Ripley Under Water (12 page)

“Sunday. Yes. I saw your wife or somebody looking out of the front window. Well—the photos are just for the record. As I said, I—I have a fair dossier on you.”

Pritchard hadn’t exactly said it, Tom thought. “You work for some kind of investigations bureau? International Prowlers Incorporated?”

“Ha-ha! No, just for my pleasure—and my wife’s,” he added with some emphasis. “And you’re a fertile field, Mr. Ripley.”

Tom was thinking that the rather dull girl in the travel agency had probably answered David Pritchard’s question: “Where did your last customer buy a ticket for? He’s a neighbor, Mr. Ripley. We hailed him just now, but he didn’t see us. We can’t make up our minds, but we’d like to go to some place different.” The girl might have said, “Mr. Ripley just bought a ticket to Tangier for himself and his wife.” She might have been obtuse enough to volunteer the hotel, Tom thought, especially as an agency got a percentage from hotels where the client was booked. Tom said, “You and your wife came all the way to Tangier just to see me?” His tone might have meant that he was flattered.

“Why not? It is interesting,” said Pritchard, his dark brown eyes steady on Tom.

And annoying. Every time Tom saw Pritchard, he seemed to be a pound or so heavier. Curious. Tom glanced to his left, to see if Heloise had come into the lobby, because she was due now. “Some trouble for you, I’d think, considering that we’ll stay such a short time. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh? You’ve got to see Casablanca, no?”

“Oh, definitely,” Tom replied, “we’ll go to Casablanca. What hotel are you and Janice in?”

“The—um—Grand Hotel Villa de France, just”—he waved a hand toward Tom—“a street or so away.”

Tom didn’t completely believe him. “And how are our mutual friends? We have so many.” Tom smiled. He was on his feet now, left hand clutching cards and pen and resting on the black leather-covered bar stool.

“Which ones?” Pritchard chuckled, sounding rather like an old man.

Tom would have loved to sock him in his bulging solar plexus. “Mrs. Murchison?” Tom ventured.

“Yes, we’re in touch, and with Cynthia Gradnor too.”

Once more the name rolled easily from Pritchard’s tongue. Tom backed a few inches, indicating his imminent departure via the broad doorway. “You talk with each other—across the Atlantic?”

“Oh, yes. Why not?” Pritchard showed his square teeth.

“But—” Tom began in a bemused way. “What do you talk about?”

“You!” Pritchard replied with a smile. “We pool our facts.” Again his nod for emphasis. “And we plan.”

“And your objective?”

“Pleasure,” replied Pritchard. “Maybe revenge.” He gave a full-throated chuckle here. “For some, of course.”

Tom nodded, and said pleasantly, “Good luck.” He turned and left.

Tom found Heloise , spotted her, in one of the easy chairs in the lobby. She was looking at a French newspaper, or at least one printed in French, but Tom saw also a column in Arabic down the front page. “My dear—” Tom knew she had seen Pritchard.

Heloise bounced up. “Again! That so-and-so! Tom, I can’t believe that he is here!”

“I’m just as annoyed as you,” Tom murmured in French, “but let’s be calm now, because he might be watching us from the bar.” Tom stood up straight and calm. “He claims to be at the Grand Hotel something near here, with his wife. I don’t necessarily believe him. But he’s no doubt at a hotel somewhere tonight.”

“And he follows us here!”

“My dear, my sweet, we could—” Tom stopped abruptly, and felt at the edge of a cliff, as to his reasoning. He had been about to say that he and Heloise could move that afternoon, change their hotel and give Pritchard the slip, and maybe successfully, in Tangier, but it would be less fun for Noelle Hassler, who had probably told her friends that she was at the Hotel El Minzah for a few days. And why should he and Heloise inconvenience themselves because of the creep called Pritchard? “Did you leave the key at the desk?”

Heloise said she had. “Preeckard’s wife is with him?” she asked as they went out through the front door.

Tom hadn’t even looked to see if Pritchard had left the bar. “He said she was, which probably means that she isn’t.” His wife! What a relationship, his wife admitting to Tom in the Fontainebleau cafe that her husband was a tyrant and a brute. Yet they clung together. Sickening.

“You are tense, cheri.” Heloise was holding his arm, mainly so that they could stay together in the jostling crowd on the pavement.

“I am thinking. Sorry.”

“About what?”

“About us. About Belle Ombre. Everything.” He took a quick glance at Heloise’s face, just as she brushed her hair back with her left hand. I want us to be safe, Tom might have added, but he didn’t want to upset Heloise any further. “Let’s cross the street.”

Once more, they had begun walking down the Boulevard Pasteur, as if the throngs and the shop fronts were a magnet. Tom saw a red and black shingle hanging over a doorway: Rubi Bar and Grill, in English with Arabic letters under it.

“Shall we look in?” Tom asked.

This was a smallish bar and restaurant, with three or four non-tourist types standing or sitting.

Tom and Heloise stood at the bar, and ordered a cafe express and a tomato juice. The barman pushed a little saucer of cold beans and another of radishes and black olives toward them, plus forks and paper napkins.

A well-built man on a stool behind Heloise, reading an Arabic newspaper with an air of serious absorption, seemed to be lunching from the saucers. He wore a yellowish djellaba, which hung down almost to his black business shoes. Tom saw him shove a hand into a slit in order to get at the pocket of his trousers. The edges of the slit looked a bit soiled. The man blew his nose, then shoved the handkerchief back in his pocket, never taking his eyes from the newspaper.

Tom was inspired. He would buy a djellaba, and, with some courage, wear it. He so informed Heloise, and she laughed.

“And I’ll photograph you—in the Casbah? Outside our hotel?” she asked.

“Oh, anywhere.” Tom was thinking how practical the loose garment was, because one could wear shorts or a business suit under it, even a bathing suit.

Tom was in luck: just around the corner from the Rubi Bar and Grill was a shop where djellabas hung amid bright scarves on the shop front.

“Djellaba—s’il vous plait?” Tom said to the proprietor. “Not pink, no,” he continued in French, on seeing the shop owner’s first offering. “And long sleeves?” Tom indicated with a forefinger on his wrist.

“Ah! Si! Ici, m’sieur.” His heelless sandals clap-clapped on the old wooden floor. “Ici—“

A rack of djellabas, partly obscured by a couple of display counters. No room even to sidle to where the shop owner was, but Tom pointed to a pale green number. This had long sleeves and two slits for reaching pockets. Tom held it up against himself to verify the length.

Heloise doubled over, and for politeness’ sake coughed and made her way toward the door.

“Bon, c’est fait,” Tom said, after asking the price, which struck him as reasonable. “And these?”

“Ah, si—” There followed a eulogy—Tom could not make out every word, although the man spoke in French—on the quality of his knives. For the hunt, for le bureau, and for the kitchen.

These were pocketknives. Tom made his choice quickly: one with a haft of light brown wood with inlaid brass fittings, a blade sharp and pointed, and concave on its non-cutting edge. Thirty dirhams. Folded, his knife was not six inches long, suitable for any pocket.

“A taxi ride?” Tom said to Heloise. “A quick tour—any direction. Does that appeal?”

Heloise took a look at her wristwatch. “We could. Aren’t you going to change into your djellaba?”

“Change? I can do that in the taxi!” Tom waved to the shopkeeper, who was watching them. “Merci, m’sieur!”

The shopkeeper said something Tom did not understand, and Tom hoped it was “God be with you,” no matter what God.

The taxi driver asked, “Yacht Club?”

“That’s for lunch some day,” Heloise said to Tom. “Noelle wants to take us.”

A drop of sweat slid down Tom’s cheek. “Someplace cool? With a breeze?” he said in French to the driver.

“La Haffa? Brize—ocean. V’near.”

Tom was lost. Still, they got in and gave the driver his head. Tom made a statement: “We must be at Hotel Minzah in one hour,” and made sure the driver understood it.

Checking of watches. They were to pick up Noelle at seven.

Again high speed, and faulty springs in the taxi. The driver was clearly aiming for somewhere. They headed west, Tom thought, and the city began to fade away.

“Your dress,” said Heloise, slyly.

Tom pulled the folded garment from its plastic bag, got it into position, ducked and hauled the flimsy pale green gown over his head. Then a shimmy or two and it was over his jeans, and he made sure he could sit down without splitting it before he did sit down. “There!” he said triumphantly to Heloise.

She surveyed him with a sparkle in her eyes, approvingly.

Tom checked his trouser pockets: accessible. The knife was in his left pocket.

“La Haffa,” said the driver, pulling up at a cement wall with a couple of doors in it, one open. The blue Atlantic Strait lay beyond, visible through a break in the wall.

“What is it? A museum?” asked Tom.

“The cafe,” said the driver. “J’attends? Demi-heure?”

Wisest to say yes, Tom thought, and replied, “Okay, demi-heure.”

Heloise had already got out, and with head lifted was gazing out at the blue water. The breeze blew her hair steadily out to one side.

A figure in black trousers and limp white shirt slowly beckoned to them from a stone doorway, like some evil spirit, Tom thought, leading them into hell or at least corruption. A skinny mongrel, black and much underfed, started to sniff at them, apparently lost the energy, and went limping away on three legs. Whatever the problem with his fourth leg was, he seemed to have had it for a long time.

Tom almost reluctantly followed Heloise through the primitive stone doorway onto a stone path that led in the direction of the sea. Tom saw a kitchen of sorts to their left, with a stove capable of heating water. Broad, railless stone steps descended toward the ocean. Tom glanced into cubicles on either side, rooms with no walls on the sea side, and with straw mats on poles for a roof, mats on the floor, and no furnishings otherwise. No customers just now either.

“Curious,” Tom said to Heloise . “Would you like some mint tea?”

Heloise shook her head. “Not now. I don’t like this.”

Neither did Tom. The waiter was not hovering. Tom could imagine the place being fascinating at night, or at sunset, with friends, with a little liveliness, an oil lamp on the floor. One would have to sit cross-legged on those mats, or recline like the ancient Greeks. Then Tom heard laughter from one cubicle, where three men sat smoking something, legs folded on the mat-covered floor. Tom had an impression of tea cups, a white plate in the shade there, where the sunlight fell like tiny flecks of gold.

Their taxi was waiting, the driver talking and laughing with the skinny fellow in the white shirt.

Back to El Minzah, where Tom paid the driver off, and he and Heloise entered the lobby. Tom did not see Pritchard anywhere, from where he stood. And his djellaba excited not the least notice, he was glad to see.

“Darling, there’s something I want to do just now—for an hour, maybe. Can you—would you mind going alone to the airport to pick up Noelle?”

“Non-n,” said Heloise thoughtfully. “We will come back here at once, of course. What are you going to do?”

Tom smiled, hesitated. “Nothing important. Just—be on my own for a while. See you then around—eight? Or soon after? My greetings to Noelle. See you both soon!”

Chapter 8

Tom walked out into the sun again, hiked up his djellaba and pulled his schematic map from a back pocket. The Grand Hotel Villa de France that Pritchard had mentioned was indeed two steps away, apparently, approachable by the Rue de Hollande. Tom started walking, wiped sweat from his forehead with the upper part of the pale green djellaba, then hoisted it up at the sides, and pulled it over his head as he walked. Pity he had no plastic bag, but the garment folded into a rather small square.

No one looked at him, and Tom did not stare at the passers-by either. Most of the people, male and female, carried shopping bags of some kind, and were not out for a walk.

Tom entered the lobby of the Grand Hotel Villa de France and looked around. Not so plush as the Minzah; four people occupying chairs in the lobby, none Pritchard or wife. Tom went to the desk and asked if he could speak with M. David Pritchard.

“Ou Madame Pritchard,” Tom added.

“Who shall I say?” asked the young man behind the desk.

“Just say Thomas.”

“M’sieur Thomas?”

“Oui.”

M. Pritchard was not in, it seemed, although the young man looked behind him and remarked that his key was absent.

“May I speak with his wife?”

Hanging up the telephone, the young man remarked that M. Pritchard was alone.

“Thank you very much. Please say that M’sieur Thomas called, would you? No, thank you, M’sieur Pritchard knows where to reach me.”

Tom turned toward the door, and at that moment saw Pritchard emerging from a lift, with camera on a strap over one shoulder. Tom strolled toward him. “Afternoon, Mr. Pritchard!”

“Well—hello! Nice surprise.”

“Yes. Thought I’d come and say hello. Have you got a few minutes? Or have you an appointment?”

Pritchard’s deep pinkish lips parted in surprise, or was it pleasure? “Yum—yes, why not?”

Favorite phrase of Pritchard’s, it seemed, why not. Tom put on an affable manner, and moved toward the door, but had to wait while Pritchard deposited his key.

“Nice camera,” Tom remarked, when Pritchard came back. “I was just at a great place on the coast near here. Well, it’s all on the coast, isn’t it.” He gave an easy laugh.

Out of the air-conditioning into the hot sunlight again. It was close to six-thirty, Tom saw.

“How well do you know Tangier?” Tom asked, ready to play the knowledgeable. “La Haffa? That’s the spectacular-view place. Or—a cafe?” He made a circular gesture with a finger to indicate the immediate neighborhood.