumptuous of me—I would so much like to say a few words to you face to face.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have the car. I’m free until nearly five. Can—“

  Tom did not want her at his house, nor did he want to go to the house of the shimmering ceiling. They agreed to meet near the obelisk in Fontainebleau (Tom’s idea) at a working-class bar-cafe called Le Sport or some such on the northeast corner at a quarter past three. Tom and Heloise had M. Lepetit coming at four-thirty, for their music lesson, but Tom did not mention that.

  Heloise looked at him with an interest in her eyes that his telephone calls seldom evoked.

  “Yes, of all people.” Tom hated saying it, but went ahead. “She wants to see me. I might learn something. So I agreed. This afternoon.”

  “Learn something?”

  “I don’t like her husband. I don’t like either of them, my dear, but—if I learn something, it helps.”

  “They are asking funny questions?”

  Tom smiled a little, grateful for Heloise ‘s understanding of their mutual problems, mainly his problems. “Not too many. Don’t worry. They tease. Ils taquinent. Both of them.” Tom added on a more cheerful note, “I’ll give you a full report when I return—which will be in time for M’sieur Lepetit.”

  Tom left the house a few minutes later, and found a parking place near the obelisk, dubious as to parking ticket, but he didn’t care.

  Janice Pritchard was already there, standing uneasily at the bar. “Mr. Ripley.” She gave Tom a warm smile.

  Tom nodded, but ignored the hand she extended. “Good afternoon. Can’t we find a booth?”

  They did. Tom ordered tea for the lady, and an espresso for himself.

  “What’s your husband doing today?” Tom asked with a pleasant smile, expecting Janice to say he was at the Fontainebleau insead , in which case Tom was going to ask her to be more specific about her husband’s studies.

  “His massage afternoon,” replied Janice Pritchard with a weaving motion of her head. “In Fontainebleau. I’m supposed to pick him up at four-thirty.”

  “Massage? He has a bad back?” The word massage was disagreeable to Tom; he associated it with sex parlors, although he knew respectable massage parlors existed.

  “No.” Janice’s face looked tortured. She stared as much at the tabletop as at Tom. “He just likes it. Anywhere, everywhere, twice a week, anyway.”

  Tom swallowed, hating the conversation. The loud cries for “Un Ricard!” and the roars of triumph from the video games were more pleasant than Janice talking about her oddball husband.

  “I mean—even if we’re in Paris, he can find a massage parlor right away.”

  “Curious,” Tom murmured. “And what’s he got against me?”

  “Against you?” Janice said, as if surprised. “Why, nothing. He has a respect for you.” She looked Tom in the eyes.

  Tom knew that. “Why does he say he’s at insead, when he isn’t?”

  “Oh—you know that?” Now Janice’s eyes were steadier, amused, and mischievous.

  “No,” Tom said. “I’m not at all sure. I just don’t believe all of what your husband says.”

  Janice laughed, giggling with a curious glee.

  Tom didn’t smile back, because he didn’t feel like it. He watched Janice rub her right wrist with her thumb, as if performing some kind of unconscious massage. She wore a crisply clean white shirt above her same blue slacks, with a turquoise (not real, but pretty) necklace under the shirt collar. And now Tom saw definite bruise marks as her massaging pushed her cuff back. Tom realized that a bluish spot on the left side of her neck was a bruise also. Did she want him to see her bruises? “Well,” Tom said finally, “if he doesn’t attend insead—“

  “He likes to tell unusual stories,” said Janice, looking down at the glass ashtray, in which three stubs from preceding customers lay, one a filter.

  Tom smiled indulgently, doing his best to make it look genuine. “But of course you love him all the same.” He saw Janice hesitate, frown. She was putting on the damsel-in-distress act, Tom felt, or something close to it, loving his drawing her out.

  “He needs me. I’m not sure he—I mean, that I love him.” She glanced up at Tom.

  Oh, Christ, as if it mattered, Tom thought. “To ask a very American question, what does he do for a living? Where does his money come from?”

  Janice’s brow suddenly unfurrowed. “Oh, that’s no problem. His family had a lumber business in Washington State. It was sold when the father died, and David got half along with his brother. It’s all invested—somehow—so income comes from that.”

  The way she said “somehow” told Tom that she didn’t know a thing about stocks and bonds. “Switzerland?”

  “No-o. Some bank in New York, they handle it all. It’s enough for us—but David always wants more.” Janice smiled almost sweetly, as if talking about a child’s penchant for another helping of cake. “I think his father got impatient with him, threw him out of the house when he was about twenty-two, because he wasn’t working. Even then, David had a good allowance, but he wanted more.”

  Tom could imagine. Easy money nourished the fantasy element in his existence, guaranteed the continued unreality, and at the same time food in the fridge and on the table.

  Tom took a sip of his coffee. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Oh—” His question might have awakened her from a dream. She shook her head a little, and regarded Tom. “To tell you he’s playing a game with you. He wants to hurt you. He wants to hurt me too. But you—interest him now.”

  “How can he hurt me?” Tom pulled out his Gitanes.

  “Oh, he suspects you—of everything. So he just wants to make you feel aw-w-ful.” She drawled the word out, as if this kind of hurt was unpleasant, but just a game.

  “He hasn’t succeeded yet.” Tom extended the packet. She shook her head and took one of her own. “Suspects me of what, for instance?”

  “Oh, I’m not saying. He’d beat me, if I ever told.”

  “Beat you?”

  “Oh, yes. He loses his temper sometimes.”

  Tom feigned mild shock. “But you must know what he’s got against me. It’s surely not personal, because I never met him till a couple of weeks ago.” Then he ventured, “He knows nothing about me.”

  Her eyes n
arrowed, and her weak smile could hardly be called a smile now. “No, he just pretends.”

  Tom disliked her as much as he disliked her husband, but tried not to let it show in his face. “He makes a habit of going around annoying people?” Tom asked it as if he were amused by the idea.

  Again the juvenile giggle from Janice, though the little wrinkles around her eyes would indicate that she was at least thirty-five, the age her husband looked also. “You could say that.” She glanced at Tom and away.

  “Who was it before me?”

  Silence, as Janice looked into the sordid ashtray as if it were a fortune-teller’s crystal ball, as if she glimpsed fragments of old stories there. Her brows even lifted—was she acting some part now, for her own pleasure?—and Tom saw for the first time a scar of crescent shape on the right side of her forehead. Result of a flying saucer one evening?

  “What does he hope to gain by annoying people?” Tom asked gently, as if posing a question at a seance.

  “Oh, his idea of fun.” Now Janice gave a real smile. “There was a singer in America—two singers!” she added with a laugh. “One a pop singer and the other—much more important, a female soprano in the opera. I forgot her name, maybe that’s for the best, ha-ha! Norwegian, I think. David—” Janice gazed at the ashtray again.

  “A pop singer?” Tom prompted.

  “Yes. David just wrote insulting notes, you see. ‘You’re slipping,’ or ‘Two assassins are waiting,’ something like that. David wanted to throw him off make him give a shaky performance. I’m not even sure the letters ever reached this one, they get so many letters, and he was pretty big among the kids. First name was Tony, I remember that. But I think drugs happened to him and not—” Janice paused again, then came out with, “David just likes to see people wilt—if he can. If he can make them wilt.”

  Tom listened. “And he collects dossiers on these people? Newspaper items?”