Nothing That Meets the Eye

by Patricia Highsmith

  The policemen looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Okay, Mr. Knowlton,” one of them said. “Now you drive on ahead of us, will you?”

  Back at the station in Croydon, they called the number Penn gave them. Hanna, the maid, answered. Penn, six feet from the telephone, could hear her shrill, German-accented voice; then Ginnie came on. The officer reported that David Ostrander was missing since ten o’clock last night, and asked her if she’d had any word from him. Ginnie’s voice, after the first exclamation which Penn had heard, sounded alarmed. The officer watched Penn as he listened to her.

  “Yes . . . What’s that again? . . . No, no blood or anything. Not a clue so far. That’s why we’re calling you.” A long pause. The officer’s pencil tapped but did not write. “I see . . . I see . . . We’ll call you, Mrs. Ostrander.”

  “May I speak to her?” Penn reached for the telephone.

  The captain hesitated, then said, “Good-bye, Mrs. Ostrander,” and put the telephone down. “Well, Mr. Knowlton, are you prepared to swear that the story you told us is true?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Because I’ve just heard a motive if I ever heard one. A motive for getting Mr. Ostrander out of the way. Now, just what did you do to him—or maybe say to him?” The officer leaned forward, palms on his desk.

  “What did she just tell you?”

  “That you’re in love with her and you might have wanted her husband out of the picture.”

  Penn tried to keep calm. “I was quitting my job to get away from the situation! I told Mr. Ostrander yesterday that I was going to quit, and I told his wife the day before.”

  “So you admit there was a situation.”

  The police, four of them now, looked at him with frank disbelief.

  “Mrs. Ostrander’s upset,” Penn said. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Can I talk to her, please? Now?”

  “You’ll see her when she gets here.” The officer sat down and picked up a pen. “Knowlton, we’re booking you on suspicion. Sorry.”

  They questioned him until one P.M., then gave him a hamburger and a paper container of weak coffee. They kept asking him if there hadn’t been a gun at the lodge—there hadn’t been—and if he hadn’t weighted David’s body and thrown it in the lake along with the gun.

  “We walked half around the lake this morning,” Penn said. “Did you notice any footprints anywhere?”

  By that time, he had told them about his dream and suggested that David Ostrander was trying to enact it, an idea that brought incredulous smiles, and he had laid bare his heart in regard to Ginnie, and also his intentions with her, which were nil. Penn didn’t say that Ginnie had said she was in love with him, too. He couldn’t bear to tell them that, in view of what she had said about him.

  They went into his past. No police record. Born in Raleigh, Virginia, graduated from the state university, a major in journalism, worked on a Baltimore paper for a year, then four years in the Coast Guard. A clean slate everywhere, and this the police seemed to believe. It was, specifically, the cleanliness of his slate with the Ostranders that they doubted. He was in love with Mrs. Ostrander and yet he was really going to quit his job and leave? Hadn’t he any plans about her?

  “Ask her,” Penn said tiredly.

  “We’ll do that,” replied the officer who was called Mac.

  “She knows about the dream I had, too, and the questions her husband asked me about it,” Penn said. “Ask her in privacy, if you doubt me.”

  “Get this, Knowlton,” Mac said. “We don’t fool around with dreams. We want facts.”

  Ginnie arrived a little after three P.M. Catching a glimpse of her through the bars of the cell they had put him in, Penn sighed with relief. She looked calm, perfectly in command of herself. The police took her to another room for ten minutes or so, and then they came and unlocked Penn’s cell door. As he approached Ginnie, she looked at him with a hostility or fear that was like a kick in the pit of his stomach. It checked the “Hello, Ginnie” that he wanted to say.

  “Will you repeat to him what he said to you day before yesterday, Mrs. Ostrander?” asked Mac.

  “Yes. He said, ‘I wish David would disappear the way he did in my dream. I wish he were out of your life so I could be alone with you.’”

  Penn stared at her. “Ginnie, you said that!”

  “I think what we want to know from you, Knowlton, is what you did with her husband,” said Mac.

  “Ginnie,” Penn said desperately, “I don’t know why you’re saying that. I can repeat every word of the conversation we had that afternoon, beginning with me saying I wanted to quit. That much you’ll agree with, won’t you?”

  “Why, my husband had fired him—because of his attentions to me!” Ginnie glared at Penn and at the man around her.

  Penn felt a panic, a nausea rising. Ginnie looked insane—or like a woman who was positive she was looking at her husband’s murderer. There flashed to his mind her amazing coolness the moment after the one time he had kissed her, when David, by an unhappy stroke of luck, had tapped on her door and walked in. Ginnie hadn’t turned a hair. She was an actress by nature, apparently, and she was acting now. “That’s a lie and you know it,” Penn said.

  “And it’s a lie what you said to her about wanting to get rid of her husband?” Mac asked.

  “Mrs. Ostrander said that, I didn’t,” Penn replied, feeling suddenly weak in the knees. “That’s why I was quitting. I didn’t want to interfere with a marriage that—”

  The listening policeman smiled.

  “My husband and I were devoted.”

  Then Ginnie bent her head and gave in, it appeared, to the most genuine tears in the world.

  Penn turned to the desk. “All right, lock me up. I’ll be glad to stay here till David Ostrander turns up—because I’ll bet my life he’s not dead.”

  Penn pressed his palms against the cool wall of the cell. He was aware that Ginnie had left the station, but that was the only external circumstance of which he was aware.

  A funny girl, Ginnie. She was mad about David, after all. She must worship David for his talent, for his discipline, and for his liking her. What was she, after all? A good-looking girl who hadn’t succeeded as an actress (until now), who hadn’t enough inner resources to amuse herself while her husband worked twelve hours a day, so she had started flirting with her husband’s secretary. Penn remembered that Ginnie had said their chauffeur had quit five months ago. They hadn’t hired another. Penn wondered if the chauffeur had quit for the same reason he had been going to leave. Or had David fired him? Penn didn’t dare believe anything, now, that Ginnie had ever said to him.

  A more nightmarish thought crossed his mind: suppose Ginnie really didn’t love David, and had stopped on her way to Croydon and found David in the lodge and had shot him? Or if she had found him on the grounds, in the woods, had she shot him and left him to be discovered later, so that he would get the blame? So that she would be free of David and free of him, too? Or was there even a gun in Stonebridge that Ginnie could have taken?

  Did Ginnie hate David or love him? On that incredible question his own future might hang, because if Ginnie had killed him herself . . . But how did it explain David’s voluntarily disappearing last night?

  Penn heard footsteps and stood up.

  Mac stopped in front of his cell. “You’re telling the truth, Knowlton?” he asked a little dubiously.

  “Yes.”

  “So, the worst that can happen is, you’ll sit a couple of days till Ostrander turns up.”

  “I hope you’re looking for him.”

  “That we are, all over the state and farther if we have to.” He started to go, then turned back.

  “Thought I’d bring you a stronger light bulb and something to read, if you’re in any mood for reading.”
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  There was no news the next morning.

  Then, around four P.M., a policeman came and unlocked Penn’s cell.

  “What’s up?” Penn asked.

  “Ostrander turned up at his house in Stonebridge,” the man said with a trace of a smile.

  Penn smiled, too, slightly. He followed him out to the front desk.

  Mac gave Penn a nod of greeting. “We just called Mr. Ostrander’s house. He came home half an hour ago. Said he’d taken a walk to do some thinking, and he can’t understand what all the fuss is about.”

  Penn’s hand shook as he signed his own release paper. He was dreading the return to the lodge to get his possessions, the inevitable few minutes at the Stonebridge house while he packed up the rest of his things.

  David’s convertible was at the curb where Penn had left it yesterday. He got in and headed for the lodge. There, he packed first his own things and closed his suitcase, then started to carry it and the tape recorder to the car, but on second thought decided to leave the tape recorder. How was he supposed to know what David wanted done with his stuff?

  As he drove south toward Stonebridge, Penn realized that he didn’t know what he felt or how he ought to behave. Ginnie: it wasn’t worthwhile to say anything to her, either in anger or by way of asking her why. David: it was going to be hard to resist saying, “I hope you enjoyed your little joke. Are you trying to get a plot out of it?” Penn’s foot pressed the accelerator, but he checked his speed abruptly. Don’t lose your temper, he told himself. Just get your stuff quietly and get out.

  Lights were on in the living room, and also in Ginnie’s room upstairs. It was around nine o’clock. They’d have dined, and sometimes they sat awhile in the living room over coffee, but usually David went into his study to work. Penn couldn’t see David’s study window. He rang the bell.

  Hanna opened the door. “Mister Knowlton!” she exclaimed. “They told me you’d gone away for good!”

  “I have,” Penn said. “Just came by to pick up my things.”

  “Come right in, sir! Mister and Missus are in the living room. I’ll tell them you’re here.” She went trotting off before he could stop her.

  Penn followed her across the broad foyer. He wanted a look at David, just a look. Penn stopped a little short of the door. David and Ginnie were sitting close together on the sofa, facing him, David’s arm on the back of the sofa, and as Hanna told them he was here, David dropped his arm so that it circled Ginnie’s waist. Ginnie did not show any reaction, only took a puff on her cigarette.

  “Come on in, Penn!” David called, smiling. “What’re you so shy about?”

  “Nothing at all.” Penn stopped at the threshold now. “I came to get my things, if I may.”

  “If you may!” David mocked. “Why, of course, Penn!” He stood up, holding Ginnie’s hand now, as if he wanted to flaunt before Penn how affectionate they had become.

  “Tell him to get his things and go,” Ginnie said, smashing her cigarette in the ashtray. Her tone wasn’t angry, in fact it was gentle, but she’d had a few drinks.

  David came toward Penn, his lean, wrinkled face smiling. “I’ll come with you. Maybe I can help.”

  Penn turned stiffly and walked to his room, which was down the hall. He went in, dragged a large suitcase out of the bottom of a closet, and began with a bureau drawer, lifting out socks and pajamas. He was conscious of David watching him with an amused smile. The smile was like an animal’s claws in Penn’s back. “Where’d you hide that night, David?”

  “Hide? Nowhere!” David chuckled. “Just took a little walk and ­didn’t answer you. I was interested to see what would happen. Rather, I knew what would happen. Everything was just as I’d predicted.”

  “What do you mean?” Penn’s hands trembled as he slid open his top drawer.

  “With Ginnie,” David said. “I knew she’d turn against you and turn to me. It’s happened before, you see. You were a fool to think if you waited for her she’d divorce me and come to you. An absolute fool!”

  Penn whirled around, his hands full of folded shirts. “Listen, David, I wasn’t waiting for Ginnie. I was clearing out of this—”

  “Don’t give me that, you sneak! Carrying on behind your employer’s back!”

  Penn flung the shirts into his suitcase. “What do you mean, it’s happened before?”

  “With our last chauffeur. And my last secretary, too. I’d get a girl secretary, you see, but Ginnie likes these little dramas. They serve to draw us together and they keep her from getting bored. Your dream gave me a splendid idea for this one. You see how affectionate Ginnie is with me now? And she thinks you’re a prizewinning sucker.” David laughed and lifted his cigarette to his lips.

  A second later, Penn landed the hardest blow he had ever struck, on David’s jaw. David’s feet flew up in the wake of his body, and his head hit a wall six feet away.

  Penn threw the rest of his things into his suitcase and crushed the lid down as furiously as if he were still fighting David. He pulled the suitcase off the bed and turned to the door.

  Ginnie blocked his way. “What’ve you done to him?”

  “Not as much as I’d like to do.”

  Ginnie rushed past him to David, and Penn went out the door.

  Hanna was hurrying down the hall. “Something the matter, Mr. Knowlton?”

  “Nothing serious. Good-bye, Hanna,” Penn said, trying to control his hoarse voice. “And thanks,” he added, and went on toward the front door.

  “He’s dead!” Ginnie cried wailingly.

  Hanna was running to the room. Penn hesitated, then went on toward the door. The little liar! Anything for a dramatic kick!

  “Stop him!” Ginnie yelled. “Hanna, he’s trying to get away!”

  Penn set his suitcase down and went back. He’d yank David up and douse his head in water. “He’s not dead,” Penn said as he strode into the room.

  Hanna was standing beside David with a twisted face, ready for tears. “Yes—he is, Mr. Knowlton.”

  Penn bent to pull David up, but his hand stopped before it touched him. Something shiny was sticking out of David’s throat, and Penn recognized it—the haft of his own paper knife that he’d neglected to pack.

  A long, crazy laugh—or maybe it was a wailing sob—came from Ginnie behind him. “You monster! I suppose you wiped your fingerprints off it! But it won’t do you any good, Penn! Hanna, call the police at once. Tell them we’ve got a murderer here!”

  Hanna looked at her with horror. “I’ll call them, ma’am. But it was you that wiped the handle. You were wiping it with your skirt when I came in the door.”

  Penn stared at Ginnie. He and she were not finished with each other yet.

  A GIRL LIKE PHYL

  Jeff Cormack stood looking through a thick glass window onto a field of Kennedy Airport, drawing on a cigarette that he hoped would be his last before he boarded. Twice they had announced delays that had caused the passengers to disperse, humping hand luggage back to the departure lounge or to one of the bars for a drink. It was a foggy day in November.

  Here it came again, the droning female voice, “Passengers on TWA Flight eight-oh-seven to Paris are kindly requested . . .”

  A collective groan, mumbles of impatience drowned out the voice, so that people asked others, “Did she say half an hour?” The answer was yes.

  Jeff picked up his attaché case, and was turning toward the doorway when he saw a face some five yards away that made him stop and stay motionless for a few seconds. Phyl. No, it couldn’t be. This girl looked hardly twenty. But the resemblance! The light brown eyes with the sharp upward slant at the outer corners, the fresh pink at the cheekbones, the soft abundant hair of the same dark brown as Phyl’s. And the lips! The girl was like Phyl at the time Jeff had met her. Jeff tore his eyes away and reached for
his black case, which was somehow on the floor again.

  He felt shattered, and noticed that his hands trembled a little.

  He mustn’t look at the girl again, he thought, not try to find her again. She was evidently on the same flight. He walked slowly toward the bar, not caring where he walked, because he had no purpose in doing anything except to kill the next half hour. He’d be quite late getting to Paris at this rate, after midnight certainly before he got to his hotel. He would still try to reach Kyrogin by telephone tonight, and he envisaged staying up all night, because he didn’t know and his office scouts hadn’t been able to find out exactly when Kyrogin was arriving in Paris and where he was staying. At least it wouldn’t be at the Russian Embassy, Jeff thought. Kyrogin was an engineer, an important man but not a Communist deputy. Jeff knew that Kyrogin’s mission was semi-secret, that he was in search of a bargain, and Jeff wanted to get to him first, meaning before any other American firm, or maybe an English firm, got to him. Jeff had to convince Kyrogin that his company, Ander-Mack, was the best possible one for setting up oil rigs.

  Thinking of the job he had to do in the next twenty-four hours gave Jeff a sense of solidity, of definite time and place.

  The girl’s face had whisked him back eighteen—no, twenty—years, to the year he had met Phyl. Not that he had stopped thinking about Phyl during all that time. They had been together for a little over a year. Then, after they had parted, he had thought about her a lot for the next two years, the Awful Years, as he called them. Then had come a three- or four-year break, in a manner of speaking, when he had not thought about her (not with the same intensity), when he had worked even harder at his own work in order to keep Phyl out of his mind, not to mention that during that period he had met someone else and got married. His son Bernard was now fifteen, going to Groton and not doing too well. Bernard had no idea of what he wanted to be as yet. Maybe an actor. And Betty, his wife, lived in Manhattan. He’d said good-bye to her this morning, and said he would be back in three days, maybe sooner. Just three hours ago. Was it possible?