Strangers on a Train

by Patricia Highsmith

  “A very good point. However—” Gerard stopped vaguely, as if lost in his own slow thoughts.

  Anne did not like to look at the top of his bald freckled head, so she stared at the tile cigarette box on the coffee table, and finally took a cigarette.

  “Do you think your husband has any suspicion who murdered his wife, Mrs. Haines?”

  Anne blew her smoke out defiantly. “I certainly do not.”

  “You see, if that night on the train, Charles went into the subject of murder, he went into it thoroughly. And if your husband did have some reason to think his wife’s life was in danger, and if he mentioned it to Charles—why then they have a sort of mutual secret, a mutual peril even. It’s only a speculation,” he hurried to add, “but investigators always have to speculate.”

  “I know my husband couldn’t have said anything about his wife’s being in danger. I was with him in Mexico City when the news came, and with him days before in New York.”

  “How about March of this year?” Gerard asked in the same even tone. He reached for his empty highball glass, and submitted to Anne’s taking it to refill.

  Anne stood at the bar with her back to Gerard, remembering March, the month Charles’ father was killed, remembering Guy’s nervousness then. Had that fight been in February or March? And hadn’t he fought with Charles Bruno?

  “Do you think your husband could have been seeing Charles now and then around the month of March without your knowing about it?”

  Of course, she thought, that might explain it: that Guy had known Charles intended to kill his father, and had tried to stop him, had fought with him, in a bar. “He could have, I suppose,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

  “How did your husband seem around the month of March, if you can remember, Mrs. Haines?”

  “He was nervous. I think I know the things he was nervous about.”

  “What things?”

  “His work—” Somehow she couldn’t grant him a word more than that about Guy. Everything she said, she felt Gerard would incorporate in the misty picture he was composing, in which he was trying to see Guy. She waited, and Gerard waited, as if he vied with her not to break the silence first.

  Finally, he tapped out his cigar and said, “If anything does occur to you about that time in regard to Charles, will you be sure and tell me? Call me any time during the day or night. There’ll be somebody there to take messages.” He wrote another name on his business card, and handed it to Anne.

  Anne turned from the door and went directly to the coffee table to remove his glass. Through the front window, she saw him sitting in his car with his head bent forward, like a man asleep, while, she supposed, he made his notes. Then with a little stab, she thought of his writing that Guy might have seen Charles in March without her knowing about it. Why had she said it? She did know about it. Guy said he hadn’t seen Charles, between December and the wedding.

  When Guy came in about an hour later, Anne was in the kitchen, tending the casserole that was nearly done in the oven. She saw Guy put his head up, sniffing the air.

  “Shrimp casserole,” Anne told him. “I guess I should open a vent.”

  “Was Gerard here?”

  “Yes. You knew he was coming?”

  “Cigars,” he said laconically. Gerard had told her about the meeting on the train, of course. “What did he want this time?” he asked.

  “He wanted to know more about Charles Bruno.” Anne glanced at him quickly from the front window. “If you’d said anything to me about suspecting him of anything. And he wanted to know about March.”

  “About March?” He stepped onto the raised portion of the floor where Anne stood.

  He stopped in front of her, and Anne saw the pupils of his eyes contract suddenly. She could see a few of the hair-fine scars over his cheekbone from that night in March, or February. “Wanted to know if you suspected Charles was going to have his father killed that month.” But Guy only stared at her with his mouth in a familiar straight line, without alarm, and without guilt. She stepped aside, and went down into the living room. “It’s terrible, isn’t it,” she said, “murder?”

  Guy tapped a fresh cigarette on his watch face. It tortured him to hear her say “murder.” He wished he could erase every memory of Bruno from her brain.

  “You didn’t know, did you, Guy—in March?”

  “No, Anne. What did you tell Gerard?”

  “Do you believe Charles had his father killed?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s possible. But it doesn’t concern us.” And he did not realize for seconds that it was even a lie.

  “That’s right. It doesn’t concern us.” She looked at him again. “Gerard also said you met Charles June before last on the train.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well—what does it matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it because of something Charles said on the train? Is that why you dislike him?”

  Guy shoved his hands deeper in his jacket pockets. He wanted a brandy suddenly. He knew he showed what he felt, that he could not hide it from Anne now. “Listen, Anne,” he said quickly. “Bruno told me on the train he wished his father were dead. He didn’t mention any plans, he didn’t mention any names. I didn’t like the way he said it, and after that I didn’t like him. I refuse to tell Gerard all that, because I don’t know if Bruno had his father killed or not. That’s for the police to find out. Innocent men have been hanged because people reported their saying something like that.”

  But whether she believed him or not, he thought, he was finished. It seemed the basest lie he had ever told, the basest thing he had ever done—the transferring of his guilt to another man. Even Bruno wouldn’t have lied like this, wouldn’t have lied against him like this. He felt himself totally false, totally a lie. He flung his cigarette into the fireplace and put his hands over his face.

  “Guy, I do believe you’re doing what you should,” Anne’s voice said gently.

  His face was a lie, his level eyes, the firm mouth, the sensitive hands. He whipped his hands down and put them in his pockets. “I could use a brandy.”

  “Wasn’t it Charles you fought with in March?” she asked as she stood at the bar.

  There was no reason not to lie about this also, but he could not. “No, Anne.” He knew from the quick sidelong glance she gave him that she didn’t believe him. She probably thought he had fought with Bruno to stop him. She was probably proud of him! Must there always be this protection, that he didn’t even want? Must everything always be so easy for him? But Anne would not be satisfied with this. She would come back to it and back to it until he told her, he knew.

  That evening, Guy lighted the first fire of the year, the first fire in their new house. Anne lay on the long hearthstone with her head on a sofa pillow. The thin nostalgic chill of autumn was in the air, filling Guy with melancholy and a restless energy. The energy was not buoyant as autumnal energy had been in his youth, but underlaid with frenzy and despair, as if his life were winding down and this might be his last spurt. What better proof did he need that his life was winding down than that he had no dread of what lay ahead? Couldn’t Gerard guess it now, knowing that he and Bruno had met on the train? Wouldn’t it dawn on him one day, one night, one instant as his fat fingers lifted a cigar to his mouth? What were they waiting for, Gerard and the police? He had sometimes the feeling that Gerard wanted to gather every tiniest contributing fact, every gram of evidence against them both, then let it fall suddenly upon them and demolish them. But however they demolished him, Guy thought, they would not demolish his buildings. And he felt again the strange and lonely isolation of his spirit from his flesh, even from his mind.

  But suppose his secret with Bruno were never found out? There were still those moments of mingled horror at what he had done, and of absolute despondency, when he felt that secret bore a charmed inviolability. Perhaps, he thought, that was why he was not afraid of Gerard or the police, beca
use he still believed in its inviolability. If no one had guessed it so far, after all their carelessness, after all Bruno’s hints, wasn’t there something making it impregnable?

  Anne had fallen asleep. He stared at the smooth curve of her forehead, paled to silver by the fire’s light. Then he lowered his lips to her forehead and kissed her, so gently she would not awaken. The ache inside him translated itself into words: “I forgive you.” He wanted Anne to say it, no one but Anne.

  In his mind, the side of the scale that bore his guilt was hopelessly weighted, beyond the scale’s measure, yet into the other side he continually threw the equally hopeless featherweight of self-defense. He had committed the crime in self-defense, he reasoned. But he vacillated in completely believing this. If he believed in the full complement of evil in himself, he had to believe also in a natural compulsion to express it. He found himself wondering, therefore, from time to time, if he might have enjoyed his crime in some way, derived some primal satisfaction from it—how else could one really explain in mankind the continued toleration of wars, the perennial enthusiasm for wars when they came, if not for some primal pleasure in killing?—and because the capacity to wonder came so often, he accepted it as true that he had.

  forty-three

  District attorney Phil Howland, immaculate and gaunt, as sharp of outline as Gerard was fuzzy, smiled tolerantly through his cigarette smoke. “Why don’t you let the kid alone? It was an angle at first, I grant you. We combed through his friends, too. There’s nothing, Gerard. And you can’t arrest a man on his personality.”

  Gerard recrossed his legs and allowed himself a complaisant smile. This was his hour. His satisfaction was heightened by the fact he had sat here smiling in the same way during other less momentous interviews.

  Howland pushed a typewritten sheet with his fingertips to the edge of the desk. “Twelve new names here, if you’re interested. Friends of the late Mr. Samuel furnished us by the insurance companies,” Howland said in his calm, bored voice, and Gerard knew he pretended especial boredom now, because as District Attorney he had so many hundreds of men at his disposal, could throw so much finer nets so much farther.

  “You can tear them up,” Gerard said.

  Howland hid his surprise with a smile, but he couldn’t hide the sudden curiosity in his dark, wide eyes. “I suppose you’ve already got your man. Charles Bruno, of course.”

  “Of course,” Gerard chuckled. “Only I’ve got him for another murder.”

  “Only one? You always said he was good for four or five.”

  “I never said,” Gerard denied quietly. He was smoothing out a number of papers, folded in thirds like letters, on his knees.

  “Who?”

  “Curious? Don’t you know?” Gerard smiled with his cigar between his teeth. He pulled a straight chair closer to him, and proceeded to cover its seat with his papers. He never used Howland’s desk, however many papers he had, and Howland knew now not to bother offering it. Howland disliked him, personally as well as professionally, Gerard knew. Howland accused him of not being cooperative with the police. The police had never been in the least cooperative with him, but with all their hindrance, Gerard in the last decade had solved an impressive number of cases the police hadn’t even been warm on.

  Howland got up and strolled slowly toward Gerard on his long thin legs, then hung back, leaning against the front of his desk. “But does all this shed any light on the case?”

  “The trouble with the police force is that it has a single-track mind,” Gerard announced. “This case, like many others, took a double-track mind. Simply couldn’t have been solved without a double-track mind.”

  “Who and when?” Howland sighed.

  “Ever hear of Guy Haines?”

  “Certainly. We questioned him last week.”

  “His wife. June eleventh of last year in Metcalf, Texas. Strangulation, remember? The police never solved it.”

  “Charles Bruno?” Howland frowned.

  “Did you know that Charles Bruno and Guy Haines were on the same train going South on June first? Ten days before the murder of Haines’ wife. Now, what do you deduce from that?”

  “You mean they knew each other before last June?”

  “No, I mean they met each other on that train. Can you put the rest together? I’m giving you the missing link.”

  The District Attorney smiled faintly. “You’re saying Charles Bruno killed Guy Haines’ wife?”

  “I certainly am.” Gerard looked up from his papers, finished. “The next question is, what’s my proof? There it is. All you want.” He gestured toward the papers that overlapped in a long row, like cards in a game of solitaire. “Read from the bottom up.”

  While Howland read, Gerard drew a cup of water from the tank in the corner and lighted another cigar from the one he had been smoking. The last statement, from Charles’ taxi driver in Metcalf, had come in this morning. He hadn’t even had a drink on it yet, but he was going to have three or four as soon as he left Howland, in the lounge car of an Iowa-bound train.

  The papers were signed statements from Hotel La Fonda bellhops, from one Edward Wilson who had seen Charles leaving the Santa Fe station on an eastbound train the day of Miriam Haines’ murder, from the Metcalf taxi driver who had driven Charles to the Kingdom of Fun Amusement Park at Lake Metcalf, from the barman in the roadhouse where Charles had tried to get hard liquor, plus telephone bills of long-distance calls to Metcalf.

  “But no doubt you know that already,” Gerard remarked.

  “Most of it, yes,” Howland answered calmly, still reading.

  “You knew he made a twenty-four-hour trip to Metcalf that day, too, did you?” Gerard asked, but he was really in too good spirits for sarcasm. “That taxi driver was certainly hard to find. Had to trace him all the way up to Seattle, but once we found him, it didn’t take any jostling for him to remember. People don’t forget a young man like Charles Bruno.”

  “So you’re saying Charles Bruno is so fond of murder,” Howland remarked amusedly, “that he murders the wife of a man he meets on a train the week before? A woman he’s never even seen? Or had he seen her?”

  Gerard chuckled again. “Of course he hadn’t. My Charles had a plan.” The “my” slipped out, but Gerard didn’t care. “Can’t you see it? Plain as the nose on your face? And this is only half.”

  “Sit down, Gerard, you’ll work yourself into a heart attack.”

  “You can’t see it. Because you didn’t know and don’t know Charles’ personality. You weren’t interested in the fact he spends most of his time planning perfect crimes of various sorts.”

  “All right, what’s the rest of your theory?”

  “That Guy Haines killed Samuel Bruno.”

  “Ow!” Howland groaned.

  Gerard smiled back at the first grin Howland had given him since he, Gerard, had made a mistake in a certain case years ago. “I haven’t finished checking on Guy Haines yet,” Gerard said with deliberate ingenuousness, puffing away at the cigar. “I want to take it easy, and that’s the only reason I’m here, to get you to take it easy with me. I didn’t know but what you’d grab Charles, you see, with all your information against him.”

  Howland smoothed his black mustache. “Everything you say confirms my belief you should have retired about fifteen years ago.”

  “Oh, I’ve solved a few cases in the last fifteen years.”

  “A man like Guy Haines?” Howland laughed again.

  “Against a fellow like Charles? Mind you, I don’t say Guy Haines did it of his own free will. He was made to do it for Charles’ unsolicited favor of freeing him of his wife. Charles hates women,” he remarked in a parenthesis. “That was Charles’ plan. Exchange. No clues, you see. No motives. Oh, I can just hear him! But even Charles is human. He was too interested in Guy Haines to leave him alone afterward. And Guy Haines was too frightened to do anything about it. Yes—” Gerard jerked his head for emphasis, and his jowls shook—“Haines was coerced. How ter
ribly probably no one will ever know.”

  Howland’s smile went away momentarily at Gerard’s earnestness. The story had the barest possibility, but still a possibility. “Hmm-m.”

  “Unless he tells us,” Gerard added.

  “And how do you propose to make him tell us?”

  “Oh, he may yet confess. It’s wearing him down. But otherwise, confront him with the facts. Which my men are busy gathering. One thing, Howland—” Gerard jabbed a finger at his papers on the chair seat. “When you and your—your army of oxes go out checking these statements, don’t question Guy Haines’ mother. I don’t want Haines forewarned.”

  “Oh. Cat-and-mouse technique for Mr. Haines,” Howland smiled. He turned to make a telephone call about an inconsequential matter, and Gerard waited, resenting that he had to turn his information over to Howland, that he had to leave the Charles–Guy Haines spectacle. “Well—” Howland let his breath out in a long sigh—“what do you want me to do, work over your little boy with this stuff? Think he’ll break down and tell all about his brilliant plan with Guy Haines, architect?”

  “No, I don’t want him worked over. I like clean jobs. I want a few days more or maybe weeks to finish checking on Haines, then I’ll confront them both. I’m giving you this on Charles, because from now on I’m out of the case personally, so far as they’re to know. I’m going to Iowa for a vacation, I really am, and I’m going to let Charles know it.” Gerard’s face lighted with a big smile.

  “It’s going to be hard to hold the boys back,” Howland said regretfully, “especially for all the time it’ll take you to get evidence against Guy Haines.”

  “Incidentally—” Gerard picked up his hat and shook it at Howland. “You couldn’t crack Charles with all that, but I could crack Guy Haines with what I’ve got this minute.”

  “Oh, you mean we couldn’t crack Guy Haines?”

  Gerard looked at him with elaborate contempt. “But you’re not interested in cracking him, are you? You don’t think he’s the man.”

  “Take that vacation, Gerard!”