Ripley's Game (27 page)

Jonathan did. There was a nineteenth-century three-storey house across the road, set well back and more than
half-obscured by trees. Trees bordered the road on either side in a haphazard way. Jonathan was imagining a car pausing on the road outside the house gates, and that was what Tom was talking about: the rifle would be more accurate than a pistol.

‘Of course it depends on what they do,’ Tom said. ‘If they intend to throw an incendiary bomb, for instance. Then the rifle will be the thing to use. Of course there are back windows too. And side windows. Come this way.’

Tom led Jonathan into Heloise’s room, which had a window giving on the back lawn. Here were denser trees beyond the lawn, and poplars bordering the lawn on the right.

‘There’s a lane going through those woods. You can faintly see it on the left. And in my atelier —’ Tom went into the hall and opened a door on the left. This room had windows on the back lawn and in the direction in which the village of Villeperce lay, but only cypresses and poplars and the tiles of a small house were visible. ‘We might keep a look-out on both sides of the house, not that we have to stay glued to the windows but — The other important point is, I want the enemy to think I’m alone here. If you —’

The telephone was ringing. Tom thought for a moment that he wouldn’t answer it, then that he might learn something if he did. He took it in his room.

‘Oui?’

‘M. Ripley?’ said a Frenchwoman’s voice, ‘
Ici
, Mme Trevanny. Is my husband there by any chance?’

She sounded very tense.

‘Your husband?
Mais non,
madame!’ Tom said with astonishment in his voice.

‘Merci, m’sieur. Excusez-moi.’
She hung up.

Tom sighed. Jonathan was indeed having troubles.

Jonathan was standing in the doorway. ‘My wife.’

‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘I’m sorry. I said you weren’t here. You can send a
pneu,
if you like. Or telephone. Maybe she’s in your shop.’

‘No, no, I doubt that.’ But she could be, because she had a key. It was only a quarter past 1 p.m. How else could Simone have obtained his number, Tom thought, if not from Jonathan’s notation in his shop? ‘Or if you like, I’ll drive you back now to Fontainebleau. It’s really up to you, Jonathan.’

‘No,’ Jonathan said. Thanks.’ Renunciation, Jonathan thought. Simone had known Tom was lying.

‘I apologize for lying just now. You can always blame me. I doubt if I can sink any lower in your wife’s mind anyway.’ Tom at that moment didn’t give a damn, didn’t have the time or the inclination to sympathize with Simone. Jonathan wasn’t saying anything. ‘Let’s go down and see what the kitchen has to offer.’

Tom drew the curtains in his room almost closed, but open enough so that one could see out without stirring the curtains. He did the same in Heloise’s room, and also downstairs in the living-room. Mme Annette’s quarters he decided to let alone. They had windows on the lane side and the back lawn.

There was plenty of Mme Annette’s delicious ragoût of last evening. The window over the kitchen sink had no curtains, and Tom made Jonathan sit out of view at the kitchen table, with a scotch and water.

‘What a shame we can’t potter in the garden this afternoon,’ Tom said, washing lettuce at the sink. He had a compulsion to glance out the window at every passing car. Only two cars had passed in the last ten minutes.

Jonathan had noticed that both garage doors were wide open. Tom’s car was parked on the gravel in front of the house. It was so quiet, any footstep would be heard on the gravel, Jonathan thought.

‘And I can’t turn on any music, because I might drown out some other noise. What a bore,’ Tom said.

Though neither ate much, they spent a long time at the table in the dining area off the living-room. Tom made coffee. Since there was nothing substantial for dinner that
evening, Tom telephoned the Villeperce butcher and asked for a good steak for two.

‘Oh, Mme Annette is taking a short holiday.’ Tom said in response to the butcher’s question. The Ripleys were such good customers, Tom had no hesitation in asking the butcher to pick up some lettuce and a nice vegetable of some kind at the grocery next door.

The very audible crunching of tyres on gravel half an hour later announced the arrival of the butcher’s van. Tom had jumped to his feet. He paid the genial butcher’s boy, who was wearing a blood-spattered apron, and tipped him. Jonathan was now looking at some books on furniture, and seemed quite content, so Tom went upstairs to pass some time by tidying his atelier, a room which Mme Annette never touched.

A telephone call just before 5 p.m. came like a scream in the silence, a muffled scream to Tom, because he had dared to go out in the garden and was messing about with the secateurs. Tom ran into the house, though he knew Jonathan wouldn’t touch the telephone. Jonathan was still lounging on the sofa, surrounded by books.

The call was from Heloise. She was very happy because she had rung Noëlle, and a friend of Noëlle’s, Jules Grifaud, an interior decorator, had bought a chalet in Switzerland, and was inviting Noëlle and her to drive there with him and keep him company for a week or so while he arranged his things in the house.

‘The country around is so beautiful,’ Heloise said. ‘And we can also help him…’

It sounded deadly to Tom, but if Heloise was enthusiastic, that was what mattered. He had known she wouldn’t go on that Adriatic cruise, like an ordinary tourist.

‘Are you all right, darling? … What are you doing?’

‘Oh – a little gardening … Yes, everything is
very
tranquil.’

19

A
ROUND
7.30 p.m., when Tom was standing at the front window of his living-room, he saw the dark-blue Citroen – the same one he’d seen that morning, he thought – cruise past the house, this time at a faster speed, but still not as fast as the usual car which intended to get somewhere. Was it the same? In the dusk, colours were deceiving – the difference between blue and green. But the car had been a convertible with a dirty white upper trim, like the one this morning. Tom looked at the gates of Belle Ombre, which he had left ajar, but which the butcher’s boy had closed. Tom decided to leave them closed, but not locked. They creaked a little.

‘What’s up?’ Jonathan asked. He was drinking coffee. He hadn’t wanted tea. Tom’s unease was making him uneasy, and as far as he had been able to find out, Tom had no real reason to be so anxious.

‘I think I saw the same car as I saw this morning. A dark-blue Citroen. The one this morning had a Paris plate. I know most of the cars around here, and only two or three people have cars with Paris plates.’

‘Could you see the licence now?’ It looked dark to Jonathan, and he had a lamp on beside him.

‘No – I’m going to get the rifle.’ Tom went upstairs as if borne on wings, and returned at once with the rifle. He had left no lights on upstairs. He said to Jonathan, ‘I definitely don’t want to use a gun if I can avoid it, because of the noise. It’s not the hunting season, and a gunshot might bring the neighbours – or
someone
might investigate. Jonathan —’

Jonathan was on his feet. ‘Yes?’

‘You might have to wield this rifle like a club.’ Tom illustrated, so that the weightiest part of it, the butt, could be used to best effect. ‘You can see how it works, in case you have to shoot with it. Safety’s on now.’ Tom showed him.

But they’re not here, Jonathan was thinking. And at the same time he was feeling odd and unreal, as he had felt in Hamburg and in Munich, when he had known that his targets were real, and that they would materialize.

Tom was calculating how much time it would take the Citroen to cruise or drive around the circular road that led back to the village. They could of course turn at some convenient place on the road and come straight back. ‘If anyone comes to the door,’ Tom said, ‘I have the feeling I’m going to be plugged when I open the door. That would be the simplest for them, you see. Then the fellow with the gun jumps into the waiting car and off they go.’

Tom was a bit overwrought, Jonathan thought, but he listened carefully.

‘Another possibility is a bomb through that window,’ Tom said, gesturing towards the front window. ‘Same as Reeves had. So if you’re – um – agreeable — Sorry, but I’m not used to discussing my plans. I usually play it by ear. But if you’re willing, would you hide yourself in the shrubbery to the right of the door here – it’s thicker on the right – and clout anyone who walks up and rings the doorbell? They may not ring the doorbell, but I’ll be watching with the Luger for signs of bomb throwing. Clout him fast if he’s at the door, because he’ll be fast. He’ll have a gun in his pocket, and all he wants is a clear view of me.’ Tom went to die fireplace, where he had meant to light a fire and forgot, and took one of the third-of-a-log pieces from the wood basket. This he put on the floor to the right of the front door. It was not as heavy as the amethyst vase on the wooden chest by the door, but much easier to handle.

‘How about.’ Jonathan said, ‘if
I
open the door? If they know what you look like, as you say, they’ll see I’m not you and—’

‘No.’ Tom was surprised by Jonathan’s courageous offer. ‘First, they might not wait to see, just fire. And if they did look at you, and you said I don’t live here, or I’m not in, they’d only push in and see or —’ Tom gave it up with a laugh, imagining the Mafia blasting Jonathan in the stomach and pushing him into the house at the same time. ‘I think you should take up the post by the door now, if you’re willing. I don’t know how long you’ll have to stay there, but I can always bring you refreshments.’

‘Sure.’ Jonathan took the rifle from Tom and went out. The road in front of the house was quiet. Jonathan stood in the shadow of the house, and practised a swing with the rifle, high up so as to catch a man standing on the steps in the head.

‘Good,’ Tom said. ‘Would you care for a scotch now by any chance? You can leave the glass in the bushes. Doesn’t matter if it breaks.’

Jonathan smiled. ‘No, thanks.’ He crept into the shrubbery – cypress-like bushes four feet high, and laurel also. It was very dark where Jonathan was, and he felt absolutely concealed. Tom had closed the door.

Jonathan sat on the ground, his knees under his chin, and the rifle alongside near his right hand. He wondered if this could last for an hour? Longer? Or was it even a game Tom was playing. Jonathan couldn’t believe it was entirely a game. Tom wasn’t out of his head, and he believed something might happen tonight, and that small possibility made it wise to take precautions. Then as a car approached, Jonathan felt a start of real fear, an impulse to run straight into the house. The car went by at a fast clip. Jonathan hadn’t even a glimpse of it through the bushes and the house gates. He leaned a shoulder against a slender trunk of something and began to feel sleepy. Five minutes later, he lay at full length on his back, but still quite awake, beginning to feel the chill of the earth penetrating his shoulder-blades. If the telephone rang again, it might well be Simone. He wondered if she would, in some frenzy of temper, come to Tom’s house in a taxi? Or would she ring her brother Gerard in Nemours and ask him to bring her in his car? A bit more likely. Jonathan stopped thinking about that possibility, because it was so awful. Ludicrous. Unthinkable. How would he explain lying outside the house in the shrubbery, even if he concealed the rifle?

Jonathan heard the house door opening. He had been dozing.

Take this blanket,’ Tom whispered. The road was empty, and Tom stepped out with a steamer rug and handed it to Jonathan. Tut it under you. That ground must be awful.’ Tom’s own whispering made him realize that the Mafia boys might sneak up on foot. He hadn’t thought of that before. He went back into the house without another word to Jonathan.

Tom went up the stairs, and in the dark surveyed the situation from the windows, front and back. All looked calm. A street light glowed brightly, but without extending its light very far, on the road about a hundred yards to the left in the direction of the village. None of its light fell in front of Belle Ombre, as Tom knew well. It was extremely silent, but that was normal. Even the footsteps of a man walking on the road might have been heard through the closed windows, Tom thought. He wished he could put on some music. He was about to turn from the window, when he heard the faint
crunch-crunch-crunch
of someone walking on the dirt road, and then he saw a not very strong flashlight beam, moving from the right towards Belle Ombre. Tom felt sure this wasn’t a person who would turn in at Belle Ombre, and the figure didn’t, but went on and was lost to view before it reached the street light. Male or female, Tom couldn’t tell.

Jonathan was perhaps hungry. That couldn’t be helped. Tom was hungry, too. But of course it could be helped.

Tom went down the stairs, still in the dark, his fingertips on the banister, and into the kitchen – the living-room and kitchen were lighted – and made some caviare canapes. The caviare was left over from last night, in its jar in the fridge, so the job was quick. Tom was bringing the plate for Jonathan, when he heard the purr of a car. The car went past Belle Ombre from left to right, and stopped. Then there was the feeble click of a car door, the sound of a car door when it hadn’t quite closed. Tom set the plate down on the wooden chest by the door, and pulled out his gun.