Ripley Under Ground (9 page)

Tom ducked as a man in faded blue came walking along the lane, pushing a wooden homemade wheelbarrow full of firewood. The man did not glance Tom’s way. He was walking toward the road that ran in front of Tom’s house. Where had he come from? Maybe he was pinching state wood, and was as glad to avoid Tom as Tom was to avoid him.

Tom dug until the trench was nearly four feet deep, traversed by roots that would take a saw to cut. Then he climbed out and looked around for a slope, any depression in which to hide Murchison temporarily. Tom found one fifteen feet away, and dragged the corpse by the ropes once more. He covered the gray tarpaulin with fallen branches and leaves. At least it would not catch the eye of someone in the lane, he thought.

Then he pushed the now featherlight barrow onto the lane, and for good measure returned the barrow to the shed, so that Mme. Annette would not ask him a question about it if she saw it out.

He had to enter by the front door, because the French windows were locked. His forehead was wet with sweat.

Upstairs, he wiped himself with a hot wet towel, got back into pajamas and went to bed. It was twenty to eight. He had done too much for Derwatt Ltd., he thought. Were they worth it? Curiously, Bernard was. If they could get Bernard past this
crise
.

But that wasn’t the way to look at it. He wouldn’t have killed someone just to save Derwatt Ltd. or even Bernard, Tom supposed. Tom had killed Murchison because Murchison had realized, in the cellar, that he had impersonated Derwatt. Tom had killed Murchison to save himself. And yet, Tom tried to ask himself, had he intended to kill Murchison anyway when they went down to the cellar together? Had he not intended to kill him? Tom simply could not answer that. And did it matter, much?

Bernard was the only one of the trio whom he could not understand perfectly, and yet Tom liked Bernard best. The motive of Ed and Jeff was so simple, to make money. Tom doubted that Cynthia had done the breaking off with Bernard. It would not have surprised Tom if Bernard (who certainly at one point had been in love with Cynthia) had broken it off, because he was ashamed of his forging. It would be interesting to sound Bernard out about this some time. Yes, in Bernard there was a mystery, and it was mystery that made people attractive, Tom thought, that caused people to fall in love, too. Despite the ugly, tarpaulin-bound lump in the woods behind his house, Tom felt his own thoughts bearing him away as if he were on a cloud. It was strange, and exceedingly pleasant, to daydream about Bernard’s drives, fears, shames, and possible loves. Bernard, like the real Derwatt, was a bit of a saint.

A pair of flies, insane as usual, were annoying Tom. He pulled one out of his hair. They were zooming around his night table. Late for flies, and he’d had quite enough of them this summer. The French countryside was famous for its variety of flies, which outnumbered the variety of cheeses, Tom had read somewhere. One fly jumped on the other’s back. In plain view! Quickly Tom struck a match and held it to the bastards. Wings sizzled.
Buzz-buzz
. Legs struck in the air and flailed their last. Ah, Liebestod, united even in death!

If it could happen in Pompeii, why not at Belle Ombre, Tom thought.

8

T
om spent Saturday morning lazily, writing a letter to Heloise c.o. American Express, Athens, and at 2:30 p.m. he listened to a comic program on the radio, as he often did. Mme. Annette, on Saturday afternoons, sometimes found Tom convulsed on the yellow sofa, and Heloise now and then asked him to translate, but much of it didn’t translate, not the puns. At four, responding to an invitation that had come that noon by telephone, Tom went to take tea with Antoine and Agnès Grais, who lived on the other side of Villeperce, walking distance. Antoine was an architect who worked in Paris and spent weekdays there in his atelier. Agnès, a quiet blonde of about twenty-eight, stayed in Villeperce and took care of their two small children. There were four other guests at the Grais’, all Parisians.

“What have you been doing, Tome?” Agnès asked, bringing out her husband’s speciality at the end of the tea, a bottle of strong old Holland gin, which the Grais recommended to be drunk neat.

“Painting a little. Wandering around the garden cleaning the wrong things, probably.” The French said “cleaning” for “weeding.”

“Not lonely? When is Heloise coming back?”

“Maybe in a month.”

The hour and a half at the Grais’ was soothing to Tom. The Grais made no comment on his two guests, Murchison and Count Bertolozzi, and perhaps had not noticed them or heard of them via Mme. Annette, who chatted freely in the food shops. Nor did the Grais notice his pink and almost bleeding palms, sore from the ropes around Murchison.

That evening, Tom lay with his shoes off on the yellow sofa, browsing in
Harrap’s Dictionary
, which was so heavy he had to hold it against his thighs or rest it upon a table. He anticipated a telephone call, without being quite sure who would ring, and at a quarter past ten, one came. Chris Greenleaf in Paris.

“Is this—Tom Ripley?”

“Yes. Hello, Chris. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. I just got here with my friend. I’m awfully glad you’re in. I didn’t have time to get a letter from you, in case you wrote. Well—look—”

“Where’re you staying?”

“At the Hotel Louisiane. Highly recommended by the fellows back home! It’s my first night in Paris. I haven’t even opened my suitcase. But I thought I’d call you.”

“What’re your plans? When would you like to visit?”

“Oh, any time. Of course I want to do some tourism. The Louvre first, maybe.”

“How about Tuesday?”

“Well—all right, but I was thinking of tomorrow, because my friend is busy all day tomorrow. He has a cousin living here, an older man, an American. So I was hoping . . .”

Somehow Tom couldn’t turn him down, or think of a good excuse. “Tomorrow. All right. In the afternoon? I’m a little busy in the morning.” Tom explained that he would have to take a train at Gare de Lyon for Moret-les-Sablons, and that he should ring again when he had chosen his train, so that Tom would know when to meet him.

Obviously Chris would stay overnight tomorrow. Tom realized that he would have to finish Murchison’s grave and get him into it tomorrow morning. That was, in fact, probably why he had allowed Chris to come tomorrow. It was an added prod for himself.

Chris sounded naïve, but perhaps he had some of the Greenleaf good manners and would not outstay a welcome. Tom winced as this crossed his mind, because he had certainly outstayed his welcome at Dickie’s in Mongibello in his callow youth, when he’d been twenty-five, not twenty. Tom had come from America, or rather had been sent by Dickie’s father, Herbert Greenleaf, to bring Dickie back home. It had been a classic situation. Dickie hadn’t wanted to go back to the United States. And Tom’s
naïveté
at that time, was something that now made him cringe. The things he had had to learn! And then—well, Tom Ripley had stayed in Europe. He had learned a bit. After all he had some money—Dickie’s—the girls had liked him well enough, and in fact Tom had felt a bit pursued. Heloise Plisson had been one of the ones who had liked him. And from Tom’s point of view, she wasn’t a piece of cement, orthodox, or far out, or another bore. Tom had not proposed marriage, nor had Heloise. It was a dark chapter in his life, a brief one. Heloise had said, in their rented bungalow in Cannes, “Since we’re living together, why not get married? . . .
Apropos
, I am not sure Papa will countenance [how had she said ‘countenance’ in French? look that up] our living together much longer, whereas if we were really married—
ça serait un ƒait accompli
.” Tom had turned green at the wedding, even though it had been a civil wedding with no audience in a courtroom of some kind. Heloise had said later, laughing, “You were green.” True. But Tom had at least gone through with it. He had hoped for a word of praise from Heloise, though he knew this was absurd on his part. It was for the bridegroom to say, “Darling, you were gorgeous!” or “Your cheeks were glowing with beauty and happiness!” or some such rot. Well, Tom’s had been pale green. At least he hadn’t collapsed going up the aisle—which had been a dingy passage between a few straight empty chairs in a magistrate’s office in the south of France. Marriages ought to be secret, Tom thought, as private as the wedding night—which wasn’t saying much. Since everybody’s mind was frankly on the wedding night anyway at weddings, why was the affair itself so blatantly public? There was something rather vulgar about it. Why couldn’t people surprise their friends by saying, “Oh, but we’ve been married for three months now!” It was easy to see the reason for public weddings in the past—she’s off our hands and you can’t wriggle out of this one, old cock, or fifty relatives of the bride will boil you in oil—but why these days?

Tom went to bed.

On Sunday morning, again around 5 a.m., Tom donned his Levi’s and went quietly down the stairs.

This time, he ran into Mme. Annette, who opened the door from the kitchen into the hall, just as Tom was about to open the front door to go out. Mme. Annette had a white cloth pressed to her cheek—no doubt the cloth contained hot salt of the coarse cooking type—and there was a dolorous expression on her face.

“Mme. Annette—it’s the tooth,” Tom said sympathetically.

“I could not sleep all night,” said Mme. Annette. “You are up early, M. Tome.”

“Damn that dentist,” Tom said in English. He continued in French, “The idea of a nerve
falling
out! He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Now listen, Mme. Annette, I have some yellow pills upstairs, I just remembered them. From Paris. Especially for toothache. Wait a second.” Tom ran back up the stairs.

She took one of the capsules. Mme. Annette blinked as she swallowed. She had pale blue eyes. Her thin upper lids, drawn downward at the outer corners, looked Nordic. She was a Breton on her father’s side.

“If you like, I can drive you to Fontainebleau today,” Tom said. Tom and Heloise had a dentist in Fontainebleau, and Tom thought he would see Mme. Annette on a Sunday.

“Why are you up so early?” Mme. Annette’s curiosity was greater than her pain, it seemed.

“I’m going to work a little in the garden and go back to sleep for an hour or so. I also had a difficult time sleeping.”

Tom persuaded her gently back to her room, and left the bottle of capsules with her. Four in twenty-four hours were all right to take, he told her. “Don’t bother with breakfast or lunch for me, dear Madame. Repose yourself today.”

Then Tom went out to his task. He took it at a reasonable rate, or what he thought was reasonable. The trench ought to be five feet deep, and no nonsense about it. He had taken a rather rusty but still effective bucksaw from the toolshed, and with this he attacked the crisscrossing roots, heedless of the damp soil that stuck in the saw’s teeth. He made progress. It was fairly light, though the sun was by no means up, when he finished the trench and hauled himself out, muddying the whole front of his sweater, unfortunately a beige cashmere. He looked around, but saw no one on the little lane that ran through the woods. A good thing, he thought, that the French tied up their dogs in the country, because a dog during last night might have snuffed up the branches that covered Murchison’s corpse and barked an announcement that would have carried a kilometer. Again Tom tugged on the ropes that bound Murchison’s tarpaulin. The body fell in with a thud positively delicious to Tom’s ears. The shoveling in of earth was also a pleasure. There was soil to spare, and after stamping down the grave, Tom scattered the rest of the soil about in all directions. Then he walked slowly, but with a sense of achievement, back across his lawn and around to the front door.

He washed his sweater in some kind of delicate suds from Heloise’s bathroom. Then he slept excellently till after 10 a.m.

Tom made some coffee in the kitchen, then went out to pick up his
Observer
and
Sunday Times
at the newspaper shop. Usually he stopped for a coffee somewhere while he glanced at the two newspapers—always a treasure to him—but today he wanted to be alone when he looked at the Derwatt write-ups. Tom almost forgot to buy Mme. Annette’s daily, the local edition of
Le Parisien
, whose headline was always in red. Today, something about a strangled twelve-year-old. The placards outside the shop touting various newspapers were equally bizarre but in a different way:

JEANNE AND PIERRE KISS AGAIN!

Who were they?

MARIE FURIOUS WITH CLAUDE!

The French were never merely annoyed, they were
ƒurieux
.

ONASSIS FEARS THEY WILL STEAL JACKIE FROM HIM!

Were the French lying awake worrying about that?

A BABY FOR NICOLE!

Nicole
who
, for Christ’s sake? Tom never knew who most of these people were—film stars, pop singers, perhaps—but they evidently sold newspapers. The activities of the English Royal Family were unbelievable, Elizabeth and Philip on the brink of divorce three times a year, and Margaret and Tony spitting in each other’s faces.

Tom put Mme. Annette’s paper on the kitchen table, then went up to his room. Both the
Observer
and the
Sunday Times
had a picture of him as Philip Derwatt on their arts review pages. In one, his mouth was open in the act of replying to questions, open in the disgusting beard. Tom looked quickly at the write-ups, not really wanting to read every word.

The
Observer
said: “. . . breaking his long retreat with a surprise appearance Wednesday afternoon at the Buckmaster Gallery, Philip Derwatt, who prefers to be called simply Derwatt, was reticent about his Mexican whereabouts but voluble enough when questioned about his work and that of his contemporaries. On Picasso: ‘Picasso has periods. I have no periods.’” In the
Sunday Times
photograph, he stood behind Jeff’s desk gesticulating with his left fist raised, an action Tom did not remember having made, but here it was “. . . wearing clothes that had obviously been in a cupboard for years . . . held his own against a battery of twelve reporters, which must have been a trial after six years of seclusion, we assume.” Was that “we assume” a dig? Tom thought not, really, because the rest of the comment was favorable. “Derwatt’s current canvases maintain his high standards—idiosyncratic, bizarre, even sick, perhaps? . . . None of Derwatt’s paintings is dashed off or unresolved. They are labors of love, though his technique appears quick, fresh, and easy for him. This is not to be confused with facility or the look of it. Derwatt says he has never painted a picture in less than two weeks . . .” Had he said that? “. . . and he works daily, often for more than seven hours per day. . . . Men, little girls, chairs, tables, strange things on fire, these still predominate. . . . The show is going to be another sellout.” No mention was made of Derwatt’s disappearance after the interview.

A pity, Tom thought, that some of these compliments couldn’t be engraved upon Bernard Tufts’s own tomb, wherever that might be finally. Tom was reminded of “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” a line that had made Tom’s eyes fill with tears on the three occasions he had seen it in the English Protestant Cemetery in Rome, and could sometimes make his eyes water when he merely thought of it. Perhaps Bernard, the plodder, the artist, would compose his own lines before he died. Or would he be anonymously famous because of one “Derwatt,” one splendid picture which he had yet to paint?

Or would Bernard ever paint another Derwatt? Good God, he didn’t even know, Tom realized. And was Bernard painting any more of his own paintings, that might be called Tufts?

Mme. Annette was feeling better before noon. And as Tom had foreseen, because of the anodynal pills, she did not want to be taken to the better dentist at Fontainebleau.

“Madame—I am inundated with
invités
just now, it seems. A pity Mme. Heloise is not here. But tonight there is another for dinner, a young man called M. Christophe, an American. I can do all the shopping necessary in the village. . . .
Non-non
, you repose yourself.”

And Tom did the shopping straightaway and was back home before two. Mme. Annette said an American had rung, but they could not understand each other, and the American would ring back.

Chris did, and Tom was to pick him up at 6:30 at Moret.

Tom put on old flannels, a turtleneck sweater, and desert boots, and left in the Alfa Romeo. The menu tonight was
viande hâchée
—the French hamburger which was so red and delicious one could eat it raw. Tom had seen Americans swoon over hamburgers with onion and ketchup in the Paris drugstores, when they had been away from America only twenty-four hours.

Tom recognized Chris Greenleaf at his first glimpse, as he had thought he might. Though Tom’s view was obscured by several people, Christopher’s blond head stuck a bit above them. His eyes and his brows had the same slight frown that Dickie’s had had. Tom raised an arm in greeting, but Christopher was hesitant until their eyes actually met, and Tom smiled. The boy’s smile was like Dickie’s, but if there was a difference, it was in the lips, Tom thought. Christopher’s lips were fuller, with a fullness unrelated to Dickie and no doubt from Christopher’s mother’s side.