Ripley's Game

by Patricia Highsmith

  ‘Jon, what’s this?’ Simone asked, holding up the little blue book that was the Swiss bank’s passbook.

  ‘Oh – that —’Jonathan shook his head, trying to make himself more alert.

  ‘It’s a bankbook. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Well — yes.’ The sum was in six figures, more than four hundred thousand francs, which were indicated by an ‘f’ after them. He also knew that Simone had looked into the little book in all innocence, assuming it was a record of some household purchase, some kind of record they had in common.

  ‘It says francs. French francs? – Where did you get it? What wit, Jon?’

  The sum was in French francs, darling, that’s sort of an advance – from the German doctors.’

  ‘But —’ Simone looked at a loss. ‘It’s French francs, isn’t it? This sum!’ She laughed a little, nervously.

  Jonathan’s face was suddenly warm. ‘I told you where I got it, Simone. Naturally – I know it’s a biggish sum. I didn’t want to tell you at once. I —’

  Simone laid the little blue book carefully on top of his wallet on the low table in front of the sofa. Then she pulled the chair from in front of the writing-table and sat down on it, sideways, holding to its back with one hand. Jon —’

  Georges suddenly appeared in the hall doorway, and Simone got up with determination and turned him by the shoulders. ‘Chou-chou, papa and I are talking. Now leave us alone for a minute.’ She came back and said quietly, ‘Jon, I don’t believe you.’

  Jonathan heard a trembling in her voice. It wasn’t only the sum of money, startling though it was, but also his secrecy lately – the trips to Germany. ‘Well – you’ve got to believe me,’ Jonathan said. Some strength had returned. He stood up. ‘It’s an advance. They don’t think I’m going to be able to use it. I won’t have time. But you can.’

  Simone did not respond to his laugh. ‘It’s in your name. – Jon, whatever you are doing, you are not telling me the truth.’ And she waited, just those few seconds when he might have told her the truth, but he didn’t speak.

  Simone left the room.

  And lunch was a sort of duty. They barely talked. Jonathan could see that Georges was puzzled. Jonathan could foresee the days ahead – Simone perhaps not questioning him again, just coolly waiting for him to tell the truth, or to explain – somehow. Long silences in the house, no more love-making, no more affection or laughter. He had to come up with something else, something better. Even if he said he ran the risk of dying under the German doctors’ treatment, was it logical that they’d paid him this much? Not really. Jonathan realized that his life wasn’t worth as much as the lives of two Mafiosi.

  16

  FRIDAY morning was lovely with light rain alternating with sunlight every half-hour or so, just the thing for the garden, Tom thought. Heloise had driven up to Paris, because there was a dress sale at a certain boutique in the Faubourg St-Honoré, and Tom felt sure she would come back also with a scarf or something more important from Hermès as well. Tom sat at the harpsichord, playing the base of a Goldberg variation, trying to get the fingering in his head and in his hand. He had bought a few music books in Paris the same day he had acquired the harpsichord. Tom knew how the variation should sound, because he had Landowska’s recording. As he was going over it for the third or fourth time and feeling that he had made progress, the telephone jangled.

  ‘Hello?’ said Tom.

  ‘‘Ello – ah – to whom am I speaking, please?’ a man’s voice asked in French.

  Tom, more slowly than usual, felt an unease. ‘You wished to speak to whom?’ he asked with equal politeness.

  ‘M. Anquetin?’

  ‘No, this is not his house,’ said Tom, and put the telephone back in its cradle.

  The man’s accent had been perfect – hadn’t it? But then the Italians would get a Frenchman to make the call, or an Italian whose French accent was perfect. Or was he over anxious? Frowning, Tom turned to face the harpsichord and the windows, and shoved his hands into his back pockets. Had the Genotti family found Reeves in his hotel, and were they checking all the telephone numbers Reeves had called? If so, this caller wouldn’t be satisfied with his answer. An ordinary person would have said, ‘You are mistaken, this is so-and-so’s residence.’ Sunlight came through the windows slowly, like something liquid pouring between the red curtains on to the rug. The sunlight was like an arpeggio that Tom could almost hear – this time Chopin, perhaps. Tom realized that he was afraid to ring Reeves in Amsterdam and ask what was happening. The call hadn’t sounded like a long-distance call, but it wasn’t always possible to tell. It could have come from Paris. Or Amsterdam. Or Milan. Tom had an unlisted number. The operator wouldn’t give his name or address, but from the exchange – 424 – it would be easy for the man who had the number to find the district, if he cared to. It was part of the Fontainebleau area. Tom knew it wouldn’t be impossible for the Mafia to find out that Tom Ripley lived in this area, in Villeperce even, because the Derwatt affair had been in the newspapers, Tom’s photograph also, just six months ago. Much depended, of course, on the second bodyguard, alive and uninjured, who had walked the train in search of his capo and his colleague. This one might remember Tom’s face from the restaurant car.

  Tom was again on the Goldberg variation base when the telephone rang a second time. Ten minutes had passed, he thought, since the first call. This time he was going to say it was the house of Robert Wilson. There was no concealing his American accent.

  ‘Ota,’ Tom said in a bored tone.

  ‘Hello—’

  ‘Yes. Hello,’ Tom said, recognizing Jonathan Trevanny’s voice.

  ‘I’d like to see you,’ Jonathan said, ‘if you’ve got some tame.’

  ‘Yes, of course. – Today?’

  ‘If you could, yes. I can’t – I don’t want to make it around the lunch hour, if you don’t mind. Later today?’

  ‘Sevenish?’

  ‘Even six-thirty. Can you come to Fontainebleau?’

  Tom agreed to meet Jonathan at the Salamandre Bar. Tom could guess what it was about: Jonathan couldn’t explain the money properly to his wife. Jonathan sounded worried, but not desperate.

  At 6 p.m., Tom took the Renault, because Heloise was not back with the Alfa. Heloise had telephoned to say she was going to have cocktails with Noëlle, and might also have dinner with her. And she had bought a beautiful suitcase at Hermès, because it had been on sale. Heloise thought that the more she bought at sales, the more she was being economical, and positively virtuous.

  Tom found Jonathan already in the Salamandre, standing at the counter drinking dark beer – probably good old Whitbread’s ale, Tom thought. The place was unusually busy and noisy this evening, and Tom supposed it would be all right to talk at the counter. Tom nodded and smiled in greeting, and ordered the same dark beer for himself.

  Jonathan told him what had happened. Simone had seen the Swiss bankbook. Jonathan had told her it was an advance from the German doctors, and that he was running a risk in taking their drugs, and that this was a kind of payment for his life.

  ‘But she doesn’t really believe me.’ Jonathan smiled. ‘She’s even suggested I impersonated somebody in Germany to get an inheritance for a gang of crooks – something like that – and that this is my cut. Or that I’ve borne false witness for something.’ Jonathan gave a laugh. He actually had to shout to be heard, but he was sure no one was listening in the vicinity, or could understand if they did. Three barmen were working frantically behind the counter, pouring Pernods and red wine and drawing glasses of lager from the tap.

  ‘I can understand,’ Tom said, glancing at the noisy fray around him. He was still concerned about the telephone call he had got that morning, which hadn’t been repeated in the afternoon. He had even looked around Belle Ombre and Villeperce, as he drove out at 6 p.m., for any strange figures on the streets. It was odd how one finally knew everybody in the village, by their figures, even at a distance, so that a newcomer at once c
aught the eye. Tom had even been afraid, a little, when he started the motor of the Renault. Fixing dynamite to the ignition was a favourite Mafia prank. ‘We’ll have to think !’ Tom shouted, earnestly.

  Jonathan nodded and quaffed his beer. ‘Funny she’s suggested nearly everything I might’ve done short of murder!’

  Tom put his foot on the rail and tried to think in all the din. He looked at a pocket of Jonathan’s old corduroy jacket where a rip had been neatly mended, no doubt by Simone. Tom said in sudden desperation, ‘I wonder what’s the matter with telling her the truth? After all, these Mafiosi, these morpions —’

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘I’ve thought of that. Simone – she’s a Catholic. That —’ Being regularly on the pill was a kind of concession for Simone to have made. Jonathan saw the Catholic retreat as a slow one: they didn’t want to be seen to be routed, even if they gave in here and there. Georges was being raised as a Catholic, inevitable in this country, but Jonathan tried to make Georges see that it wasn’t the only religion in the world, tried to make him understand that he would be free to make his own choice when he grew a little older, and his efforts had so far not been opposed by Simone. ‘It’s so different for her,’ Jonathan shouted, now getting used to the noise and almost liking its protective wall. ‘It’d be really a shock – something she couldn’t forgive, you know. Human life and all that.’

  ‘Human! Ha-ha!’

  ‘The thing is,’ Jonathan said, serious again, ‘it’s almost like my whole marriage. I mean, as if my marriage itself was at stake.’ He looked at Tom, who was trying to follow him. ‘What a hell of a place to talk about something serious!’ Jonathan began again with determination, ‘Things are not the same between us, to put it mildly. And I don’t see how they’re going to get any better. I was simply hoping you might have an idea – as to what I should do or say. On the other hand, I don’t know why you should. It’s my problem.’

  Tom was thinking they might find a quieter place, or sit in his car. But would he be able to think any better in a quieter place? ‘I will try to get an idea!’ Tom yelled. Why did everyone – even Jonathan – suppose that he could come up with an idea for them? Tom often thought he had a hard enough time trying to steer a course for himself. His own welfare often required ideas, those inspirations that came sometimes while he was under the shower, or gardening, those gifts of the gods that were presented only after his own anxious pondering. A single person hadn’t the mental equipment to take on the problems of another and maintain the same degree of excellence, Tom thought. Then Tom reflected that his own welfare was tied up with Jonathan’s after all, and if Jonathan cracked up – but Tom couldn’t imagine Jonathan saying to anyone that Tom had been on the train with him, helping him. There shouldn’t be any need to say that, and Jonathan as a matter of principle wouldn’t. How does one suddenly acquire about ninety-two thousand dollars? That was the problem. It was the question Simone was asking Jonathan.

  ‘If we could only make a double-barrelled thing out of it,’ Tom said finally.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something added to the sum the doctors might have paid you. – How about a bet? One doctor has bet another in Germany, and they’ve both deposited the money with you, a sort of trust fund – I mean it’s in trust with you. That could account for – let’s say fifty thousand dollars of it, more than half. Or are you thinking in francs? Um-m — more than two hundred and fifty thousand francs, perhaps.’

  Jonathan smiled. The idea was amusing, but rather wild. ‘Another beer?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tom, and lit a Gauloise. ‘Look. You might say to Simone that – that because the bet seemed so frivolous, or ruthless or whatever, you hadn’t wanted to tell her, but there’s a bet on your life. One doctor has bet that you’ll live – a full life span, for instance. That would leave you and Simone with a little more than two hundred thousand francs of your own – which by the way I hope you’ve already begun to enjoy!’

  Tock! Tock! A hectic barman set down Tom’s fresh glass and bottle. Jonathan was already on his second.

  ‘We’ve bought a sofa – much needed,’ Jonathan said. ‘We could treat ourselves to a telly too. Your idea is better than nothing. Thank you.’

  A stocky man of about sixty greeted Jonathan with a brief handshake and walked on towards the back of the bar with no glance at Tom. Tom stared at two blonde girls who were being chatted up by a trio of boys in bell-bottom trousers standing by their table. A roly-poly old dog with skinny legs looked miserably up at Tom as he waited on his leash for his master to finish his petit rouge.

  ‘Heard from Reeves lately?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Lately – not in about a month, I think.’

  Then Jonathan didn’t know about Reeves’ flat being bombed, and Tom saw no reason to tell him. It would only shake his morale.

  ‘Have you? Is he all right?’

  Tom said casually, ‘I really don’t know,’ as if Reeves was not in the habit of writing or telephoning. Tom felt suddenly ill-at-ease, as if eyes were on him. ‘Let’s take off, shall we?’ He beckoned to the barman to take his two ten-franc notes, though Jonathan had pulled out his money also. ‘My car’s outside to the right.’

  On the pavement, Jonathan began awkwardly, ‘You feel you’re all right yourself? Nothing to worry about?’

  Now they were beside his car. ‘I’m the worrying type. You’d never think so, would you? I try to think of the worst before it happens. Not quite the same as being pessimistic’ Tom smiled. ‘You going home? I’ll drop you off.’

  Jonathan got into the car.

  When Tom got in and closed the door, he at once had a sense of privacy, as if they were in a room in his own house. And how long would his house be safe? Tom had an unpleasant vision of the ubiquitous Mafia, like black cockroaches darting everywhere, coming from everywhere. If he fled his house, getting Heloise and Mme Annette out before him or with him, the Mafia might simply set fire to Belle Ombre. Tom thought of the harpsichord burning, or going up in pieces from a bomb. Tom admitted that he had a love of house and home usually found only in women.

  ‘I’m in more danger than you, if that bodyguard, the second one, can identity my face. I’ve had a few pictures in the newspapers, that’s the trouble,’ Tom said.

  Jonathan knew. ‘I apologize for asking to see you today. I’m afraid I’m awfully worried about my wife. It’s because – how we get along is the most important thing in my life. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to deceive her about anything, you see. And I’ve rather failed – so it’s shattering to me. But – you were a help. Thanks.’

  ‘Yes. It’s all right this time,’ Tom said pleasantly. He meant their seeing each other this evening. ‘But it occurs to me —’ Tom opened the glove compartment, and took out the Italian gun. ‘I think you ought to have this handy. In your shop, for instance.’

  ‘Really? – To tell you the truth, I’m afraid I’d be hopeless in a shoot-out.’

  It’s better than nothing. If someone comes into your shop who looks odd — Haven’t you got a drawer just behind your counter?’

  A tingle went up Jonathan’s spine, because he’d had a dream a few nights ago of exactly that: a Mafia gunman coming into his shop and shooting him point-blank in the face. ‘But why do you think I’ll need it? There’s some reason, isn’t there?’

  Suddenly Tom thought, why not tell Jonathan? It might inspire him to more caution. At the same time Tom knew that caution wasn’t of much help. It also occurred to Tom that Jonathan would be safer if he took his wife and child away on a trip for a while. ‘Yes, I had a telephone call today that bothered me. A man who sounded French, but that doesn’t mean anything. He asked for some French name. It may not mean anything and yet I can’t be sure. Because as soon as I open my mouth, I sound like an American, and he may have been verifying —’ Tom trailed off. ‘To fill you in further, Reeves’ place in Hamburg was bombed – 1 suppose it was around the middle of April.’

  ‘His fla
t. Good God! Was he injured?’

  ‘No one was in the place at the time. But Reeves went to Amsterdam in a hurry. He’s still there as far as I know, under another name.’

  Jonathan thought of Reeves’ flat being looked over for names and addresses, of his and maybe Tom Ripley’s also being found. ‘Then how much does the enemy know?’

  ‘Oh, Reeves says he has all his important papers under control. They got hold of Fritz – I suppose you know Fritz – and beat him up a bit, but according to Reeves, Fritz was heroic. He gave them an opposite description of you – you being the man Reeves hired, or somebody hired.’ Tom sighed. ‘I’m assuming they suspect Reeves and a few casino club men – only.’ He glanced at Jonathan’s wide eyes. Jonathan didn’t look so much frightened as jolted.

  ‘Good Christ!’ Jonathan whispered. ‘Do you suppose they got hold of my address – pr our addresses?’

  ‘No,’ Tom said, smiling, ‘or they’d have been here already, I can tell you that.’ Tom wanted to get home. He turned on the ignition and manoeuvred himself into the traffic of the Rue Grande.

  ‘Then – assuming the man who phoned you was one of them, how did he get your number?’

  ‘Now we enter the realm of guesswork,’ Tom said, getting his car into the clear at last. He was still smiling. Yes, it was dangerous, and this time he wasn’t getting a penny out of it, not even protecting his own money, which was what he had done at least in the Derwatt near-fiasco. ‘Maybe because Reeves was stupid enough to ring me from Amsterdam. I’m toying with the possibility that the Mafia boys might’ve traced him to Amsterdam, because for one thing he’s having his housekeeper send his possessions there. Pretty stupid move, so soon,’ Tom said as if in parentheses. ‘I’m wondering, you see, if – even if Reeves got out of his Amsterdam hotel, the Mafia boys didn’t check on the phone calls he made. In which case my number might be there. By the way, he didn’t ring you, I trust, when he was in Amsterdam. You’re sure?’

  ‘The last call I had was from Hamburg, I know.’ Jonathan remembered Reeves’ cheerful voice, telling him his money, all of it, would be deposited at once in the Swiss bank. Jonathan was worried about the bulge of the gun in his pocket. ‘Sorry, but I’d better go to my shop first to get rid of this gun. Drop me anywhere here.’