Ripley Under Water (29 page)

“Um—I dunno exactly.” Ed looked as if he were enjoying the summer breeze through his window. “I rang him last night, told him I was coming over to see you. I also said you might need him. Saw no harm in it, Tom.”

“No,” Tom agreed. “No harm.”

“Are we going to need him, do you think?”

Tom frowned at the congestion on the peripherique. The weekend departures were of course already beginning, and the drive south would also present more cars. Tom turned and turned again in his mind the question of whether to tell

Ed about the corpse before or after lunch. “I really don’t know as yet.”

“What beautiful fields here!” Ed said as they rolled away from Fontainebleau eastward. “Broader than in England, it seems.”

Tom said nothing, but he was pleased. Some guests made no comment, as if they were blind or daydreaming out the window. Ed was equally appreciative of Belle Ombre, much admired the impressive gates, which Tom reminded him with a laugh were not bulletproof, and praised the balance in the design of the house from the front.

“Yes, and now—” Tom had parked the Mercedes not far from the front door, its back to the house. ”—I have to tell you something most unpleasant which I didn’t know till this morning before eight, Ed—I swear.”

“I believe you,” said Ed, frowning. He had his luggage in his hand. “What is it?”

“In the garage there—” Tom lowered his voice and took a step nearer Ed. “Pritchard deposited the corpse on my doorstep this morning. Murchison’s corpse.”

Ed frowned harder. “The—you don’t mean it!”

“It’s a bag of bones,” Tom said in almost a whisper. “My housekeeper doesn’t know about it, and let’s keep it that way. It’s in the back of the station wagon there. Doesn’t even weigh much. But something’s got to be done.”

“Obviously.” Ed spoke softly too. “Take it to some woods and leave it, do you mean?”

“I dunno. Have to think. I thought—better to tell you now.”

“Here on the doorstep?”

“Right there.” Tom indicated with a nod. “He did it in the dark, of course. I didn’t hear a thing, where I sleep. Madame Annette didn’t mention hearing anything. I found it around seven this morning. He came by the side here—maybe with his helper Teddy, but even alone he could’ve dragged it without too much trouble. From the lane. Hard to see the lane now, but you can drive a car into it, stop, and walk onto my land.” As Tom glanced in that direction, he fancied he could see a faint depression in the grass, a path such as a person walking would have made, since the bones weren’t heavy enough to have had to be dragged.

“Teddy,” Ed said musingly, and half-turned toward the house door.

“Yes. I learned that from Pritchard’s wife, I think I told you. I’m wondering if Teddy is still employed or does Pritchard consider the job done? Well—let’s go in, have a drink and try to enjoy a nice lunch.”

Tom used his key on the ring he still held in one hand. Mme Annette, busy in the kitchen, had perhaps seen them but also realized that they wanted to talk for a minute.

“How nice! Really, Tom,” said Ed. “Beautiful living-room.”

“Want to leave your mac down here?”

Mme Annette came in and Tom introduced them. She of course wanted to carry Ed’s case upstairs. Ed remonstrated, smiling.

“This is a ritual,” Tom murmured. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

Tom did. Mme Annette had cut a single peach-colored rose for the dressing table, very effective in its narrow vase. Ed thought the room splendid. Tom showed him the bath adjacent, and asked him to make himself comfortable and come down soon for a pre-lunch drink.

It was then just past 1 p.m.

“Have there been any telephone calls, madame?” Tom asked.

“No, m’sieur, and I have been home since a quarter past ten.”

“Good,” said Tom calmly, thinking that it was very good. Surely Pritchard had told his spouse of his moves? His success? What had her reaction been, Tom wondered, besides silly laughter?

Tom went to his CD collection, hesitated between a Scriabin string composition—beautiful but dreamy—and Brahms’s Opus 39, and chose the latter, a series of sixteen brilliant waltzes played on the piano. That was what he and Ed needed, and he hoped Ed would like it too. He set the volume not too loud.

He made himself a gin and tonic, and by the time he had twisted the lemon peel and dropped it in, Ed was down.

Ed wanted the same.

Tom made the drink, then went to the kitchen to ask Mme Annette to hold lunch for another five minutes or so, please.

Tom and Ed lifted their glasses, and exchanged a look in silence, but for the Brahms. Tom felt the drink at once, but he also felt the Brahms making his blood run faster. One rapid and thrilling musical idea followed another, as if the great composer were deliberately showing off. And with that talent, why not?

Ed strolled toward the French windows on the terrace side. “What a pretty harpsichord! And the view here, Tom! All yours?”

“No, just to where the row of bushes is. Behind’s woods. Anybody’s sort of.”

“And—I like your music.”

Tom smiled. “Good.”

Ed strolled back to the center of the room. He had put on a fresh blue shirt. “How far away does this Pritchard live?” he asked quietly.

“About two kilometers that way.” Tom gestured over his left shoulder. “By the way, my housekeeper doesn’t understand English—or so I fancy,” he added with a smile, “or I prefer to think.”

“I remember—from somewhere. Convenient.”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

They lunched on cold ham, cottage cheese with parsley, Mme Annette’s homemade potato salad, black olives and a nice bottle of Graves, chilled. Then a sorbet. Their mood was outwardly cheerful, but Tom was thinking of their next job, and he knew Ed was too. Neither wanted coffee.

“I’m going to change into Levis,” Tom said. “Are you okay? We have to—may have to kneel in the back of the car.”

Ed was already in blue jeans.

Tom nipped upstairs and changed. When he came down, he again got his Swiss knife from the hall table, and gave Ed a nod. They went out through the front door. Tom deliberately did not glance at the kitchen window, lest he attract Mme Annette’s eye.

They went past the brown Renault, where the garage door was open. There was no wall between the cars in the garage.

“It’s not too bad,” Tom said as cheerily as he could. “The head’s missing. What I’m after now—”

“Missing?”

“It probably rolled off, don’t you think? After three, four years? Cartilage dissolving—”

“Rolled off where?”

“This thing’s been under water, Ed. The Loing river. I don’t suppose the current reverses, as in a canal, but—there is a current. I just want to check on the rings. He had two, I remember, and I—I left them on. Okay, are you game?”

Tom could see that Ed tried to look game as he nodded. Tom opened the side door, and they had a view of most of the dark gray canvas-wrapped form, on which Tom saw two coils of rope, one apparently at waist-, one at about knee-level. What Tom thought were the shoulders were toward the front of the car. “Shoulders this way, I think,” Tom said, gesturing. “Excuse me.” Tom got in first, crept to the other side of the corpse to give Ed room, and pulled out his Swiss knife. “I’m going to look at the hands.” Tom began sawing away at the rope, not a quick job.

Ed put a hand under the end of the sack, the feet end, and tried to lift it. “Quite light!”

“I told you.”

With his knees on the car floor, Tom attacked the rope from below, sawing upward with his knife’s little saw blade now. It was Pritchard’s rope, and new. He got it cut. Tom loosened the rope and braced himself, because he was at the abdominal part of the remains now. There was still only a stale, dampish smell, not the kind to make one ill unless one thought about it. Now Tom could see that some bits of flesh still clung, pale and flabby, to the spinal column. The abdomen was of course rather a hollow. The hands, Tom reminded himself.

Ed was watching closely, and had murmured something, maybe his favorite exclamation.

“Hands,” Tom said. “Well—you can see why it’s light.”

“Never saw anything like it!”

“I hope you never will.” Tom loosened Pritchard’s cloth, then the worn-out beige tarpaulin which seemed ready to fall apart everywhere, like a mummy’s disintegrating tapes.

The hand and wrist bones almost separated from the two bones of the forearm, Tom thought, but at any rate, they didn’t. It was the right hand (Murchison lay on his back), and Tom saw at once the heavy gold ring with purple stone, which he vaguely recalled, and remembered thinking was probably a class ring. Tom took it carefully from the little finger. It came off easily, but he did not want to tear off the delicate bones of that finger. Tom pushed his thumb into the ring to clean it, then pushed it into a front pocket of his Levis.

“You said two rings?”

“As I recall.” Tom had to back up, as the left arm was not bent but straight down at the side. Tom loosened more tarpaulin, then twisted and lowered the window behind him. “You all right, Ed?”

“Sure.” But Ed looked white in the face.

“This’ll be quick.” Tom got to the hand, and there was no ring on it. He looked under the bones, to see if it had fallen off, even into Pritchard’s oilcloth. “Wedding ring, I think,” Tom said to Ed. “Not here. Maybe it fell off.”

“Certainly logical it could’ve fallen off,” replied Ed, and cleared his throat.

Tom could see that Ed was struggling, that he would have preferred not to watch. Once more, Tom groped under the femur, the pelvic bones. He felt crumbs, soft and not so soft, but nothing like a ring. He sat back. Should he take both wrappings off? Yes. “I’ve got to look for that—here. You know, Ed, if Madame Annette gives us a shout, about a telephone call or some such, you step out and tell her we’re in the garage, and I’ll be there in a minute. I’m not sure if she knows we’re here or not. If she asks—which she won’t—what we’re doing, I’ll say we’re looking at maps.”

Then Tom went at his task with a will, cut the other rope in the same manner (it had a hard knot), wishing he had his pruning saw from the greenhouse. He lifted ankle and shin bones, looked and felt, down to the end. Useless. Tom noticed that the little toe was missing from the left foot. And so was a phalange or two of the fingers. But that class ring proved it was Murchison, Tom thought.

“Can’t find it,” Tom said. “Now—” Tom hesitated about stones. Should he gather some, as he had with Bernard Tufts, to sink the bones? What was he going to do with the thing, anyway? “I think tie it up again. Could look almost like skis, you know?”

“Won’t this Pritchard bastard get the police, Tom? Tell the police to come here?”

Tom gave a gasp. “Yes, you’d think! But we’re dealing with loonies, Ed! Just try and predict them!”

“But what if the police come?”

“Well—” Tom felt his adrenaline rising. “I’ll tell them these bones are in the car because I wanted them out of sight of my guest, and that I intended to deliver them to the police as soon as I’d recovered from the shock of finding them. And also—who notified the police? There’s the culprit!”

“You think Pritchard knows about that ring? Identification?”

“I doubt it. Doubt if he looked for a ring.” Tom began tying up the lower part of the carcass again.

“I’ll help you with the top,” Ed said, reaching for the rope that Tom had laid to one side.

Tom was grateful. “Got to make two loops around instead of three, thanks to that knot, I think.” Pritchard had looped three circles around with his new rope.

“But—what’re we going to do with it finally?” Ed asked.

Throw it back in some canal, Tom thought to himself in which case, they’d have to—or he’d have to—untie the ropes again to get some stones into Pritchard’s canvas. Or throw the damned thing into Pritchard’s little pond. Tom laughed suddenly. “I was thinking we could throw it back at Pritchard. He’s got a pond on his lawn.”

Ed gave a short laugh, unbelieving. They were both tugging at the final knots to secure their ropes.

“I’ve got more rope in my cellar, thank goodness,” Tom said. “Excellent, Ed. Now we know what we’ve got here, right? A headless corpse, pretty hard to identify, I’d say, fingerprints long ago washed off with the skin.”

Here Ed forced a laugh that sounded sick.

“Let’s get out,” Tom said at once. Ed got down to the garage floor and Tom slid out after him. Tom looked at the stretch of the road in front of Belle Ombre, as much of it as he could see. He couldn’t believe that Pritchard wasn’t curious enough to be snooping now, and Tom was half expecting Pritchard at any moment. But he didn’t want to tell Ed this.

“I thank you, Ed. I couldn’t have done it without you!” Tom gave Ed’s arm a pat.

“Are you kidding?” Ed tried to grin.

“No. I bogged down on it this morning, as I said.” Tom wanted to look for extra rope now and have it handy in the garage, but he noticed that Ed’s pallor did not leave his face. “Want to take a turn in the back garden? Out in the sun?”

Tom put out the inside light in the garage. They strolled around by the kitchen side of the house—Mme Annette had likely finished there, and was in her own room by now—and onto the back lawn. The sunshine fell warm and bright on their faces. Tom chatted about his dahlias. He’d cut a couple now, he said, because he had his knife with him. But there was the greenhouse, quite near, so Tom went in and got his clippers, his second pair.

“You don’t lock this at night?” Ed asked.

“Usually not. I know I should,” Tom replied. “Most people would around here.” Tom found himself glancing at the side road, the unpaved lane, for a car or for Pritchard. After all, Pritchard had made his delivery by that road. Tom cut three blue dahlias and they went into the living room, via a French window.

“Nice little brandy?” Tom suggested.

“Frankly, I feel like lying down for a couple of minutes.”

“Nothing easier.” Tom poured a very small Remy Martin, and handed it to Ed. “I insist. Moral support. Won’t do you any harm.”

Ed smiled, and tossed it down. “Um-m. Thank you.”

Tom went up with Ed, took a hand towel from the guest bathroom, and wet it with cold water. He told Ed to lie down with the folded towel on his forehead, and if he wanted to sleep for a while, fine.