The Talented Mr. Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  Every morning he watched the sun, from his bedroom window, rising through the winter mists, struggling upward over the peaceful-looking city, breaking through finally to give a couple of hours of actual sunshine before noon, and the quiet beginning of each day was like a promise of peace in the future. The days were growing warmer. There was more light, and less rain. Spring was almost here, and one of these mornings, one morning finer than these, he would leave the house and board a ship for Greece.

  On the evening of the sixth day after Mr. Greenleaf and McCarron had left, Tom called him in Rome. Mr. Greenleaf had nothing new to report, but Tom had not expected anything. Marge had gone home. As long as Mr. Greenleaf was in Italy, Tom thought, the papers would carry something about the case every day. But the newspapers were running out of sensational things to say about the Greenleaf case.

  “And how is your wife?” Tom asked.

  “Fair. I think the strain is telling on her, however. I spoke to her again last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said. He ought to write her a nice letter, he thought, just a friendly word while Mr. Greenleaf was away and she was by herself. He wished he had thought of it before.

  Mr. Greenleaf said he would be leaving at the end of the week, via Paris, where the French police were also carrying on the search. McCarron was going with him, and if nothing happened in Paris they were both going home. “It’s obvious to me or to anybody,” Mr. Greenleaf said, “that he’s either dead or deliberately hiding. There’s not a corner of the world where the search for him hasn’t been publicized. Short of Russia, maybe. My God, he never showed any liking for that place, did he?”

  “Russia? No, not that I know of.”

  Apparently Mr. Greenleaf’s attitude was that Dickie was either dead or to hell with him. During that telephone call, the to-hell-with-him attitude seemed to be uppermost.

  Tom went over to Peter Smith-Kingsley’s house that same evening. Peter had a couple of English newspapers that his friends had sent him, one with a picture of Tom ejecting the Oggi photographer from his house. Tom had seen it in the Italian newspapers too. Pictures of him on the streets of Venice and pictures of his house had also reached America. Bob and Cleo both had airmailed him photographs and write-ups from New York tabloids. They thought it was all terribly exciting.

  “I’m good and sick of it,” Tom said. “I’m only hanging around here to be polite and to help if I can. If any more reporters try to crash my house, they’re going to get it with a shotgun as soon as they walk in the door.” He really was irritated and disgusted, and it sounded in his voice.

  “I quite understand,” Peter said. “I’m going home at the end of May, you know. If you’d like to come along and stay at my place in Ireland, you’re more than welcome. It’s deadly quiet there, I can assure you.”

  Tom glanced at him. Peter had told him about his old Irish castle and had shown him pictures of it. Some quality of his relationship with Dickie flashed across his mind like the memory of a nightmare, like a pale and evil ghost. It was because the same thing could happen with Peter, he thought, Peter the upright, unsuspecting, naïve, generous good fellow—except that he didn’t look enough like Peter. But one evening, for Peter’s amusement, he had put on an English accent and had imitated Peter’s mannerisms and his way of jerking his head to one side as he talked, and Peter had thought it hilariously funny. He shouldn’t have done that, Tom thought now. It made Tom bitterly ashamed, that evening and the fact that he had thought even for an instant that the same thing that had happened with Dickie could happen with Peter.

  “Thanks,” Tom said. “I’d better stay by myself for a while longer. I miss my friend Dickie, you know. I miss him terribly.” He was suddenly near tears. He could remember Dickie’s smiles that first day they began to get along, when he had confessed to Dickie that his father had sent him. He remembered their crazy first trip to Rome. He remembered with affection even that half hour in the Carlton Bar in Cannes, when Dickie had been so bored and silent, but there had been a reason why Dickie had been bored, after all: he had dragged Dickie there, and Dickie didn’t care for the Côte d’ Azur. If he’d only gotten his sightseeing done all by himself, Tom thought, if he only hadn’t been in such a hurry and so greedy, if he only hadn’t misjudged the relationship between Dickie and Marge so stupidly, or had simply waited for them to separate of their own volition, then none of this would have happened, and he could have lived with Dickie for the rest of his life, traveled and lived and enjoyed living for the rest of his life. If he only hadn’t put on Dickie’s clothes that day—

  “I understand, Tommie boy, I really do,” Peter said, patting his shoulder.

  Tom looked up at him through distorting tears. He was imagining traveling with Dickie on some liner back to America for Christmas holidays, imagining being on as good terms with Dickie’s parents as if he and Dickie had been brothers. “Thanks,” Tom said. It came out a childlike “blub.”

  “I’d really think something was the matter with you if you didn’t break down like this,” Peter said sympathetically.

  29

  Venice

  3 June, 19——

  Dear Mr. Greenleaf:

  While packing a suitcase today, I came across an envelope that Richard gave me in Rome, and which for some unaccountable reason I had forgotten until now. On the envelope was written “Not to be opened until June” and, as it happens, it is June. The envelope contained Richard’s will, and he leaves his income and possessions to me. I am as astounded by this as you probably are, yet from the wording of the will (it is typewritten) he seems to have been in possession of his senses.

  I am only bitterly sorry I did not remember having the envelope, because it would have proven much earlier that Dickie intended to take his own life. I put it into a suitcase pocket, and then I forgot it. He gave it to me on the last occasion I saw him, in Rome, when he was so depressed.

  On second thought, I am enclosing a photostat copy of the will so that you may see it for yourself. This is the first will I have ever seen in my life, and I am absolutely unfamiliar with the usual procedure. What should I do?

  Please give my kindest regards to Mrs. Greenleaf and realize that I sympathize deeply with you both, and regret the necessity of writing this letter. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. My next address will be:

  c/o American Express

  Athens, Greece

  Most sincerely yours,

  Tom Ripley

  In a way it was asking for trouble, Tom thought. It might start a new investigation of the signatures, on the will and also the remittances, one of the relentless investigations that insurance companies and probably trust companies also launched when it was a matter of money out of their own pockets. But that was the mood he was in. He had bought his ticket for Greece in the middle of May, and the days had grown finer and finer, making him more and more restless. He had taken his car out of the Fiat garage in Venice and had driven over the Brenner to Salzburg and Munich, down to Trieste and over to Bolzano, and the weather had held everywhere, except for the mildest, most springlike shower in Munich when he had been walking in the Englischer Garten, and he had not even tried to get under cover from it but had simply kept on walking, thrilled as a child at the thought that this was the first German rain that had ever fallen on him. He had only two thousand dollars in his own name, transferred from Dickie’s bank account and saved out of Dickie’s income, because he hadn’t dared to withdraw any more in so short a time as three months. The very chanciness of trying for all of Dickie’s money, the peril of it, was irresistible to him. He was so bored after the dreary, eventless weeks in Venice, when each day that went by had seemed to confirm his personal safety and to emphasize the dullness of his existence. Roverini had stopped writing to him. Alvin McCarron had gone back to America (after nothing more than another inconsequential telephone call to him from Rome), and Tom supposed that he and Mr. Greenleaf had concluded that Dickie was either dead or hiding of his
own will, and that further search was useless. The newspapers had stopped printing anything about Dickie for want of anything to print. Tom had a feeling of emptiness and abeyance that had driven him nearly mad until he made the trip to Munich in his car. When he came back to Venice to pack for Greece and to close his house, the sensation had been worse: he was about to go to Greece, to those ancient heroic islands, as little Tom Ripley, shy and meek, with a dwindling two-thousand-odd in his bank, so that he would practically have to think twice before he bought himself even a book on Greek art. It was intolerable.

  He had decided in Venice to make his voyage to Greece an heroic one. He would see the islands, swimming for the first time into his view, as a living, breathing, courageous individual—not as a cringing little nobody from Boston. If he sailed right into the arms of the police in Piraeus, he would at least have known the days just before, standing in the wind at the prow of a ship, crossing the wine-dark sea like Jason or Ulysses returning. So he had written the letter to Mr. Greenleaf and mailed it three days before he was to sail from Venice. Mr. Greenleaf would probably not get the letter for four or five days, so there would be no time for Mr. Greenleaf to hold him in Venice with a telegram and make him miss his ship. Besides, it looked better from every point of view to be casual about the thing, not to be reachable for another two weeks until he got to Greece, as if he were so unconcerned as to whether he got the money or not, he had not let the fact of the will postpone even a little trip he had planned to make.

  Two days before his sailing, he went to tea at the house of Titi della Latta-Cacciaguerra, the countess he had met the day he had started looking for a house in Venice. The maid showed him into the living room, and Titi greeted him with the phrase he had not heard for many weeks: “Ah, ciao, Tomaso! Have you seen the afternoon paper? They have found Dickie’s suitcases! And his paintings! Right here in the American Express in Venice!” Her gold earrings trembled with her excitement.

  “What?” Tom hadn’t seen the papers. He had been too busy packing that afternoon.

  “Read it! Here! All his clothes deposited only in February! They were sent from Naples. Perhaps he is here in Venice!”

  Tom was reading it. The cord around the canvases had come undone, the paper said, and in wrapping them again a clerk had discovered the signature of R. Greenleaf on the paintings. Tom’s hands began to shake so that he had to grip the sides of the paper to hold it steady. The paper said that the police were now examining everything carefully for fingerprints.

  “Perhaps he is alive!” Titi shouted.

  “I don’t think—I don’t see why this proves he is alive. He could have been murdered or killed himself after he sent the suitcases. The fact that it’s under another name—Fanshaw—” He had the feeling the countess, who was sitting rigidly on the sofa staring at him, was startled by his nervousness, so he pulled himself together abruptly, summoned all his courage and said, “You see? They’re looking through everything for fingerprints. They wouldn’t be doing that if they were sure Dickie sent the suitcases himself. Why should he deposit them under Fanshaw, if he expected to claim them again himself? His passport’s even here. He packed his passport.”

  “Perhaps he is hiding himself under the name of Fanshaw! Oh, caro mio, you need some tea!” Titi stood up. “Giustina! Il te, per piacere, subitissimo!”

  Tom sank down weakly on the sofa, still holding the newspaper in front of him. What about the knot on Dickie’s body? Wouldn’t it be just his luck to have that come undone now?

  “Ah, carissimo, you are so pessimistic,” Titi said, patting his knee. “This is good news! Suppose all the fingerprints are his? Wouldn’t you be happy then? Suppose tomorrow, when you are walking in some little street of Venice, you will come face to face with Dickie Greenleaf, alias Signor Fanshaw!” She let out her shrill, pleasant laugh that was as natural to her as breathing.

  “It says here that the suitcases contained everything—shaving kit, toothbrush, shoes, overcoat, complete equipment,” Tom said, hiding his terror in gloom. “He couldn’t be alive and leave all that. The murderer must have stripped his body and deposited his clothes there because it was the easiest way of getting rid of them.”

  This gave even Titi pause. Then she said, “Will you not be so downhearted until you know what the fingerprints are? You are supposed to be off on a pleasure trip tomorrow. Ecco il te!”

  The day after tomorrow, Tom thought. Plenty of time for Roverini to get his fingerprints and compare them with those on the canvases and in the suitcases. He tried to remember any flat surfaces on the canvas frames and on things in the suitcases from which fingerprints could be taken. There was not much, except the articles in the shaving kit, but they could find enough, in fragments and smears, to assemble ten perfect prints if they tried. His only reason for optimism was that they didn’t have his fingerprints yet, and that they might not ask for them because he was not yet under suspicion. But if they already had Dickie’s fingerprints from somewhere? Wouldn’t Mr. Greenleaf send Dickie’s fingerprints from America the very first thing, by way of checking? There could be any number of places they could find Dickie’s fingerprints: on certain possessions of his in America, in the house in Mongibello—

  “Tomaso! Take your tea!” Titi said, with another gentle press of his knee.

  “Thank you.”

  “You will see. At least this is a step toward the truth, what really happened. Now let us talk about something else, if it makes you so unhappy! Where do you go from Athens?”

  He tried to turn his thoughts to Greece. For him, Greece was gilded, with the gold of warriors’ armor and with its own famous sunlight. He saw stone statues with calm, strong faces, like the women on the porch of the Erechtheum. He didn’t want to go to Greece with the threat of the fingerprints in Venice hanging over him. It would debase him. He would feel as low as the lowest rat that scurried in the gutters of Athens, lower than the dirtiest beggar who would accost him in the streets of Salonika. Tom put his face in his hands and wept. Greece was finished, exploded like a golden balloon.

  Titi put her firm, plump arm around him. “Tomaso, cheer up! Wait until you have reason to feel so downcast!”

  “I can’t see why you don’t see that this is a bad sign!” Tom said desperately. “I really don’t!”

  30

  The worst sign of all was that Roverini, whose messages had been so friendly and explicit up to now, sent him nothing at all in regard to the suitcases and canvases having been found in Venice. Tom spent a sleepless night and then a day, of pacing his house while he tried to finish the endless little chores pertaining to his departure, paying Anna and Ugo, paying various tradesmen. Tom expected the police to come knocking on his door at any hour of the day or night. The contrast between his tranquil self-confidence of five days ago and his present apprehension almost tore him apart. He could neither sleep nor eat nor sit still. The irony of Anna’s and Ugo’s commiseration with him, and also of the telephone calls from his friends, asking him if he had any ideas as to what might have happened in view of the finding of the suitcases, seemed more than he could bear. Ironic, too, that he could let them know that he was upset, pessimistic, desperate even, and they thought nothing of it. They thought it was perfectly normal, because Dickie after all might have been murdered: everybody considered it very significant that all Dickie’s possessions had been in the suitcases in Venice, down to his shaving kit and comb.

  Then there was the matter of the will. Mr. Greenleaf would get it day after tomorrow. By that time they might know that the fingerprints were not Dickie’s. By that time they might have intercepted the Hellenes, and taken his own fingerprints. If they discovered that the will was a forgery, too, they would have no mercy on him. Both murders would come out, as naturally as ABC.

  By the time he boarded the Hellenes Tom felt like a walking ghost. He was sleepless, foodless, full of espressos, carried along only by his twitching nerves. He wanted to ask if there was a radio, but he was positive there
was a radio. It was a good-sized triple-deck ship with forty-eight passengers. He collapsed about five minutes after the stewards had brought his luggage into his cabin. He remembered lying face down on his bunk with one arm twisted under him, and being too tired to change his position, and when he awakened the ship was moving, not only moving but rolling gently with a pleasant rhythm that suggested a tremendous reserve of power and a promise of unending, unobstructable forward movement that would sweep aside anything in its way. He felt better except that the arm he had been lying on hung limply at his side like a dead member, and flopped against him when he walked through the corridor so that he had to grip it with the other hand to hold it in place. It was a quarter of ten by his watch, and utterly dark outside.

  There was some kind of land on his extreme left, probably part of Yugoslavia, five or six little dim white lights, and otherwise nothing but black sea and black sky, so black that there was no trace of a horizon and they might have been sailing against a black screen, except that he felt no resistance to the steadily plowing ship, and the wind blew freely on his forehead as if out of infinite space. There was no one around him on the deck. They were all below, eating their late dinner, he supposed. He was glad to be alone. His arm was coming back to life. He gripped the prow where it separated in a narrow V and took a deep breath. A defiant courage rose in him. What if the radioman were receiving at this very minute a message to arrest Tom Ripley? He would stand up just as bravely as he was standing now. Or he might hurl himself over the ship’s gunwale—which for him would be the supreme act of courage as well as escape. Well, what if? Even from where he stood, he could hear the faint beep-beep-beep from the radio room at the top of the superstructure. He was not afraid. This was it. This was the way he had hoped he would feel, sailing to Greece. To look out at the black water all around him and not be afraid was almost as good as seeing the islands of Greece coming into view. In the soft June darkness ahead of him he could construct in imagination the little islands, the hills of Athens dotted with buildings, and the Acropolis.