The Talented Mr. Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  What I am trying to say is that I feel Richard may have killed himself. At the time of this writing he has not been found. I certainly hope he will be before this reaches you. It goes without saying that I am sure Richard had nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with Freddie’s death, but I think the shock of it and the questioning that followed did do something to upset his equilibrium. This is a depressing message to send to you and I regret it. It may be all completely unnecessary and Dickie may be (again understandably, according to his temperament) simply in hiding until these unpleasantnesses blow over. But as the time goes on, I begin to feel more uneasy myself. I thought it my duty to write you this, simply by way of letting you know. . . .

  Munich

  3 March, 19——

  Dear Tom:

  Thanks for your letter. It was very kind of you. I’ve answered the police in writing, and one came up to see me. I won’t be coming by Venice, but thanks for your invitation. I am going to Rome day after tomorrow to meet Dickie’s father, who is flying over. Yes, I agree with you that it was a good idea for you to write to him.

  I am so bowled over by all this, I have come down with something resembling undulant fever, or maybe what the Germans call Foehn, but with some kind of virus thrown in. Literally unable to get out of bed for four days, otherwise I’d have gone to Rome before now. So please excuse this disjointed and probably feebleminded letter which is such a bad answer to your very nice one. But I did want to say I don’t agree with you at all that Dickie might have committed suicide. He just isn’t the type, though I know all you’re going to say about people never acting like they’re going to do it, etc. No, anything else but this for Dickie. He might have been murdered in some back alley of Naples—or even Rome, because who knows whether he got up to Rome or not after he left Sicily? I can also imagine him running out on obligations to such an extent that he’d be hiding now. I think that’s what he’s doing.

  I’m glad you think the forgeries are a mistake. Of the bank, I mean. So do I. Dickie has changed so much since November, it could easily have changed his handwriting, too. Let’s hope something’s happened by the time you get this. Had a wire from Mr. Greenleaf about Rome—so must save all my energy for that.

  Nice to know your address finally. Thanks again for your letter, your advice, and invitations.

  Best,

  Marge

  P.S. I didn’t tell you my good news. I’ve got a publisher interested in “Mongibello”! Says he wants to see the whole thing before he can give me a contract, but it really sounds hopeful! Now if I can only finish the damn thing!

  M.

  She had decided to be on good terms with him, Tom supposed. She’d probably changed her tune about him to the police, too.

  Dickie’s disappearance was stirring up a great deal of excitement in the Italian press. Marge, or somebody, had provided the reporters with photographs. There were pictures in Epoca of Dickie sailing his boat in Mongibello, pictures of Dickie in Oggi sitting on the beach in Mongibello and also on Giorgio’s terrace, and a picture of Dickie and Marge—“girlfriend of both il sparito Dickie and il assassinato Freddie”—smiling, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, and there was even a businesslike portrait of Herbert Greenleaf, Sr. Tom had gotten Marge’s Munich address right out of a newspaper. Oggi had been running a life story of Dickie for the past two weeks, describing his school years as “rebellious” and embroidering his social life in America and his flight to Europe for the sake of his art to such an extent that he emerged as a combination of Errol Flynn and Paul Gauguin. The illustrated weeklies always gave the latest police reports, which were practically nil, padded with whatever theorizing the writers happened to feel like concocting that week. A favorite theory was that he had run off with another girl—a girl who might have been signing his remittances—and was having a good time, incognito, in Tahiti or South America or Mexico. The police were still combing Rome and Naples and Paris, that was all. No clues as to Freddie Miles’s killer, and nothing about Dickie Greenleaf’s having been seen carrying Freddie Miles, or vice versa, in front of Dickie’s house. Tom wondered why they were holding that back from the newspapers. Probably because they couldn’t write it up without subjecting themselves to charges of libel by Dickie. Tom was gratified to find himself described as “a loyal friend” of the missing Dickie Greenleaf, who had volunteered everything he knew as to Dickie’s character and habits, and who was as bewildered by his disappearance as anybody else. “Signor Ripley, one of the young well-to-do American visitors in Italy,” said Oggi, “now lives in a palazzo overlooking San Marco in Venice.” That pleased Tom most of all. He cut out that write-up.

  Tom had not thought of it as a “palace” before, but of course it was what the Italians called a palazzo—a two-story house of formal design more than two hundred years old, with a main entrance on the Grand Canal approachable only by gondola, with broad stone steps descending into the water, and iron doors that had to be opened by an eight-inch-long key, besides the regular doors behind the iron doors, which also took an enormous key. Tom used the less formal “back door” usually, which was on the Viale San Spiridione, except when he wanted to impress his guests by bringing them to his home in a gondola. The back door—itself fourteen feet high like the stone wall that enclosed the house from the street—led into a garden that was somewhat neglected but still green, and which boasted two gnarled olive trees and a birdbath made of an ancient-looking statue of a naked boy holding a wide shallow bowl. It was just the garden for a Venetian palace, slightly run down, in need of some restoration which it was not going to get, but indelibly beautiful because it had sprung into the world so beautiful more than two hundred years ago. The inside of the house was Tom’s ideal of what a civilized bachelor’s home should look like, in Venice, at least: a checkerboard black-and-white marble floor downstairs extending from the formal foyer into each room, pink-and-white marble floor upstairs, furniture that did not resemble furniture at all but an embodiment of cinquecento music played on hautboys, recorders, and violas da gamba. He had his servants—Anna and Ugo, a young Italian couple who had worked for an American in Venice before, so that they knew the difference between a Bloody Mary and a crême de menthe frappe—polish the carved fronts of the armoires and chests and chairs until they seemed alive with dim lustrous lights that moved as one moved around them. The only thing faintly modern was the bathroom. In Tom’s bedroom stood a gargantuan bed, broader than it was long. Tom decorated his bedroom with a series of panoramic pictures of Naples from 1540 to about 1880, which he found at an antique store. He had given his undivided attention to decorating his house for more than a week. There was a sureness in his taste now that he had not felt in Rome, and that his Rome apartment had not hinted at. He felt surer of himself now in every way.

  His self-confidence had even inspired him to write to Aunt Dottie in a calm, affectionate, and forbearing tone that he had never wanted to use before, or had never before been able to use. He had inquired about her flamboyant health, about her little circle of vicious friends in Boston, and had explained to her why he liked Europe and intended to live here for a while, explained so eloquently that he had copied that section of his letter and put it into his desk. He had written this inspired letter one morning after breakfast, sitting in his bedroom in a new silk dressing gown made to order for him in Venice, gazing out of the window now and then at the Grand Canal and the Clock Tower of the Piazza San Marco across the water. After he had finished the letter he had made some more coffee and on Dickie’s own Hermes he had written Dickie’s will, bequeathing him his income and the money he had in various banks, and had signed it Herbert Richard Greenleaf, Jr. Tom thought it better not to add a witness, lest the banks or Mr. Greenleaf challenge him to the extent of demanding to know who the witness was, though Tom had thought of making up an Italian name, presumably someone Dickie might have called into his apartment in Rome for the purpose of witnessing the will. He would just have to take his chances
on an unwitnessed will, he thought, but Dickie’s typewriter was so in need of repair that its quirks were as recognizable as a particular handwriting, and he had heard that holograph wills required no witness. But the signature was perfect, exactly like the slim, tangled signature on Dickie’s passport. Tom practiced for half an hour before he signed the will, relaxed his hands, then signed a piece of scrap paper, then the will, in rapid succession. And he would defy anybody to prove that the signature on the will wasn’t Dickie’s. Tom put an envelope into the typewriter and addressed it To Whom It May Concern, with a notation that it was not to be opened until June of this year. He tucked it into a side pocket of his suitcase, as if he had been carrying it there for some time and hadn’t bothered unpacking it when he moved into the house. Then he took the Hermes Baby in its case downstairs and dropped it into the little inlet of the canal, too narrow for a boat, which ran from the front corner of his house to the garden wall. He was glad to be rid of the typewriter, though he had been unwilling to part with it until now. He must have known, subconsciously, he thought, that he was going to write the will or something else of great importance on it, and that was the reason why he had kept it.

  Tom followed the Italian newspapers and the Paris edition of the Herald-Tribune on the Greenleaf and Miles cases with the anxious concern befitting a friend of both Dickie and Freddie. The papers were suggesting by the end of March that Dickie might be dead, murdered by the same man or men who had been profiting by forging his signature. A Rome paper said that one man in Naples now held that the signature on the letter from Palermo, stating that no forgeries had been committed against him, was also a forgery. Others, however, did not concur. Some man on the police force, not Roverini, thought that the culprit or culprits had been “intimo” with Greenleaf, that they had had access to the bank’s letter and had had the audacity to reply to it themselves. “The mystery is,” the officer was quoted, “not only who the forger was but how he gained access to the letter, because the porter of the hotel remembers putting the registered bank letter into Greenleaf’s hands. The hotel porter also recalls that Greenleaf was always alone in Palermo. . . .”

  More hitting around the answer without ever hitting it. But Tom was shaken for several minutes after he read it. There remained only one more step for them to take, and wasn’t somebody going to take it today or tomorrow or the next day? Or did they really already know the answer, and were they just trying to put him off guard—Tenente Roverini sending him personal messages every few days to keep him abreast of what was happening in the search for Dickie—and were they going to pounce on him one day soon with every bit of evidence they needed?

  It gave Tom the feeling that he was being followed, especially when he walked through the long, narrow street to his house door. The Viale San Spiridione was nothing but a functional slit between vertical walls of houses, without a shop in it and with hardly enough light for him to see where he was going, nothing but unbroken housefronts and the tall, firmly locked doors of the Italian house gates that were flush with the walls. Nowhere to run to if he were attacked, no house door to duck into. Tom did not know who would attack him, if he were attacked. He did not imagine police, necessarily. He was afraid of nameless, formless things that haunted his brain like the Furies. He could go through San Spiridione comfortably only when a few cocktails had knocked out his fear. Then he walked through swaggering and whistling.

  He had his pick of cocktail parties, though in his first two weeks in his house he went to only two. He had his choice of people because of a little incident that had happened the first day he had started looking for a house. A rental agent, armed with three huge keys, had taken him to see a certain house in San Stefano parish, thinking it would be vacant. It had not only been occupied but a cocktail party had been in progress, and the hostess had insisted on Tom and the rental agent, too, having a cocktail by way of making amends for their inconvenience and her remissness. She had put the house up for rent a month ago, had changed her mind about leaving, and had neglected to inform the rental agency. Tom stayed for a drink, acted his reserved, courteous self, and met all her guests, who he supposed were most of the winter colony of Venice and rather hungry for new blood, judging from the way they welcomed him and offered their assistance in finding a house. They recognized his name, of course, and the fact that he knew Dickie Greeleaf raised his social value to a degree that surprised even Tom. Obviously they were going to invite him everywhere and quiz him and drain him of every last little detail to add some spice to their dull lives. Tom behaved in a reserved but friendly manner appropriate for a young man in his position—a sensitive young man, unused to garish publicity, whose primary emotion in regard to Dickie was anxiety as to what had happened to him.

  He left that first party with the addresses of three other houses he might look at (one being the one he took) and invitations to two other parties. He went to the party whose hostess had a title, the Contessa Roberta (Titi) della Latta-Cacciaguerra. He was not at all in the mood for parties. He seemed to see people through a mist, and communication was slow and difficult. He often asked people to repeat what they had said. He was terribly bored. But he could use them, he thought, to practice on. The naïve questions they asked him (“Did Dickie drink a lot?” and “But he was in love with Marge, wasn’t he?” and “Where do you really think he went?”) were good practice for the more specific questions Mr. Greenleaf was going to ask him when he saw him, if he ever saw him. Tom began to be uneasy about ten days after Marge’s letter, because Mr. Greenleaf had not written or telephoned him from Rome. In certain frightened moments, Tom imagined that the police had told Mr. Greenleaf that they were playing a game with Tom Ripley, and had asked Mr. Greenleaf not to talk to him.

  Each day he looked eagerly in his mailbox for a letter from Marge or Mr. Greenleaf. His house was ready for their arrival. His answers to their questions were ready in his head. It was like waiting interminably for a show to begin, for a curtain to rise. Or maybe Mr. Greenleaf was so resentful of him (not to mention possibly being actually suspicious) that he was going to ignore him entirely. Maybe Marge was abetting him in that. At any rate, he couldn’t take a trip until something happened. Tom wanted to take a trip, the famous trip to Greece. He had bought a guidebook of Greece, and he had already planned his itinerary over the islands.

  Then, on the morning of April fourth, he got a telephone call from Marge. She was in Venice, at the railroad station.

  “I’ll come and pick you up!” Tom said cheerfully. “Is Mr. Greenleaf with you?”

  “No, he’s in Rome. I’m alone. You don’t have to pick me up. I’ve only got an overnight bag.”

  “Nonsense!” Tom said, dying to do something. “You’ll never find the house by yourself.”

  “Yes, I will. It’s next to della Salute, isn’t it? I take the motoscafo to San Marco’s, then take a gondola across.”

  She knew, all right. “Well, if you insist.” He had just thought that he had better take one more good look around the house before she got here. “Have you had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Good! We’ll lunch together somewhere. Watch your step on the motoscafo!”

  They hung up. He walked soberly and slowly through the house, into both large rooms upstairs, down the stairs and through his living room. Nothing, anywhere, that belonged to Dickie. He hoped the house didn’t look too plush. He took a silver cigarette box, which he had bought only two days ago and had had initialed, from the living room table and put it in the bottom drawer of a chest in the dining room.

  Anna was in the kitchen, preparing lunch.

  “Anna, there’ll be one more for lunch,” Tom said. “A young lady.”

  Anna’s face broke into a smile at the prospect of a guest. “A young American lady?”

  “Yes. An old friend. When the lunch is ready, you and Ugo can have the rest of the afternoon off. We can serve ourselves.”

  “Va bene,” Anna said.

  Anna and Ugo came a
t ten and stayed until two, ordinarily. Tom didn’t want them here when he talked with Marge. They understood a little English, not enough to follow a conversation perfectly, but he knew both of them would have their ears out if he and Marge talked about Dickie, and it irritated him.

  Tom made a batch of martinis, and arranged the glasses and a plate of canapés on a tray in the living room. When he heard the door knocker, he went to the door and swung it open.

  “Marge! Good to see you! Come in!” He took the suitcase from her hand.

  “How are you, Tom? My!— Is all this yours?” She looked around her, and up at the high coffered ceiling.

  “I rented it. For a song,” Tom said modestly. “Come and have a drink. Tell me what’s new. You’ve been talking to the police in Rome?” He carried her topcoat and her transparent raincoat to a chair.

  “Yes, and to Mr. Greenleaf. He’s very upset—naturally.” She sat down on the sofa.

  Tom settled himself in a chair opposite her. “Have they found anything new? One of the police officers there has been keeping me posted, but he hasn’t told me anything that really matters.”

  “Well, they found out that Dickie cashed over a thousand dollars’ worth of traveler’s checks before he left Palermo. Just before. So he must have gone off somewhere with it, like Greece or Africa. He couldn’t have gone off to kill himself after just cashing a thousand dollars, anyway.”

  “No,” Tom agreed. “Well, that sounds hopeful. I didn’t see that in the papers.”

  “I don’t think they put it in.”

  “No. Just a lot of nonsense about what Dickie used to eat for breakfast in Mongibello,” Tom said as he poured the martinis.