The Boy Who Followed Ripley

  Tom smiled. “The fellow coming is a stranger.” Reeves was one of his interesting friends. Maybe Frank had seen Reeves Minot’s name in newspapers too. Tom wasn’t going to ask. “Now,” Tom said quietly, “your situation.” Tom waited, noting the boy’s uneasiness, the frown. Tom felt uneasy also, and deliberately pushed off his shoes and swung his feet up on the bed, pulled a pillow under his head. “By the way, I thought you did very well at lunch.”

  Frank glanced at Tom, but his expression did not change. “You asked me before,” the boy said softly, “and I told you. You’re the only person who knows.”

  “We shall keep it that way. Don’t confess to anyone—ever. Now tell me—what time of day did you do it?”

  “Around seven, eight.” The boy’s voice cracked. “My father always watched the sunset—nearly every evening in summer. I hadn’t—”

  Here there was a long pause.

  “I absolutely had not planned to do it. I was not even very angry, not angry at all. Later—even the next day, I couldn’t believe I’d done it—somehow.”

  “I believe you,” Tom said.

  “I didn’t usually walk out with my father for those sunsets. In fact I think he liked to be alone there, but that day he asked me to come with him. He’d just been talking with me about my doing pretty well in school, and how Harvard Business School would come soon and how easy it—well, the usual. He even tried to say a nice word about Teresa, because he knew I—that I like her. But up to then, no. He’d been stuffy about Teresa coming to the house—twice only she was there—and saying it was stupid to be in love at sixteen, get married early or something, even though I never said a word about getting married, never even asked Teresa! She’d laugh! Anyway, I suppose I suddenly had it that day. The phoniness, the all-round phoniness, everywhere I looked.”

  Tom started to say something, and the boy nervously interrupted.

  “The two times Teresa did come to the Maine house, my father was a bit rude to her. Unfriendly, you know? Just because she’s pretty, maybe, and my dad knows she’s popular. Knew. You’d have thought she was some girl I picked up off the streets! But Teresa’s very polite, she knows how to behave! And she didn’t like it—natch. She wasn’t going to come to the house again, and she more or less told me so.”

  “That must’ve been very tough for you.”

  “Yes.” Then Frank was silent for several seconds, looking at the floor. He seemed stuck.

  Tom supposed that Frank could visit at Teresa’s house, or meet her in New York now and then, but Tom didn’t want to get sidetracked from the essentials. “Who was at the house that day? The housekeeper Susie. Your mother?”

  “And my brother too. We were playing croquet, then Johnny quit the game. Johnny had a date. He has a girlfriend whose family lives— Well, anyway my dad was on the front porch when Johnny went off in his car, and Dad said good-bye to him. Johnny had a lot of roses from the garden to give his girl, I remember, and I remember thinking if it weren’t for my dad’s attitude, Teresa could’ve been at the house that evening, somehow, and we could’ve gone out somewhere. My dad won’t even let me drive yet, but I can drive. Johnny taught me on the dunes. My father always thought I’d have a wreck and kill myself, but fellows fifteen and younger in Louisiana or Texas, they’re driving if they feel like it.”

  Tom knew. “Then what? After Johnny left. You’d been talking with your father—”

  “I’d been listening to him—in the library downstairs. I wanted to escape, but he said. ‘Come out with me, watch the sunset, it’ll do you good.’ I was in a lousy mood and I tried to hide it. I should’ve said. ‘No, I’m going up to my room,’ but I didn’t. And then Susie—she’s all right but a little in her second childhood, makes me nervous—she was around and made sure my dad got down the ramp in his wheelchair. There’s a ramp from the back terrace down to garden level, made just for my father. But she needn’t have bothered, because my dad can make it by himself. Then she went back in the house, and my father went on up the path—it’s wide, flagstones—toward the woods and the cliff. And when we got there, he started talking again.” Frank lowered his head, clenched his right fist and opened it. “Somehow after four or five minutes of it, I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  Tom blinked, unable to look any longer at the boy who was looking at him now. “The cliff’s steep there? Down to the sea?”

  “It’s pretty steep, but not straight down. But anyway—enough to—to kill someone, certainly. Rocks there.”

  “Lots of trees there?” Tom was still wondering who might have seen him. “Boats?”

  “No boats, no. No harbor there, anyway. Trees, sure. Pines. Part of our land, but we let it grow wild up there, and just cut a path to the cliff.”

  “You couldn’t’ve been seen from the house even with binoculars?”

  “No, I know. Even in winter, if my father was on the cliff—it’s not visible from the house.” The boy gave a heavy sigh. “I thank you for listening to all this. Maybe I should write it out or try to—somehow—to get it off my mind. It’s terrible. I don’t know how to analyze it. Sometimes I can’t believe I did it. It’s strange.” Frank looked suddenly at the door, as if the existence of other people had just crossed his mind, but there had been no sound from the direction of the door.

  Tom smiled a little. “Why not write it out? You could show it only to me—if you feel like it. Then we could destroy it.”

  “Yes,” Frank said softly. “I remember—I had the feeling I couldn’t look at his shoulders and the back of his head one second longer. I thought—I don’t know what I thought, but I rushed forward and kicked the brake lever off and hit the forward button and I gave the chair a shove besides. Then it went forward, head over. Then I didn’t look. I just heard a clatter.”

  Tom had an instant’s sickish feeling, imagining it. Fingerprints on the wheelchair, Tom wondered? But they might have been expected, if Frank had accompanied his father to the cliff. “Did anyone talk about fingerprints on the chair?”

  “No.”

  Fingerprints would have been looked for at once, Tom thought, if there had been any suspicion of foul play. “On that button you mentioned?”

  “I think I hit it with the side of my fist.”

  “The motor must’ve been still running when they got to him.”

  “Yes, I think somebody said it was.”

  “Then what did you do—just afterward?”

  “I didn’t look down. I started walking back to the house. I felt suddenly very tired. It was strange. Then I started trotting toward the house, sort of to wake up. Nobody was on the lawn but Eugene—our driver, kind of butler too—he was in the big downstairs dining room, in fact, by himself, and I said, “My father just went over the cliff.” Then Eugene told me to tell my mother and to ask her to call the hospital, and he ran out toward the cliff. My mother was with Tal in the upstairs living room watching TV, and I told her, and then Tal called the hospital.”

  “Who’s Tal?”

  “A New York friend of my mother’s. Talmadge Stevens. He’s a lawyer, but not one of my father’s lawyers. Big fellow. He—” The boy stopped again.

  Was Tal possibly his mother’s lover? “Did Tal say anything to you? Ask any questions?”

  “No,” Frank said. “Well—I said my father sent the chair over himself. Tal didn’t ask anything.”

  “So—the ambulance—and then I suppose the police came?”

  “Yes. Both. It seemed like an hour before they got him up. Plus the wheelchair. They were using big spotlights. Then of course the journalists, but Mom and Tal got rid of them pretty fast. They’re both good at that. Mom was furious at the journalists, but they were just the local journalists that night.”

  “And later—the journalists?”

  “My mom had to see a couple of them. I spoke to one at least, had to.”

  “And you said what—exactly?”

  “I said my father was near the edge. It seemed to me that he really di
d mean to send himself over.” On the last word, Frank sounded as if he had no breath left. He got up from the chair and walked to the window, which was partly open. Frank turned. “I lied. I told you.”

  “Does your mother suspect you—at all?”

  Frank shook his head. “I’d know if she did, and she doesn’t. I’m considered rather—um—serious—if you know what I mean. Honest too.” Frank smiled nervously. “Johnny was more rebellious at my age, they had to have tutors for him, he was so often running away from Groton, going to New York. Then he sobered up—a little. I don’t mean he ever drank booze, but pot sometimes, sure. A little cocaine. He’s better now. But I mean, I’m considered something like a Boy Scout by comparison. That’s why Dad put the pressure on me, you see, to take an interest in his company, the Pierson empire!” Frank flung his arms out and laughed.

  Tom saw that the boy was tired.

  Frank wandered back to the chair, sat down, and tipped his head back with his eyes half shut. “You know what I sometimes think? That my father was so near to being dead anyway. Half dead in his chair and maybe going to die pretty soon. And I wonder if I think that just to excuse myself a little? Awful to think that!” Frank said with a gasp.

  “Back to Susie for a minute. She thinks you sent the chair over and she said that to you?”

  “Yes.” Frank looked at Tom. “She even said she saw me from the house, so that’s why no one believes her. You can’t see the cliff from the house. But Susie was very upset when she said that. Sort of hysterical.”

  “Susie also talked to your mother?”

  “Oh, sure, I know. My mother didn’t believe her. My mother doesn’t like Susie really. My father liked her, because she’s very reliable—was—and she’s been with us so many years, since Johnny and I were babies almost.”

  “She was your governess?”

  “No, she was more the housekeeper. We always had separate—women as governess. Mostly English.” Frank smiled. “Mother’s helpers. We only got rid of the last one when I was about twelve.”

  “And Eugene? Did he say anything?”

  “About me? No. Not a thing.”

  “Do you like him?”

  Now Frank laughed a little. “He’s all right. He’s from London. Has a sense of humor. But whenever Eugene and I used to joke, my dad would say to me later that I shouldn’t joke with the butler or the chauffeur. Eugene was both most of the time.”

  “Anyone else in the household? Other servants?”

  “Not just now. Part-time people now and then. Vic the gardener, on vacation in July, maybe longer, so we have part-time fellows sometimes. My father always wanted the minimum of servants and secretaries around.”

  Tom was thinking that perhaps Lily and Tal were not so unhappy at John Pierson’s demise. What went on there? He got up and went to his desk. “Just in case you do feel like writing it all out,” Tom said, handing the boy some twenty sheets of typewriter paper, “with a pen or on the typewriter. Anyway, they’re both here.” Tom’s typewriter sat in the middle of his desk.

  “Thank you.” Frank stared at the sheets in his hand, musingly.

  “You’d probably like to take a walk—but unfortunately you can’t.”

  Frank stood up, paper in hand. “Just what I’d like to do.”

  “You could try the back road there,” Tom said. “It’s a one-lane; nobody ever on it but an occasional farmer. You know, beyond where we were working this morning.” The boy knew, and moved toward the door. “And don’t run,” Tom said, because Frank looked charged with nervous energy. “Come back in half an hour, or I’ll be worried. You’ve got a watch?”

  “Oh, yes.— Two-thirty-two.”

  Tom checked his own, early by a minute. “If you want the typewriter later, just come in and get it.”

  The boy went to his room next door to deposit the paper, then went down the stairs. From a side window, Tom could see Frank crossing the lawn, plunging through a section of underbrush, jumping, tripping once and falling on his hands, then springing up as lithely as an acrobat. The boy turned to the right and became hidden by trees as he followed the narrow road.

  A moment later, Tom found himself switching on his transistor. It was partly because he wanted to catch the French news at 3 p.m., partly because he felt a need to change the atmosphere after Frank’s story. Amazing, in fact, that the boy hadn’t broken down even more while telling it. Would that come, or wouldn’t it? Or had it come in the night, perhaps nights before, when the boy was in London or alone at the house of Mme. Boutin, his mind in terror of an imagined judgment from somewhere? Or had the few seconds of tears, today before lunch, been enough? There were boys (and girls) aged ten or so in New York, who had witnessed murder, murdered in gangs their contemporaries or strangers, but Frank was hardly that type. Such guilt as Frank’s would show itself in some way, some time. Tom thought that every strong emotion such as love, hatred, or jealousy eventually showed itself in some gesture, and not always in the form of a clear illustration of that emotion, not always what the person himself, or the public, might have expected.

  Restless, Tom went downstairs to speak with Mme. Annette, who was engaged in the gruesome task of dropping a live lobster into a huge pot of boiling water. She was just lifting it toward the steam, the crustacean’s limbs were stirring, and Tom recoiled at the threshold, making a gesture to indicate that he would wait a moment in the living room.

  Mme. Annette gave him an understanding smile, because she had seen such a reaction in him before.

  Had Tom heard a hiss of protest from the lobster? Was Tom even now, with some highly attuned part of his own auditory nerve, hearing a cry of pain and outrage from the kitchen, a final high-pitched shriek as the life went out? Where had the unfortunate creature spent the night, because Mme. Annette must have bought it yesterday Friday from the mobile poissonerie van that parked itself in Villeperce? This lobster was a big one, not like some of the little creatures Tom had seen wriggling vainly, tied upside down to the shelf bars in the fridge. When Tom heard the clunk of the vessel’s lid, he approached the kitchen again, head a little down.

  “Ah, Madame Annette,” he said. “Nothing important, just—”

  “Oh, Monsieur Tome, you are always so worried about the lobsters! Even the mussels, isn’t it?” She laughed with real mirth. “I tell my chums—mes copines Geneviève and Marie-Louise—” These were other servants of local gentry, whom Mme. Annette encountered while marketing, and who sometimes visited one another on good TV evenings, because they all had TV, and rotated their get-togethers.

  Tom admitted his weakness with a nod and a polite smile. “Liver of yellow,” Tom said in French, the phrase useless, he realized, because he had meant to translate either lily-livered or yellow-bellied. No matter. “Madame Annette, another guest tomorrow, but just for Sunday night till Monday morning. A gentleman. I’ll bring him home around eight-thirty for dinner, and he’ll have the young man’s room, and I’ll sleep in the room of my wife. Monsieur Billy will sleep in my room. I’ll remind you tomorrow.” But he knew he wouldn’t need to remind her.

  “Very good, Monsieur Tome. An American also?”

  “No, he—European,” Tom said with a shrug. He fancied he could smell the lobster, and he backed from the kitchen. “Merci, madame!”

  Tom went back to his room, listened to the news at three on a French pop station, and heard nothing about Frank Pierson. When the news was over, Tom realized that a half hour had passed, just, since Frank’s departure. Tom looked out his side window again. The woods at the corner of his garden showed no human figure. Tom waited, lit a cigarette, and went back to the window. Seven past three now.

  Absolutely no reason to feel worried, Tom told himself. Ten minutes one way or the other. Whoever used that road? Sleepy-looking farmers leading or driving a horse and wagon, an old fellow driving a tractor now and then, headed for a field across the main road. Still, Tom was worried. Suppose someone had been watching, since Moret, and had trailed Frank to
Belle Ombre? Tom had walked alone one night to Georges’ and Marie’s noisy café to take a coffee and see if any new character had appeared who showed curiosity even in him. Tom hadn’t seen any new personage, and more important, the talkative Marie had asked nothing about a boy staying in his house. Tom had been slightly relieved.

  At twenty past three, Tom went downstairs again. Where was Heloise? Tom went out by way of the French windows, and walked slowly across the lawn toward the little road. His eyes were on the grass, and he expected the boy to shout a “Hello!” at any moment. Or did he? Tom picked up a stone from the grass and threw it awkwardly with his left hand toward the woods. He kicked away a wild blackberry vine, and finally stepped onto the road. Now he could see at least thirty yards along the road, even if it was a bit overgrown, because the road was straight. Tom began walking, listening, but he heard only the innocent and absentminded tweets of sparrows, and from somewhere a turtle dove.

  He certainly didn’t want to call Frank’s name or even “Billy!” Tom stopped and listened again. Really nothing, no sound of a car motor, not even from behind him on the Belle Ombre road. Tom started trotting, thinking he’d better have a look at the end of the road—and what was the end? Tom thought it went on for a kilometer or so, and met another road more important, while all around were farm fields, corn for cattle, cabbages sometimes, mustard. Tom had by now begun to look for broken branches on either side of the lane, which might indicate a struggle, but he knew a wagon could have broken some just as well, and also he did not see anything unusual in the foliage. He walked again. He had by now come to the crossroad, a bigger road though still not paved, that ended what he thought of as the woods. Beyond lay cleared fields, belonging to farmers whose houses he could not see. Tom took a deep breath, and turned back. Had the boy possibly gone back to the house, got back, before Tom went out? Was he even now in his room? Tom leaned forward and again ran.

  “Tom?” The voice had come from Tom’s right.

  Tom skidded in his desert boots and looked into the woods.

  Frank came from behind a tree—or so it seemed to Tom, materializing suddenly from green leaves and brown tree trunks in gray trousers and beige sweater almost blending with the verdure in the spotty sunlight. He was alone.