Deep Water

by Patricia Highsmith

  "Oh, I don't think I'd care for that," Melinda said, with a cool smile.

  "This summer's gone by without a real vacation for either of us," he said.

  "Let it go by. I'm sick of it."

  "The winter's going to be even more boring—without a break somewhere," he said.

  "Oh, I don't think it's going to be boring," she said. He smiled. "Is that a threat?"

  "Take it the way you like."

  "Are you going to put arsenic in my food?"

  "I don't think arsenic could kill you."

  It was a charming evening. Before they went home Vic stopped at Wesley's biggest drugstore to look over the book rack. He bought a couple of Penguin books, one on insects, the other on the installation of stained glass in church windows. Melinda went into a phone booth and made a very long call to someone Vic could hear the murmur of her voice, but he made no effort to hear what she was saying.

  Chapter 13

  Trixie entered the Highland School on September 7 and was put into the third grade because she could read so well. Vic was very proud of her. The school called him and Melinda in to discuss the matter of putting her into the third grade: she would need some extra help in arithmetic, geography, and probably also penmanship, and the school wanted to know if they could count on her parents to tutor her a bit at home. Vic said that he would be happy to tutor her and that he had plenty of time for it. Even Melinda gave an affirmative answer. So it was settled. As a surprise present and a reward, Vic gave Trixie the bookcase he had made, and filled its upper two shelves with new books for her, putting her old favorites in the two lower shelves. He was to tutor her two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday, come hell or high water, he told her, and she seemed to be fairly impressed. The tutoring began at the end of her first week in school. Half an hour of arithmetic, half an hour of penmanship on the living room cocktail table, then a fifteen-minute break and an hour of geography, which was not quite such a mental strain on Trixie because Vic could make geography very funny.

  Vic very much enjoyed tutoring Trixie. He had been looking forward to it for years, to helping her first with arithmetic and algebra and geometry, then perhaps trig and calculus. It had always seemed the essence of parenthood and domesticity, the older generation passing down the wisdom of the race to the offspring, as birds taught their young to fly. And yet the tutoring brought into focus certain uncomfortable facts, made him realize more acutely that he was leading two lives and that the friendships he now enjoyed with Horace and Phil, for instance, existed because they did not know the truth about him. He felt more guilt about that than he had felt for killing De Lisle.

  He thought about such things as he watched Trixie's plump, uncomfortable hand trying to make a row of 'b''s, or 'q''s or 'g''s. "Aye bee see dee ee eff 'gee-ee', aitch eye jay kay ellemeno 'pee-ee'," Trixie chanted periodically to rest from the penmanship labors, because she had known the alphabet for years. Vic tried to answer the question he had not been able to answer for the past four or five years:

  where were things going with Melinda and where did he want them to go? He wanted her to himself, but she was not attractive to him as a woman; that he realized, too. Neither was she repellent. He simply felt that he could get along without her, or any other woman, physically, for the rest of his life. And had he known that before he killed De Lisle? He couldn't answer that, he couldn't remember. De Lisle's murder was like a caesura in his experience, and it was strangely hard to remember, emotionally, before that time. He remembered a knot, a dark, hard knot of repressions and resentments in himself, and it was as if his murdering De Lisle had untied the knot. He was more relaxed now and, to be perfectly honest, happier. He couldn't see himself as a criminal, a psychopath. It was, indeed, much as he had foreseen the evening he had made the shocking statement to Joel Nash. He had indulged in a fantasy that night of having killed McRae himself, assuming that McRae had provoked him sufficiently, and Vic remembered that he had started to 'feel' better immediately. A discharge of repressed hatred, perhaps that was a better metaphor than the untying of a knot. But just what had pushed him across the line from fantasy to fact that night in the Cowans' swimming pool? And would it happen again under the right circumstances? He hoped not. Obviously, it was better to let off steam here and there rather than let it build up to explosive proportions. He smiled at the simple logic of it. He could imagine many things, but he could not imagine himself very angry, as most people became angry, raising their voices and banging their fists on tables. But perhaps he should set himself to try.

  "Get some corners on those 'r''s," Vic said to Trixie. "You're making a string of croquet wickets."

  Trixie giggled, her concentration running out. "Let's play croquet!"

  "After you get through the 'r''s."

  Phil and Horace could never exactly condone his murder of De Lisle, Vic thought, so he was doomed to hypocrisy. But he could not keep himself from taking some comfort in the thought that Phil or Horace or any other man might have killed him, too, under similar circumstances. They simply wouldn't have done it in a swimming pool, probably. They might have chosen De Lisle's house, one afternoon when their wife was there. And perhaps they, too, might have felt better afterward—perhaps. The whole house reflected Vic's happier state of mind. He had repainted the garage in a cheerful yellow, set out a little maple tree in one of the hydrangea holes and filled in the other hole and seeded it. The living room looked as if happy people lived in it now, even if happy people didn't. He thought he had lost at least fifteen pounds—he had an aversion to weighing himself—and he hardly ever took a drink any more. He whistled more often. Or did he whistle just to annoy Melinda, just because she generally asked him to stop?

  Melinda drove up in her car while Vic and Trixie were playing a rather unorthodox game of croquet on the lawn. There was a man with her, a man Vic had never seen before. Vic calmly bent over and finished his shot—a fifteen-foot shot over convex ground that bumped Trixie's ball lightly and left his sitting where hers had been, directly in front of the wicket. Trixie let out a wail and jumped up and down and stamped, letting off steam as if she had a big stake in the game, though Trixie's sole objective in croquet seemed to be to knock the ball as far as possible. Vic turned toward the driveway as Melinda and the man approached. He was a tall, broad-shouldered blond man of about thirty-two, in tweed jacket and slacks. His serious face smiled a little as he neared Vic.

  "Vic, this is Mr. Carpenter," Melinda said. "Mr. Carpenter, my husband."

  "How do you do?" Vic said, extending his hand.

  "How do you do?" Mr. Carpenter said, with a firm grip. "Your wife's just been showing me around the town. I'm looking for a place to live."

  "Oh. To rent or to buy?" Vic asked.

  "To rent," he replied.

  "Mr. Carpenter's a psychotherapist," Melinda said."He's going to be working at Kennington for a few months. I found him asking questions in the drugstore, so I thought I'd give him a tour of the town. None of the real estate places are open on Sunday around here."

  That gave Vic his first suspicion. Melinda was explaining a little too carefully. Mr. Carpenter's eyes were lingering on him with just a little too much interest, even for a psychotherapist. "Did you tell him about the Derby place?" Vic asked.

  "Showed it to him," Melinda said. "That's a little too barnlike. He wants more of something like Charley had, maybe in the woods, but comfortable."

  "Well, it's a good time of the year to be looking. Summer people giving up their houses. What about Charley's place?" Vic asked, going her one better. "Wouldn't that be free now?"

  Mr. Carpenter was looking at Melinda, and there was nothing about his expression that would have betrayed that he had ever heard of Charley.

  "Y-yes," Melinda said thoughtfully. "We might ask about that.

  The owners should be in today, too." She glanced toward the house, as if the telephone had crossed her mind.

  But she wasn't going to telephone the owners just now, Vic knew
, and probably not tomorrow either. "Wouldn't you care to come in, Mr. Carpenter?" Vic asked. "Or are you in a hurry?" Mr. Carpenter indicated with a smile and a little bow that he would be happy to come in. They all walked toward the house,

  Trixie trailing them and staring at the newcomer.

  "What do you think of Kennington?" Vic asked as they went into the house. Kennington was a psychiatric institute outside of Wesley, with about a hundred in- and out-patients. It was famous for its small, distinguished staff and for its homelike atmosphere. The long, low white building sat on a green hill and looked like a well-kept country home.

  "Well, I only got there yesterday," Mr. Carpenter said pleasantly. "The people are very nice. I expected that. I'm sure I'll enjoy my work."

  Vic did not think he should ask him exactly what he would be doing. That would show too much curiosity.

  "Would you care for a drink?" Melinda asked. "Or some coffee?"

  "Oh, no, thank you. I'll just have a cigarette. Then I ought to be getting back to my car."

  "Oh, yes. He left his car in front of the drugstore, unlocked," Melinda said, smiling. "He's afraid somebody's going to steal it." "Not much of that around here," Vic said genially.

  "Certainly isn't like New York," Mr. Carpenter agreed, looking around the room as he spoke.

  Vic was looking at his loose tweed jacket, wondering if the bulge under his arm could be a gun in a shoulder holster, or if it was a bulge at all. It might have been just a fold in the cloth. His heavy features wore a half-bored expression now that was deliberate, Vic felt. There was a certain veneer of the scholar about him, but only a veneer. He had the face of a man of action. Vic filled his pipe. He had a great taste for his pipe lately.

  "Where're you staying now?" Vic asked.

  "At the Ardmore in Wesley," Mr. Carpenter replied.

  "Oh, you'll love it here once you get settled," Melinda put in with animation. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, smoking a cigarette. "The mornings are so cool and fresh around here. It's really a pleasure to get a car and drive along some of these roads at seven or eight in the morning."

  Vic couldn't think of a single morning when Melinda had been up and out at seven or eight.

  "I expect I'll like it," Mr. Carpenter said. "I'm sure getting myself settled won't be much of a problem."

  "My wife has a real genius for getting people settled," Vic said, with an affectionate smile at Melinda. "She really knows the houses and the countryside up here. Let her help you." Vic smiled directly at Mr. Carpenter.

  He nodded slowly at Vic, looking as if he were thinking of something else.

  "Trixie, go in the other room," Melinda said nervously to Trixie, who was sitting in the middle of the floor staring at all of them.

  "Well, she might be introduced first," Vic said, getting up. He pulled Trixie gently to her feet by both hands. "Trixie, this is Mr. Carpenter. My daughter, Beatrice," Vic said.

  "How do you do?" said Mr. Carpenter, smiling but not getting up.

  "How do you do?"Trixie said. "Daddy, Can't I stay?"

  "Not now, hon. Do as your mother says. You'll probably see Mr. Carpenter again. Run out and play and we'll finish our game n a little while." Vic opened the front door for her and she ran Mr. Carpenter was eyeing him sharply when Vic turned around.

  Vic smiled. "Might as well let the child get some air on a day like this-Oh, look." He picked up Trixie's copybook from the cocktail table. "Don't you think that's a pretty handsome page? Look at it compared to last week." He opened the book at an earlier page to show Melinda.

  Melinda tried to pretend interest, tried quite well. "It looks fine," she said.

  "I'm teaching my daughter calligraphy," Vic explained to Mr. Carpenter. "She's just started in school and they put her in a class beyond her age group." Vic turned over the pages of Trixie's copybook with a fond smile.

  Then Mr. Carpenter asked how old Trixie was, asked a question about the weather around Little Wesley, and then stood up. "I must be going. I'm afraid you'll have to drive me back," he added to Melinda.

  "Oh, I don't mind a bit! We might go by that-that place we were talking about in the woods."

  "Charley's place," Vic supplied.

  "Yes," Melinda said.

  "Well, you must come back again," Vic said to Mr. Carpenter. "I hope you enjoy your stay. Kennington's a fine place. We're very proud of it."

  "Thank you," Mr. Carpenter said.

  Vic watched them until Melinda drove off, and then he turned back to the croquet game. Trixie had banged the balls all over the lawn. "Now, where were we?" he asked.

  As he played, and gave Trixie pointers that were usually not followed, Vic thought about Mr. Carpenter. It would be much more fun not to let Melinda know he suspected anything, Vic thought. Then there was the possibility that he could be wrong, that Mr. Carpenter was a psychotherapist and nothing else. But would a psychotherapist get into a car with a strange woman and be driven around in search of a house to rent? Well, that was barely possible, too, he supposed. But Mr. Carpenter was not Melinda's type for a boyfriend, that was one thing he felt sure of. He had an unmistakable air of being serious about something, whatever it might be, the look of a man who didn't let himself be distracted. Still, he was quite handsome. A detective agency might well have chosen him for a job like this. For the second time Vic tried to remember if he had seen Mr. Carpenter anywhere on the streets of Little Wesley or Wesley. He didn't think he had.

  Melinda was back in a very short time, not long enough for her to have gone by Charley's house. She went into the house without saying anything to him. When Vic had finished the game with Trixie, he went into the house, too. Melinda was washing her hair in the bathroom basin. The bathroom door was open.

  Vic took the 'World Almanac' down from the bookcase and sat down with it. He read about the antidotes for arsenic poisoning. She came out of the bathroom, went into her own room, and Vic called:

  "Did you get Mr. Carpenter back all right?"

  "Um-hm."

  "Show him Charley's place?"

  "Nope."

  "He seems a nice fellow."

  Melinda came in in her robe, barefoot, a towel around her head."Um-hm, I think he is. He's got a lot of brains. The kind of man you'd like to talk to, I should think." There was the old nagging challenge in her tone.

  Vic smiled. "`Well, let's see more of him—if he's got any time for us."

  On Monday, Vic called Kennington Institute from his office. Yes, they had a Mr. Carpenter there. Mr. Harold Carpenter. He was not always at the Institute the woman on the telephone said, but she could take a message. "Is this in regard to a house?" she asked.

  "Yes, but I'll try again," Vic said. "I haven't found anything yet for him, but I wanted to keep in touch. Thank you." He hung up before she could finish her question of what real estate company he represented.

  Chapter 14

  They were playing it very carefully, Mr. Carpenter and Melinda, Vic thought, if Mr. Carpenter was a detective. Even after a week Vic wasn't quite sure, and he had seen Mr. Carpenter two or three more times. Once he had come to the house for cocktails and once Melinda had asked him to drop in at the Mellers', who had given a cocktail party with about eight guests. Here Mr. Carpenter met the Cowans and the MacPhersons but not the Wilsons, because the Mellers—like the Cowans—had crossed the Wilsons off their list. Horace talked for a while with Mr. Carpenter at the party, and later that evening Vic asked Horace what they had talked about. Horace said they had talked about brain injuries, and asked where they had met him. Vic told Horace what Melinda had told him about their meeting. In fact, there was only one thing interesting about the evening at the Mellers'. Vic noticed that Melinda paid more than necessary attention to Harold Carpenter. Vic thought it was deliberate, and for the benefit of their friends as well as of himself. He smiled at both of them, with a benign good humor. What did they expect to do? Provoke him to another murderous attack? Was this the first small, calculated step?

&n
bsp; After about ten days Harold Carpenter began to come to the house quite often. He had taken Charley De Lisle's former house after all—which had not really surprised Vic, because the house made a good conversation piece: Harold could ask all kinds of questions about the deceased Charley, ask not only Vic but all of Vic's friends as well. "Where are you staying?" was a question nearly everybody would put to a newcomer like Carpenter, and then Carpenter was launched. Vic supposed that within three weeks Carpenter had heard at least ten people's versions of the evening Charley had drowned. He must have done it very subtly, too, because neither Horace nor Phil came to him to tell him that he had been interrogated by Carpenter.

  "Have you met Don Wilson?" Vic asked Carpenter one Saturday afternoon when he had dropped in to borrow Vic's hedge shears.

  "No," Carpenter replied a little wonderingly.