Ripley Under Ground (19 page)

“Nothing!”

“Will you tell me when you are in Paris?”

Tom went back downstairs, and put on some music. He chose jazz. It was not good, not bad jazz, and, as he had noticed in other crucial moments in his life, the jazz did nothing for him. Only classical music did something—it soothed or it bored, gave confidence or took confidence quite away, because it had order, and one either accepted that order or rejected it. Tom dumped a lot of sugar into his tea, now cold, and drank it off. Bernard had not shaved in two days, it seemed. Was he going to affect a Derwatt beard?

A few minutes later, they were strolling over the back lawn. One of Bernard’s shoelaces was untied. Bernard wore desert boots, rather flattened with wear, their soles against the uppers like the beaks of newborn birds, which had a curious way of looking ancient. Was Bernard going to tie his shoelace or not?

“The other night,” Tom said, “I tried to compose a limerick.

“There once was a match by computer.

A nought was wed to a neuter.

Said the neuter to nought,

‘I’m not what I ought,

But our offspring will be even mooter.’

“The trouble is, it’s clean. But maybe you can think of a better last line.” Tom had two versions of middle part and last line, but was Bernard even listening?

They were going into the lane now, into the woods. The rain had stopped, and now it was merely drippy.

“Look at the little frog!” Tom said, bending to scoop it up, because he had almost trod on it, a little thing no bigger than a thumbnail.

The blow hit Tom on the back of the head, and might have been Bernard’s fist. Tom heard Bernard’s voice saying something, was aware of wet grass, a stone against his face, then he passed out—for all practical purposes, though he felt a second blow on the side of his head.
This is too much
, Tom thought. He imagined his empty hands groping stupidly over the ground, but he knew he was not moving.

Then he was being rolled over and over. Everything was silent, except for a ringing in his ears. Tom tried to move and could not. Was he face down or face up? He was thinking, in a way, without being able to see. He blinked his eyes, and they were gritty. He began to realize, to believe, that weights or a weight was descending on his spine, his legs. Through the ringing in his ears came the whispering sound of a shovel driving into soil. Bernard was burying him. Tom was sure now that his eyes were open. How deep was the hole? It was Murchison’s grave, Tom was sure. How much time had passed?

Good God,
Tom thought, he couldn’t allow Bernard to bury him several feet under, or he’d never get out. Dimly, even with dim humor, Tom thought that there could be a limit to placating Bernard, and the limit was his own life.
Listen! Okay!
Tom imagined, believed that he had yelled this, but he hadn’t.

“. . . not the first,” Bernard’s voice said, thick and muffled by the earth that surrounded Tom.

What did that mean? Had he even heard it? Tom was able to turn his head a little, and he realized he was face down. He could turn his head to a very small degree.

And the weight had stopped falling. Tom concentrated on breathing, partly through his mouth. His mouth was dry and he spat out gritty soil. If he didn’t move, Bernard would leave. Now Tom was awake enough to realize that Bernard must have got the shovel from the toolshed, while he was knocked out. Tom felt a warm tickle on the back of his neck. That was blood, probably.

Maybe two, maybe five minutes passed, and Tom wanted to bestir himself, or at least try to, but was Bernard standing there watching him?

Impossible to hear anything, such as footfalls. Maybe Bernard had departed minutes ago. And anyway, would Bernard attack again if he saw him struggling out of the grave? It was a bit amusing. Later, if there was any later, Tom would laugh, he thought.

Tom risked it. He worked his knees. He got his hands in a position to push himself upward, and then found he had no strength. So he began to dig upward with his fingers like a mole. He cleared a space for his face, and tunneled upward for air, without reaching any air. The earth was wet and loose but very clinging. The weight on his spine was formidable. He began to push with his feet and to work upward with his hands and arms, like someone trying to swim in unhardened cement. It couldn’t be more than three feet of earth on top of him. Tom thought optimistically, maybe not even that. It took a long time to excavate three feet of earth, even soft earth like this, and Bernard surely hadn’t been at work very long. Tom felt sure he was now stirring the top of his prison, and if Bernard were standing there not reacting, not tossing more earth on or digging him up to hit him on the head again, he could afford to give a big heave and relax for a few seconds. Tom gave a big heave. It gained him more breathing space. He took some twenty inhalations of tomblike wet air, then went at it again.

Two minutes later, he was standing reeling like a drunk, beside Murchison’s—now his own—grave, covered from head to foot with mud and clods.

It was growing dark. There was no light on in the house, Tom saw when he staggered into the lane. Automatically, Tom thought of the appearance of the grave, thought of covering it back, wondered where the shovel was that Bernard had used, and then thought the hell with it all. He was still wiping dirt out of his eyes and ears.

Maybe he would find Bernard sitting in the more or less dark of the living room, in which case Tom would say, “Boo!” Bernard’s had been a rather ponderous practical joke. Tom took his shoes off on the terrace and left them. The French windows were ajar. “Bernard!” Tom called. He was really in no state to withstand another attack.

No answer.

Tom walked into his living room, then turned and walked dazedly out again and dropped his muddy jacket on the terrace, also his trousers. In his shorts now, he put on lights and went upstairs to his bathroom. A bath refreshed him. He put a towel around his neck. The cut on his head was bleeding. Tom had touched it only once with his washcloth to get the mud out, and then tried to forget it, because there was nothing he could do about it alone. He put on his dressing gown and went down to the kitchen, made a sandwich of sliced ham and poured a big glass of milk, and had this snack at the kitchen table. Then he hung his jacket and trousers in his bathroom. Brush them and send them to the cleaners, the redoubtable Mme. Annette would say, and what a blessing she was not here now, but she’d be back by 10 p.m., Tom thought, maybe 11:30 p.m. if she’d gone to the cinema in Fontainebleau or Melun, but he shouldn’t count on that. It was now ten minutes to eight.

What would Bernard do now, Tom wondered? Drift to Paris? Somehow Tom could not see Bernard going back to London, so he ruled that idea out. But Bernard was so deranged at the moment as to be really unpredictable by any standards. Would Bernard, for instance, inform Jeff and Ed that he had killed Tom Ripley? Bernard might as well shout anything from the housetops now. In fact, Bernard was going to kill himself, and Tom sensed this the way he might have sensed a murder, because suicide was after all a form of murder. And in order for Bernard to go through, or carry out, whatever it was he intended, Tom knew that he himself had to continue to be dead.

And what a bore that was, in view of Mme. Annette, Heloise, his neighbors, the police. How could he make all of them believe he was dead?

Tom put on Levi’s and went back to the lane with the lantern from the spare loo. Sure enough, the shovel lay on the ground between the much-used grave and the lane. Tom used it to fill in the grave. A beautiful tree ought to grow there at some time, Tom thought, because the ground was so well loosened. Tom even dragged back some of the old branches and leaves with which he had originally covered Murchison.

R.I.P. Tom Ripley, he thought.

Another passport might be useful, and who but Reeves Minot should he call on for it? It was high time he asked Reeves for a small favor.

Tom wrote a note to Reeves on his typewriter, and enclosed two, for safety, of his current passport photographs. He should ring Reeves tonight from Paris. Tom had decided to go to Paris, where he could hide out for a few hours and think. So Tom now took his muddy shoes and clothes up to the attic, where Mme. Annette would probably not go. Tom changed clothes again, and took the estate wagon to the Melun railway station.

He was in Paris by 10:45 p.m., and he dropped the note to Reeves in a Gare de Lyon postbox. Then he went to the Hotel Ritz, where he took a room under the name Daniel Stevens, wrote a made-up American passport number, saying he did not have his passport with him. Address: 14 rue du Docteur Cavet, Rouen, a street which as far as Tom knew did not exist.

17

T
om telephoned Heloise from his room. She was not in. The maid said she had gone out to dinner with her parents. Tom put in a call to Reeves in Hamburg. This came through in twenty minutes, and Reeves was in.

“Greetings, Reeves. Tom here. I’m in Paris. How goes everything? . . . Can you pop me a passport
tout de suite
? I’ve already sent you photographs.”

Reeves sounded flustered. Good heavens, was this a real request at last? A passport? Yes, those essential little things that were pinched all the time, everywhere. How much would Reeves want for it, Tom was polite enough to ask.

Reeves couldn’t say just now.

“Put it on the bill,” Tom said with confidence. “The point is to get it to me at once. If you get my pictures Monday morning, can you finish by Monday night? . . . Yes, it is urgent. Have you got a friend flying to Paris late Monday night, for example?” If not, find one, Tom thought.

Yes, Reeves said, a friend could fly to Paris. Not another carrier (or host), Tom insisted, because he would not be in any position to pick someone’s pockets or suitcase.

“Any American name,” Tom said. “American passport preferred, English will do. Meanwhile, I’m at the Ritz, Place Vendôme . . . Daniel Stevens.” Tom gave the Ritz’s telephone number for Reeves’s convenience, and said he would meet Reeves’s messenger personally, once he knew the time the man could get to Orly.

By this time, Heloise was back in Chantilly, and Tom spoke with her. “
Yes
, I am in Paris. Do you want to come in tonight?”

Heloise did. Tom was delighted. He had a vision of sitting across a table from Heloise, drinking champagne, in another hour or so, if Heloise wanted champagne, and she usually did.

Tom stood on the gray pavement, looking out at the round Place Vendôme. Circles annoyed him. Which direction should he take? Left toward l’Opéra, or right toward the rue de Rivoli? Tom preferred to think in squares or rectangles. Where was Bernard? Why do you want a passport, he asked himself? As an ace in the hole? An added measure of potential freedom?
I can’t draw like Derwatt
, Bernard had said this afternoon.
I simply don’t draw anymore—seldom for myself even.
Was Bernard at this moment in some Paris hotel, cutting his wrists in a basin? Leaning over the Seine on one of the bridges about to jump over—gently—when no one was looking?

Tom walked in a straight line toward the rue de Rivoli. It was dull and dark at this time of night, and shop windows were barred with steel bands and chains against the theft of tourist-aimed crap they displayed—silk handkerchiefs with “Paris” printed on them, overpriced silk ties and shirts. He thought of taking a taxi to the sixth
arrondissement
, strolling about in that more cheerful atmosphere and having a beer at Lippe’s. But he did not want possibly to run into Chris. He went back to his hotel, and put in a call to Jeff’s studio.

This call (the operator said) would take forty-five minutes, the lines were crowded, but it came through in half an hour.

“Hello?— Paris?” Jeff’s voice came like that of a drowning dolphin.

“
It’s Tom in Paris!
Can you hear me?”

“
Badly!
”

It was not bad enough for Tom to attempt a second call. He pursued: “I don’t know where Bernard is. Have you heard from him?”

“Why are you in Paris?”

Rather useless, under the circumstances of near inaudibility, to explain that. Tom managed to learn that Jeff and Ed had not heard anything from Bernard.

Then Jeff said, “They’re trying to find
Derwatt
. . .” (Muttered English curses.) “My God, if I can’t hear
you
, I doubt if anybody in between can hear a bloody . . .”

“
D’accord!
” Tom responded. “Tell me all your troubles.”

“Murchison’s wife may . . .”

“What?” Good God, the telephone was a maddening device. People should revert to pen and paper and the packet-boat. “Can’t hear a damned word!”

“We sold ‘The Tub’ . . . They are asking . . . for Derwatt! Tom, if you’d only . . .”

They were suddenly cut off.

Tom banged the telephone down in anger, gripped it and lifted it again, ready to blast at the operator downstairs. But he put the telephone down. It wasn’t her fault. It was nobody’s fault, nobody who could be found.

Well, Mrs. Murchison was coming over, as Tom had foreseen. And maybe she knew about the lavender theory. And “The Tub” was sold, to whom? And Bernard was—where? Athens? Would he repeat Derwatt’s act and drown himself off a Greek island? Tom saw himself going to Athens. What was that island of Derwatt’s? Icaria? Where was it? Find out tomorrow in a tourist agency.

Tom sat down at the writing table and dashed off a note:

Dear Jeff,

In case you see Bernard, I am supposed to be dead. Bernard thinks he has killed me. I will explain later. Don’t pass this on to anyone, it is
only
in case you see Bernard and he says he has killed me—pretend to believe him and don’t do anything. Stall Bernard, please.

All the best,

Tom

Tom went downstairs and posted the letter with a seventy-centime stamp bought at the desk. Jeff probably wouldn’t get it till Tuesday. But it was not the kind of message he dared send by cable. Or did he?
I must lie low even under ground re Bernard.
No, that wasn’t clear enough. He was still pondering when Heloise came in the door. Tom was glad to see that she had her small Gucci valise with her.

“Good evening, Mme. Stevens,” Tom said in French. “You are Mme. Stevens this evening.” Tom thought of steering her to the desk to register, then decided not to bother, and led Heloise to the lift.

Three pairs of eyes followed them. Was she really his wife?

“Tome, you are pale!”

“I’ve had a busy day.”

“Ah, what is that—”

“Sh-h” She meant the back of his head. Heloise noticed everything. Tom thought he could tell her a few things, but not everything. The grave—that would be too horrible. Besides, it would make Bernard out a killer, which he wasn’t. Tom tipped the lift man, who insisted on carrying Heloise’s valise.

“What happened to your head?”

Tom took off the dark green and blue muffler that he had been wearing high around his neck to catch the blood. “Bernard hit me. Now don’t be worried, darling. Take off your shoes. Your clothes. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like some champagne?”

“Yes. Why not?”

Tom ordered it by telephone. Tom felt light-headed, as if he had a fever, but he knew it was only fatigue and loss of blood. Had he checked over the house for blood drops? Yes, he remembered going upstairs at the last minute especially to look for blood anywhere.

“Where is Bernard?” Heloise had slipped off her shoes and was barefoot.

“I really don’t know. Maybe Paris.”

“You had a fight? He wouldn’t leave?”

“Oh—a slight fight. He is very nervous just now. It is nothing serious, nothing.”

“But why did you come to Paris? Is he still at the house?”

That was a possibility, Tom realized, though Bernard’s things had been gone from the house. Tom had looked. And Bernard couldn’t get back into the house without breaking a French window. “He’s not at the house, no.”

“I want to see your head. Come into the bathroom where there is more light.”

A knock came at the door. They were quick with the champagne. The portly, gray-haired waiter grinned as the cork popped. The bottle crunched pleasantly into a bucket of ice.

“Merci, m’sieur,” said the waiter, taking Tom’s banknote.

Tom and Heloise lifted their glasses, Heloise a little uncertainly, and drank. She had to see his head. Tom submitted. He took off his shirt, and bent over and closed his eyes, as Heloise washed the back of his head in the basin with a face towel. He closed his ears, or tried to, to her exclamations which he had anticipated.

“It isn’t a big cut, or it would’ve kept on bleeding!” Tom said. The washing was making it bleed again, of course. “Get another towel—get something,” Tom said, and returned to the bedroom, where he sank gently to the floor. He was not out, so he crawled to the bathroom where the floor was of tile.

Heloise was talking about adhesive tape.

Tom fainted for a minute, though he didn’t mention it. He crawled to the toilet and threw up briefly. He used some of Heloise’s wet towels for his face and forehead. Then a couple of minutes later, he was standing at the basin, sipping champagne, while Heloise made a bandage out of a small white handkerchief. “Why do you carry adhesive tape?” Tom asked.

“I use it for my nails.”

How, Tom wondered? He held the tape while she cut it. “Pink adhesive tape,” Tom said, “is a sign of racial discrimination. Black Power in the States ought to get onto that—and stop it.”

Heloise didn’t understand. Tom had spoken in English.

“I will explain it tomorrow—maybe.”

Then they were in bed, in the luxurious wide bed with four thick pillows, and Heloise had donated her pajamas to put under Tom’s head, in case he bled anymore, but he thought he had almost stopped. Heloise was naked, and she felt unbelievably smooth, like something of polished marble, only of course she was soft, and even warm. It was not an evening for making love, but Tom felt very happy, and not at all worried about tomorrow—which was perhaps unwise of him, but that night, or rather early morning, he indulged himself. In the darkness, he heard the hiss of champagne bubbles as Heloise sipped her glass, and the click as she set it down on the night table. Then his cheek was against her breast. Heloise, you’re the only woman in the world who has ever made me think of
now
, Tom wanted to say, but he was too tired, and the remark was probably not important.

In the morning, Tom had some explaining to do to Heloise, and he had to do it subtly. He said that Bernard Tufts was upset because of his English girlfriend, that he might kill himself, and Tom wanted to find him. He might be in Athens. And since the police wanted to keep Tom in their sight because of Murchison’s disappearance, it was best that the police thought he was in Paris, staying with friends, perhaps. Tom explained that he was awaiting a passport which could come only by Monday evening at best. Tom and Heloise were breakfasting in bed.

“I don’t understand why you bother about this
fou
who even hit you.”

“Friendship,” Tom said. “Now, darling, why don’t you go back to Belle Ombre and keep Mme. Annette company? Or—we can ring her and you can spend today and tonight with me,” Tom said more cheerfully. “But we’d better change hotels today, just for safety.”

“Oh, Tome—” But Heloise didn’t mean her disappointed tone, Tom knew. She liked doing things that were a little sly, keeping secrets when secrets were unnecessary. The stories she’d told Tom about her adolescent intrigues with girl schoolmates, and boys, too, to evade her parents’ surveillance, matched the inventions of Cocteau.

“We’ll have another name today. What name would you like? Got to be something American or English, because of me. You’re just my French wife, you see?” Tom was speaking in English.

“Hm-m. Gladstone?”

Tom laughed.

“Is there something funny about Gladstone?”

How Heloise hated the English language, because she thought it was full of dirty double meanings that she could never master. “No, it’s just that he invented a suitcase.”

“He invented the
suitcase
! I don’t believe you! Who could invent a suitcase? It is too
simple
! Really, Tome!”

They moved to the Hotel Ambassadeur, in the boulevard Haussmann, in the ninth
arrondissement
. Conservative and respectable. Here, Tom registered as William Tenyck, with wife Mireille. Tom made a second call to Reeves, and left his new name, address, and telephone number, PRO 72-21, with the man with the German accent who frequently answered Reeves’s telephone.

Tom and Heloise went to a film in the afternoon, and returned to the hotel at 6 p.m. No message as yet from Reeves. Heloise rang Mme. Annette, at Tom’s suggestion, and Tom spoke with Madame also.

“Yes, we are in Paris,” Tom said. “I am sorry I didn’t leave you a note. . . . Perhaps Mme. Heloise will return late tomorrow night, I am not sure.” He handed the phone back to Heloise.

Bernard had certainly not been in evidence at Belle Ombre, or Mme. Annette would have mentioned him.

They went to bed early. Tom had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Heloise to cut away the silly strips of adhesive on the back of his head, and she had even bought some lavender-colored French antiseptic with which she soaked the patch of bandage. She had rinsed his muffler out at the Ritz, and it had been dry by morning. Just before midnight, their telephone rang. Reeves said that a friend would bring him what he needed tomorrow night Monday on Lufthansa flight 311 due at Orly at 12:15 a.m.

“And his name?” Tom asked.

“It’s a woman. Gerda Schneider. She knows what you look like.”

“Okay,” Tom said, quite pleased with the service in view of the fact Reeves hadn’t yet received his photographs. “Want to come with me tomorrow night to Orly?” Tom asked Heloise when he had hung up.

“I will drive you. I want to know if you are safe.”

Tom told her that the station wagon was at the Melun station. She perhaps could get André, a gardener they sometimes used, to go with her to fetch it.

They decided to stay another night at the Ambassadeur, in case there was any hitch about the passport on Monday night. Tom thought of catching a night flight to Greece in the small hours of Tuesday, but this couldn’t be determined until he had the passport in hand. There was also the matter of acquainting himself with the signature on the passport. All this, he realized, to save Bernard’s life. Tom wished he could share his thoughts, his feelings, with Heloise, but he was afraid he could not make her understand. Would she understand if she knew about the forgeries? Yes, she might, intellectually, if he could use such a word. But Heloise would say, “Why is it all on your shoulders? Can’t Jeff and Ed look for their friend—their breadwinner?” Tom did not begin the story to her. It was best to be alone, stripped for action, in a sense. Stripped of sympathy, even of tender thoughts from home.