The Talented Mr. Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

“Can you talk louder? It’s a bad connection.”

  “Is this better? I can hear you fine.”

  People in London always could. “A little.”

  “Did you get my letter?”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “Oh. We’re in trouble. I wanted to warn you. There’s a . . .”

  Crackling, a buzz, a dull click, and they were cut off.

  “Damn,” Tom said mildly. Warn him? Was something wrong at the gallery? With Derwatt Ltd? Warn him? Tom was hardly involved. He had dreamed up the idea of Derwatt Ltd., true, and he derived a little income from it, but— Tom glanced at the telephone, expecting it to ring again at any moment. Or should he ring Jeff? No, he didn’t know if Jeff was at his studio or at the gallery. Jeff Constant was a photographer.

  Tom walked toward the French windows that gave onto the back garden. He’d scrape a bit more at the moss, he thought. Tom gardened casually, and he liked spending an hour at it every day, mowing with the push-powered lawnmower, raking and burning twigs, weeding. It was exercise, and he could also daydream. He had hardly resumed with the trowel, when the telephone rang.

  Mme. Annette was coming into the living room, carrying a duster. She was short and sturdy, about sixty, and rather jolly. She knew not a word of English and seemed incapable of learning any, even “Good morning,” which suited Tom perfectly.

  “I’ll get it, madame,” said Tom, and took the telephone.

  “Hello.” Jeff ’s voice said. “Look, Tom, I’m wondering if you could come over. To London, I . . .”

  “You what?” It was again a poor connection, but not as bad.

  “I said—I’ve explained it in a letter. I can’t explain here. But it’s important, Tom.”

  “Has somebody made a mistake?— Bernard?”

  “In a way. There’s a man coming from New York, probably tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  “I explained it in my letter. You know Derwatt’s show opens on Tuesday. I’ll hold him off till then. Ed and I just won’t be available.” Jeff sounded quite anxious. “Are you free, Tom?”

  “Well—yes.” But Tom didn’t want to go to London.

  “Try to keep it from Heloise. That you’re coming to London.”

  “Heloise is in Greece.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” The first hint of relief in Jeff’s voice.

  Jeff’s letter came that afternoon at five, express and registered.

  104 Charles Place

  N.W.8.

  Dear Tom,

  The new Derwatt show opens on Tuesday, the 15th, his first in two years. Bernard has nineteen new canvases and other pictures will be lent. Now for the bad news.

  There is an American named Thomas Murchison, not a dealer but a collector—retired with plenty of lolly. He bought a Derwatt from us three years ago. He compared it with an earlier Derwatt he has just seen in the States, and now he says his is phony. It is, of course, as it is one of Bernard’s. He wrote to the Buckmaster Gallery (to me) saying he thinks the painting he has is not genuine, because the technique and colors belong to a period of five or six years ago in Derwatt’s work. I have the distinct feeling Murchison intends to make a stink here. And what to do about it? You’re always good on ideas, Tom.

  Can you come over and talk to us? All expenses paid by the Buckmaster Gallery? We need an injection of confidence more than anything. I don’t think Bernard has messed up any of the new canvases. But Bernard is in a flap, and we don’t want him around even at the opening, especially at the opening.

  Please come at once if you can!

  Best,

  Jeff

  P.S. Murchison’s letter was courteous, but supposing he’s the kind who will insist on looking up Derwatt in Mexico to verify, etc.?

  The last was a point, Tom thought, because Derwatt didn’t exist. The story (invented by Tom), which the Buckmaster Gallery and Derwatt’s loyal little band of friends put out, was that Derwatt had gone to a tiny village in Mexico to live, and he saw no one, had no telephone, and forbade the gallery to give his address to anyone. Well, if Murchison went to Mexico, he would have an exhausting search, enough to keep any man busy for a lifetime.

  What Tom could see happening was Murchison—who would probably bring his Derwatt painting over—talking to other art dealers and then the press. It could arouse suspicion, and Derwatt might go up in smoke. Would the gang drag him into it? (Tom always thought of the gallery batch, Derwatt’s old friends, as “the gang,” though he hated the term every time it came into his head.) And Bernard might mention Tom Ripley, Tom thought, not out of malice but out of his own insane—almost Christ-like—honesty.

  Tom had kept his name and his reputation clean, amazingly clean, considering all he did. It would be most embarrassing if it were in the French papers that Thomas Ripley of Villeperce-sur-Seine, husband of Heloise Plisson, daughter of Jacques Plisson, millionaire owner of Plisson Pharmaceutiques, had dreamed up the money-making fraud of Derwatt Ltd., and had for years been deriving a percentage from it, even if it was only ten percent. It would look exceedingly shabby. Even Heloise, whose morals Tom considered next to nonexistent, might react to this, and certainly her father would put the pressure on her (by stopping her allowance) to get a divorce.

  Derwatt Ltd. was now big, and a collapse would have ramifications. Down would go the lucrative art supply line of materials labeled “Derwatt,” from which the gang, and Tom, got royalties also. Then there was the Derwatt School of Art in Perugia, mainly for nice old ladies and American girls on holiday, but still a source of income, too. The art school got its money not so much from teaching art and selling “Derwatt” supplies as from acting as a rental agent, finding houses and furnished apartments, of the most expensive order, for well-heeled tourist-students, and taking a cut from it all. The school was run by a pair of English queens, who were not in on the Derwatt hoax.

  Tom couldn’t make up his mind whether to go to London or not. What could he say to them? And Tom didn’t understand the problem: couldn’t a painter conceivably return to an earlier technique, for one painting?

  “Would m’sieur prefer lamb chops or cold ham this evening?” Mme. Annette asked Tom.

  “Lamb chops, I think. Thank you. And how is your tooth?” That morning, Mme. Annette had been to the village dentist, in whom she had the greatest confidence, for a tooth that had kept her awake all night.

  “No pain now. He is so nice, Dr. Grenier! He said it was an abscess but he opened the tooth and he said the nerve would fall out.”

  Tom nodded, but wondered how a nerve could fall out; gravity, presumably. They’d had to dig hard for one of his nerves once, and in an upper tooth, too.

  “You had good news from London?”

  “No, well—just a ring from a friend.”

  “Any news from Mme. Heloise?”

  “Not today.”

  “Ah, imagine sunlight! Greece!” Mme. Annette was wiping the already shining surface of a large oak chest beside the fireplace. “Look! Villeperce has no sun. The winter has arrived.”

  “Yes.” Mme. Annette said the same thing every day lately.

  Tom didn’t expect to see Heloise until close to Christmas. On the other hand, she could turn up unexpectedly—having had a slight but reparable tiff with her friends, or simply having changed her mind about staying on a boat so long. Heloise was impulsive.

  Tom put on a Beatles record to lift his spirits, then walked about the large living room, hands in his pockets. He loved the house. It was a two-story squarish gray stone house with four turrets over four round rooms in the upstairs corners, making the house look like a little castle. The garden was vast, and even by American standards the place had cost a fortune. Heloise’s father had given the house to them three years ago as a wedding present. In the days before he married, Tom had needed some extra money, the Greenleaf money not being enough for him to enjoy the kind of life he had come to prefer, and Tom had been interested in his cut of the Derwatt affair. Now he regretted that. H
e had accepted ten percent, when ten percent had been very little. Even he had not realized that Derwatt would flourish the way it had.

  Tom spent that evening as he did most of his evenings, quietly and alone, but his thoughts were troubled. He played the stereo softly while he ate, and he read Servan-Schreiber in French. There were two words Tom didn’t know. He would look them up tonight in his Harrap’s beside his bed. He was good at holding words in his memory to look up.

  After dinner he put on a raincoat, though it wasn’t raining, and walked to a little bar-café a quarter of a mile distant. Here he took coffee some evenings, standing at the bar. Invariably the proprietor, Georges, inquired about Mme. Heloise, and expressed regret that Tom had to spend so much time alone. Tonight Tom said cheerfully:

  “Oh, I am not sure she will stay on that yacht another two months. She will get bored.”

  “Quel luxe,” murmured Georges dreamily. He was a paunchy man with a round face.

  Tom mistrusted his mild and unfailing good humor. His wife, Marie, a big energetic brunette who wore bright red lipstick, was frankly tough, but she had a wild happy way of laughing that redeemed her. This was a workman’s bar, and Tom did not object to that fact, but it was not his favorite bar. It just happened to be the closest. At least Georges and Marie had never referred to Dickie Greenleaf. A few people in Paris, acquaintances of his or Heloise’s, had, and so had the owner of the Hotel St. Pierre, Villeperce’s only hostelry. The owner had asked, “You are perhaps the M. Ripley who was a friend of the American Granelafe?” Tom had acknowledged that he was. But that had been three years ago, and such a question—if it never went any further—did not make Tom nervous, but he preferred to avoid the subject. The newspapers had said that he had received quite a sum of money, some said a regular income, which was true, from Dickie’s will. At least no newspaper had ever implied that Tom had written the will himself, which he had. The French always remembered financial details.

  After his coffee, Tom walked home, saying “Bonsoir” to a villager or two on the road, slipping now and then in the sodden leaves that cluttered the edge of the road. There was no sidewalk to mention. He had brought a flashlight, because the streetlights were too infrequent. He caught glimpses of cozy families in kitchens, watching television, sitting around oilcloth-covered tables. Chained dogs barked in a few courtyards. Then he opened the iron gates—ten feet high—of his own house, and his shoes crunched on gravel. Mme. Annette’s light was on in her side room, Tom saw from the glow. She had her own television set. Often Tom painted at night, for his amusement only. He knew he was a bad painter, worse than Dickie. But tonight he was not in the mood. Instead, he wrote to a friend in Hamburg, Reeves Minot, an American, asking when did he expect to need him? Reeves was to plant a microfilm—or something—on a certain Italian Count Bertolozzi. The Count would then visit Tom for a day or so in Villeperce, and Tom would remove the object from the place in the suitcase or wherever, which Reeves would tell him, and post it to a man Tom didn’t know at all in Paris. Tom frequently performed these fence-like services, sometimes for jewelry thefts. It was easier if Tom removed the objects from his guests, than if someone tried to do the same thing in a Paris hotel room, when the carrier was not in. Tom knew Count Bertolozzi slightly from a recent trip to Milan, when Reeves, who lived in Hamburg, had been in Milan also. Tom had discussed paintings with the Count. It was usually easy for Tom to persuade people with a bit of leisure to stay with him a day or so in Villeperce and look at his paintings—he had besides Derwatts, a Soutine, of whose work Tom was especially fond, a van Gogh, two Magrittes, and drawings by Cocteau and Picasso, and many drawings of less famous painters which he thought equally good or better. Villeperce was near Paris, and it was nice for his guests to enjoy a bit of country before going up. In fact, Tom often fetched them from Orly in his car, Villeperce being some forty miles south of Orly. Only once had Tom failed, when an American guest had become immediately ill in Tom’s house from something he must have eaten before arriving, and Tom had not been able to get to his suitcase because the guest was constantly in bed and awake in his room. That object—another microfilm of some sort—had been recovered with difficulty by a Reeves man in Paris. Tom could not understand the value of some of these things, but neither could he always when he read spy novels, and Reeves was only a fence himself and took a percentage. Tom always drove to another town to post these things, and he always sent them with a false return name and address.

  That night, Tom could not fall asleep, so he got out of bed, put on his purple woolen dressing gown—new and thick, full of military frogs and tassels, a birthday present from Heloise—and went down to the kitchen. He had thought of taking up a bottle of Super Valstar beer, but decided to make some tea. He almost never drank tea, so in a way it was appropriate, as he felt it was a strange night. He tiptoed around the kitchen, so as not to awaken Mme. Annette. The tea Tom made was dark red. He has put too much in the pot. He carried a tray into the living room, poured a cup, and walked about, noiseless in felt houseshoes. Why not impersonate Derwatt, he thought. My God, yes! That was the solution, the perfect solution, and the only solution.

  Derwatt was about his age, close enough—Tom was thirty-one and Derwatt would be about thirty-five. Blue-gray eyes, Tom remembered Cynthia (Bernard’s girlfriend) or maybe Bernard saying in one of their gushing descriptions of Derwatt the Untarnishable. Derwatt had had a short beard, which was a tremendous help, would be, for Tom.

  Jeff Constant would surely be pleased with the idea. A press interview. Tom must brush up on the questions he might have to answer, and the stories he would have to tell. Was Derwatt as tall as he? Well, who among the press would know? Derwatt’s hair had been darker, Tom thought. But that could be fixed. Tom drank more tea. He continued walking about the room. His should be a surprise appearance, a surprise presumably even to Jeff and Ed—and Bernard, of course. Or so they would tell the press.

  Tom tried to imagine confronting Mr. Thomas Murchison. Be calm, self-assured, that was the essence. If Derwatt said a picture was his own, that he had painted it, who was Murchison to say him nay?

  On a crest of enthusiasm, Tom went to his telephone. Often the operators were asleep at this hour—2 a.m. and a bit after—and took ten minutes to answer. Tom sat patiently on the edge of the yellow sofa. He was thinking that Jeff or somebody would have to get some very good makeup in readiness. Tom wished he could count on a girl, Cynthia for instance, to supervise it, but Cynthia and Bernard had broken up two or three years ago. Cynthia knew the score about Derwatt and Bernard’s forgeries, and would have none of it, not a penny of the profits, Tom remembered.

  “’Allo, j’écoute,” said the female operator in an annoyed tone, as if Tom had got her out of bed to do him a favor. Tom gave the number of Jeff’s studio, which he had in an address book by the telephone. Tom was rather lucky, and the call came through in five minutes. He pulled his third cup of filthy tea nearer the telephone.

  “Hello, Jeff. Tom. How are things?”

  “Not any better. Ed’s here. We were just thinking of ringing you. Are you coming over?”

  “Yes, and I have a better idea. How about my playing—our missing friend—for a few hours, anyway?”

  Jeff took an instant to comprehend. “Oh, Tom, great! Can you be here for Tuesday?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Can you make it Monday. The day after tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think I can. But Tuesday, yes. Now listen, Jeff, the makeup—it’s got to be good.”

  “Don’t worry! Just a sec!” He left off to speak with Ed, then returned. “Ed says he has a source—of supply.”

  “Don’t announce it to the public,” Tom continued in his calm voice, because Jeff sounded as if he were leaping off his feet with joy. “And another thing, if it doesn’t work, if I fail—we must say it’s a joke a friend of yours dreamed up—me. That it has nothing to do with—you know.” Tom meant with validating Murchison’s forgery, but Jeff grasped t
his at once.

  “Ed wants to say a word.”

  “Hello, Tom,” Ed’s deeper voice said. “We’re delighted you’re coming over. It’s a marvelous idea. And you know—Bernard’s got some of his clothes and things.”

  “I’ll leave that to you.” Tom felt suddenly alarmed. “The clothes are the least. It’s the face. Get cracking, will you?”

  “Right you are. Bless you.”

  They hung up. Then Tom slumped back on the sofa and relaxed, almost horizontal. No, he wouldn’t go to London too soon. Go on stage at the last moment, with dash and momentum. Too much briefing and rehearsal could be a bad thing.

  Tom got up with the cold cup of tea. It would be amusing and funny if he could bring it off, he thought, as he stared at the Derwatt over his fireplace. This was a pinkish picture of a man in a chair, a man with several outlines, so it seemed one was looking at the picture through someone else’s distorting eyeglasses. Some people said Derwatts hurt their eyes. But from a distance of three or four yards, they didn’t. This was not a genuine Derwatt, but an early Bernard Tufts forgery. Across the room hung a genuine Derwatt, “The Red Chairs.” Two little girls sat side by side, looking terrified, as if it were their first day in school, or as if they were listening to something frightening in church. “The Red Chairs” was eight or nine years old. Behind the little girls, wherever they were sitting, the whole place was on fire. Yellow and red flames leapt about, hazed by touches of white, so that the fire didn’t immediately catch the attention of the beholder. But when it did, the emotional effect was shattering. Tom loved both pictures. But now he had almost forgotten to remember, when he looked at them, that one was a forgery and the other genuine.

  Tom recalled the early amorphous days of what was now Derwatt Ltd. Tom had met Jeffrey Constant and Bernard Tufts in London just after Derwatt had drowned—presumably intentionally—in Greece. Tom had just returned from Greece himself; it was not long after Dickie Greenleaf’s death. Derwatt’s body had never been found, but some fishermen of the village said they had seen him go swimming one morning, and had not seen him return. Derwatt’s friends—and Tom had met Cynthia Gradnor on the same visit—had been profoundly disturbed, affected in a way that Tom had never seen after a death, not even in a family. Jeff, Ed, Cynthia, Bernard had been dazed. They had spoken dreamily, passionately, of Derwatt not only as an artist but as a friend, and as a human being. He had lived simply, in Islington, eating badly at times, but he had always been generous to others. Children in his neighborhood had adored him, and had sat for him without expecting any payment, but Derwatt had always reached in his pockets for what were perhaps his last pennies to give them. Then just before he had gone to Greece, Derwatt had had a disappointment. He had painted a mural on a government assignment for a post office in a town in the north of England. It had been approved in sketch form, but rejected when finished: somebody was nude in it, or too nude, and Derwatt had refused to change it. (“And he was right, of course!” Derwatt’s loyal friends had assured Tom.) But this had deprived Derwatt of a thousand pounds that he had counted on. It seemed to have been a last straw in a series of disappointments—the depth of which Derwatt’s friends had not realized, and for this they reproached themselves. There had been a woman in the picture too, Tom recalled vaguely, the cause of another disappointment to Derwatt, but it seemed that the woman was not so important to him as his work disappointments. All Derwatt’s friends were professionals also, mostly freelance, and were quite busy, and in the last days when Derwatt had called on them—not for money but for company on several evenings—they had said they hadn’t time to see him. Unbeknownst to his friends, Derwatt had sold what furniture he had in his studio and got himself to Greece where he had written a long and depressed letter to Bernard. (Tom had never seen the letter.) Then had come the news of his disappearance or death.