Ripley Under Ground (22 page)

Tom stood up as Mrs. Murchison left.

“Where’re you staying in London, Mr. Derwatt?” Inspector Webster asked.

“I’m staying at Mr. Constant’s studio.”

“May I ask how you arrived in England?” A big smile. “The Immigration Control has no record of your entering.”

Tom looked deliberately vague and thoughtful. “I have a Mexican passport now.” Tom had expected the question. “And I have another name in Mexico.”

“You flew?”

“By boat,” Tom said. “I don’t much like airplanes.” Tom expected Webster to ask if he had landed at Southampton or where, but Webster said only:

“Thanks, Mr. Derwatt. Good-bye.”

If he looked that up, Tom thought, what would he find? How many people from Mexico had entered London a fortnight ago? Probably not many.

Jeff closed the door once more. There were a few seconds of silence while their visitors moved out of hearing distance. Jeff and Ed had heard the last words.

“If he wants to look that up,” Tom said, “I’ll manufacture something else.”

“What?” asked Ed.

“Oh—a Mexican passport, for instance,” Tom replied. “I did know—that I’d have to hop it back to France at once.” He spoke like Derwatt, but in almost a whisper.

“Not tonight, do you think?” Ed said. “
Surely
not.”

“No. Because I said I’d be at Jeff’s. Don’t yer know?”

“Good God,” said Jeff with relief, but he wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

“We have succeeded,” Ed said, mock solemn, pulling a hand down the front of his face.

“Christ, I wish we could celebrate!” Tom said suddenly. “How can I celebrate in this bloody beard? Out of which I had to keep the cheese sauce this
noon
? I’ve got to wear this beard all evening!”

“And sleep with it!” Ed yelped, falling all over the room with laughter.

“Gentlemen—” Tom drew himself up, and promptly slumped again. “I must risk, because of need, a ring to Heloise. May I, Jeff? Subscriber Trunk Dialing, so I hope it isn’t conspicuous on your bill. Too bad if it is, because I feel this is necessary.” Tom took the telephone.

Jeff made tea, and reinforced the tray with a whiskey bottle.

Mme. Annette answered, as Tom had hoped she wouldn’t. He put on a woman’s voice and asked in worse French than his own if Mme. Ripley was there. “Hush!” Tom said to Jeff and Ed, who were laughing. “Hello, Heloise.” Tom spoke in French. “I must be brief, my darling. If anyone telephones to speak to me, I am staying in Paris with friends. . . . I expect a woman may ring you, a woman who speaks only English, I don’t know. You must give a false number for me in Paris . . . Invent one. . . . Thank you, darling. . . . I think tomorrow afternoon, but you must not say this to the American lady. . . . And don’t tell Mme. Annette I am in London. . . .”

When Tom hung up, he asked Jeff if he could have a look at the books Jeff said they had made, and Jeff got them out. They were two ledgers, one a bit worn, the other newer. Tom bent over them for a few minutes, reading titles of canvases and dates. Jeff was generous with space, and the Derwatts did not predominate, as the Buckmaster Gallery dealt with other painters. Jeff had entered some titles in different inks after some dates, because Derwatt did not always give his pictures titles.

“I like this page with the tea stain,” Tom said.

Jeff beamed. “Ed’s contribution. Two days old.”

“Speaking of celebrating,” Ed said, bringing his hands together with a subdued clap, “what about Michael’s party tonight? Ten-thirty, he said. Holland Park Road.”

“We’ll think about that,” Jeff said.

“Look in for twenty minutes?” Ed said hopefully.

“The Tub” was correctly listed as one of the later pictures, Tom saw, there probably had been no avoiding that. The ledgers were mainly filled with purchasers’ names and addresses, the prices they had paid, the purchases genuine, the arrival times sometimes faked, Tom supposed, but all in all, he thought Jeff and Ed had done quite a good job. “And the inspector looked at these?”

“Oh, yes,” Jeff said.

“He didn’t raise any questions, did he, Jeff?” Ed said.

“No.”

Vera Cruz . . . Vera Cruz . . . Southampton . . . Vera Cruz . . .

If it had passed muster, it had passed, Tom supposed.

They said good-bye to Leonard—it was near closing time anyway—and took a taxi to Jeff’s studio. Tom felt they both looked at him as if he were some sort of magical personage: it amused Tom, yet in a way he did not like it. They might have imagined him a saint, able to cure a dying plant by touching it, able to erase a headache by waving a hand, able to walk on water. But Derwatt hadn’t been able to walk on water, or maybe hadn’t wanted to. Yet Tom was Derwatt now.

“I want to ring Cynthia,” Tom said.

“She works till seven. It’s a funny office,” Jeff said.

Tom rang Air France first and booked a 1 p.m. flight for tomorrow. He could pick up his ticket at the terminus. Tom had decided to be in London tomorrow morning, in case any difficulties arose. It mustn’t look again as if Derwatt were fleeing the scene posthaste.

Tom drank sugared tea and reclined on Jeff’s couch, without jacket and tie now, but still with the bothersome beard. “I wish I could make Cynthia take Bernard back,” Tom said musingly, as if he were God having a weak moment.

“Why?” asked Ed.

“I’m afraid Bernard may destroy himself. I wish I knew where he was.”

“You mean really? Kill himself?” Jeff asked.

“Yes,” Tom said. “I told you that—I thought. I didn’t tell Cynthia. I thought it wasn’t fair. It’d be like blackmail—to make her take him back. And I’m sure Bernard wouldn’t like that.”

“You mean commit suicide somewhere?” Jeff said.

“Yes, I do mean that.” Tom hadn’t been going to mention the effigy in his house, but he thought, why not? Sometimes the truth, dangerous as it was, could be turned to advantage to reveal something new, something more. “He hanged himself in my cellar—in effigy. I should say he hung himself, since he was a batch of clothes. He labeled it ‘Bernard Tufts.’ The old Bernard, you see, the forger. Or maybe the real one. It’s all muddled in Bernard’s mind.”

“Wow! He’s off his rocker, eh?” Ed said, looking at Jeff.

Both Jeff and Ed were wide-eyed, Jeff in his somewhat more calculating fashion. Were they only now realizing that Bernard Tufts was not going to paint any more Derwatts?

Tom said, “I am speculating. No use getting upset before it’s happened. But you see—” Tom got up. He started to say,
the important thing is that Bernard thinks he has killed me
. Tom wondered,
was
it important? If so, how? Tom realized he had been glad no journalists had been on hand to write, tomorrow, “Derwatt is back,” because if Bernard saw it in any newspaper, he would know that Tom was out of the grave, somehow, alive. That, in a sense, might be good for Bernard, because Bernard might be less inclined to kill himself, if he thought he had not killed Tom Ripley. Or would this really count, in Bernard’s confused thinking just now? What was right and what was wrong?

After seven, Tom rang Cynthia at a Bayswater number. “Cynthia—before I leave, I wanted to say—in case I see Bernard again, anywhere, can I tell him one small thing, that—”

“That what?” Cynthia asked, brisk, so much more on the defensive, or at least on the protective, than Tom.

“That you’ll agree to see him again. In London. It’d be wonderful, you see, if I could just say something positive like that to him. He’s very depressed.”

“But I see no use in seeing him again,” Cynthia said.

In her voice, Tom heard the bulwarks of castles, churches, the middle class. Gray and beige stones, impregnable. Decent behavior. “Under any circumstances, you just don’t want to see him again?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. It’s much easier if I don’t prolong things. Easier on Bernard, too.”

That was final. Stiff upper-lip stuff. But it was also petty, bloody petty. Tom at least understood where he was now. A girl had been neglected, jilted, ousted, abandoned—three years ago. It was Bernard who had broken it off. Let Bernard, under the best of circumstances, try to remedy that. “All right, Cynthia.”

Would it do her pride any good, Tom wondered, to know Bernard would hang himself again because of her?

Jeff and Ed had been in Jeff’s bedroom talking, and had not heard any of the conversation, but they asked Tom what Cynthia had said.

“She doesn’t want to see Bernard again,” Tom said.

Neither Jeff nor Ed seemed to see the consequences of this.

Tom said, to bring the matter to a conclusion, “Of course, I may never see Bernard again myself.”

20

T
hey went to Michael’s party. Michael who? They arrived around midnight. Half the guests were tiddly, and Tom could not see anyone who looked of any importance, as far as he was concerned. Tom sat in a deep chair, actually rather under a lamp, with a long scotch and water, and chatted with a few people who seemed a little in awe of him, or at least respectful. Jeff was keeping an eye on him from across the room.

The decor was pink and full of huge tassels. Chairs resembled white meringues. Girls wore skirts so short that Tom’s eye—unused to such gear—was drawn to intricate seaming of tights of various colors—then repelled. Goony, Tom thought. Absolutely nuts. Or was he seeing them as Derwatt would? Was it possible for anybody to imagine approachable flesh under those tights that showed nothing but fortified seams and sometimes more panties under them? Breasts were visible when the girls bent for cigarettes. Which half of the girl was one supposed to look at? Looking higher, Tom was startled by brown-rimmed eyes. A colorless mouth below the eyes said:

“Derwatt—can you tell me where you live in Mexico? I don’t expect a real answer, but a half-real answer will do.”

Through his undistorting glasses, Tom regarded her with contemplative puzzlement, as if he were devoting half his great brain to the question she had asked, but in fact he was bored. How he preferred, Tom thought, Heloise’s skirts to just above the knee, no makeup at all, and eyelashes that didn’t look like a handful of spears pointed at him. “Ah, well,” Tom said, ruminating on nothing. “South of Durango.”

“Durango, where is that?”

“North of Mexico City. No, of course I can’t tell you the name of my village. It’s a long Aztec name. Ah-hah-hah.”

“We’re looking for something unspoilt. We meaning my husband, Zach, and we have two kids.”

“You might try Puerto Vallarta,” Tom said, and was rescued, or at least beckoned by Ed Banbury from a distance. “Excuse me,” said Tom, and hauled himself up from the white meringue.

Ed thought it was time they slipped out. So did Tom think so. Jeff was circulating smoothly, maintaining his easy smile, chatting. Commendable, Tom thought. Young men, older men regarded Tom, perhaps not daring to approach, perhaps not wanting to.

“Shall we blow?” Tom said as Jeff joined them.

Tom insisted on finding his host, whom he had not met or seen for the hour he had been there. Michael the host was the one in a black bear parka with the hood not pulled over his head. He was not very tall and had crew-cut black hair. “Derwatt, you’ve been the jewel in my carcanet tonight! I can’t tell you how pleased I am and how grateful I am to these old . . .”

The rest was lost in noise.

Handshakes, and at last the door closed.

“Well,” Jeff said over his shoulder when they were safely down a flight of stairs. He whispered the rest. “The only reason we went to the party is because the people are of no importance.”

“And yet they are, somehow,” Ed said. “They’re still people. Another success tonight!”

Tom let it go. It was true, nobody had ripped off his beard.

They dropped Ed off somewhere in their taxi.

In the morning, Tom breakfasted in bed, Jeff’s idea of a small consolation for having to eat through the beard. Then Jeff went out to pick up something from a photographer’s supply shop, and said he would be back by 10:30—though of course he couldn’t accompany Tom to the West Kensington Terminus. It became 11. Tom went into the bathroom and started carefully removing the gauze of his beard.

The telephone rang.

Tom’s first thought was not to answer it. But wouldn’t that look just a little odd? Maybe evasive?

Tom braced himself for Webster and answered it, in Derwatt’s voice. “Yes? Hello?”

“Is Mr. Constant there? . . . Or is that Derwatt? . . . Oh, good. Inspector Webster. What are your plans, Mr. Derwatt?” Webster asked in his usual pleasant voice.

Tom had no plans, for Inspector Webster. “Oh—I expect to leave this week. Back to the salt mines.” Tom chuckled. “And quietude.”

“Could you—perhaps give me a ring before you go, Mr. Derwatt?” Webster gave his number, plus an extension, and Tom wrote it down.

Jeff came back. Tom had almost his suitcase in his hand, so eager was he to be off. Their good-byes were brief, even perfunctory on Tom’s part, though they knew, each knew, that their welfare depended on each other.

“Good-bye. God bless.”

“Good-bye.”

To hell with Webster.

Soon, Tom was in the cocoon of the airplane, the synthetic, strapped-in atmosphere of smiling hostesses, stupid yellow and white cards to fill out, the unpleasant nearness of elbows in business suits, which made Tom twitch away. He wished he had traveled first class.

Would he have to say to anyone where, as Tom Ripley, he had been in Paris? At least last night, for instance? Tom had a friend who would vouch, but he didn’t want to involve another person, because there were enough people already involved.

The plane took off, standing on its tail. How boring, Tom thought, to be jetting at a few hundred miles an hour, hearing very little, letting the unfortunate people who lived below suffer the noise. Only trains excited Tom. The nonstop trains from Paris rocketing by on smooth rails past the platform in Melun—trains going so fast, one couldn’t read the French and Italian names on their sides. Once Tom had almost crossed a track where it was forbidden to cross. The tracks had been empty, the station silent. Tom had decided not to risk it, and fifteen seconds later, two chromium express trains had passed each other going like hell, and Tom had imagined being chewed up between them, his body and his suitcase strewn for yards in either direction, unidentifiable. Tom thought of it now and winced in the jet airplane. He was glad, at least, that Mrs. Murchison was not on the plane. He had even glanced around for her when he boarded.