The Talented Mr. Ripley

  “At what time was he found?”

  “At dawn this morning. By some workmen who were walking along the road.”

  “Dio mio!” Tom murmured.

  “He said nothing about making an excursion yesterday to the Via Appia when he left your apartment?”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “What did you do yesterday after Signor Mee-lays left?”

  “I stayed here,” Tom said, gesturing with open hands as Dickie would have done, “and then I had a little sleep, and later I went out for a walk around eight or eight-thirty.” A man who lived in the house, whose name Tom didn’t know, had seen him come in last night at about a quarter to nine, and they had said good evening to each other.

  “You took a walk alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Signor Mee-lays left here alone? He was not going to meet anybody that you know of?”

  “No. He didn’t say so.” Tom wondered if Freddie had had friends with him at his hotel, or wherever he had been staying. Tom hoped that the police wouldn’t confront him with any of Freddie’s friends who might know Dickie. Now his name—Richard Greenleaf—would be in the Italian newspapers, Tom thought, and also his address. He’d have to move. It was hell. He cursed to himself. The police officer saw him, but it looked like a muttered curse against the sad fate that had befallen Freddie, Tom thought.

  “So—” the officer said, smiling, and closed his tablet.

  “You think it was—” Tom tried to think of the word for hoodlum “—violent boys, don’t you? Are there any clues?”

  “We are searching the car for fingerprints now. The murderer may have been somebody he picked up to give a ride to. The car was found this morning in the vicinity of the Piazza di Spagna. We should have some clues before tonight. Thank you very much, Signor Greenleaf.”

  “Di niente! If I can be of any further assistance—”

  The officer turned at the door. “Shall we be able to reach you here for the next few days, in case there are any more questions?”

  Tom hesitated. “I was planning to leave for Majorca tomorrow.”

  “But the questions may be, who is such-and-such a person who is a suspect,” the officer explained. “You may be able to tell us who the person is in relation to the deceased.” He gestured.

  “All right. But I do not think I knew Signor Miles that well. He probably had closer friends in the city.”

  “Who?” The officer closed the door and took out his tablet.

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “I only know he must have had several friends here, people who knew him better than I did.”

  “I am sorry, but we still must expect you to be in reach for the next couple of days,” he repeated quietly, as if there were no question of Tom’s arguing about it, even if he was an American. “We shall inform you as soon as you may go. I am sorry if you have made travel plans. Perhaps there is still time to cancel them. Good day, Signor Greenleaf.”

  “Good day.” Tom stood there after they had closed the door. He could move to a hotel, he thought, if he told the police what hotel it was. He didn’t want Freddie’s friends or any friends of Dickie’s calling on him after they saw his address in the newspapers. He tried to assess his behavior from the polizia’s point of view. They hadn’t challenged him on anything. He had not acted horrified at the news of Freddie’s death, but that jibed with the fact that he was not an especially close friend of Freddie’s, either. No, it wasn’t bad, except that he had to be on tap.

  The telephone rang, and Tom didn’t answer it, because he had a feeling that it was Fausto calling from the railroad station. It was eleven-five, and the train for Naples would have departed. When the phone stopped ringing, Tom picked it up and called the Inghilterra. He reserved a room, and said he would be there in about half an hour. Then he called the police station—he remembered that it was number eighty-three—and after nearly ten minutes of difficulties because he couldn’t find anyone who knew or cared who Richard Greenleaf was, he succeeded in leaving a message that Signor Richard Greenleaf could be found at the Albergo Inghilterra, in case the police wanted to speak to him.

  He was at the Inghilterra before an hour was up. His three suitcases, two of them Dickie’s and one his own, depressed him: he had packed them for such a different purpose. And now this!

  He went out at noon to buy the papers. Every one of the papers had it: americano murdered on the via appia antica . . . shocking murder of riccissimo americano frederick miles last night on the via appia . . . via appia murder of americano without clues . . . Tom read every word. There really were no clues, at least not yet, no tracks, no fingerprints, no suspects. But every paper carried the name Herbert Richard Greenleaf and gave his address as the place where Freddie had last been seen by anybody. Not one of the papers implied that Herbert Richard Greenleaf was under suspicion, however. The papers said that Miles had apparently had a few drinks and the drinks, in typical Italian journalistic style, were all enumerated and ran from americanos through scotch whiskey, brandy, champagne, even grappa. Only gin and Pernod were omitted.

  Tom stayed in his hotel room over the lunch hour, walking the floor and feeling depressed and trapped. He telephoned the travel office in Rome that had sold him his ticket to Palma, and tried to cancel it. He would have twenty percent of his money back, they said. There was not another boat to Palma for about five days.

  Around two o’clock his telephone rang urgently.

  “Hello,” Tom said in Dickie’s nervous, irritable tone.

  “Hello, Dick. This is Van Houston.”

  “Oh-h,” Tom said, as if he knew him, yet the single word conveyed no excess of surprise or warmth.

  “How’ve you been? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” the hoarse, strained voice asked.

  “Certainly has. Where are you?”

  “At the Hassler. I’ve been going over Freddie’s suitcases with the police. Listen, I want to see you. What was the matter with Freddie yesterday? I tried to find you all last evening, you know, because Freddie was supposed to be back at the hotel by six. I didn’t have your address. What happened yesterday?”

  “I wish I knew! Freddie left the house around six. We both had taken on quite a lot of martinis, but he looked capable of driving or naturally I wouldn’t have let him go off. He said he had his car downstairs. I can’t imagine what happened, except that he picked up somebody to give them a lift, and they pulled a gun on him or something.”

  “But he wasn’t killed by a gun. I agree with you somebody must have forced him to drive out there, or be blotted out, because he’d have had to get clear across town to get to the Appian Way. The Hassler’s only a few blocks from where you live.”

  “Did he ever black out before? At the wheel of a car?”

  “Listen, Dickie, can I see you? I’m free now, except that I’m not supposed to leave the hotel today.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Oh, come on. Leave a message where you are and come over.”

  “I can’t, Van. The police are coming over in about an hour and I’m supposed to be here. Why don’t you call me later? Maybe I can see you tonight.”

  “All right. What time?”

  “Call me around six.”

  “Right. Keep your chin up, Dickie.”

  “You too.”

  “See you,” the voice said weakly.

  Tom hung up. Van had sounded as if he were about to cry at the last. “Pronto?” Tom said, clicking the telephone to get the hotel operator. He left a message that he was not in to anybody except the police, and that they were to let nobody up to see him. Positively no one.

  After that the telephone did not ring all afternoon. At about eight, when it was dark, Tom went downstairs to buy the evening papers. He looked around the little lobby and into the hotel bar whose door was off the main hall, looking for anybody who might be Van. He was ready for anything, ready even to see Marge sitting there waiting for him, but he saw no one who looked even like a police ag
ent. He bought the evening papers and sat in a little restaurant a few streets away, reading them. Still no clues. He learned that Van Houston was a close friend of Freddie’s, aged twenty-eight, traveling with him from Austria to Rome on a holiday that was to have ended in Florence, where both Miles and Houston had residences, the papers said. They had questioned three Italian youths, two of them eighteen and one sixteen, on suspicion of having done the “horrible deed,” but the youths had been later released. Tom was relieved to read that no fingerprints that could be considered fresh or usable had been found on Miles’s “bellissima Fiat 1400 convertible.”

  Tom ate his costoletta di vitello slowly, sipped his wine, and glanced through every column of the papers for the last-minute items that were sometimes put into Italian papers just before they went to press. He found nothing more on the Miles case. But on the last page of the last newspaper he read:

  BARCA AFFONDATA CON MACCHIE DI SANGUE TROVATA

  NELL’ ACQUA POCA FONDO VICINO SAN REMO

  He read it rapidly, with more terror in his heart than he had felt when he had carried Freddie’s body down the stairs, or when the police had come to question him. This was like a nemesis, like a nightmare come true, even the wording of the headline. The boat was described in detail and it brought the scene back to him, Dickie sitting in the stern at the throttle, Dickie smiling at him, Dickie’s body sinking through the water with its wake of bubbles. The text said that the stains were believed to be bloodstains, not that they were. It did not say what the police or anybody else intended to do about them. But the police would do something, Tom thought. The boatkeeper could probably tell the police the very day the boat was lost. The police could then check the hotels for that day. The Italian boatkeeper might even remember that it was two Americans who had not come back with the boat. If the police bothered to check the hotel registers around that time, the name Richard Greenleaf would stand out like a red flag. In which case, of course, it would be Tom Ripley who would be missing, who might have been murdered that day. Tom’s imagination went in several directions: suppose they searched for Dickie’s body and found it? It would be assumed to be Tom Ripley’s now. Dickie would be suspected of murder. Ergo, Dickie would be suspected of Freddie’s murder, too. Dickie would become overnight “a murderous type.” On the other hand, the Italian boatkeeper might not remember the day that one of his boats had not been brought back. Even if he did remember, the hotels might not be checked. The Italian police just might not be that interested. Might, might, might not.

  Tom folded up his papers, paid his check, and went out.

  He asked at the hotel desk if there were any messages for him.

  “Si, signor. Questo e questo e questo—” The clerk laid them out on the desk before him like a card player laying down a winning straight.

  Two from Van. One from Robert Gilbertson. (Wasn’t there a Robert Gilbertson in Dickie’s address book? Check on that.) One from Marge. Tom picked it up and read its Italian carefully: Signorina Sherwood had called at three-thirty-five p.m. and would call again. The call was long distance from Mongibello.

  Tom nodded, and picked them up. “Thanks very much.” He didn’t like the looks of the clerk behind the desk. Italians were so damned curious!

  Upstairs he sat hunched forward in an armchair, smoking and thinking. He was trying to figure out what would logically happen if he did nothing, and what he could make happen by his own actions. Marge would very likely come up to Rome. She had evidently called the Rome police to get his address. If she came up, he would have to see her as Tom, and try to convince her that Dickie was out for a while, as he had with Freddie. And if he failed—Tom rubbed his palms together nervously. He mustn’t see Marge, that was all. Not now with the boat affair brewing. Everything would go haywire if he saw her. It’d be the end of everything! But if he could only sit tight, nothing at all would happen. It was just this moment, he thought, just this little crisis with the boat story and the unsolved Freddie Miles murder, that made things so difficult. But absolutely nothing would happen to him, if he could keep on doing and saying the right things to everybody. Afterward it could be smooth sailing again. Greece, or India. Ceylon. Some place far, far away, where no old friend could possibly come knocking on his door. What a fool he had been to think he could stay in Rome! Might as well have picked Grand Central Station, or put himself on exhibition in the Louvre!

  He called the Stazione Termini, and asked about the trains for Naples tomorrow. There were four or five. He wrote down the times for all of them. It would be five days before a boat left from Naples for Majorca, and he would sit the time out in Naples, he thought. All he needed was a release from the police, and if nothing happened tomorrow he should get it. They couldn’t hold a man forever, without even any grounds for suspicion, just in order to throw an occasional question at him! He began to feel he would be released tomorrow, that it was absolutely logical that he should be released.

  He picked up the telephone again, and told the clerk that if Miss Marjorie Sherwood called again, he would accept the call. If she called again, he thought, he could convince her in two minutes that everything was all right, that Freddie’s murder didn’t concern him at all, that he had moved to a hotel just to avoid annoying telephone calls from total strangers and yet still be within reach of the police in case they wanted him to identify any suspects they picked up. He would tell her that he was flying to Greece tomorrow or the next day, so there was no use in her coming to Rome. As a matter of fact, he thought, he could fly to Palma from Rome. He hadn’t even thought of that before.

  He lay down on the bed, tired, but not ready to undress, because he felt that something else was going to happen tonight. He tried to concentrate on Marge. He imagined her at this moment sitting in Giorgio’s, or treating herself to a long, slow Tom Collins in the Miramare bar, and debating whether to call him up again. He could see her troubled eyebrows, her tousled hair as she sat brooding about what might be happening in Rome. She would be alone at the table, not talking to anyone. He saw her getting up and going home, taking a suitcase and catching the noon bus tomorrow. He was there on the road in front of the post office, shouting to her not to go, trying to stop the bus, but it pulled away . . .

  The scene dissolved in swirling yellow-grayness, the color of the sand in Mongibello. Tom saw Dickie smiling at him, dressed in the corduroy suit that he had worn in San Remo. The suit was soaking wet, the tie a dripping string. Dickie bent over him, shaking him. “I swam!” he said. “Tom, wake up! I’m all right! I swam! I’m alive!” Tom squirmed away from his touch. He heard Dickie laugh at him, Dickie’s happy, deep laugh. “Tom!” The timbre of the voice was deeper, richer, better than Tom had even been able to make it in his imitations. Tom pushed himself up. His body felt leaden and slow, as if he were trying to raise himself out of deep water.

  “I swam!” Dickie’s voice shouted, ringing and ringing in Tom’s ears as if he heard it through a long tunnel.

  Tom looked around the room, looking for Dickie in the yellow light under the bridge lamp, in the dark corner by the tall wardrobe. Tom felt his own eyes stretched wide, terrified, and though he knew his fear was senseless, he kept looking everywhere for Dickie, below the half-drawn shades at the window, and on the floor on the other side of the bed. He hauled himself up from the bed, staggered across the room, and opened a window. Then the other window. He felt drugged. Somebody put something in my wine, he thought suddenly. He knelt below the window, breathing the cold air in, fighting the grogginess as if it were something that was going to overcome him if he didn’t exert himself to the utmost. Finally he went into the bathroom and wet his face at the basin. The grogginess was going away. He knew he hadn’t been drugged. He had let his imagination run away with him. He had been out of control.

  He drew himself up and calmly took off his tie. He moved as Dickie would have done, undressed himself, bathed, put his pajamas on and lay down in bed. He tried to think about what Dickie would be thinking about. His mo
ther. Her last letter had enclosed a couple of snapshots of herself and Mr. Greenleaf sitting in the living room having coffee, the scene he remembered from the evening he had had coffee with them after dinner. Mrs. Greenleaf had said that Herbert had taken the pictures himself by squeezing a bulb. Tom began to compose his next letter to them. They were pleased that he was writing more often. He must set their minds at rest about the Freddie affair, because they knew of Freddie. Mrs. Greenleaf had asked about Freddie Miles in one of her letters. But Tom was listening for the telephone while he tried to compose the letter, and he couldn’t really concentrate.

  18

  The first thing he thought of when he woke up was Marge. He reached for the telephone and asked if she had called during the night. She had not. He had a horrible premonition that she was coming up to Rome. It shot him out of bed, and then as he moved in his routine of shaving and bathing, his feeling changed. Why should he worry so much about Marge? He had always been able to handle her. She couldn’t be here before five or six, anyway, because the first bus left Mongibello at noon, and she wasn’t likely to take a taxi to Naples.

  Maybe he would be able to leave Rome this morning. At ten o’clock he would call the police and find out.

  He ordered caffe latte and rolls sent up to his room, and also the morning papers. Very strangely, there was not a thing in any of the papers about either the Miles case or the San Remo boat. It made him feel odd and frightened, with the same fear he had had last night when he had imagined Dickie standing in the room. He threw the newspapers away from him into a chair.

  The telephone rang and he jumped for it obediently. It was either Marge or the police. “Pronto?”

  “Pronto. There are two signori of the police downstairs to see you, signore.”

  “Very well. Will you tell them to come up?”

  A minute later he heard their footsteps in the carpeted hall. It was the same older officer as yesterday, with a different younger policeman.

  “Buon giorno,” said the officer politely, with his little bow.