Ripley Under Ground (24 page)

Mme. Annette had evidently forgot, Tom thought, that she had not actually seen M. Murchison walking out of the house.

“Is there something you wish, M. Tome?” Mme. Annette asked.

But they didn’t need anything, and Mrs. Murchison apparently had no more questions. Mme. Annette a bit reluctantly left the room.

“What do you think happened to my husband?” Mrs. Murchison asked, looking at Heloise, then back at Tom.

“If I were to guess anything,” Tom said, “it would be that someone knew he was carrying a valuable painting. Not a very valuable painting, to be sure, but a Derwatt. I gather that he spoke to a few people about it in London. If someone tried to kidnap him and the painting, they might have gone too far and killed him. Then they would have to hide his body somewhere. Or else—he’s being held alive somewhere.”

“But that sounds as if my husband is right in thinking ‘The Clock’ is a forgery. As you say, the picture wasn’t very valuable, maybe because it isn’t very big. But maybe they’re trying to hush up the whole idea of Derwatt’s being forged.”

“But I don’t believe your husband’s picture was a forgery. And
he
was dubious when he left. As I said to Webster, I don’t think Tommy was going to bother showing ‘The Clock’ to the expert in London. I didn’t ask him, as I recall. But I had the idea he had second thoughts after seeing my two. I may be wrong.”

A silence. Mrs. Murchison was wondering what to say or ask next. The only important thing was the people around the Buckmaster Gallery, Tom supposed. And how could she ask him about them?

The taxi arrived.

“Thank you, Mr. Ripley,” Mrs. Murchison said. “And Madame. I may see you again if—”

“Any time,” Tom said. He saw her out to the taxi.

When he came back into the living room, Tom walked slowly to the sofa and sank down in it. The Melun police couldn’t tell Mrs. Murchison anything new, or they would certainly have told him something by now, Tom thought. Heloise had said they had not rung while he had been gone. If the police had found Murchison’s body in the Loing or wherever it was—

“Chéri, you are so nervous,” Heloise said. “Take a drink.”

“I might,” Tom said, pouring it. There had been no item in the London papers that Tom had seen on the plane about Derwatt turning up again in London. The English didn’t think it important apparently. Tom was glad, because he did not want Bernard, wherever he was, to know that he had somehow climbed out of the grave. Just why Tom didn’t want Bernard to know this was hazy in Tom’s mind. But it had something to do with what Tom felt was Bernard’s destiny.

“You know, Tome, the Berthelins want us to come for an apéritif tonight at seven. It would do you good. I said you might be here tonight.”

The Berthelins lived in a town seven kilometers away. “Can I—” The telephone interrupted Tom. He motioned for Heloise to answer it.

“Shall I say to anyone that you are here?”

He smiled, pleased at her concern. “Yes. And maybe it’s Noëlle asking your advice about what to wear Tuesday.”

“Oui. Yes. Bonjour.” She smiled at Tom. “One moment.” She handed him the telephone. “An English trying to speak French.”

“Hello, Tom, this is Jeff. Are you all right?”

“Oh, perfectly.”

Jeff wasn’t, quite. His stutter had come back, and he was talking quickly and softly. Tom had to ask him to speak up.

“I said Webster is asking about Derwatt again, where he is. If he’s left.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said we didn’t know if he’d left or not.”

“You might say to Webster that—he seemed depressed and might want to be by himself for a while.”

“I think Webster might want to see you again. He’s coming over to join Mrs. Murchison. That’s the reason I’m ringing.”

Tom sighed. “When?”

“It could be today. I can’t tell what he’s up to. . . .”

When they had hung up, Tom felt stunned, and also angry, or irritated. Face Webster again for what? Tom preferred to leave the house.

“Chéri, what is it?”

“I can’t go to the Berthelins,” Tom said, and laughed. The Berthelins were the least of his problems. “Darling, I must go to Paris tonight, to Salzburg tomorrow. Maybe Salzburg tonight, if there is a plane. The English Inspector Webster may telephone this evening. You must say I went to Paris on business, to talk to my accountant, anything. You don’t know where I’m staying. At some hotel, you don’t know which hotel.”

“But what are you running from, Tome?”

Tom gasped. Running? Running from? Running to? “I don’t know.” He had begun to sweat. He wanted another shower, but was afraid to take the time. “Tell Mme. Annette also that I had to dash up to Paris.”

Tom went upstairs and took his suitcase out of the closet. He would wear the ugly new raincoat again, repart his hair, and become Robert Mackay again. Heloise came in to help him.

“I’d love a shower,” Tom said, and at that instant heard Heloise turn on the shower in his bathroom. Tom jumped out of his clothes and stepped under the shower, which was lukewarm, just right.

“Can I come with you?”

How he wished she could! “Darling, it’s the passport thing. I can’t have Mme. Ripley crossing the French-German or Austrian border with Robert Mackay. Mackay,
that
swine!” Tom got out of the shower.

“The English inspector is coming because of Murchison? Did you kill him, Tome?” Heloise looked at him, frowning, anxious, but far from hysteria, Tom saw.

She knew about Dickie, Tom realized. Heloise had never said it in so many words, but she knew. He might as well tell her, Tom thought, because she might be of help, and in any case the state of affairs was so desperate that if he lost, or tripped anywhere, everything was up, including his marriage. It occurred to him, couldn’t he go as Tom Ripley to Salzburg? Take Heloise with him? But much as he would have liked to, he didn’t know what he would have to do in Salzburg, or where the trail would lead from there. He should take both passports, however, his own and Mackay’s.

“You killed him, Tome? Here?”

“I had to kill him to save a lot of other people.”

“The Derwatt people? Why?” She began to speak in French. “Why are those people so important?”

“It’s Derwatt who is dead—for years,” Tom said. “Murchison was going to—to expose that fact.”

“He is
dead
?”

“Yes, and I impersonated him twice in London,” Tom said. The word in French sounded so innocent and gay: he had “représenté” Derwatt twice in London. “Now they are looking for Derwatt—maybe not desperately just now. But nothing falls into place just yet.”

“You have not been forging his paintings, too?”

Tom laughed. “Heloise, you do me credit. It is Bernard the fou who has been forging. He wants to stop it. Oh, it is very complicated to explain.”

“Why must you look for the
fou
Bernard? Oh, Tome, stay away from it. . . .”

Tom did not listen to the rest of what she said. He suddenly knew why he must find Bernard. He had suddenly a vision. Tom picked up his suitcase. “Good-bye, my angel. Can you drive me to Melun? And avoid the police station, please?”

Downstairs, Mme. Annette was in the kitchen, and Tom said a hasty good-bye from the front hall, averting his head so she might not notice the different parting in his hair. The ugly, but perhaps lucky, raincoat was over his arm.

Tom promised to keep in touch with Heloise, though he said he would sign a different name to any telegram that he sent. They kissed good-bye in the Alfa Romeo. And Tom left the comfort of her arms and boarded a first-class carriage for Paris.

In Paris, he discovered that there was no direct plane for Salzburg, and only one daily flight of use, on which one had to change planes at Frankfurt to get to Salzburg. The plane to Frankfurt left at 2:40 p.m. every day. Tom stayed in a hotel not far from the Gare de Lyon. Just before midnight, he risked a telephone call to Heloise. He could not bear to think of her there at the house alone, possibly facing Webster, not knowing where he was. She had said she was not going to the Berthelins.

“Darling, hello. If Webster is there, say I have got the wrong number, and hang up,” Tom said.

“M’sieur, I think you have made a mistake,” Heloise’s voice said, and the telephone was hung up.

Tom’s spirit sank, his knees sank, and he sat down on his hotel room bed. He reproached himself for having rung her. It was better to work alone, always. Surely Webster would realize, or very much suspect, that it was he who had rung.

What was Heloise going through now? Was it better that he had told her the truth or not?

22

I
n the morning, Tom bought his airline ticket, and by 2:20 p.m. was at Orly. If Bernard were not in Salzburg, where then? Rome? Tom hoped not. It would be difficult to find anyone in Rome. Tom kept his head down and did not look around at Orly, because it was possible that Webster had called someone over from London to look out for him. That depended on how hot things were, and Tom didn’t know. Why was Webster calling on
him
again? Did Webster suspect he had impersonated Derwatt? If so, his second impersonation with a different passport to enter and leave England was a slight point in his favor: at least Tom Ripley hadn’t been in London during the second impersonation.

There was a wait of an hour in the Frankfurt terminus, then Tom boarded a four-engined plane of the Austrian Airlines with the charming name of
Johann Strauss
on its fuselage. At the Salzburg terminus, he began to feel safer. Tom rode in on the bus to Mirabeleplatz, and since he wanted to stay at the Goldener Hirsch, he thought it best to ring first, because it was the best hotel and often full. They had a room with bath to offer. Tom gave his name as Thomas Ripley. Tom decided to walk to the hotel, because the distance was short. He had been to Salzburg twice before, once with Heloise. On the pavements, there were a few men in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats, their costume complete down to the hunting knives in their knee-high stockings. Rather large old hotels, which Tom recalled vaguely from other trips, displayed their menus on big placards propped beside their front doors: full meals featuring Wiener schnitzel at twenty-five and thirty schillings.

Then there was the River Salzach and the main bridge—the Staatsbrücke was it called?—and a couple of smaller bridges in view. Tom took the main bridge. He was watching everywhere for the gaunt and probably stooping figure of Bernard. The gray river flowed quickly, and there were sizable rocks along either green bank over which the water frothed. It was dusk, just after 6 p.m. Lights began to come on irregularly in the older half of the city that he was approaching, lights that jumped higher like constellations onto the great hill of the Feste Hohensalzburg and onto the Mönchsberg. Tom entered a narrow short street that led to the Getreidegasse.

Tom’s room had a view on the Sigmundsplatz at the rear of the hotel: to the right was the “horse bath” fountain backed by a small rocky cliff, and in front was an ornate well. In the morning, they sold fruit and vegetables from pushcarts here, Tom remembered. Tom took a few minutes to breathe, to open his suitcase, and walk in socked feet on the immaculately polished pinewood floors of his room. The furnishings were predominantly Austrian green, the walls white, the windows double-glazed with deep embrasures. Ah, Austria! Now to go down and have a Doppelespresso at the Café Tomaselli just a few steps away. And this might not be a bad idea, as it was a big coffee house and Bernard might be there.

But Tom had a slivowitz instead at Tomaselli’s, because it wasn’t the hour for coffee. Bernard was not here. Newspapers in several languages hung on rotating racks, and Tom browsed in the London
Times
and the Paris
Herald-Tribune
, without finding anything about Bernard (not that he expected to in the
Herald-Tribune
) or about Thomas Murchison or his wife’s visit to London or France. Good.

Tom wandered out, crossed the Staatsbrücke again, and went up the Linzergasse, the main street that led from it. It was now after 9 p.m. Bernard, if he were here, would be at a medium-priced hotel, Tom thought, and as likely this side of the Salzach as the other. And he would have been here two or three days. Who knew? Tom stared into windows that displayed hunting knives, garlic presses, electric razors, and windows full of Tyrolean clothes—white blouses with ruffles, dirndl skirts. All the shops were closed. Tom tried the back streets. Some were not streets, but unlighted narrow alleys with closed doorways on either side. Toward ten, Tom was hungry, and went into a restaurant up and to the right of the Linzergasse. Afterward, he walked back by a different route to the Café Tomaselli, where he intended to spend an hour. In the street of his hotel, the Getreidegasse, was also the house where Mozart had been born. Perhaps Bernard, if he was lingering in Salzburg, frequented this area. Give the search twenty-four hours, Tom told himself.

No luck at Tomaselli’s. The clientele now seemed to be the regulars, the Salzburgers, families enjoying huge pieces of cake with espressos-with-cream, or glasses of pink Himbeersaft. Tom was impatient, bored by the newspapers, frustrated because he did not see Bernard, angry—because he was tired. He went back to his hotel.

Tom was out on the streets again by 9:30 a.m., and on the “right bank” of Salzburg, the newer half, he rambled in a zigzag, watching out for Bernard, pausing sometimes to look into shop windows. Tom started back toward the river, with the idea of visiting the Mozart Museum in the street of his hotel. Tom walked through the Dreifaltigkeitsgasse into Linzergasse, and as he approached the Staatsbrücke, Tom saw Bernard stepping off the bridge on the other side of street.

Bernard’s head was down, and he was almost hit by a car. Tom, who wanted to follow him, was held up by a long traffic light, but that didn’t matter, because Bernard was in plain view. Bernard’s raincoat was dirtier, and its belt hung out of one strap nearly to the ground. He looked almost like a tramp. Tom crossed the street and kept some thirty feet behind, ready to dash forward if Bernard turned a corner, because he did not want Bernard to vanish into a small hotel in a little street where there were perhaps a couple of hotels.

“Are you busy this morning?” asked a female voice in English.

Startled, Tom glanced into the face of a blonde floozy who was standing in a doorway. Tom walked on quickly. My God, did he look that desperate, or that kooky in his green raincoat? At ten in the morning!

Bernard kept walking up the Linzergasse. Then Bernard crossed the street and half a block farther went into a doorway over which there was a sign:
ZIMMER UND PENSION
. A drab doorway. Tom paused on the opposite pavement. Der Blaue something, the place was called. The sign was worn off. At least Tom knew where Bernard was staying. And he’d been right! Bernard was in Salzburg! Tom congratulated himself on his intuition. Or was Bernard only now engaging a room?

No, evidently he was staying at the Blaue something, because he did not appear in the next minutes, and he had not been carrying his duffelbag. Tom waited it out, and a dreary wait it was, because there was no café nearby from which he might watch the doorway. And at the same time, Tom had to keep himself hidden, in case Bernard might look out a front window of the establishment and see him. But somehow people who looked like Bernard never got a room with a view. Still, Tom hid himself, and he had to wait until nearly eleven.

Then out came Bernard, shaven now, and Bernard turned right as if he had a destination.

Tom followed discreetly, and lit a Gauloise. Over the main bridge again. Through the street Tom had taken last evening, and then Bernard turned right in the Getreidegasse. Tom had a glimpse of his sharp, rather handsome profile, his firm mouth—and of a hollow that made a shadow in his olive cheek. His desert boots had collapsed. Bernard was going into the Mozart Museum. Admission twelve schillings. Tom pulled his raincoat collar up and went in.

One paid admission in a room at the top of the first flight of steps. Here were glass cases full of manuscripts and opera programs. Tom looked into the main front room for Bernard, and not seeing him, assumed he had gone up to the next floor, which as Tom recalled had been the living quarters of the Mozart family. Tom climbed the second flight.

Bernard was leaning over the keyboard of Mozart’s clavichord, a keyboard protected by a panel of glass from anyone who might wish to press a key. How many times had Bernard looked at it, Tom wondered?

There were only five or six people drifting about in the museum, or at least on this floor, so Tom had to be careful. In fact, at one point he stepped back behind a doorjamb, so Bernard would not see him if he looked his way. Actually, Tom realized, he wanted to watch Bernard to try to see what state of mind he was in. Or—Tom tried to be honest with himself—was he merely curious and amused, because for a short time he could observe someone whom he knew slightly, someone in a crisis, who was not aware of him? Bernard drifted into a front room on the same floor.

Eventually, Tom followed Bernard up the next and last stairs. More glass cases. (In the clavichord room had been the spot, a labeled corner, where Mozart’s cradle had rested, but no cradle. A pity they hadn’t put at least a replica there.) The stairs had slender iron banisters. Windows were set at angles in some corners, and Tom, awed as always by Mozart, wondered on what view the Mozart family had looked out. Surely not the cornice of another building just four feet away. The miniature stage models—
Idomeneo
ad infinitum,
Cosi fan tutte
—were dull and rather clumsily done, but Bernard drifted through them, staring.

Bernard turned his head unexpectedly toward Tom—and Tom stood still in a doorway. They stared at each other. Then Tom fell back a step and moved to the right, which put him behind a doorway and in another room, a front room. Tom began to breathe again. It had been a funny instant because Bernard’s face—

Tom did not dare pause to think anymore, and made for the stairway down at once. He was not comfortable, and even then not much, until he was in the busy Getreidegasse, in the open air. Tom took the little short street toward the river. Was Bernard going to try to follow him? Tom ducked his head and walked faster.

Bernard’s expression had been one of disbelief, and after a split-second fear, as if Bernard had seen a ghost.

Tom realized that that was exactly what Bernard had thought he had seen: a ghost. A ghost of Tom Ripley, the man he had killed.

Tom turned suddenly and started back toward the Mozarthaus, because it had occurred to him that Bernard might want to leave the town, and Tom did not want this to happen without his knowing where Bernard was going. Should he hail Bernard now, if he saw him on a pavement? Tom waited a few minutes across the street from the Mozart Museum, and when Bernard did not appear, Tom started walking toward Bernard’s pension. Tom did not see Bernard along the way, and then as Tom drew nearer the pension, he saw Bernard walking rather quickly on the other side, the pension side, of the Linzergasse. Bernard went into his hotel-pension. For nearly half an hour, Tom waited, then decided Bernard was not going out for a time. Or perhaps Tom was willing to risk Bernard’s leaving; Tom himself didn’t know. He much wanted a coffee. He went into a hotel which had a coffee bar. He also made a decision, and when he left the bar, he went straight back to Bernard’s pension with an idea of asking the desk to tell Herr Tufts that Tom Ripley was downstairs and would like to speak with him.

But Tom could not get past the modest, drab entrance. He had one foot on the doorstep, then he drifted back onto the pavement, feeling for an instant dizzy. It’s indecision, he told himself. Nothing else. But Tom went back to his hotel on the other side of the river. He walked into the comfortable lobby of the Goldener Hirsch, where the gray-and-green uniformed porter at once handed him his key. Tom took the self-operating lift to the third floor and entered his room. He removed the awful raincoat and emptied its pockets—cigarettes, matches, Austrian coins mingled with French. He separated the coins, and tossed the French into a top pocket of his suitcase. Then he took off his clothes and fell into bed. He had not realized how tired he was.

When he awakened, it was after 2 p.m. and the sun was shining brightly. Tom went for a walk. He did not look for Bernard, but rambled around the town like any tourist, or rather not like a tourist, because he had no objective. What was Bernard doing here? How long was he going to stay? Tom felt now wide awake, but he did not know what he should do. Approach Bernard and try telling him that Cynthia wanted to see him? Should he talk to Bernard and try to persuade him—of what?

Between four and five in the afternoon, Tom suffered a depression. He had had coffee and a Steinhäger somewhere. He was far up (as the river flowed, up the river) beyond Hohensalzburg but still on the quay on the old side of town. He was thinking of the changes in Jeff, Ed, and now Bernard since the Derwatt fraud. And Cynthia had been made unhappy, the course of her life had been changed because of Derwatt Ltd.—and this seemed to Tom more important than the lives of the three men involved. Cynthia by now would have married Bernard and might have had a couple of children, though since Bernard would have been equally involved, it was impossible for Tom to say why he thought the alteration of Cynthia’s life of more importance than that of Bernard’s. Only Jeff and Ed were pink-cheeked and affluent, their lives outwardly changed for the better. Bernard looked exhausted. At thirty-three or thirty-four.

Tom had intended to dine in the restaurant of his hotel, which was considered the best restaurant of Salzburg also, but he found himself not in the mood for such fine food and surroundings, so he wandered up the Getreidegasse, past the Bürgerspitalplatz (Tom saw by a streetmarker) and through the Gstättentor, a narrow old gateway wide enough for a single lane of traffic, one of the original gates of the town at the foot of the Mönchsberg, which loomed darkly beside it. The street beyond was almost equally narrow and rather dark. There’d be a small restaurant somewhere, Tom thought. He saw two places with almost identical menus outside: twenty-six schillings for soup-of-the-day, Wiener schnitzel with potatoes, salad, dessert. Tom went into the second, which had a little lantern-shaped sign out in front, the Café Eigler or some such.

Two Negro waitresses in red uniforms were sitting with male customers at one table. There was a jukebox playing, and the light was dim. Was it a whorehouse, a pickup joint, or just a cheap restaurant? Tom had taken only a step into the place, when he saw Bernard in a booth by himself, bending over his bowl of soup. Tom hesitated.