Tom didn’t know. “And how are you faring all by yourself? Not lonely or bored?”
“Oh, no, never am. I listen to my French grammar records, try to improve.” Here a little laugh. “The people are nice around here.”
Really. Tom thought at once of the Grais, two houses away, but did not want to ask if she’d made acquaintance with them.
“Well—David. Next week it could be tennis rackets,” Janice said.
“As long as he’s happy,” Tom replied with a chuckle. “Perhaps it will take his mind off my household.” He spoke in a tolerant and amused tone, as if of a child with a temporary obsession.
“Oh, I doubt it. He’s bought the house here. He finds you fascinating.”
Tom again recalled Janice, smiling and plainly in good humor, driving her husband away from Belle Ombre, after Pritchard had been prowling about with his camera, snapping. “You seem to disapprove of some of his doings,” Tom went on. “Has it ever occurred to you to discourage him? Even leave him?” Tom ventured.
Nervous laugh. “Women don’t abandon their husbands, do they? Then he’d come after me!” Her last word was shrill, said through laughter.
Tom was not laughing, not even smiling. “I understand,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “You’re a loyal wife! Well, my best to you both, Janice. Maybe we’ll see you soon.”
“Oh, maybe, yes. Thank you for calling, Mr. Ripley.”
“Bye-bye.” He hung up.
What a madhouse! See them soon! He’d said “we” just now, as if Heloise were back home. Why not? It might lure Pritchard to further adventure, derring-do. Tom realized that he had a desire to murder Pritchard. It was similar to his desire to hit at the Mafia, but that had been impersonal: he hated the Mafia per se, considered them brutal and well-organized blackmailers. Whichever Mafia member he killed, and he had killed two, didn’t matter, it was two fewer. But Pritchard was a personal matter, Pritchard had stuck his neck out and was asking for it. Could Janice help? Don’t count on Janice, Tom reminded himself; she would let him down at the last minute, and save her husband so she could enjoy more mental and physical discomfort, presumably, at his hands. Why hadn’t he finished off Pritchard in La Haffa, with the aid of his new knife right there in his pocket?
He might have to get rid of both Pritchards to have any peace, Tom thought, lighting a cigarette. Unless they both decided to quit the neighborhood.
The Calvados and the coffee. Tom finished the last drops, and returned the cup and saucer to the kitchen. Mme Annette would not be ready to serve for a good five, minutes, he saw at a glance, so Tom informed her that he wanted to make one more telephone call.
He then rang the Grais, whose number he knew by heart.
Agnes answered, and from the background clatter Tom thought he had interrupted in the middle of dinner.
“Yes, back from London today,” Tom said. “I’m interrupting you, I think.”
“No! Sylvie and I are just tidying up. Is Heloise with you?” Agnes asked.
“She’s in North Africa still. I just wanted to announce my return. Can’t tell when Heloise will decide to come home. And did you know that your neighbors the Pritchards have bought that house?”
“Oui!” Agnes said at once, and informed Tom that she had learned this from Marie in the bar-tabac. “And the noise, Tome,” she continued, with a certain amusement in her voice. “I believe madame is alone now, but she plays loud rock music till all hours! Ha-ha! Does she dance by herself, I wonder?”
Or watch kinky videocassettes? Tom blinked. “No idea,” replied Tom, smiling. “You can hear it where you are?”
“If the wind is right! Not every night, to be sure, but Antoine was furious last Sunday night. But not furious enough to go to their house and tell them to shut up. And he could not find their telephone number.” Agnes laughed again.
They hung up, pleasantly and cordially like good neighbors. Then Tom sat down to a solitary dinner with a magazine propped up in front of him. As he ate his excellent braised beef, he chewed mentally on the two Pritchard nuisances. Back even this minute was David, perhaps, with fishing gear? Fishing for Murchison? Why hadn’t that occurred to Tom at once? Murchison’s corpse?
Tom’s eyes left the page he had been reading, and he sat back, touched his lips with his napkin. Fishing gear? It would take a grappling iron, a strong rope, and more than a rowing boat. It would take more than standing on a river or canal bank with a delicate pole and line, as some locals did, catching, if they were lucky, small white-colored fish, presumably edible. Since Pritchard’s money was in good supply, according to Janice, was he going to buy a fancy motorboat? Even hire a helper?
But then, he might be quite on the wrong track, Tom thought. Maybe David Pritchard really liked fishing.
The last thing Tom did that evening was address an envelope to his National Westminster Bank branch, because he needed to shift money from deposit to current to cover the PS 2000 check. The sight of the envelope by his typewriter would remind him tomorrow morning.
Chapter 15
After his first coffee the next morning, Tom walked out on the terrace and into the garden. It had rained during the night, and the dahlias looked good; they could use a deadheading, and it would be nice to cut a few for the living room. Mme Annette seldom did that, knowing Tom liked to choose the colors for the day himself.
David Pritchard is back now, Tom reminded himself, back last night presumably, getting down to his fishing today, perhaps. Was he?
Tom did some bill-paying, spent an hour in the garden pottering, and then had lunch. Mme Annette said nothing about news of the Pritchards in the bakery this morning. He took a look at the two cars in the garage, and the one that stood outside, at the moment the station wagon. All three started properly. Tom washed the windows of them all.
Then he took the red Mercedes, which he seldom drove and which he considered Heloise’s car, and headed in a westerly direction.
The roads through the flat landscape were fairly familiar, but they were not the roads he took to go to Moret, for instance, or Fontainebleau, the shopping places. Tom could not even have said exactly what road he had taken that night with Bernard to dispose of Murchison’s body. Tom had been in quest only of a canal, any fairly distant stream into which he could dump the tied-up corpse with fair ease. Tom had put a few large stones in the canvas sheet that shrouded Murchison,he remembered, to make the body sink and stay sunk. Well, it had, as far as Tom had ever learned. At a glance, Tom saw that there was a folded roadmap in the glove compartment, perhaps of the vicinity, but for the moment he preferred to trust his instinct. The main rivers in the area, the Loing, the Yonne and the Seine, had canals and tributaries, numerous and some nameless, and Tom knew that into one of these he had dropped Murchison, and from over the parapet of a bridge which he might recognize if he came to it.
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.
Ripley Under Water Page 19