Ripley Under Water (28 page)

“M’sieur Tome!”

Tom heard Mme Annette’s cry, from the back terrace steps, when he was in the greenhouse, with its door open just in case of a shout. “Yes?”

“Telephone!”

Tom trotted, hoping it was Ed, thinking it might be Heloise. Two leaps and he was up the terrace steps.

It was Ed. “Tomorrow around midday looks fine, Tom. To be precise—got a pencil?”

“Yes, indeed.” Tom wrote down. 11:25 arrival at de Gaulle, flight 212. “I’ll be there, Ed.”

“That would be nice—if it isn’t a lot of trouble.”

“No-o. A nice drive—it’ll do me good. Anything from—well, Cynthia? Anybody?”

“Not a thing. And at your end?”

“He’s still fishing. You’ll see—oh, one more thing, Ed. What’s the price of The Pigeon drawing?”

“Ten thousand for you. Not fifteen.” Ed chuckled.

They hung up cheerfully.

Tom began to think of a frame for the pigeon drawing: light brown wood, either slender or quite broad, but warm in tone, like the pale yellowish paper of the drawing. He went into the kitchen to tell Mme Annette the good news: their guest would be in time for lunch tomorrow.

Then he went out and wound up his chores in the greenhouse, including giving it a sweep. He also dusted the inside of the slanting windows with a soft broom that he fetched from the house. Tom wanted his house to be looking its best for an old friend like Ed.

That evening, Tom watched a videocassette of Some Like It Hot. Just what he needed, light-minded relaxation, even the insanity of the forced smiles of the male chorus.

Before going to bed, Tom went to his workroom and made some sketches at the table, at which he could comfortably stand. He drew in heavy black lines his recollection of Ed’s face. He might ask Ed if he would be willing to pose for five or ten minutes for preliminary sketches. It would be interesting to do a portrait of Ed’s blondish and very English face, the receding hairline, the thin, straight, light brown hair, the polite but quizzical eyes, the slender lips, ready to smile or shut straight on short notice.

Chapter 19

Tom was up unusually early, as was his wont when he had engagements ahead. By six-thirty, he had shaved and put on Levis and shirt, and was downstairs walking deliberately quietly through the living room toward the kitchen to boil some water. Mme Annette usually got up only at quarter-past or half-past seven. Tom carried his drip pot and cup and saucer on a tray into the living room. The coffee was not yet ready, so he went to the front door, thinking to open it for the fresh morning air, to glance at the garage and decide whether to take the red Mercedes or the Renault to de Gaulle.

A long gray bundle at Tom’s feet made him jump back a little. It lay across the doorstep and Tom knew, with horror, and instantly, what it was.

Tom could see that Pritchard had wrapped it in what could be called a “new” gray canvas sheet, which looked to Tom like the same sheet Pritchard had been using to cover his boat, now tied with rope. Pritchard had also stabbed this canvas with a knife or scissors in several places—why? For fingerholds? Pritchard had had to transport the thing here, and maybe alone. Tom bent and pulled a flap of the new canvas back, out of curiosity, and at once saw the old canvas, threadbare and failing, and some gray-whiteness of bone.

Belle Ombre’s big iron gates were still closed and padlocked from the inside. Pritchard must have driven into the lane beside Tom’s lawn, stopped his car and dragged or carried the bundle across the grass and about ten meters of gravel to arrive at his front door. The gravel would have made a noise, of course, but both Mme Annette and Tom had been sleeping at the back part of the house.

Tom fancied he could smell something unpleasant, but perhaps it was only a stink of moisture, staleness—or imagination.

The station wagon was a good idea for the moment, and thank God Mme Annette was not yet awake. Tom went back into the hall, grabbed his keyring from the hall table, dashed out and opened the back of the car. Then he took a firm grip with both hands under two cords on the bundle, and heaved, expecting a much heavier weight.

The damned thing weighed no more than fifteen kilos, Tom thought, less than forty pounds. And some of that was water. The bundle dripped a little, even as Tom staggered with it toward the white station wagon. Tom felt that he had been paralyzed with surprise for several seconds on the doorstep. Mustn’t let that happen again! Tom could not tell head from feet, he realized, as he heaved the burden into the back of the car. He got into the driver’s seat and gave one cord a tug, so that be could close the back.

No blood. Absurd thought, Tom realized at once. The stones he had put in with Bernard Tufts’s help must also be long gone. The bones had stayed sunken because no flesh was left, Tom supposed.

Tom locked the back of the car, then the side door. This car was outside the two-car garage. What next? Go back to his coffee, say “Bonjour” to Mme Annette. And meanwhile think. Or scheme.

He returned to the front door, where some drops of water were visible on doorstep and mat, to his annoyance, but the sunlight would soon take care of that, certainly by nine-thirty, Tom thought, when Mme Annette usually went out shopping. In fact, most of the time she departed and returned by the kitchen door. Inside the house, Tom made for the hall bathroom, and washed his hands at the basin. He noticed some sandy wetness on his right thigh and brushed it off into the basin as best he could.

When had Pritchard found his bonanza? Probably late yesterday afternoon, though of course it could have been yesterday morning. He’d have kept his trove hidden in his boat, Tom supposed. Had he told Janice? Probably, why not? Janice seemed to make no judgments of any kind concerning right or wrong, pro or con on anything, and certainly not her husband, or she would not be with him now. Tom corrected himself: Janice was just as cracked as David.

Tom entered the living room with cheerful air, on seeing Mme Annette adding toast, butter and marmalade to his breakfast on the coffee table. “How nice! Thank you,” said Tom. “Bonjour, madame!”

“Bonjour, M’sieur Tome. You are up early.”

“As always when I have a guest coming, isn’t it so?” Tom bit into his toast.

Tom was thinking that he should put a cover over the bundle, newspapers, anything, so that it didn’t look like what it was to anyone glancing through a window of the car.

Had Pritchard dismissed Teddy by now, Tom wondered. Or had Teddy dismissed himself, scared of becoming an accomplice in something he had nothing to do with?

What did Pritchard expect him to do with the bag of bones? Was he going to arrive at any moment with the police and say, “Look! Here’s the missing Murchison!”?

Tom stood up at this thought, with coffee cup in hand, frowning. The corpse could jolly well go straight back into a canal, Tom thought, and Pritchard could go to hell. Of course Teddy could witness that he and Pritchard had found something, some corpse, but what was the proof that it was Murchison’s?

Tom glanced at his wristwatch. Seven minutes to eight. He thought he should leave the house at ten minutes before ten at the latest to fetch Ed. Tom moistened his lips, then lit a cigarette. He was walking slowly about the living room, prepared to stop walking if Mme Annette should reappear. Tom recalled that he had decided to leave Murchison’s two rings on his hands. Teeth, dental records? Had Pritchard gone so far in America as to get photostats of police documents, maybe via Mrs. Murchison? Tom realized that he was torturing himself, because he couldn’t, with Mme Annette in the kitchen, which had a window, go outside now and take a good look at what was in his station wagon. The car stood parallel to the kitchen window, part of the canvas bundle perhaps just visible to Mme Annette, if she peered, but why should she? The postman was also due at nine-thirty.

He’d simply drive the station wagon into the garage and take a look, and right away. Meanwhile Tom finished his cigarette calmly, got his Swiss knife from the hall table and pocketed it, and took a handful of old newspapers, folded, from the basket near the fireplace.

Tom backed the red Mercedes out in readiness for the drive to the airport, and drove the white station wagon into the place where the Mercedes had been. Sometimes Tom used a small vacuum cleaner with the electric outlet in the garage, so at the moment Mme Annette could think what she wished as to his activities. The garage doors were at right angles to the kitchen window. Nevertheless, Tom closed the garage door on the side where the station wagon was, and left the other open, where the brown Renault stood. He switched on the wire-guarded light on the right wall.

He got into the back of the station wagon and forced himself to make sure which was head and which the feet of the wrapped object. This was not easy, and just as Tom was realizing that the corpse was rather short, if it was Murchison, he realized also that it had no head. The head had fallen off, separated. Tom made himself slap the feet, the shoulders.

No head.

That was comforting, as it meant no teeth, no characteristic nosebone or whatever. Tom got out and opened the windows of the car by the driver’s and passenger’s seats. It was a funny, musty smell that emanated from the canvas-wrapped bundle, not like death but like something very wet. Tom realized that he would have to look at the hands in order to see about the rings. No head. Where was the head, then? Rolling down with the current somewhere, Tom supposed, rolling back again, maybe? No, not in a river.

Tom tried to sit on a tool box, which was too low, and ended by leaning against a front fender with his head bent low. He was near fainting. Could he risk waiting till Ed got here, to supply moral support? Tom faced the fact that he couldn’t investigate the corpse further. He would say …

Tom straightened up and forced himself to think. He would say, in case Pritchard turned up with the police, that of course he had had to put the revolting bag of bones—Tom had seen some bones and had certainly felt them—out of his housekeeper’s vision for decency’s sake, and he had been so nauseated that he had not yet contacted the police himself.

It would be highly disagreeable, however, if the police arrived (summoned by Pritchard) when he was away from the house fetching Ed from the airport. Mme Annette would have to deal with them, the police would certainly look for the corpse Pritchard told them about, and it would not take them too long to find it, less than half an hour, Tom estimated. Tom bent and wet his face at an outside standpipe on the lane side of the house.

Now he felt better, though he realized that he was waiting for Ed’s presence to bolster his courage.

Suppose it was somebody else’s corpse, not Murchison’s? Funny, the things that ran through one’s mind. Then Tom reminded himself that the tan tarpaulin was all too familiar as the one he and Bernard had used that night.

Suppose Pritchard kept on fishing for the head, in the vicinity of where he had found the corpse? What were the people of Voisy saying? Had any of them noticed anything? Tom gave it a fifty-fifty chance that someone had. There was often a man or woman taking a walk along a riverbank, over the bridge there, where the view would have been better. Unfortunately the object retrieved looked as though it might be a human body. Obviously the two (three?) ropes that he and Bernard had used had lasted, or the tarpaulin wouldn’t have been there.

Tom thought of working in the garden for half an hour to ease his nerves, and then didn’t feel like it. Mme Annette was ready to depart for morning shopping. There was only half an hour or so before he had to take off for Ed.

Tom went up and took a quick shower, though he’d already had one that morning, and put on different clothing.

Now the house was silent when he went downstairs. If the telephone rang now, Tom decided that he would not answer it, even though it might be Heloise. He hated being away from the house for nearly two hours. His watch said five to ten. Tom strolled to the bar cart, chose the tiniest glass (stemmed) and poured a minuscule Remy Martin, savored it on his tongue and sniffed the glass. Then he washed and dried the glass in the kitchen and brought it back to the bar cart. Wallet, keys, all set.

Tom went out and locked the front door. Mme Annette had thoughtfully opened the iron gates for him. Tom left them wide open when he departed northward. He drove at a medium or normal speed. Loads of time, in fact, though one never knew what the peripherique would present.

Exit at Pont La Chapelle, northward toward the huge and dismal airport, which Tom still didn’t like. Heathrow was so huge, its sprawling entirety was hard to imagine, until of course one had to walk a kilometer or so with luggage. But de Gaulle in its arrogant inconvenience was easily conceived: a circular main building, and a gaggle of roads off, all marked of course, but it was too late to turn around if you hadn’t found the first marking.

Tom parked, being fifteen minutes early at least, in an open-air lot.

Then there was Ed, looking warm with open-necked white shirt and a knapsack of some kind slung over one shoulder. He had an attache case in one hand.

“Ed!” Ed hadn’t seen him. Tom waved.

“Hello, Tom!”

They shook hands firmly.

“My car’s not far away,” Tom said. “Let’s get this shuttle bus! And how’s everything in London?”

Everything was all right, said Ed; his coming over had not been difficult, no one was annoyed. He could stay till Monday with no problems, longer if necessary. “And your end? Any news?”

Straphanging in the little yellow bus, Tom wrinkled his nose and winced. “Well—a little something. Tell you later, not just here.”

Once in Tom’s car, Ed asked how Heloise was faring in Morocco. Had Ed been to his house in Villeperce before, Tom asked, and Ed said he hadn’t.

“Funny!” Tom said. “Almost unbelievable!”

“But it’s worked out pretty well,” Ed replied, with a friendly smile at Tom. “A business relationship, is it not?”

Ed laughed, as if at the absurdity of his statement, because in a sense their relationship was as deep as that of friendship, yet different. A betrayal by either of them could lead to disgrace, a fine, maybe imprisonment. “Yes,” Tom agreed. “Speaking of that, what’s Jeff doing this weekend?”