Ripley Under Water (14 page)

Tom pulled on black cotton trousers. “Does Noelle like her room?”

“You washed your djellaba already?” Heloise called to him from the bathroom, where she was applying makeup.

“Dusty!” Tom replied.

“What are the stains? Grease?”

Had she spotted some that he’d missed? At that moment, Tom heard the wailing, high-pitched voice of the prayer-caller from a nearby tower. It could be taken as an alarm, Tom thought, a warning of worse to come, if he chose to think of it that way, which he didn’t. Grease? Could he get away with it?

“This looks like blood, Tome,” she said in French.

He advanced, buttoning his shirt. “Surely not much, my sweet. Yes, I cut my finger a little. Hit it on something.” That was true. He held out his right hand, palm down. “Tiny. But I didn’t want the stains to stay in.”

“Oh, they are feeble,” she said solemnly. “But how did you do that?”

Tom had realized in the taxi that he would have to explain a few things to Heloise, because he was going to suggest that they move by tomorrow noon, before tomorrow noon. He was even a little worried about staying here tonight. “Well, my dear—” He sought for words.

“You saw this—”

“Pritchard,” Tom supplied. “Yes. We had a little scuffle. Dustup—outside a teashop—a cafe. He so annoyed me that I hit him. Socked him. But I didn’t hurt him badly.” Heloise was waiting for more, as she so often had in the past. It was seldom that he and she were together like this, when something happened, and he was not used to sharing information with her—not any more than necessary, at any rate.

“Well, Tome—you found him somewhere?”

“He’s at a hotel near here. And his wife’s not with him, though he told me she was, when I saw him in the bar downstairs. I suppose she’s in Villeperce. Makes me wonder what she’s up to.” He was thinking of Belle Ombre. A female prowler was creepier than a male one, Tom felt. She’d be less likely to be challenged by other people, for one thing.

“But what is the matter with these Pree-shard?”

“My dear, I told you they’re cracked. Fous! It needn’t spoil your holiday. You’ve got Noelle. This creep wants to annoy me, not you, I’m sure of that.” Tom wet his lips, and walked to the bed to sit down and put on his socks and shoes. He wanted to get back to Belle Ombre to check on things, then to London. He tied his shoes rapidly.

“Where was the fight? About what?”

He shook his head, wordless.

“Is your finger still bleeding?”

Tom looked at it. “No.”

Heloise went into the bathroom, and returned with a Band-Aid, stripping it for application.

In a trice the little bandage was in place, and Tom felt better, at least as if he weren’t leaving a trail, the faintest pink smudge somewhere.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

Tom looked at his watch. “Don’t we have to meet Noelle downstairs?”

“Ye-es,” Heloise said calmly.

Tom put his wallet into his jacket pocket. “I came out the better in the fight today.” Tom pictured Pritchard “resting” this evening, when he got back to his hotel, but what he would do tomorrow was anybody’s guess. “But I think Mr. Pritchard is going to want to hit back. Maybe tomorrow. Best if you and Noelle change hotels. I don’t want any unpleasantnesses here for you.”

Heloise’s eyebrows trembled slightly. “Hit back how? And you want to stay here?”

“That’s what I don’t know yet. Let’s go down, darling.”

They had kept Noelle waiting five minutes, but she seemed in good humor. She looked as if she had come back to some place she liked, after a long absence. As they approached, she was chatting with the barman.

“Bon soir, Tome!” Noelle said, and continued in French. “What may I offer you as aperitif? This evening is mine.” Noelle tossed her head, and her straight hair stirred like a curtain. She wore large thin gold circles as earrings, an embroidered black jacket and black slacks. “Are you both warm enough for tonight? Yes,” said Noelle, checking like a mother hen to see if Heloise had a sweater in her hand.

Tom and Heloise had been forewarned: evenings in Tangier were decidedly cooler than the daytime.

Two Bloody Marys, one gin and tonic for the gentleman.

Heloise brought the matter up. “Tom thinks he may have to leave the hotel tomorrow—we might. You remember the man photographing our house, Noelle?”

Tom was pleased to realize that Heloise hadn’t mentioned Pritchard when she had been alone with Noelle. Noelle did indeed remember.

“He is here?” cried Noelle, really astonished.

“And still making trouble! Show your hand, Tome!”

Tom gave a laugh. Show his hand. “You will have to take my word for my wound,” Tom said solemnly, showing his Band-Aid.

“A fistfight!” said Heloise.

Noelle looked at Tom. “But why is he angry with you?”

“That is the question. He is like a prowler—willing to buy an airplane ticket, as most are not,” Tom replied in French, “to be nearer. Strange.”

Heloise told Noelle that Pritchard was here without his wife, at a hotel in the vicinity, and in case Pritchard intended to try some odd attack, it would be better if they all left the Minzah, because Pritchard knew that she and Tom were here.

“There are other hotels,” Tom said unnecessarily, but he was trying to sound more at ease than he felt. He found he was glad that Noelle and Heloise knew of his plight, or his present strain, even if Noelle didn’t know the reason for Murchison’s mysterious disappearance and the Derwatt business. Business. That had two meanings, Tom thought as he sipped his drink: industry, which it was, and phoniness, which by now half of it was. Tom with difficulty refocused his attention on the ladies. He was standing, as was Heloise, and only Noelle was perched on a stool.

They were talking about buying jewelry in the Grand Socco, both talking at the same time, though they no doubt managed, as ever, to make themselves perfectly clear to each other.

A man came in selling red roses, a street peddler judging from his garb. Noelle waved him away, still rapt in her conversation with Heloise. The barman escorted the man to the door.

Dinner at the Nautilus Plage. Noelle had made reservations. It was a terraced restaurant on the seacoast, busy but rather elegant, with plenty of room between the tables and lighted candles to read the menu by. Fish was the specialty. Only gradually did they return to the subject of tomorrow, the next hotel. Noelle was sure she could extricate them easily from their unwritten obligation to stay five days at the Minzah. She knew the Minzah people: the Minzah was fully booked, and she would just say there was someone coming whom she wished to avoid.

“Which is true, I believe?” she asked, arching her eyebrows at Tom, smiling.

“Quite,” said Tom. Noelle seemed to have forgotten her recent lover, Tom thought, the one who had depressed her.

Chapter 9

Tom was up early the next day, and his accidental awakening of Heloise before eight didn’t seem to bother her. “I’m going to have a coffee downstairs, my dear. What time did Noelle say she wanted to check out—ten?”

“Tennish,” said Heloise , eyes still closed. “I can do the packing, Tom. Where are you going?”

She knew he was going somewhere. But Tom didn’t know exactly where he was going. “On patrol,” he said. “Want me to order a continental for you? With orange juice?”

“I will—when I feel like it.” She snuggled into the pillow.

There was a nice, relaxed spouse, Tom thought, as he opened the door and blew a kiss back to her. “Back in about an hour.”

“Why are you taking your djellaba?”

Tom had it again in one hand, folded. “I dunno. To buy a hat to match?”

Downstairs, Tom spoke again with the desk, and reminded them that he and his wife were leaving that morning. Noelle had told them late last night, near midnight, but Tom thought it courteous to say a word now, as the staff had changed. Then he went to the men’s room, where a middle-aged American was shaving at a basin, or at least he looked American. Tom shook out his djellaba and put it on.

The American watched him in the mirror. “Don’t you guys trip on those things?” With battery razor in one hand, the American chuckled, and looked unsure of whether he’d been understood.

“Oh, sure,” Tom replied. “Then we make a bad joke, like—enjoy your trip?”

“Ha-ha!”

Tom waved and departed.

Once more the gentle slope downward of the Boulevard Pasteur, where shopkeepers had already set up pavement stalls, or were in the act of doing so. What were the men wearing in the way of headwear? Most wore nothing, Tom saw as he looked around. A couple had white cloths of some kind, resembling a barber’s hot towel more than a turban. Tom finally bought a straw hat with a wide brim, yellowish in color, for twenty dirhams.

Thus attired, Tom walked toward the Villa de France. En route, he stopped at the Cafe de Paris for an espresso and something like a croissant. Then onward.

He loitered for two or more minutes outside the entrance of the Grand Hotel Villa de France, hoping Pritchard might emerge, in which case Tom would pull his hat brim down in front and keep gazing. But Pritchard did not.

Tom entered the lobby, looked around, and went to the front desk. He tilted his hat back, like a tourist come in from the sun, and said in French, “Good morning. May I speak with M’sieur David Pritchard, please?”

“Preechard—” The clerk referred to a ledger, then dialed a number on a desk to Tom’s left.

Tom saw the clerk nodding, frowning. “Je suis desole, m’sieur,” he said, returning, “mais M’sieur Preechard ne veut pas etre derange.”

“Tell him I am Tom Ripley, please,” Tom said with urgency in his voice. “I am quite sure—it is very important.”

The clerk tried it again. “It is M’sieur Reepley, m’sieur. II dit—”

The clerk was interrupted by Pritchard, apparently, and after a moment came and told Tom that M. Preechard did not wish to speak with anyone.

Rounds one and two for Tom, Tom thought, as he thanked the clerk and walked away. Did Pritchard have a broken jaw? A tooth knocked loose? Pity it wasn’t a good deal worse.

Back to the Minzah now. He must change more money for Heloise when they paid and checked out. What a shame not to have seen more of Tangier! But then—Tom’s spirits rose and consequently his self-confidence—maybe he could get a late afternoon plane today to Paris. Must ring Mme Annette, he thought. Ring the airport first. Air France, if possible. Tom wanted to lure Pritchard back to Villeperce.

He bought a tightly bound bunch of jasmine from a pavement vendor. It had an interesting and authentic smell.

In their room, Tom found Heloise dressed and packing their suitcases.

“Your hat! I want to see it on.”

Tom had unconsciously removed his hat on entering the hotel, and now he put it on. “Don’t you think it’s too much like Mexico?”

“No-n, cheri, not with your dress,” said Heloise , surveying him quite seriously.

“What is the news from Noelle?”

“We go first to the Hotel Rembrandt, and then—Noelle has an idea of a taxi to Cap Spartel. We must see it, she says. Maybe have lunch there. Un snack. Not a big lunch.”

Tom remembered Cap Spartel on the map, a cape or promontory west of Tangier. “How long does it take to get there?”

“Noelle said no more than forty-five minutes. Camels, Noelle said. And a marvelous view. Tome—” Now Heloise’s eyes were suddenly sad.

She sensed that he might be leaving, Tom knew, and today. “I—well—I must ring the airlines, my sweet. I am thinking of Belle Ombre!” he added, like a knight before departure.

“But—I’ll try for a late plane this afternoon. I’d also like to see Cap Spartel.”

“Did—” Heloise dropped a folded blouse into her suitcase. “Did you see Preechaud this morning?”

Tom smiled. Heloise had infinite variations on that name. He thought of saying that the expletive-deleted had been in but had not wanted to see him, but finally said, “No. I just walked around, bought the hat, had a coffee.” He liked to keep certain little things back from Heloise, little things that could only disturb her.

By a quarter to noon, Noelle, Heloise and Tom were in a taxi heading westward toward Cap Spartel, across empty and dryish land. Tom had telephoned from the Hotel Rembrandt lobby, and with the aid and clout of the hotel manager got a reservation on an Air France plane leaving Tangier at 5:15 p.m. for Paris. The manager had assured Tom that the confirmed reservation would be at the Tangier airport on his arrival. Therefore Tom could turn his attention to the scenery, or so he felt. There had been no time to ring Mme Annette, but his unexpected appearance would not terrify her, and he had the house key on his ring.

“Now zees was very important—always,” said Noelle, beginning her speech on Cap Spartel, after Tom with difficulty had paid off the taxi over Noelle’s protestations. “The Romans were here—everyone was here,” she said in English, opening her arms.

Her leather handbag hung over one shoulder. Now she wore yellow cotton slacks and a loose jacket over her shirt. The steady breeze blew their clothing and their hair in an unvarying westerly direction, or so it seemed to Tom. It ballooned men’s shirts and trousers and at the same time was gentle. Two longish bar-cafes seemed the only structures in the area. The Cap stood high above the Strait, and the view was better than Tom had yet seen it, because the Atlantic spread widely to the west.

Smirking camels regarded them from a few yards away, two or three comfortably installed on the sand, with legs folded under them. A white-gowned attendant in a turban lingered near the camels, but seemed never to look at them. He was eating something like peanuts out of his hand.

“A ride now or after lunch?” asked Noelle in French. “Look! You see? I almost forgot!” She pointed to the coast, which curved magnificently on the western side, where Tom could see what looked like tan adobe ruins, the low remains of halls and rooms. “The Romans made fish oil here and sent it to Rome. The Romans once owned all this here.”

At that moment, Tom was looking at a hillside, where a man dismounted from a motorcycle and at once assumed a prayer position, head down, buttocks high, facing Mecca, no doubt.