Ripley Under Water (15 page)

Both cafes had indoor and outdoor tables, one with a terrace on the ocean side. They chose that one and sat at a white metal table.

“A beautiful sky!” said Tom. It was indeed impressive, something to remember, a great dome of cloudless blue, without even an airplane or a bird at the moment, only silence, and a feeling of timelessness. After all, he thought, had the camels changed over the thousands of years when, far back in time, their passengers had no cameras?

They ate tidbits for lunch, a favorite kind of meal for Heloise. Tomato juice, Perrier, olives, radishes, little pieces of fried fish. Under the table, Tom looked at his wristwatch. Nearly 2 p.m.

The ladies were talking about a camel ride. Noelle’s slender face, her narrow nose, had already become suntanned. Or was it protective makeup? And how long would Noelle and Heloise be staying in Tangier?

“Maybe three more days?” Noelle asked, looking at Heloise .

“I have some friends here. There’s the Golf Club, nice for lunch. I reached only one friend this morning.”

“You will be in touch, Tome?” asked Heloise . “You took the Rembrandt telephone number.”

“Of course, darling.”

“What a shame,” said Noelle with vehemence, “that these barbare types like Preetchard can spoil one’s vacation!”

“Oh—” Tom gave a shrug. “He didn’t spoil it. And I have some business to take care of at home. And elsewhere.” Tom didn’t feel that he was being vague, although he was. Noelle wasn’t in the least interested in the details of his activities, of how he made his living. Noelle lived on family income, plus something from a former husband, Tom vaguely recalled.

Their snack over, they drifted toward the camels, but first petted “baby donkey,” whose presence was announced in English by its owner, a sandaled man in charge of mother donkey. Baby donkey with fuzzy coat and ears kept very close to the side of mother donkey.

“Picture? Photo?” asked the owner of both. “Baby donkey.”

Noelle had a camera in her capacious reticule. She pulled it out and gave the donkey owner a ten-dirham note. “Put your hand on baby donkey’s head,” Noelle said to Heloise . Click! Heloise was grinning. “You, Tome!”

“No.” Or maybe yes. Tom took a step toward mother and baby donkey and Heloise , then shook his head. “No, I’ll take one of you two.”

Tom did. Then he left the women talking in French to the camel driver. He had to get a taxi back to Tangier, to collect his luggage, which he could have brought, but he wanted to return to the Rembrandt to see if Pritchard had snooped them out there. They’d told the Minzah that they were going on to Casablanca.

Tom had to wait for a taxi. Several minutes before, he had asked the cafe barman if he could telephone somewhere for one, and the barman had done this. Meanwhile, Tom paced the terrace floor, making himself walk slowly.

A taxi arrived with people intending to get out here. Tom got into the taxi and said, “To the Hotel Rembrandt, Boulevard Pasteur, s’il vous plait.”

They tore off.

Tom had not looked back at the camels, not wanting to see Heloise perhaps being tossed from side to side as the camel got to his or her feet. Tom didn’t want to think about looking down from a camel’s back to the distant sand, though Heloise would probably be smiling broadly and looking in all directions as she rode. And she’d make it to the ground later with no bones broken. Tom closed the window except for a quarter-inch, as the speed of the taxi made the air whip in.

Had he ever been on a camel? Tom wasn’t quite sure, even though the discomfort of being lifted up high seemed so real, so within his memory, that he felt it had happened. He would hate it. It would be something like looking down at a swimming pool while standing on a diving board five or six meters above the surface of the water. Jump! Why should he? Had anybody ever commanded him to jump? At summer camp? Tom wasn’t sure. Sometimes his imagination was as clear as a remembered experience. And some remembered experiences faded, he supposed, such as that of killing Dickie, Murchison, even the couple of well-fed Mafia members around whose throats he had pulled a garrote. The latter two alleged humans, as Doonesbury would say, had meant nothing to him, except that he particularly detested the Mafia. Had he really killed those two on the train? Was his unconscious mind shielding the conscious by making him feel that he might not have killed them? Or not quite? But of course he’d read about the two corpses in the papers. Or had he? Naturally, he wouldn’t have cut the item out to keep in the house! There was indeed a screen between fact and memory, Tom realized, though he could not have given it a name. He could, of course, he thought a few seconds later, and it was self-preservation.

Now again the dusty, busy, populated streets and four-story edifices of Tangier took form all around, and he glimpsed the redbrick tower of the San Francisco, looking somewhat like that of the Piazza San Marco in Venice, despite its Arabic designs in white brick. Tom sat on the edge of his seat. “It’s very near,” he said in French, because the driver was going fast.

At last a left swerve to the other side of Pasteur, and Tom was out, paying the driver off.

He had left his luggage in the care of the concierge downstairs. “Any messages for Ripley?” he asked at the desk.

There was none.

That pleased Tom. He had only one small suitcase and an attache case. “Now I’ll need a taxi, please,” Tom said. “To the airport.”

“Yes, sir.” The man raised a finger and said something to a bellhop.

“No one came in to ask for me? Even someone who didn’t leave a message?” asked Tom.

“No, m’sieur. I do not think so,” said the desk man, earnestly.

Tom entered the taxi that had arrived. “L’aeroport, s’il vous plait.”

They headed south, and once they had left the city, Tom sat back and lit a cigarette. How long would Heloise want to stay in Morocco? Would Noelle persuade her to go on somewhere else? Egypt? Tom couldn’t see Egypt, but he could see Noelle wanting to linger in Morocco. That suited Tom perfectly, because he sensed some danger ahead, maybe violence, and around Belle Ombre. He must try to steer the odious Pritchards away from Villeperce, Tom thought, because as an outsider—worse, an American—he did not want to bring trouble and disturbance upon that quiet little town.

On the Air France plane, the atmosphere was French, and Tom, having a first-class ticket, accepted a glass of champagne (not his favorite wine) as he watched the coastline of Tangier and Africa recede from his vision. If any coastline contour could be called unique, a popular and abused word in travel brochures, it was the two-pronged port of Tangier. Tom wanted to come back one day. He picked up his knife and fork for his dinner, just as the Spanish land mass also faded and yielded to the usual oyster whiteness and boredom-from-the-window which was the fate of airplane travelers. There was a new (to Tom) issue of Le Point ready for him, and Tom intended to look at it after his meal, then deliberately snooze until landing.

Tom wanted to ring Agnes Grais to ask how things were, so this he did from the airport, after claiming his suitcase. Agnes was at home.

“I’m at de Gaulle,” Tom said in answer to her question. “I decided to come home early … Yes, Heloise is staying on with her friend Noelle. Is everything all right on the home front?” he went on in French.

Tom was told that it was as far as Agnes knew. “You are coming home by train? Let me pick you up at Fontainebleau. Doesn’t matter how late … But of course, Tome!”

Agnes consulted a timetable. She would pick him up just after midnight. It would be a pleasure, she assured Tom.

“One more thing, Agnes. Can you ring Madame Annette now and tell her I’ll be coming home by myself tonight? So that I don’t frighten her when I use my key?”

Agnes said she would.

Tom felt much better then. He did similar favors for the Grais sometimes, and for their children. It was part of life in the country, part of the satisfaction, helping neighbors. The other part, of course, was the hassle of getting from the country to anywhere, or back, such as now. Tom took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon, then the train, on which he bought the ticket from the conductor, choosing to pay a tiny fine rather than fool with the slot machines at the Gare. He could have taken a taxi all the way home, but he was wary of letting taxi drivers go all the way to Belle Ombre’s gates. It was like letting a potential enemy know exactly where you lived. Tom recognized this fear in himself, and asked himself if he was becoming paranoid. But if a taxi driver turned out to be an enemy, it would be too late for academic questions.

At Fontainebleau, there was Agnes, smiling, good-humored as ever, and Tom answered her questions about Tangier as they drove toward Villeperce. He did not mention the Pritchards, and was hoping Agnes might say something, anything, about Janice Pritchard, who lived a couple of hundred meters away from her, but Agnes did not.

“Madame Annette said she would wait up for you. Really, Tome, Madame Annette—”

Agnes could not find words for Mme Annette’s devotion, and just as well. Mme Annette had even opened the big gates.

“You are not sure, then, when Heloise is back?” asked Agnes as they rolled into Belle Ombre’s forecourt.

“No. That’s up to her. She needs a little vacation.” Tom got his case from the trunk and said goodnight to Agnes, with his thanks.

Mme Annette opened the front door. “Soyez le bienvenu, M’sieur Tome!”

“Merci, Madame Annette! I am happy to be here.” He was happy to smell again the faint and familiar scent of rose petals and furniture polish, to hear Mme Annette asking if he were hungry. Tom assured her he was not, and that he wanted merely to go to bed. But first the mail?

“Ici, M’sieur Tome. Comme toujours.”

It was on the hall table, and not much of a stack, Tom saw.

“Madame Heloise , she is well?” Mme Annette asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes. With her friend Madame Noelle, you remember.”

“These tropical countries—” Mme Annette shook her head slightly. “A person must be very careful.”

Tom laughed. “Madame was riding a camel today.”

“Oooh, la!”

It was unfortunately rather late to ring Jeff Constant or Ed Banbury without being rude, but Tom did anyway, Ed first. It would be nearly midnight in London.

Ed answered, somewhat sleepily.

“Ed, my apologies for ringing so late. But it’s an important—” Tom moistened his lips. “I think I should come over to London.”

“Oh? What’s happening?” Ed had come awake.

“Anxieties,” Tom said with a sigh. “Better if I talk with—some people there, you know? Can you put me up? Or can Jeff? For a night or so?”

“I think very likely either of us could,” said Ed, his tense, clear voice sounding like his own now. “Jeff’s got a spare bed and so have I.”

“The first night at least,” Tom said, “till I see how things go. Thanks, Ed. Anything from Cynthia?”

“N-no.”

“No hints, no rumors anywhere?”

“No, Tom. You’re back in France? I thought you—“

“David Pritchard turned up in Tangier, believe it or not. Followed us there.”

“What?”

“He means us no good, Ed, and he’ll do his damnedest. His wife stayed at home—in my town. I’ll save the details for London and I’ll ring you again tomorrow, when I have my ticket. What’s a good time to get you?”

“Before ten-thirty my time,” Ed said. “Tomorrow morning. Where’s Pritchard now?”

“Tangier, as far as I know. At the moment. I’ll ring you tomorrow morning, Ed.”

Chapter 10

Tom was up before eight. He went down to have a look at the garden. The forsythia he had worried about had been watered, or at least it looked all right, and Henri had been here, Tom saw from some new deadheads of roses near the compost heap by the greenhouse. In two days, a disaster could hardly have happened, unless a hailstorm had hit.

“M’sieur Tome! Bonjour!” Mme Annette stood in one of the three French windows that opened on to the terrace.

No doubt his black coffee was ready, and Tom went at a trot back to the house.

“I had not expected you up so early, m’sieur,” said Mme Annette, after she had poured his first cup.

His tray was in the living room, with the filter pot.

“Nor I.” Tom sat on the sofa. “Now you must tell me the news. Sit down, madame.”

That was an unusual request. “M’sieur Tome, I have not yet gone to buy the bread!”

“Buy it from the man who honks his van!” Tom smiled. A bread truck honked from the road, and women in dressing-gowns went out to buy loaves. Tom had seen it.

“But he doesn’t stop here, because—”

“You are right, madame. But there will still be bread at the bakery this morning, if you speak with me for two minutes.” She preferred walking to the village for bread, because she met people she knew at the bakery, and they exchanged gossip.

“Has everything been quiet?” He knew such a question would make Mme Annette rack her brain for something unusual.

“M’sieur Henri was here once. Not for long, not an hour.”

“No more people photographing Belle Ombre?” Tom asked with a smile.

Mme Annette shook her head. Her hands were clasped just below her waistline. “No, m’sieur. But—my friend Yvonne told me that Madame—Pichard? The wife—”

“Pichard, something like that.”

“She is weeping—when she goes shopping. Tears! Can you imagine?”

“No,” said Tom. “Tears!”

“And her husband is not there now. He is gone.” Mme Annette said it as if he might have deserted his wife.

“Maybe he is away on a business trip. Has Madame Pichard made some friends in the village?”

Hesitation. “I don’t think so. She appears sad, m’sieur. May I prepare a soft-boiled egg for you, after I go to the bakery?”

Tom accepted that idea. He was hungry, and there was no keeping Mme Annette from the boulangerie.

Mme Annette turned on her way to the kitchen. “Ah, M’sieur Clegg telephoned. I believe yesterday.”

“Thank you. Any message?”

“No. Salutations, that is all.”

So Mme Preechard was weeping. Another dramatic show of some kind, Tom supposed, and perhaps only for her own entertainment. Tom stood up and walked to the kitchen. When Mme Annette came in from her quarters with her handbag and took the shopping bag from a hook, Tom said, “Madame Annette, please don’t say to anyone that I am home or was home. Because I think that I shall go away again today … Yes, alas, so don’t buy any extras for me! I shall tell you more later.”