Ripley Under Water (9 page)

“You still there, Tom?”

“Yep. Cynthia means us no good, my friend. And neither does Pritchard. But he’s simply cracked.”

“Cracked?”

“Some kind of mental case, don’t ask me what.” Tom took a deep breath. “Ed, I thank you for your trouble. Tell Jeff thanks too.”

When they had hung up, Tom suffered a shaky few moments. Cynthia had her suspicions with regard to Thomas Murchison’s disappearance, that was certain. And she had the courage to stick her neck out about it. She must know that if anyone were a candidate for elimination on Tom’s agenda, it would be herself, because she knew all about the forgeries, down to the first picture Bernard Tufts ever forged (which not even Tom was sure of) and its date, very likely.

Tom was thinking that Pritchard would have come across the name Murchison while reading up on Tom Ripley in newspaper archives, probably. Tom’s name had been mentioned only one day that Tom knew of in the American newspapers. Mme Annette had seen Tom carrying Murchison’s suitcase out to his (Tom’s) car at the right time to reach Orly for Murchison’s flight, and had mistakenly but innocently told the police that she had seen M. Ripley and M. Murchison going out to M. Ripley’s car with the luggage. Such was the power of suggestion, of acting, Tom thought. At that moment Murchison had been clumsily wrapped in an old canvas in Tom’s cellar, and Tom had been terrified that Mme Annette might go down for wine before he could do something about the corpse.

Cynthia’s bringing Murchison’s name up might well have given the Pritchards new enthusiasm. Tom had no doubt that Cynthia knew Murchison had “disappeared” just after visiting Tom. That had been in the newspapers in England, as Tom recalled, even if the items had been small. Murchison had had a conviction that all the late Derwatts were forgeries. As if Murchison’s belief wasn’t strong enough, Bernard Tufts had further strengthened it by telling Murchison to his face in London, at Murchison’s hotel, “Don’t buy any more Derwatts.” Murchison had told Tom of this curious meeting with a stranger in the bar of the hotel. Bernard had not told Murchison his name, Murchison had said to Tom. Tom, himself spying on Murchison just then, had seen him and Bernard tete-a-tete, viewing it with a horror Tom could still feel: Tom had known what Bernard must be saying.

Tom had often wondered if Bernard Tufts had then gone to Cynthia and tried to win her back, on the grounds that he had sworn to himself not to paint any more forgeries. But if Bernard had, Cynthia hadn’t taken him back.

Chapter 6

Tom had thought that Janice Pritchard might make another effort to “contact” him, as she would put it, and so she did, on Tuesday afternoon. The telephone rang at Belle Ombre around 2:30 p.m. Tom heard it faintly. He was then weeding in one of the rose beds near the house. Heloise answered, and after a few seconds called, “Tome! Telephone!” She had come to the open French window.

“Thank you, my sweet.” He dropped the hoe. “And who is it?”

“The wife of Prickard.”

“Aha! Pritchard, dear.” Annoyed but curious, Tom took it in the hall. This time he would not be able to go upstairs to talk without explaining that move to Heloise . “Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Ripley! I’m so glad you’re home. I was wondering—you may think this presumptuous of me—I would so much like to say a few words to you face to face.”

“Oh?”

“I have the car. I’m free until nearly five. Can—“

Tom did not want her at his house, nor did he want to go to the house of the shimmering ceiling. They agreed to meet near the obelisk in Fontainebleau (Tom’s idea) at a working-class bar-cafe called Le Sport or some such on the northeast corner at a quarter past three. Tom and Heloise had M. Lepetit coming at four-thirty, for their music lesson, but Tom did not mention that.

Heloise looked at him with an interest in her eyes that his telephone calls seldom evoked.

“Yes, of all people.” Tom hated saying it, but went ahead. “She wants to see me. I might learn something. So I agreed. This afternoon.”

“Learn something?”

“I don’t like her husband. I don’t like either of them, my dear, but—if I learn something, it helps.”

“They are asking funny questions?”

Tom smiled a little, grateful for Heloise ‘s understanding of their mutual problems, mainly his problems. “Not too many. Don’t worry. They tease. Ils taquinent. Both of them.” Tom added on a more cheerful note, “I’ll give you a full report when I return—which will be in time for M’sieur Lepetit.”

Tom left the house a few minutes later, and found a parking place near the obelisk, dubious as to parking ticket, but he didn’t care.

Janice Pritchard was already there, standing uneasily at the bar. “Mr. Ripley.” She gave Tom a warm smile.

Tom nodded, but ignored the hand she extended. “Good afternoon. Can’t we find a booth?”

They did. Tom ordered tea for the lady, and an espresso for himself.

“What’s your husband doing today?” Tom asked with a pleasant smile, expecting Janice to say he was at the Fontainebleau insead , in which case Tom was going to ask her to be more specific about her husband’s studies.

“His massage afternoon,” replied Janice Pritchard with a weaving motion of her head. “In Fontainebleau. I’m supposed to pick him up at four-thirty.”

“Massage? He has a bad back?” The word massage was disagreeable to Tom; he associated it with sex parlors, although he knew respectable massage parlors existed.

“No.” Janice’s face looked tortured. She stared as much at the tabletop as at Tom. “He just likes it. Anywhere, everywhere, twice a week, anyway.”

Tom swallowed, hating the conversation. The loud cries for “Un Ricard!” and the roars of triumph from the video games were more pleasant than Janice talking about her oddball husband.

“I mean—even if we’re in Paris, he can find a massage parlor right away.”

“Curious,” Tom murmured. “And what’s he got against me?”

“Against you?” Janice said, as if surprised. “Why, nothing. He has a respect for you.” She looked Tom in the eyes.

Tom knew that. “Why does he say he’s at insead, when he isn’t?”

“Oh—you know that?” Now Janice’s eyes were steadier, amused, and mischievous.

“No,” Tom said. “I’m not at all sure. I just don’t believe all of what your husband says.”

Janice laughed, giggling with a curious glee.

Tom didn’t smile back, because he didn’t feel like it. He watched Janice rub her right wrist with her thumb, as if performing some kind of unconscious massage. She wore a crisply clean white shirt above her same blue slacks, with a turquoise (not real, but pretty) necklace under the shirt collar. And now Tom saw definite bruise marks as her massaging pushed her cuff back. Tom realized that a bluish spot on the left side of her neck was a bruise also. Did she want him to see her bruises? “Well,” Tom said finally, “if he doesn’t attend insead—“

“He likes to tell unusual stories,” said Janice, looking down at the glass ashtray, in which three stubs from preceding customers lay, one a filter.

Tom smiled indulgently, doing his best to make it look genuine. “But of course you love him all the same.” He saw Janice hesitate, frown. She was putting on the damsel-in-distress act, Tom felt, or something close to it, loving his drawing her out.

“He needs me. I’m not sure he—I mean, that I love him.” She glanced up at Tom.

Oh, Christ, as if it mattered, Tom thought. “To ask a very American question, what does he do for a living? Where does his money come from?”

Janice’s brow suddenly unfurrowed. “Oh, that’s no problem. His family had a lumber business in Washington State. It was sold when the father died, and David got half along with his brother. It’s all invested—somehow—so income comes from that.”

The way she said “somehow” told Tom that she didn’t know a thing about stocks and bonds. “Switzerland?”

“No-o. Some bank in New York, they handle it all. It’s enough for us—but David always wants more.” Janice smiled almost sweetly, as if talking about a child’s penchant for another helping of cake. “I think his father got impatient with him, threw him out of the house when he was about twenty-two, because he wasn’t working. Even then, David had a good allowance, but he wanted more.”

Tom could imagine. Easy money nourished the fantasy element in his existence, guaranteed the continued unreality, and at the same time food in the fridge and on the table.

Tom took a sip of his coffee. “Why did you want to see me?”

“Oh—” His question might have awakened her from a dream. She shook her head a little, and regarded Tom. “To tell you he’s playing a game with you. He wants to hurt you. He wants to hurt me too. But you—interest him now.”

“How can he hurt me?” Tom pulled out his Gitanes.

“Oh, he suspects you—of everything. So he just wants to make you feel aw-w-ful.” She drawled the word out, as if this kind of hurt was unpleasant, but just a game.

“He hasn’t succeeded yet.” Tom extended the packet. She shook her head and took one of her own. “Suspects me of what, for instance?”

“Oh, I’m not saying. He’d beat me, if I ever told.”

“Beat you?”

“Oh, yes. He loses his temper sometimes.”

Tom feigned mild shock. “But you must know what he’s got against me. It’s surely not personal, because I never met him till a couple of weeks ago.” Then he ventured, “He knows nothing about me.”

Her eyes narrowed, and her weak smile could hardly be called a smile now. “No, he just pretends.”

Tom disliked her as much as he disliked her husband, but tried not to let it show in his face. “He makes a habit of going around annoying people?” Tom asked it as if he were amused by the idea.

Again the juvenile giggle from Janice, though the little wrinkles around her eyes would indicate that she was at least thirty-five, the age her husband looked also. “You could say that.” She glanced at Tom and away.

“Who was it before me?”

Silence, as Janice looked into the sordid ashtray as if it were a fortune-teller’s crystal ball, as if she glimpsed fragments of old stories there. Her brows even lifted—was she acting some part now, for her own pleasure?—and Tom saw for the first time a scar of crescent shape on the right side of her forehead. Result of a flying saucer one evening?

“What does he hope to gain by annoying people?” Tom asked gently, as if posing a question at a seance.

“Oh, his idea of fun.” Now Janice gave a real smile. “There was a singer in America—two singers!” she added with a laugh. “One a pop singer and the other—much more important, a female soprano in the opera. I forgot her name, maybe that’s for the best, ha-ha! Norwegian, I think. David—” Janice gazed at the ashtray again.

“A pop singer?” Tom prompted.

“Yes. David just wrote insulting notes, you see. ‘You’re slipping,’ or ‘Two assassins are waiting,’ something like that. David wanted to throw him off make him give a shaky performance. I’m not even sure the letters ever reached this one, they get so many letters, and he was pretty big among the kids. First name was Tony, I remember that. But I think drugs happened to him and not—” Janice paused again, then came out with, “David just likes to see people wilt—if he can. If he can make them wilt.”

Tom listened. “And he collects dossiers on these people? Newspaper items?”

“Not so much,” Janice said casually with a glance at Tom, and she drank some of her tea. “For one thing, he doesn’t want them in the house, in case he’s—well, successful. I don’t think he was successful with the Norwegian opera singer, for example, but he kept the TV on, watching her, I remember, and saying she’s becoming shaky—failing. Why, nonsense, I thought.” Janice looked into Tom’s eyes.

A phony frankness, Tom thought. If she felt so strongly, what was she doing living under the same roof as David Pritchard? Tom took a deep breath. One didn’t ask a logical question of each and every married woman. “And what’s he planning for me? Just heckling?”

“Oh—probably.” Janice squirmed again. “He thinks you’re too sure of yourself. Conceited.”

Tom repressed a laugh. “Heckle me,” Tom mused. “And what comes next?”

Janice’s thin lips rose at one corner in a sly, amused line that he’d never seen before, and her eyes avoided his. “Who knows?” She rubbed her wrist again.

“And how did David happen to alight on me?”

Janice glanced at him, then pondered. “I seem to remember he saw you at an airport somewhere. Noticed your coat.”

“Coat?”

“Leather and fur. Something nice, anyway, and David said, ‘Isn’t that a good-looking coat, I wonder who he is.’ And somehow he found out. Got behind you in a line, maybe, so he could find out your name.” Janice shrugged.

Tom tried hard to recall anything, and couldn’t. He blinked. It was possible, of course, discovering his name at an airport, noticing that he had an American passport. Then checking—what? Embassies? Tom wasn’t registered, didn’t think he was, in Paris, for instance. Then newspaper files? That took perseverance. “How long have you been married? And how did you meet David?”

“Oh—” Again mirth in her narrow face, a hand pushed through the apricot-colored hair.

“Y-yes, I suppose we’ve been married more than three years. And we met—at a big conference for secretaries, bookkeepers—even bosses.” Another laugh. “In Cleveland, Ohio. I don’t know how David and I got to talking, there were so many people. But David has a certain charm, maybe you can’t see it.”

Tom couldn’t. Types like Pritchard looked as if they intended to get what they wanted, even if it meant twisting a man’s or woman’s arm or half-throttling them, and Tom knew this had a charm for certain female types. He pushed his cuff back. “Excuse me. I have a date in a few minutes, but I’m all right for time now.” He was dying to mention Cynthia, to ask what Pritchard intended to use her for, but Tom did not want to drum the name in. And of course he didn’t want to seem worried. “What does your husband want from me—if I may ask? Why was he taking pictures of my house, for instance?”

“Oh, he wants to make you afraid of him. Wants to see that you’re afraid of him.”

Tom smiled tolerantly. “Sorry, no way.”

“It’s simply a show of power on David’s part,” she said on a shriller note. “I’ve said that many a time to him.”