Strangers on a Train

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Woke you just in time, eh?” Gerard laughed.

  Bruno set his teeth hard enough to break them. He bolted to the bathroom and took a drink with the door wide open. In the mirror, his face looked like a battlefield in hell.

  “Sorry to intrude, but I found something new,” Gerard said in the tense, high-pitched voice that meant he had scored a little victory. “About your friend Guy Haines. The one you were just dreaming about, weren’t you?”

  The glass cracked in Bruno’s hand, and meticulously he gathered up the pieces from the basin and put them in the jagged bottom of the glass. He staggered boredly back to his bed.

  “When did you meet him, Charles? Not last December.” Gerard leaned against the chest of drawers, lighting a cigar. “Did you meet him about a year and a half ago? Did you go with him on the train down to Santa Fe?” Gerard waited. He pulled something from under his arm and tossed it on the bed. “Remember that?”

  It was Guy’s Plato book from Santa Fe, still wrapped and with its address half rubbed off. “Sure, I remember it.” Bruno pushed it away. “I lost it going to the post office.”

  “Hotel La Fonda had it right on the shelf. How’d you happen to borrow a book of Plato?”

  “I found it on the train.” Bruno looked up. “It had Guy’s address in it, so I meant to mail it. Found it in the dining car, matter of fact.” He looked straight at Gerard, who was watching him with his sharp, steady little eyes that didn’t always have anything behind them.

  “When did you meet him, Charley?” Gerard asked again, with the patient air of one questioning a child he knows is lying.

  “In December.”

  “You know about his wife’s murder, of course.”

  “Sure, I read about it. Then I read about him building the Palmyra Club.”

  “And you thought, how interesting, because you had found a book six months before that belonged to him.”

  Bruno hesitated. “Yeah.”

  Gerard grunted, and looked down with a little smile of disgust.

  Bruno felt odd, uncomfortable. When had he seen it before, a smile like that after a grunt? Once when he had lied to his father about something, very obviously lied and clung to it, and his father’s grunt, the disbelief in the smile, had shamed him. Bruno realized that his eyes pled with Gerard to forgive him, so he deliberately looked off at the window.

  “And you made all those calls to Metcalf not even knowing Guy Haines.” Gerard picked up the book.

  “What calls?”

  “Several calls.”

  “Maybe one when I was tight.”

  “Several. About what?”

  “About the damned book!” If Gerard knew him so well, he should know that was exactly the kind of thing he would do. “Maybe I called when I heard his wife got murdered.”

  Gerard shook his head. “You called before she was murdered.”

  “So what? Maybe I did.”

  “So what? I’ll have to ask Mr. Haines. Considering your interest in murder, it’s remarkable you didn’t call him after the murder, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sick of murder!” Bruno shouted.

  “Oh, I believe it, Charley, I believe it!” Gerard sauntered out, and down the hall toward his mother’s room.

  Bruno showered and dressed with slow care. Gerard had been much, much more excited about Matt Levine, he remembered. As far as he knew, he had made only two calls to Metcalf from Hotel La Fonda, where Gerard must have picked up the bills. He could say Guy’s mother was mistaken about the others, that it hadn’t been he.

  “What’d Gerard want?” Bruno asked his mother.

  “Nothing much. Wanted to know if I knew a friend of yours. Guy Haines.” She was brushing her hair with upward strokes, so it stood out wildly around the calm, tired face. “He’s an architect, isn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know him very well.” He strolled along the floor behind her. She had forgotten the clippings in Los Angeles, just as he had thought she would. Thank Christ, he hadn’t reminded her he knew Guy when all the Palmyra pictures came out! The back of his mind must have known he was going to get Guy to do it.

  “Gerard was talking about your calling him last summer. What was all that?”

  “Oh, Mom, I get so damn sick of Gerard’s dumb steers!”

  forty

  A few moments later that morning, Guy stepped out of the director’s office at Hanson and Knapp Drafters, happier than he had felt in weeks. The firm was copying the last of the hospital drawings, the most complex Guy had ever supervised, the last okays had come through on the building materials, and he had gotten a telegram early that morning from Bob Treacher that made Guy rejoice for his old friend. Bob had been appointed to an advisory committee of engineers for the new Alberta Dam in Canada, a job he had been looking forward to for the last five years.

  Here and there at one of the long tables that fanned out on either side of him, a draftsman looked up and watched him as he walked toward the outer door. Guy nodded a greeting to a smiling foreman. He detected the smallest glow of self-esteem. Or maybe it was nothing but his new suit, he thought, only the third suit in his life he had ever had made for him. Anne had chosen the gray-blue glen plaid material. Anne had chosen the tomato-colored woolen tie this morning to go with it, an old tie but one that he liked. He tightened its knot in the mirror between the elevators. There was a wild gray hair sticking up from one black, heavy eyebrow. The brows went up a little in surprise. He smoothed the hair down. It was the first gray hair he had ever noticed on himself.

  A draftsman opened the office door. “Mr. Haines? Lucky I caught you. There’s a telephone call.”

  Guy went back, hoping it wouldn’t be long, because he was to meet Anne for lunch in ten minutes. He took the call in an empty office off the drafting room.

  “Hello, Guy? Listen, Gerard found that Plato book. . . . Yeah, in Santa Fe. Now, listen, it doesn’t change anything. . . .”

  Five minutes had passed before Guy was back at the elevators. He had always known the Plato might be found. Not a chance, Bruno had said. Bruno could be wrong. Bruno could be caught, therefore. Guy scowled as if it were incredible, the idea Bruno could be caught. And somehow it had been incredible, until now.

  Momentarily, as he came out into the sunlight, he was conscious again of the new suit, and he clenched his fist in frustrated anger with himself. “I found the book on the train, see?” Bruno had said. “If I called you in Metcalf, it was on account of the book. But I didn’t meet you until December . . .” The voice more clipped and anxious than Guy had ever heard it before, so alert, so harried, it hardly seemed Bruno’s voice. Guy went over the fabrication Bruno had just given him as if it were something that didn’t belong to him, as if it were a swatch of material he indifferently considered for a suit, he thought. No, there were no holes in it, but it wouldn’t necessarily wear. Not if someone remembered seeing them on the train. The waiter, for instance, who had served them in Bruno’s compartment.

  He tried to slow his breathing, tried to slow his pace. He looked up at the small disc of the winter sun. His black brows with the gray hair, with the white scar, his brows that were growing shaggier lately, Anne said, broke the glare into particles and protected him. If one looks directly into the sun for fifteen seconds, one can burn through the cornea, he remembered from somewhere. Anne protected him, too. His work protected him. The new suit, the stupid new suit. He felt suddenly inadequate and dull-witted, helpless. Death had insinuated itself into his brain. It enwrapped him. He had breathed its air so long, perhaps, he had grown quite used to it. Well, then, he was not afraid. He squared his shoulders superfluously.

  Anne had not arrived when he got to the restaurant. Then he remembered she had said she was going to pick up the snapshots they had made Sunday at the house. Guy pulled Bob Treacher’s telegram from his pocket and read it again and again:

  JUST APPOINTED TO ALBERTA COMMITTEE. HAVE RECOMMENDED YOU. THIS IS A BRIDGE, GUY. GET FREE SOON AS POSSIBLE. ACCEPTANCE GU
ARANTEED. LETTER COMING.

  BOB

  Acceptance guaranteed. Regardless of how he engineered his life, his ability to engineer a bridge was beyond question. Guy sipped his martini thoughtfully, holding the surface perfectly steady.

  forty-one

  “I’ve wandered into another case,” Gerard murmured pleasantly, gazing at the typewritten report on his desk. He had not looked at Bruno since the young man had come in. “Murder of Guy Haines’ first wife. Never been solved.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I thought you’d know quite a lot about it. Now tell me everything you know.” Gerard settled himself.

  Bruno could tell he had gone all the way into it since Monday when he had the Plato book. “Nothing,” Bruno said. “Nobody knows. Do they?”

  “What do you think? You must have talked a great deal with Guy about it.”

  “Not particularly. Not at all. Why?”

  “Because murder interests you so much.”

  “What do you mean, murder interests me so much?”

  “Oh, come, Charles, if I didn’t know from you, I’d know that much from your father!” Gerard said in a rare burst of impatience.

  Bruno started to reach for a cigarette and stopped. “I talked with him about it,” he said quietly, respectfully. “He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t even know his wife very well then.”

  “Who do you think did it? Did you ever think Mr. Haines might have arranged it? Were you interested maybe in how he’d done it and gotten away with it?” At his ease again, Gerard leaned back with his hands behind his head, as if they were talking about the good weather that day.

  “Of course I don’t think he arranged it,” Bruno replied. “You don’t seem to realize the caliber of the person you’re talking about.”

  “The only caliber ever worth considering is the gun’s, Charles.” Gerard picked up his telephone. “As you’d be the first to tell me probably.— Have Mr. Haines come in, will you?”

  Bruno jumped a little, and Gerard saw it. Gerard watched him in silence as they listened to Guy’s footsteps coming closer in the hall. He had expected Gerard would do this, Bruno told himself. So what, so what, so what?

  Guy looked nervous, Bruno thought, but his usual air of being nervous and in a hurry covered it. He spoke to Gerard, and nodded to Bruno.

  Gerard offered him his remaining chair, a straight one. “My whole purpose in asking you to come down here, Mr. Haines, is to ask you a very simple question. What does Charles talk with you about most of the time?” Gerard offered Guy a cigarette from a pack that must have been years old, Bruno thought, and Guy took it.

  Bruno saw Guy’s eyebrows draw together with the look of irritation that was exactly appropriate. “He’s talked to me now and then about the Palmyra Club,” Guy replied.

  “And what else?”

  Guy looked at Bruno. Bruno was nibbling, so casually the action seemed nonchalant, at a fingernail of the hand that propped his cheek. “Can’t really say,” Guy answered.

  “Talked to you about your wife’s murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does he talk to you about the murder?” Gerard asked kindly. “I mean your wife’s murder.”

  Guy felt his face flush. He glanced again at Bruno, as anybody might, he thought, as anybody might in the presence of a discussed party who is being ignored. “He often asked me if I knew who might have done it.”

  “And do you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like Charles?” Gerard’s fat fingers trembled slightly, incongruously. They began playing with a match cover on his desk blotter.

  Guy thought of Bruno’s fingers on the train, playing with the match cover, dropping it onto the steak. “Yes, I like him,” Guy answered puzzledly.

  “Hasn’t he annoyed you? Hasn’t he thrust himself on you many times?”

  “I don’t think so,” Guy said.

  “Were you annoyed when he came to your wedding?”

  “No.”

  “Did Charles ever tell you that he hated his father?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Did he ever tell you he’d like to kill him?”

  “No,” he replied in the same matter-of-fact tone.

  Gerard got the brown paper-wrapped book from a drawer in his desk. “Here’s the book Charles meant to mail you. Sorry I can’t let you have it just now, because I may need it. How did Charles happen to have your book?”

  “He told me he found it on the train.” Guy studied Gerard’s sleepy, enigmatic smile. He had seen a trace of it the night Gerard called at the house, but not like this. This smile was calculated to inspire dislike. This smile was a professional weapon. What it must be, Guy thought, facing that smile day after day. Involuntarily, he looked over at Bruno.

  “And you didn’t see each other on the train?” Gerard looked from Guy to Bruno.

  “No,” said Guy.

  “I spoke with the waiter who served you two dinner in Charles’ compartment.”

  Guy kept his eyes on Gerard. This naked shame, he thought, was more annihilating than guilt. This was annihilation he was feeling, even as he sat upright, looking straight at Gerard.

  “So what?” Bruno said shrilly.

  “So I’m interested in why you two take such elaborate trouble,” Gerard wagged his head amusedly, “to say you met months later.” He waited, letting the passing seconds eat at them. “You won’t tell me the answer. Well, the answer is obvious. That is, one answer, as a speculation.”

  All three of them were thinking of the answer, Guy thought. It was visible in the air now, linking him and Bruno, Bruno and Gerard, Gerard and himself. The answer Bruno had declared beyond thought, the eternally missing ingredient.

  “Will you tell me, Charles, you who read so many detective stories?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Within a few days, your wife was killed, Mr. Haines. Within a few months, Charles’ father. My obvious and first speculation is that you both knew those murders were going to happen—”

  “Oh, crap!” Bruno said.

  “—and discussed them. Pure speculation, of course. That’s assuming you met on the train. Where did you meet?” Gerard smiled. “Mr. Haines?”

  “Yes,” Guy said, “we met on the train.”

  “And why’ve you been so afraid of admitting it?” Gerard jabbed one of his freckled fingers at him, and again Guy felt in Gerard’s prosaicness his power to terrify.

  “I don’t know,” Guy said.

  “Wasn’t it because Charles told you he would like to have his father killed? And you were uneasy then, Mr. Haines, because you knew?”

  Was that Gerard’s trump? Guy said slowly, “Charles said nothing about killing his father.”

  Gerard’s eyes slid over in time to catch Bruno’s tight smirk of satisfaction. “Pure speculation, of course,” Gerard said.

  Guy and Bruno left the building together. Gerard had dismissed them together, and they walked together down the long block toward the little park where the subways were, and the taxicabs. Bruno looked back at the tall narrow building they had left.

  “All right, he still hasn’t anything,” Bruno said. “Any way you look at it, he hasn’t anything.”

  Bruno was sullen, but calm. Suddenly Guy realized how cool Bruno had been under Gerard’s attack. Guy was continually imagining Bruno hysterical under pressure. He glanced quickly at Bruno’s tall hunched figure beside him, feeling that wild, reckless comradeship of the day in the restaurant. But he had nothing to say. Surely, he thought, Bruno must know that Gerard wasn’t going to tell them everything he had discovered.

  “You know, the funny thing,” Bruno continued, “Gerard’s not looking for us, he’s looking for other people.”

  forty-two

  Gerard poked a finger between the bars and waggled it at the little bird that fluttered in terror against the opposite side of the cage. Gerard whistled a single soft note.

  From the cen
ter of the room, Anne watched him uneasily. She didn’t like his having just told her Guy had been lying, then his strolling off to frighten the canary. She hadn’t liked Gerard for the last quarter hour, and because she had thought she did like him on his first visit, her misjudgment annoyed her.

  “What’s his name?” Gerard asked.

  “Sweetie,” Anne replied. She ducked her head a little, embarrassedly, and swung half around. Her new alligator pumps made her feel very tall and graceful, and she had thought, when she bought them that afternoon, that Guy would like them, that they would coax a smile from him as they sat having a cocktail before dinner. But Gerard’s arrival had spoilt that.

  “Do you have any idea why your husband didn’t want to say he met Charles June before last?”

  The month Miriam was murdered, Anne thought again. June before last meant nothing else to her. “It was a difficult month for him,” she said. “It was the month his wife died. He might have forgotten almost anything that happened that month.” She frowned, feeling Gerard was making too much of his little discovery, that it couldn’t matter so very much, since Guy hadn’t even seen Charles in the six months afterwards.

  “Not in this case,” Gerard said casually, reseating himself. “No, I think Charles talked with your husband on the train about his father, told him he wanted him dead, maybe even told him how he intended to go about—”

  “I can’t imagine Guy listening to that,” Anne interrupted him.

  “I don’t know,” Gerard went on blandly, “I don’t know, but I strongly suspect Charles knew about his father’s murder and that he may have confided to your husband that night on the train. Charles is that kind of a young man. And I think the kind of man your husband is would have kept quiet about it, tried to avoid Charles from then on. Don’t you?”

  It would explain a great deal, Anne thought. But it would also make Guy a kind of accomplice. Gerard seemed to want to make Guy an accomplice. “I’m sure my husband wouldn’t have tolerated Charles even to this extent,” she said firmly, “if Charles had told him anything like that.”