Ripley Under Ground (6 page)

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t see the difference in quality, no. Maybe I’m obtuse. If, as you say, you’ll get an expert to look at yours, I’ll abide by what an expert says. And by the way, ‘Man in Chair’ is the picture you can take back to London with you, if you like.”

“I’d most certainly like. I’ll write you a receipt for it and even insure it for you.” Murchison chuckled.

“It’s insured. Don’t worry.”

Over two cups of tea, Murchison asked Tom about Heloise, and what she was doing. Had they any children? No. Heloise was twenty-five. No, Tom didn’t think Frenchwomen were more difficult than other women, but they had their own idea of the respect with which they should be treated. This subject did not make much progress, because every woman wanted to be treated with a certain respect, and though Tom knew Heloise’s kind, he absolutely could not put it into words.

The telephone rang, and Tom said, “Excuse me, I think I’ll take that up in my room.” He dashed up the stairs. After all, Murchison might suppose it was Heloise, and that he wanted to speak with her alone.

“Hello?” Tom said. “Eduardo! How are you? I’m in luck to get you. . . . Via the grapevine. A mutual friend in Paris rang today and told me you were in Milan. . . . Now can you pay me a visit? After all, you promised.”

The Count, a bon vivant ever willing to be distracted from the swift pursuit of his business (export-import) showed a slight hesitation about changing his Paris plans, then agreed with enthusiasm to come to Tom. “But not tonight. Tomorrow. Is that all right?”

That was quite soon enough for Tom, who wasn’t quite sure what problems Murchison would present. “Yes, even Friday would be—”

“
Thursday
,” said the Count firmly, not getting the point.

“All right. I’ll pick you up at Orly. At what time?”

“My plane is at—just a minute.” The Count took quite a time looking it up, came back to the telephone and said, “Arriving at five fifteen. Flight three zero six Alitalia.”

Tom wrote this down. “I’ll be there. Delighted you can come, Eduardo!”

Then Tom went back downstairs to Thomas Murchison. By now they called each other Tom, though Murchison said his wife called him Tommy. Murchison said he was an hydraulic engineer with a pipe-laying company whose main office was in New York. Murchison was one of the directors.

They took a walk around Tom’s back garden, which blended into virgin woods. Tom rather liked Murchison. Surely he could persuade him, convert him, Tom thought. What
should
he do?

During dinner, while Murchison talked about something brand new in his plant—packaged transport by pipe of anything and everything in soup-tin-sized containers—Tom wondered if he should bother to ask Jeff and Ed to get Mexican letterheads from some shipping company on which to list Derwatt’s paintings? And how quickly could this be done? Ed was the journalist, and couldn’t he handle a clerical job like this, and have Leonard, the gallery manager, and Jeff walk all over them on the floor to make them look five or six years old? The dinner was excellent, and Murchison had praise for Mme. Annette, which he delivered in quite passable French, for her
mousse
and even the Brie.

“We’ll have coffee in the living room,” Tom said to her. “And can you bring the brandy?”

Mme. Annette had lit the fire. Tom and Murchison settled themselves on the big yellow sofa.

“It’s a funny thing,” Tom began, “I like ‘Man in Chair’ just as much as ‘The Red Chairs.’ If it’s phony. Funny, isn’t it?” Tom was still talking in a midwestern accent. “You can see it’s got the place of honor in the house.”

“Well, you didn’t know it was a forgery!” Murchison laughed a little. “It’d be very interesting—very—to know who’s forging.”

Tom stretched his legs out in front of him and puffed on a cigar. “What a funny thing it would be,” he began, playing his last and best card, “if a forger was doing all the Buckmaster Gallery Derwatts now, all the ones we saw yesterday. Someone as good as Derwatt, in other words.”

Murchison smiled. “Then what’s Derwatt doing? Sitting back and taking it? Don’t be ridiculous. Derwatt was much as I’d thought he would be. Withdrawn and sort of old-fashioned.”

“Have you ever thought of collecting forgeries? I know a man in Italy who collects them. First as a hobby, and now he sells them to other collectors at quite high prices.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that. Yes. But I like to know I’m buying a forgery when I buy one.”

Tom sensed that he was reaching a narrow and unpleasant spot. He tried again. “I like to daydream—about absurd things like that. In a sense, why disturb a forger who’s doing such good work? I intend to hang on to ‘Man in Chair.’”

Murchison might not have heard Tom’s remarks. “And you know,” Murchison said, still gazing at the picture Tom was talking about, “it’s not merely the lavender, it’s the soul of the painting. I wouldn’t put it that way, if I weren’t mellow on your good food and drink.”

They had finished a delicious bottle of Margaux, the best from Tom’s cellar.

“Do you think the Buckmaster Gallery people might be crooks?” Murchison asked. “They
must
be. Why would they be putting up with a forger? Shoving forgeries among the real ones?”

Murchison thought the other new Derwatts, all of them in the current show, except “The Tub,” were genuine, Tom realized. “That’s if these are really forgeries—your ‘Clock’ and so forth. I suppose I’m not yet convinced.”

Murchison smiled with good humor. “Just because you like your ‘Man in Chair.’ If your picture is four years old and mine’s at least three, these forgeries have been going on quite a while. Maybe there’re more in London that weren’t lent for the show. Frankly, it’s Derwatt I suspect. I suspect him of being in cahoots with the Buckmaster people to earn more money. Another thing—there’ve been no drawings by Derwatt for years now. That’s odd.”

“Really?” Tom asked with a feigned surprise. He knew this, and he knew what Murchison was driving at.

“Drawings reveal an artist’s personality,” Murchison said. “I realized that myself, and then I read it somewhere—just to corroborate myself.” He laughed. “Just because I manufacture pipe, people never give me credit for sensitivity! But a drawing is like a signature for a painter, a very complicated signature at that. You might say, you can forge a signature or a painting more easily than you can forge a drawing.”

“Never thought of that,” said Tom, and rolled his cigar end in the ashtray. “You say Saturday you’re going to speak to the Tate Gallery man?”

“Yes. There’re a couple of old Derwatts at the Tate as you probably know. Then I’ll speak to the Buckmaster people without giving them any warning—if Riemer corroborates me.”

Tom’s mind began to make painful leaps. Saturday was the day after tomorrow. Riemer might want to compare “The Clock” and “Man in Chair” with the Tate Gallery Derwatts and those in the current show. Could Bernard Tufts’s paintings stand up to it? And if they couldn’t? He poured more brandy for Murchison and a bit for himself which he did not want. He folded his hands on his chest. “You know, I don’t think I’ll sue—or whatever one does—if there’s forging going on.”

“Hah! I’m a little more orthodox. Old-fashioned, maybe. My attitude. Suppose Derwatt’s really in on it?”

“Derwatt’s rather a saint, I hear.”

“That’s the legend. He might’ve been more of a saint when he was younger and poorer. He’s been in seclusion. His friends in London put him on the map, that’s plain. A lot can happen to a poor man, if he suddenly becomes rich.”

Tom got no further during the evening. Murchison wanted to turn in early, because he was tired.

“I’ll see about a plane in the morning. I should’ve booked one in London. That was stupid of me.”

“Oh, not in the morning, I hope,” Tom said.

“I’ll book it in the morning. I’ll take off in the afternoon, if that’s all right with you.”

Tom saw his guest up to his room, made sure he had everything he needed.

It crossed his mind to ring Jeff or Ed. But what news had he, except that he wasn’t getting anywhere in trying to persuade Murchison not to see the Tate Gallery man? And also Tom did not want Jeff’s telephone number appearing too often on his bill.

6

T
om began the morning with a determined optimism. He put on old comfortable clothes—after having in bed Mme. Annette’s delicious coffee, one black cup to wake him up—and went down to see if Murchison was stirring as yet. It was a quarter to nine.

“Le m’sieur takes his breakfast in his room,” Mme. Annette said.

While Mme. Annette tidied his room, Tom shaved in his bathroom. “M. Murchison is leaving this afternoon, I think,” Tom said in answer to Mme. Annette’s question about the dinner menu for that evening. “But today is Thursday. Do you think you could catch a nice pair of soles—” Tom gulped and thought of “shoes, skates” in English “—from the fish merchant for lunch?” A fish van came to the village twice a week. There was no fish shop in the town, because Villeperce was too small.

Mme. Annette was inspired by this suggestion. “The grapes are lovely at the fruit merchant’s,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe it . . .”

“Buy some.” Tom scarcely listened to her.

At 11 a.m. Tom and Murchison were walking in the woods behind Tom’s property. Tom was in an odd mood, or state of mind. In a burst of barefaced friendliness, honesty, or whatever one might call it, Tom had shown Murchison his own artistic efforts in the upstairs room where he painted. Tom painted landscapes and portraits mainly. He was ever trying to simplify, to keep the example of Matisse before him, but with little success, he thought. One portrait of Heloise, possibly Tom’s twelfth, was not bad, and Murchison had praised it.
My God,
Tom thought,
I’ll lay my soul bare, show him the poems I’ve written to Heloise, take my clothes off and do a sword dance, if he’ll only—see things my way!
It was no use.

Murchison’s plane was at 4 p.m. for London. Time for a decent lunch here, as Orly was about an hour away by car under good conditions. While Murchison had been changing his shoes for their little walk, Tom had wrapped “Man in Chair” in three thicknesses of corrugated paper, string, brown paper, and more string. Murchison was going to keep the painting with him on the plane, he had told Tom. Murchison said he had reserved a room at the Mandeville for this evening.

“But remember, no charges pressed on my part,” Tom said, “about ‘Man in Chair.’”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll deny it’s a fake,” Murchison said with a smile. “You’re not going to insist it’s genuine?”

“No,” Tom said. “
Touché
. I’ll bow to the experts.”

The open woods was not the place for a conversation which had to get down to a pinpoint, Tom felt. Or did it have to expand into a huge gray cloud? Tom was not happy, at any rate, talking to Murchison in the woods.

Tom asked Mme. Annette to prepare the lunch rather early, because of M. Murchison’s departure, and they began at a quarter to one.

Tom was determined to keep the conversation on the subject, because he did not want to abandon all hope. He brought up van Meegeren, with whose career Murchison was acquainted. Van Meegeren’s forgeries of Vermeer had finally achieved some value of their own. Van Meegeren may have stated it first in self-defense, in bravado, but aesthetically there was no doubt that Van Meegeren’s inventions of “new” Vermeers had given pleasure to the people who had bought them.

“I cannot understand your total disconnection with the truth of things,” Murchison said. “An artist’s style is his truth, his honesty. Has another man the right to copy it, in the same way that a man copies another man’s signature? And for the same purpose, to draw on his reputation, his bank account? A reputation already built by a man’s talent?”

They were chasing the last morsels of sole and butter around their plates, with the last morsels of potato. The sole had been superb, the white wine still was. It was the kind of lunch that under any other circumstances would have given contentment, even happiness, would have inspired lovers to go to bed—perhaps after coffee—and make love and then sleep. The beauty of the lunch was today wasted on Tom.

“I speak for myself,” Tom said. “I usually do. I don’t mean to influence you. I’m sure I couldn’t. But you have my permission to say to—who is it, Mr. Constant, yes, that I’m rather happy with my forgery and I want to keep it.”

“I’ll tell him that. But don’t you think of the future? If there’s somebody continuing to do this—”

There was a lemon soufflé. Tom struggled. He was convinced. Why couldn’t he put it into words, put it well enough to convince Murchison?
Murchison was not artistic.
Or he wouldn’t be talking like this. Murchison didn’t appreciate Bernard. What the hell was Murchison doing dragging in truth and signatures and possibly even the police, compared to what Bernard was doing in his studio, which was undeniably the work of a fine painter? How had van Meegeren put it (or had Tom himself put it that way, in one of his notebooks)? “An artist does things naturally, without effort. Some power guides his hand. A forger struggles, and if he succeeds, it is a genuine achievement.” Tom realized it was his own paraphrase. But goddam it, that smug Murchison, holier-than-thou! At least Bernard was a man of talent, of more talent than Murchison with his plumbing, his pipe-laying, his packaging of transportable items, an idea which anyway had come from a young engineer in Canada, Murchison had said.

Coffee. Neither took brandy, though the bottle was at hand.

Thomas Murchison’s face, full of flesh, somewhat ruddy—his face might have been stone to Tom. Murchison’s eyes were bright, quite intelligent, and against him.

It was 1:30. They were to leave for Orly in half an hour or so. Should he go back to London as soon as possible after the Count left, Tom wondered? But what could he accomplish in London? Damn the Count, Tom thought. Derwatt Ltd. was more important than the crap or the trinket that the Count was carrying. Tom realized that Reeves had not told him where to look in the Count’s suitcase or briefcase or whatever. Tom supposed Reeves would telephone this evening. Tom felt wretched, and he simply had to move, now, from the chair where he had been squirming for the last ten minutes.

“I wanted you to take a bottle of wine from my cellar,” Tom said. “Shall we go down and have a look?”

Murchison’s smile became broader. “What a marvelous idea! Thank you, Tom.”

The cellar was approachable from outdoors, down a few stone steps to a green door, or via a door in a downstairs spare loo, next to a little hall where guests hung their coats. Tom and Heloise had had the indoor stairs put in to avoid going outdoors in bad weather.

“I’ll take the wine back to the States with me. It’d be a pity to crack it by myself in London,” Murchison said.

Tom put on the light in the cellar. The cellar was big, gray, and as cool as a refrigerator, or so it seemed in contrast to the centrally heated house. There were five or six big barrels on stands, not all of them full, and many racks of wine bottles against all the walls. In one corner was the big fuel storage tank for the heating, and another tank that held hot water.

“Here are the clarets,” Tom said, indicating a wall of wine racks which were more than half full of dusty dark bottles.

Murchison whistled appreciatively.

It’s got to be done down here, Tom thought, if anything has to be done. Yet he had not planned nearly enough, he had not planned anything. Keep moving, he told himself, but all he did was stroll about slowly, looking over his bottles, touching one or two of the red-tinfoil-wrapped necks. He pulled one out. “Margaux. You liked that.”

“Superb,” Murchison said. “Thank you very much, Tom. I’ll tell the folks about the cellar it came from.” Murchison took the bottle reverently.

Tom said, “You won’t possibly change your mind—just for the sake of sportsmanship—about speaking to the expert in London. About the forgeries.”

Murchison laughed a little. “Tom, I can’t. Sportsmanship! I can’t for the life of me see why you want to protect them, unless—”

Murchison had had a thought, and Tom knew what that thought was, that Tom Ripley was in on it, deriving some kind of benefit or profit from it. “Yes, I have an interest in it,” Tom said quickly. “You see, I know the young man who spoke to you in your hotel the other day. I know all about him. He’s the forger.”

“
What?
That—that—”

“Yes, that nervous fellow. Bernard. He knew Derwatt. It started out quite idealistically, you see—”

“You mean, Derwatt
knows
about it?”

“Derwatt is dead. They got someone to impersonate him.” Tom blurted it out, feeling he had nothing any longer to lose, and maybe something to gain. Murchison had his life to gain, but Tom could not quite put that into words, not plain words, as yet.

“So Derwatt’s dead—since how long?”

“Five or six years. He really died in Greece.”

“So all the pictures—”

“Bernard Tufts— You saw what kind of fellow he is. He’d commit suicide if it came out he was forging his dead friend’s paintings. He told you not to buy any more. Isn’t that enough? The gallery asked Bernard to paint a couple of pictures in Derwatt’s style, you see—” Tom realized
he
had suggested that, but no matter. Tom also realized that he was arguing hopelessly, not only because Murchison was adamant, but because there was a split in Tom’s own reasoning, a split he was well acquainted with. He saw the right and the wrong. Yet both sides of himself were equally sincere: save Bernard, save the forgeries, save even Derwatt, was what Tom was arguing. Murchison would never understand. “Bernard wants out of it, I know. I don’t think you’d like to risk a man’s killing himself out of shame just to prove a point, would you?”

“He might’ve thought of shame when he began!” Murchison looked at Tom’s hands, his face, back to his hands again. “Was it
you
impersonating Derwatt? Yes. I noticed Derwatt’s hands.” Murchison smiled bitterly. “And people think I don’t notice little things!”

“You’re very observant,” Tom said quickly. He suddenly felt angry.

“My God, I might’ve mentioned it yesterday. I thought of it yesterday. Your hands. You can’t put a beard on those, can you?”

Tom said, “Let them all alone, would you? Are they doing much harm? Bernard’s pictures are good, you can’t deny that.”

“I’m damned if I’ll keep my mouth shut about it! No! Not even if you or anybody else offers me a whacking lot of money to keep my mouth shut!” Murchison’s face was redder, and his jowls trembled. He set the wine down rather hard on the floor, but it didn’t break.

The rejection of his wine was a slight insult, or so Tom felt now, a minuscule but further insult and annoyance. Tom picked up the bottle almost at once and swung it at Murchison, hitting him on the side of the head. This time the bottle broke, wine splashed, and the base of the bottle fell to the floor. Murchison reeled against the wine racks, jiggling it all, nothing else fell, except Murchison, who slumped down, bumping wine-bottle tops but not disturbing any. Tom seized the first thing to hand—which happened to be an empty coal scuttle—and swung it at Murchison’s head. Tom struck a second blow. The base of the scuttle was heavy. Murchison was bleeding, lying sideways, his body somewhat twisted, on the stone floor. He wasn’t moving.

What to do about the blood? Tom turned around in circles, looking for an old rag anywhere, even newspaper. He went over to the fuel tank. Under the tank was a large rag, stiff with age and dirt. He went back with it and mopped, but gave up the useless task after a moment, and looked around again. Put him under a barrel, he thought. He grabbed Murchison by the ankles, then at once dropped the ankles and felt Murchison’s neck. There seemed to be no pulse. Tom took a huge breath, and got his hands under Murchison’s arms. He pulled and jerked, dragging the heavy body toward the barrel. The corner behind the barrel was dark. Murchison’s feet stuck out a little. Tom bent Murchison’s knees so that the feet did not show. But since the barrel stood some sixteen inches above the floor on its stand, Murchison was more or less visible, if someone stood in the middle of the cellar and looked into that particular corner. By stooping, one had a view of Murchison’s whole body. Of all times, Tom thought, not to find an old sheet, a piece of tarpaulin, newspaper, anything to cover something up with! That was Mme. Annette’s tidiness!

Tom tossed the bloodstained rag, and it landed on Murchison’s feet. He kicked at a couple of pieces of broken bottle on the floor—the wine had mingled with the blood now—then quickly picked up the neck of the bottle, and hit the lightbulb which hung on a cord from the ceiling. The bulb broke and tinkled to the floor.

Then, gasping a little, trying to get his breathing back to normal, Tom moved in the darkness toward the stairs and climbed them. He closed the cellar door. The spare john had a basin, and here he washed his hands quickly. Some blood showed pink in the running water, and Tom thought it was Murchison’s, until he saw that it kept coming, and that he had a cut at the base of his thumb. But it wasn’t a bad cut, it could have been worse, so he considered himself lucky. He pulled toilet paper from the roll on the wall and wrapped it around his thumb.

Mme. Annette was busy in the kitchen now, which was another piece of luck. If she came out, Tom thought, he would say that M. Murchison was already in the car—in case Mme. Annette asked where he was. It was time to go.

Tom ran up to Murchison’s room. The only things Murchison had not packed were his topcoat and toilet articles in the loo. Tom put the toilet articles into a pocket of Murchison’s suitcase and closed it. Then he carried the suitcase and the topcoat down the stairs and out of the front door. He put these things into the Alfa Romeo, then ran back upstairs for Murchison’s “Clock,” which was still wrapped. Murchison had been so sure of himself, he hadn’t bothered unwrapping “The Clock” to compare it with “Man in Chair.” Pride goeth before a fall, Tom thought. He took his wrapped “Man in Chair” from Murchison’s room into his own room, and stuck it in a back corner of his closet, then carried “The Clock” downstairs. He grabbed his raincoat from a hook outside the spare loo, and went out to the car. He drove off for Orly.

Murchison’s passport and airline ticket might be in the pocket of his jacket, Tom thought. He would take care of that later, burn them preferably, when Mme. Annette was out of the house in the morning on her usual leisurely shopping tour. It also occurred to Tom that he had not told Mme. Annette about the Count’s arrival. Tom would ring her from somewhere, but not from Orly airport, he thought, because he did not want to linger there.