Ripley Under Water (24 page)

Hopeless quest, perhaps. If anyone elected to try to find Derwatt in Mexico, in some small village, it would be the task of a lifetime and then some, Tom thought, as Derwatt had never lived in Mexico, only in London, and had gone to Greece to kill himself.

Tom glanced at the gas gauge: more than half-full. He made a U-turn at the next safe spot, and headed northeast. Only every three minutes or so did he see another car. Green fields of high, thickly planted corn spread left and right, corn planted for cattle consumption. Black crows circled and cawed.

As Tom recalled, he and Bernard had driven seven or eight kilometers from Villeperce that night, and westward. Should he go home and make a circle on a map, with its center west of Villeperce? Tom now chose a road that he thought would lead him past the Pritchard house, then the Grais’ house.

Must ring the Berthelins, Tom thought out of the blue.

Did the Pritchards know Heloise’s red Mercedes? Tom thought not. As he approached their two-story white house, he slowed and tried to see as much as he could and still keep his eyes on the road. A white pickup in the driveway in front of the porch steps caught Tom’s eye. A delivery of sports goods? It had a gray lumpish cargo which projected over the floor at the back. Tom heard what he thought was a man’s voice, maybe two men’s voices, though Tom wasn’t sure, and then he was past the Pritchard establishment.

Could that have been a small boat in the pickup? The gray tarpaulin that covered it reminded Tom of the beige or tan tarpaulin or canvas that had covered Thomas Murchison. Well! Perhaps David Pritchard had acquired a pickup, and a boat, and maybe even an assistant? A rowing boat? How could one man get a rowboat into canal water (the height of the water varied with the action of the locks), plus the motor, plus descending by rope himself? The canal banks were sheer. Had Pritchard been discussing payment with his delivery man, or someone he intended to employ?

If David Pritchard was back, Tom could not pump Janice, his unreliable ally, with questions about her husband, as David would either pick up the phone or possibly overhear, and snatch the telephone from Janice’s thin hand.

The Grais’ house showed no sign of life at the moment. Tom turned left into an empty road, then right a few meters on, which put him on the road where Belle Ombre stood.

Voisy, Tom thought suddenly. The name entered his mind for no reason, and it was like a light being turned on unexpectedly. That was the village near which the stream or canal ran, where he had dropped Murchison’s body. Voisy. Westward, Tom thought. Anyway, he could look it up on the map.

Tom did just that when he got home, having found a detailed map of the Fontainebleau region. A little westward, not far from Sens. Voisy on the Loing river itself. Tom felt relieved. Murchison’s corpse would have moved northward toward the Seine, Tom thought, if it had moved at all, and that he doubted. He tried to take into consideration heavy rains, reversals of current. Would there have been reversals? Not in an inland river, he thought. And lucky it was a river, as canals were from time to time drained empty for repairs.

He rang the Berthelins’ number and Jacqueline answered. Yes, he and Heloise had been away for a few days in Tangier, Tom said, and Heloise was still there.

“And how are your son and daughter-in-law doing?” Tom asked. Their son Jean-Pierre had finished his studies at the Beaux-Arts, which had been interrupted a couple of years ago by the girl to whom he was now married, and against whom Vincent Berthelin,

Jean-Pierre’s father, had railed, Tom recalled. “The girl is not worth it!” Vincent had shouted.

“Jean-Pierre is fine and they are expecting a baby in December!” Jacqueline’s voice was full of joy.

“Ah, congratulations!” Tom said. “Now that house of yours had better be warm for the baby!”

Jacqueline laughed, and yielded on this sore point. She and Vincent had for years had no hot water, she admitted, but they were going to install a second toilet, off their guest room, plus a washbasin.

“Good!” Tom said, smiling, remembering when the Berthelins, for some reason determined to rough it in their country house, had boiled water on the kitchen stove in a kettle to wash with, and had had an outside toilet.

They promised to see each other soon, a promise not always kept, as some people seemed always busy, Tom thought, but still he felt better after hanging up. Good neighborly relations were important.

Tom relaxed with the Herald Tribune on the sofa. Mme Annette, he thought, was in her part of the house, and Tom fancied he could hear her television set. He knew she watched certain soap operas, because in the old days she used to mention them to Heloise and him until she realized that the Ripleys didn’t watch soap operas.

At half past four, when the sun was still far above the horizon, Tom took the brown Renault and drove off in the direction of Voisy. Such a difference, he thought, between the sunlit farm landscape today and that night with Bernard, a moonless night as he remembered, when he had been uncertain where he was going. Until now, he told himself, that watery grave of Murchison had been a most successful hiding place, and perhaps it still was.

Tom came to the town marker voisy before he saw the town, which in fact was out of sight around a curve to the left and behind trees. Tom saw the bridge to his right, horizontal and with a ramp at either end, and some thirty meters long, maybe more. Over that bridge with its waist-high parapet he and Bernard had heaved Murchison.

Tom drove on at a slower but steady speed. At the bridge, he turned right and drove across it, not knowing or caring where the road beyond might lead. As he remembered, he and Bernard had parked and dragged the tarpaulin bundle onto the bridge. Or had they dared to drive the car some way onto the bridge?

In the next convenient spot, Tom stopped and consulted his map, saw a crossroads and went on, knowing that a signpost would point the way to Nemours or Sens and thus orient him. Tom was thinking of the river he had just glanced at: dirtyish blue-green, its surface a couple of meters (today anyway) below the upper level of its soft and grassy banks. No one could walk to the edge of that bank without slipping in, or falling in because of losing balance.

And why in the name of—anything—would David Pritchard think of coming to Voisy, when there were twenty or thirty more kilometers of river and canal much closer to Villeperce?

Tom got home and, after removing shirt and blue jeans, took a nap in his bedroom. He felt safer, more relaxed. It was a delicious nap of three-quarters of an hour, after which Tom felt he had got rid of the strain of Tangier, the anxiety of London and talking with Cynthia and the Pritchards’ possible acquisition of a boat. Tom wandered into the room in what he thought of as the back-right corner of Belle Ombre, which was his studio or workroom.

The fine old oak flooring still looked good, though not so shiny and polished as the other floors of the house. Tom kept a few lengths of old canvas or sailcloth on the floor, which in his view were decorative, kept paint drips, if any, from staining the floor, and also served as rags when he wanted to give a brush a wipe or a cleaning.

The Pigeon. Where should he hang that yellowish sketch? In the living room, surely, to share it with his friends.

Tom looked for a few seconds at a painting he had done, which now leaned against a wall. Mme Annette stood with cup and saucer in hand, his morning coffee: Tom had made sketches for that, so as not to tire Mme Annette. She wore a purple dress and white apron there. Then one of Heloise , gazing out of the curved window in the corner of Tom’s studio, her right hand resting on the window frame, left hand on her hip. Again preliminary sketches, Tom recalled. Heloise did not like to pose for more than ten minutes at a time.

Should he try a landscape from his window? It had been three years since he had, Tom thought. The dark, dense woods beyond his own property line, where in fact Murchison’s body had known its first resting place—not a nice memory. Tom steered his thoughts back to composition. Yes, he would try it, first sketches tomorrow morning, the handsome dahlias in foreground left and right, pink and red roses beyond. One could make something soppy and pretty out of that idyllic view, but such was not Tom’s intention. He might try working with palette knife only.

Tom went downstairs, seized a white cotton jacket from the front closet, mainly so he could carry his wallet in an inside pocket, and went toward the kitchen, where Mme Annette was already astir. “At work? It’s hardly five, madame.”

“The mushrooms, m’sieur. I like to prepare them beforehand.” Mme Annette glanced at him with pale blue eyes and smiled. She was at the sink.

“I’m going out for half an hour. Can I buy something you need?”

“Oui, m’sieur—Le Parisien Libere? S’il vous plait?”

“With pleasure, madame!” Tom was off.

He picked up the newspaper first in the bar-tabac, lest he forget to buy it. It was early for men getting off from work for the day, but the usual buzz had started, a call for “Un petit rouge, Georges!” and Marie was getting into her rhythm for the evening. She gave Tom a wave, being at that moment far to the left behind the bar. Tom found himself glancing around, quickly to be sure, for David Pritchard, and not finding him. Pritchard would have stood out: taller than most, round-rimmed eyeglasses in evidence, staring, not mixing.

Tom got into the red Mercedes again, drove off in the direction of Fontainebleau, then took the next left-hand turn for no reason. His direction now was southwest, more or less. What was Heloise doing now? Strolling back to the Hotel Miramare, Casablanca, with Noelle, both carrying plastic bags and newly acquired baskets full of afternoon purchases? Both talking about a shower and a nap before the dinner hour? Should he try Heloise at 3 a.m. tonight?

At a Villeperce sign, Tom headed for home, noting the eight-kilometer distance to his village. He slowed up, stopped to let a farmgirl steer her geese across the road with a long stick; beautiful, Tom thought, three white geese headed where they ought to go, but going at their own pace, unruffled.

Around the next gentle curve, Tom had to slow because of a pickup that was going slowly, and he noticed at once that a gray shape projected from the back of it. And a canal or a stream lay to the right of the road, some sixty or eighty meters away. Pritchard and company, or David Pritchard alone? Tom was close enough to see, through the back window, that the driver was engaged in conversation with someone on the seat beside him. Tom imagined that they were both looking at and talking about the water, the stream on their right. Tom slowed still more. He was sure that the pickup was the same one that he had seen in the Pritchard back or front yard, whichever they called it.

Tom thought of taking any road off, left or right, then decided to go right on, past them.

As Tom accelerated, a car approached from the opposite direction, a big gray Peugeot that had an air of caring for nobody. Tom slowed, let the Peugeot pass, then stepped on the accelerator.

The two men in the pickup were still in conversation, and the driver was not Pritchard but a stranger to Tom, with wavy light brown hair. Pritchard sat beside him, talking and pointing toward the stream as Tom passed. Tom was reasonably sure that they had not noticed him.

Tom went on toward Villeperce, watching in his mirror till the last moment, however, to see if the pickup ventured across a field, for example, to get a closer look at the stream. It did not while Tom was watching.

Chapter 16

Tom felt restless after dinner that evening, unwilling to try television as a diversion, or to ring the Cleggs or Agnes Grais. He debated ringing Jeff Constant or Ed Banbury. One or the other might be in. What would he say? Come over soon as possible? Tom thought he might ask one of them to join him—for physical assistance in case of need, Tom admitted to himself—and he would not mind admitting it to Ed and Jeff. It could be like a little vacation for either of them, Tom thought, especially if nothing happened. If Pritchard fished or grappled for five or six days unsuccessfully, surely he’d give up? Or was he such an obsessive nut, he would go on for weeks, months?

The thought was frightening, yet that was possible, Tom realized. Who could predict what a mentally disturbed person would do? Well, psychologists could predict, Tom realized, but prediction would be based on past case histories, similarities, likelihoods, nothing that even doctors could call definite.

Heloise. She’d been away from Belle Ombre for six days. Nice to think there were two of them there, Heloise and Noelle, even nicer to know that Pritchard was not there.

Tom looked at the telephone, thinking of Ed before Jeff, and thinking it was fortunate for him that London time was an hour earlier, in case he felt inspired to ring one of them later.

Nine-twelve now. Mme Annette had finished in the kitchen, and was probably deep in television. Tom thought he might make a sketch or two for his view-from-the-window oil.

The telephone rang as he was approaching the stairs.

Tom picked it up in the hall. “Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Ripley,” said a smiling, confident American voice. “Dickie again. Remember? I’ve been keeping tabs on you—I know where you’ve been.”

It sounded like Pritchard, screwing his voice up a bit higher than normal, to make himself sound “young.” He imagined Pritchard’s face with a forced grin, mouth twisted as he attempted something like a New York drawl, or absence of consonants. Tom kept silent.

“Getting scared, Tom? Voices from the past? From the dead?”

Did Tom hear or imagine a remonstrative word from Janice in the background? A titter of laughter?

The speaker cleared his throat. “Day of reckoning’s very soon, Tom. All actions have their price.”

And what did that mean? Nothing, Tom thought.

“Still there? Maybe you’re struck dumb with fear, Tom.”

“Not at all. This is being recorded, Pritchard.”

“Oh-ho—Dickie. Starting to take me seriously, eh, Tom?”

Tom kept silent.

“I’m—I’m not Pritchard,” the high voice went on, “but I know Pritchard. He’s doing some work for me.”