Ripley Under Water (16 page)

Tom rang the Fontainebleau travel agency at nine o’clock, and secured a round-trip ticket to London with open end, leaving that day at just after 1 p.m. from de Gaulle. Tom packed a suitcase with the usual, plus a couple of drip-dry shirts.

To Mme Annette he said, “Tell anyone who might telephone that I am still in Maroc with Madame Heloise, would you? And I shall be back before you know it! Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day … No, no, I shall telephone you, tomorrow certainly, madame.”

Tom had told Mme Annette he was going to London, but not where he would be staying. He left no instructions in case Heloise rang, simply hoping that she wouldn’t, the Moroccan telephone system being discouraging.

Then Tom rang Ed Banbury from his bedroom upstairs. Though Mme Annette still knew no English and, as Tom often thought, seemed impervious to the language, he preferred some conversations quite out of her hearing. Tom told Ed his arrival time, and said that probably a little after 3 p.m. he could be at Ed’s house, if that was convenient.

Ed said he would make it convenient. No problem.

Tom checked Ed’s Covent Garden address, to make sure he had it right. “We have to consider Cynthia, find out what she’s doing, if anything,” Tom said. “We need quiet spies. We really need a mole. Think about it. Looking forward, Ed! Want anything from Frogland?”

“Um-m, well, bottle of Pernod from the duty-free?”

“No sooner said than done. A bientot.”

Tom was carrying his light suitcase down the stairs when the telephone rang. He hoped it was Heloise.

It was Agnes Grais. “Tome—since you’re alone, I thought it would be nice if you came for dinner at our place this evening. Only the kids are here, and they eat earlier, you know?”

“Thank you, dear Agnes,” he replied in French. “Sorry to say, I have to take off again … Yes, today. I was just about to ring for a taxi, in fact. What a shame.”

“A taxi to where? I am off to Fontainebleau now for shopping. Would that help you?”

That was just what Tom wanted, so he invited himself, with no trouble, to a ride as far as Fontainebleau. Agnes arrived five or ten minutes later. Tom had just time to say goodbye to Mme Annette when Agnes Grais’ station wagon came through the gates he had opened. Then they were off.

“Where’re you going now?” Agnes glanced at him with a smile, as if she thought he was the gadabout of all time.

“London. A little business—By the way—”

“Yes, Tome?”

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention to anyone that I was home overnight. Or that I’m going to London for a day or so. It’s not very important—to anyone—but I feel I should be with Heloise, even though she’s got her good friend Noelle with her. You’ve met Noelle Hassler?”

“Yes. Twice, I think.”

“I’ll be going back to—Casablanca in a few days, very likely.” Tom assumed a more relaxed manner. “Did you know that the curious Madame Pritchard is weepy lately? I heard this from my faithful spy Madame Annette.”

“Tears? Why?”

“No idea!” Tom wasn’t going to say that M. Pritchard did not appear to be home just now. Mme Janice Pritchard must be keeping to herself pretty much, if Agnes hadn’t noticed the absence of Janice’s husband. “Strange to go into the boulangerie wiping tears away, isn’t it?”

“Very! And sad.”

Agnes Grais dropped Tom at the place he had, on the spur of the moment, suggested: in front of L’Aigle Noir. The porter who came down the steps and across the terrace might or might not have known Tom by sight, as Tom patronized only the hotel restaurant and bar, but he applied himself to getting a taxi that was willing to go to the airport, for which Tom tipped him.

In what seemed like a short time, Tom was in another taxi that was driving on the left side of the road, heading for London. At his feet was the plastic bag containing Ed’s Pernod and a carton of Gauloises. From the window, Tom saw redbrick factories and warehouses, huge company signs, promising nothing of the easy fraternity that Tom associated with visiting his pals in London. He had found more than two hundred pounds in cash in his UK-England envelope (a small drawer in his captain’s chest was devoted to leftover foreign currencies), and also some traveler’s checks in pounds.

“And please watch it at Seven Dials,” Tom said to the driver in a polite but anxious tone, “if you go that way.” Ed Banbury had warned him that taxi drivers could take a wrong turn that could be disastrous. Ed’s block of flats, an old one renovated, he had said, was in Bedfordbury Street. The street was almost quaint, Tom saw when the taxi came to it. Tom paid the driver off.

Ed was in, as promised, and just as he buzzed Tom in, after verifying his voice on the speaker, a clap of thunder came that made Tom quake. Then, as Tom opened the second door, he heard the heavens open and the rain come down.

“There’s no lift,” said Ed, leaning over the banister, then starting down. “Second floor.”

“Hi, Ed,” Tom said in almost a whisper. He disliked speaking loudly when two flats on each floor might be able to hear. Ed took the plastic bag. The wooden banister was beautifully polished, the walls looked freshly painted white, and the carpeting was dark blue.

Ed’s flat presented the same new and clean appearance as the hall. Ed made tea, because he usually did at this hour, he said.

“You spoke with Jeff?” asked Tom.

“Oh, yes. He wants to see you. Maybe tonight. I told him I’d ring once you arrived and we’d talked.”

They had tea in the room that was to be Tom’s bedroom, a sort of library off the living room, with a sofa that seemed made from a twin bed by dint of a cover and some cushions. Tom filled Ed in quickly as to David Pritchard’s activities in Tangier, and the satisfying episode that had ended with Pritchard unconscious on the stone floor of La Haffa.

“I haven’t seen him since,” Tom went on. “My wife’s still there with a Paris friend called Noelle Hassler. I suppose they’ll go on to Casablanca. I don’t want Pritchard harming my wife and I don’t think he’ll try. He’s after me. I don’t know what’s on the bastard’s mind.” Tom sipped his delicious Earl Grey. “Pritchard may be a nut, okay. But what interests me is what he might be learning from Cynthia Gradnor. Any news there? Anything about the go-between, for instance—the friend of Cynthia’s whom Pritchard spoke with at the big free-for-all?”

“Yes. We got his name. George Benton. Jeff got it, somehow, and it wasn’t easy, had to do with photos taken at the party in question. Jeff had to ask questions, and he wasn’t even at that party.”

Tom was interested. “You’re sure of the name? Lives in London?”

“Pretty much sure of the name.” Ed recrossed his lean legs, and frowned slightly. “We saw three promising Bentons in the book. There are so many Bentons, and with the G. initial—we could hardly ring them up and ask if they knew Cynthia—”

Tom had to agree. “What I’m worried about is how far will Cynthia go. In fact, is she even in touch with Pritchard now? Cynthia detests me.” Tom fairly shuddered as he said the words. “She’d love to hit me hard. But if she decided to expose the forgeries, give the date when Bernard Tufts started forging”—here Tom’s voice dropped to almost a whisper—“she’ll also be betraying her great love Bernard. I’m gambling that she won’t go that far. It’s strictly a gamble.” Tom sat back in his armchair, but still did not relax. “It’s more a hope and a prayer. I haven’t seen Cynthia for a few years and her attitude toward Bernard may have changed—slightly. Maybe she’ll be more interested in avenging herself on me.” Tom paused, and watched Ed think.

“Why do you say avenge herself on you, when you know it hits all of us, Tom? Jeff and I—we were doing articles with photos of Derwatt and his paintings—old ones,” he added with a smile, “when we knew Derwatt was dead.”

Tom looked at his old friend steadily. “It’s because Cynthia knows I had the idea of Bernard’s forging in the first place. Your articles came a little later. Bernard told Cynthia, and that’s when Bernard and Cynthia began their split.”

“True. Yes, I remember.”

Ed and Jeff and Bernard, but especially Bernard, had been friendly with Derwatt the painter. And when Derwatt, in a depressed period, had gone off to Greece and deliberately drowned himself off some island there, the friends back in London had been understandably shocked, bewildered: in fact, Derwatt had merely “disappeared” in Greece, because his corpse had never been found. Derwatt had been around forty, Tom thought, beginning to be recognized as a painter of the first category, with presumably his best work ahead of him. Tom had come up with the idea of Bernard Tufts, the painter, trying some Derwatt forgeries.

“Why’re you smiling?” Ed asked.

“I was thinking of my confession. I feel sure a priest would say—could you write all that out?”

Ed put his head back and laughed. “No—he’d say you’ve made it all up!”

“No!” Tom went on, laughing. “The priest would say—”

The telephone had rung in another room.

“Excuse me, Tom, I’m expecting that,” Ed said, and went off.

While Ed spoke, Tom looked around the “library” where he was to sleep. Lots of hardcover books, as well as paperbacks, he saw, in the two floor-to-ceiling walls of shelves. Tom Sharpe, Muriel Spark, almost side by side. Ed had acquired some good furniture since Tom had seen him last. Where was Ed’s family from? Hove?

And what was Heloise doing at this moment? Nearly 4 p.m.? The sooner she left Tangier and went to Casablanca, the happier he would be.

“It’s all right,” Ed said, returning, tugging a red sweater down over his shirt. “I canceled something unimportant, and I’m free the rest of the afternoon.”

“Let’s go to the Buckmaster.” Tom stood up. “Isn’t it open till five-thirty? Six?”

“Six, I believe. I’ll just put the milk away, let’s forget about the rest. If you want to hang up stuff, Tom, there’s room in the cupboard here on the left.”

“I hung my spare trousers over a chair here—for now. Let’s go.”

Ed reached the door and turned. He had put on a raincoat. “You mentioned two things you wanted to say. Concerning Cynthia?”

“Oh—yes.” Tom buttoned his Burberry. “The second—detail. Cynthia of course knows that the corpse I cremated was Bernard’s, not Derwatt’s. I don’t have to tell you that. So in a way it’s a further insult to Bernard that I’ve—further soiled his name, as it were, by telling the police that his corpse was somebody else’s.”

“But you know, Tom, in all this time, she hasn’t said anything to us. To Jeff or me. All she does is ignore us, which is fine with us.”

“She never had an opportunity such as David Pritchard presents now,” Tom countered. “A meddling, sadistic nut. Cynthia can simply use him, don’t you see? And that’s what she’s doing.”

A taxi to Old Bond Street, to the discreetly lighted, brass and dark-wood framed window of the Buckmaster Gallery. The fine old door still had its polished brass handle, Tom noted.

A couple of palms in pots in the front window flanked an old painting and concealed much of the room beyond.

The man called Nick Hall, who had been described to Tom as about thirty, was talking to an older man. Nick had straight black hair, was rather sturdy in build and inclined to keep his arms folded, it seemed.

Tom saw what he considered mediocre modern paintings on the wall, not a total exhibition by the same person, but a selection of three or four painters. Tom and Ed stood to one side until Nick had concluded his conversation with the older gentleman. Nick gave the man a card, and the older man departed. There was no one else in the gallery now, it seemed.

“Mr. Banbury, good afternoon,” said Nick, coming forward, smiling, showing short, even teeth. Nick seemed straightforward, at least. And he plainly knew Ed, which indicated that they kept in good touch.

“Afternoon, Nick. May I introduce a friend—Tom Ripley. Nick Hall.”

“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” said Nick, smiling again. He did not extend a hand, but bowed a little.

“Mr. Ripley’s here only for a couple of days, and wanted to look in, meet you, and perhaps see an interesting painting or two.”

Ed’s manner was light, and Tom kept his the same. Nick had apparently not heard Tom’s name before. Fine. A far cry (and a good deal safer) from last time, when a gay chap named Leonard, as Tom recalled, had had Nick’s position and been in on the fact that Tom was impersonating Derwatt and holding a press conference in the back room of this very gallery.

Tom and Ed strolled into the next room (there were only two showrooms) and looked at the Corot-like landscapes hanging on the walls. There were, in the second showroom, a few canvases leaning against the wall in a back corner. More would be in the back room, Tom knew, beyond the slightly smudged white door, where the press conference—two in fact—with Tom as Derwatt had taken place.

Out of Nick’s hearing, Nick being then in the front room, Tom asked Ed to ask Nick if there had been any inquiries about Derwatts lately. “And then, I’d like to take a look at the visitors’ book—people who’ve signed.” It would be just like David Pritchard to sign, Tom thought. “Anyway, the Buckmaster Gallery people—meaning you and Jeff, the owners—know that I like Derwatts, n’est-ce pas?”

Ed did ask.

“We have six Derwatts just now, sir,” said Nick, and straightened up in his snug gray suit, as if at the prospect of a sale. “Of course I recall your name now, sir. They’re this way.”

Nick showed the Derwatts by placing them on a chair seat and letting them lean against the back. The canvases were all Bernard Tufts, two Tom remembered, four he did not. Cat in Afternoon pleased Tom most, a warm reddish-brown and nearly abstract composition in which a marmalade-and-white cat was not at once findable, a sleeping cat. Then Station Nowhere, a lovely canvas of blue, brown, tan spots with a chalky but dirty-looking building in the background, the railway station, presumably. Then—people again—Sisters in an Argument, which was a typical Derwatt, though to Tom a Bernard Tufts because of the date: a portrait of two females facing each other, mouths open. Derwatt’s multi-lined outlines conveyed a sense of activity, noise of voices, and the dashes of red—a favorite device of Derwatt and copied by Bernard Tufts—suggested anger, maybe the scratching of fingernails and the blood therefrom.