Authors: Patricia Highsmith
Should he try to get a plane from Strassburg to Paris tonight, or stay at a hotel in Strassburg? Which was safer? And safer from what, the Mafia or the police? Wouldn’t some passenger, looking out the window, have seen one body, maybe two, falling beside the train? Or had the two bodies fallen too close to the tram to be seen? If anybody had seen anything, the train wouldn’t have stopped, but word could be radioed, Jonathan supposed. Jonathan was on the alert for a train guard in the aisle, for any sign of agitation, but he didn’t see any.
At that moment, having ordered Gulaschsuppe and a bottle of Carlsbad, Tom was looking at his newspaper which he had propped against a mustard pot, and nibbling a crisp roll. And he was amused by the anxious Italian who had waited patiently outside the occupied loo, until to the Italian’s surprise a woman had emerged. Now the bodyguard was for the second time peering down the dining-car through the two glass doors. And here he came, still trying to keep his cool, looking for his
capo
or his thug chum or both, walking the whole length of the car as if he might find Marcangelo sprawled under one of the tables or chatting with the chef at the other end of the car.
Tom had not lifted his eyes as the Italian came through, but Tom had felt his glance. Now Tom risked a look over his shoulder, such as a man who was expecting his food might give, and saw the bodyguard – a blondish, crinkly-haired type in a chalk-stripe suit, broad purple tie – talking with a waiter at the back of the car. The busy waiter was shaking his head and pushing past him with his tray. The bodyguard bustled down the aisle between the tables again and went out.
Tom’s paprika-red soup arrived with the beer. Tom was hungry, as he had had only a small breakfast in his Salzburg hotel – not the Goldener Hirsch this time, because the staff knew him there. Tom had flown to Salzburg instead of Munich, not wanting to encounter Reeves and Jonathan Trevanny at the railway station. He’d had time in Salzburg to buy a green leather jacket with green felt trim for Heloise, which he intended to hide away until her birthday in October. He had told Heloise he was going to Paris for one night, maybe two, to see some art exhibits, and since Tom did this now and then, staying at the Inter-Continental or the Ritz or the Pont Royal, Heloise had not been surprised. Tom in fact varied his hotels, so that if he told Heloise he was in Paris when he wasn’t, she wouldn’t be alarmed at not finding him at, say, the Inter-Continental, if she telephoned. He had also bought his ticket at Orly, instead of at the travel agencies at Fontainebleau or Moret where he was known, and he had used his false passport provided by Reeves last year: Robert Fiedler Mackay, American, engineer, born in Salt Lake City, no wife. It had occurred to Tom that the Mafia could get the passenger list of the train with a bit of effort. Was he on the Mafia’s list of interesting people? Tom hesitated to attribute such an honour to himself, but some of Marcangelo’s family might have noticed his name in the newspapers. Not recruitable material, not promising as extortion victim either, but still a man on the borderline of the law.
But this Mafia bodyguard, or button man, hadn’t given Tom as long a look as he’d given a husky young man in a leather jacket across the aisle from Tom. Perhaps all was well.
Jonathan Trevanny would need some reassuring. Trevanny no doubt thought he wanted money, that he was intending to blackmail him somehow. Tom had to laugh a little (but he was still looking at his newspaper and might have been reading Art Buchwald) at the memory of Trevanny’s face when Tom had walked on to the platform, and at that funny moment when Trevanny had realized that he meant to help him. Tom had done some
thinking in Villeperce, and decided to lend a hand with the nasty garrotting, so that Jonathan could at least collect the money that had been promised. Tom was vaguely ashamed of himself, in fact, for having got Jonathan into it, and so coming to Jonathan’s aid relieved a bit of Tom’s guilt. Yes, if all went well, Trevanny would be a lucky and much happier man, Tom was thinking, and Tom believed in positive thinking. Don’t hope,
think
the best, and things would work out for the best, Tom felt. He would have to see Trevanny again to explain a few things, and above all Trevanny should take full credit for the Marcangelo murder in order to collect the rest of the money from Reeves. He and Trevanny mustn’t be seen to be chummy, that was a vital point. They mustn’t
be
chummy, at all. (Tom wondered now what was happening to Trevanny, if the second bodyguard was cruising the whole train?) The dear old Mafia would try to track the killer down, the killers maybe. The Mafia often took years, but they never gave up. Even if the man they wanted fled to South America, the Mafia might get him, Tom knew. But it seemed to Tom that Reeves Minot was in more danger than either himself or Trevanny at the moment.
He’d try to ring Trevanny tomorrow morning in his shop. Or tomorrow afternoon, in case Trevanny didn’t make it to Paris tonight. Tom lit a Gauloise and glanced at the woman in the reddish tweed suit, whom he and Trevanny had seen on the platform, who was now dreamily eating a dainty salad of lettuce and cucumber. Tom felt euphoric.
When Jonathan got off at Strassburg, he imagined that there were more police than usual in evidence, six perhaps instead of the usual two or three. One police officer seemed to be examining a man’s papers. Or had the man simply asked a direction, and the cop was consulting a guidebook? Jonathan walked straight out of the station with his suitcase. He had decided to stay the night in Strassburg which, for no real reason, seemed a safer place than Paris tonight.
The remaining bodyguard was probably going on to Paris to join his friends – unless by some chance the bodyguard was at this moment tailing him, ready to plug him in the back. Jonathan felt a light sweat breaking out, and he was suddenly aware of being tired. He set his suitcase down on a kerb at a street intersection, and gazed around at unfamiliar buildings. The scene was busy with pedestrians and cars. It was 6.40 p.m., no doubt the Strassburg rush hour. Jonathan thought of registering under another name. If he wrote a false name plus a false card or identity number, no one would ask to see his real card. Then he realized that a false name would make him even more uneasy. Jonathan was becoming aware of what he had done. He suffered a brief nausea. Then he picked up his suitcase and trudged on. The gun weighed heavily in his overcoat pocket. He was afraid to drop it down a street drain, or into a rubbish bin. Jonathan saw himself getting all the way to Paris and into his own house with the little gun still in his pocket.
12
T
OM,
having left the green Renault station-wagon near the Porte d’ltalie in Paris, got home to Belle Ombre a little before 1 a.m. Saturday. There was no light visible at the front of the house, but when Tom climbed the stair?? with his suitcase, he was delighted to see that there was a light in Heloise’s room in the back left corner. He went in to see her.
‘Back finally! How was Paris? What did you do?’ Heloise was in green silk pyjamas with a pink satin eiderdown pulled up to her waist.
‘Ah, I chose a bad film tonight.’ Tom saw that the book she was reading was one he had bought, on the French socialist movement. That would not improve relations with her father, Tom thought. Often Heloise came out with very leftist remarks, principles which she had no idea of practising. But Tom felt he was slowly pushing her to the left. Push with one hand, take with the other, Tom thought.
‘Did you see Noëlle?’ Heloise asked.
‘No.Why?’
‘She was having a dinner-party – tonight. I think. She needed one more man. Of course she invited us both, but I told her you were probably at the Ritz and to telephone you.’
‘I was at the Crillon this time,’ Tom said, pleasantly aware of the scent of Heloise’s cologne mingled with Nivea. And he was unpleasantly aware of his own filth after the train ride. ‘Is everything all right here?’
‘Very all right,’ said Heloise in a manner that sounded seductive, though Tom knew she didn’t mean it that way.
She meant she had had a happy and ordinary day and she was happy herself.
‘I feel like a shower. See you in ten minutes.’ Tom went to his own room, where he had a real shower in the tub, not the telephone-type shower of Heloise’s bathroom.
A few minutes later – Heloise’s Austrian jacket having been tucked away in a bottom drawer under sweaters – Tom was dozing in bed beside Heloise, too tired to look at
L’Express
any longer. He was wondering if
L’Express
might have a picture of one of the two Mafiosi, or both, beside the railway track in next week’s edition? Was that bodyguard dead? Tom devoutly hoped he had fallen under the rails somehow, because Tom was afraid he hadn’t been dead when they tossed him out. Tom recalled Jonathan pulling him back when he’d been about to fall out, and with his eyes closed Tom winced at the memory. Trevanny had saved his life, or at least saved him from an awful fall, and possibly from having a foot cut off by the train wheels.
Tom slept well, and got up around 8.30 a.m., before Heloise was awake. He had coffee downstairs in the living-room, and in spite of his curiosity didn’t switch on the radio for the 9 a.m. news. He took a stroll around the garden, gazed with some pride at the strawberry patch which he had recently snipped and weeded, and stared at three burlap sacks of dahlia roots that had been kept over the winter and were due for planting. Tom was thinking of trying Trevanny by telephone this afternoon. The sooner he saw Trevanny, tie better for Trevanny’s peace of mind. Tom wondered if Jonathan had also noticed the blondish bodyguard who had been in such a tizzy? Tom had passed him in an aisle when he had been making his way from the restaurant car back to his carriage, three carriages back, the bodyguard looking ready to explode with frustration, and Tom had had a great desire to say in his best gutter Italian, ‘You’ll get the sack if this kind of work keeps up, eh?’
Mme Annette returned before 11 a.m. from her morning
shopping and, hearing her close the side door into the kitchen, Tom went in to have a look at
Le Parisien Liberé.
The horses,’ Tom said with a smile, picking up the newspaper.
‘Ah,
oui
! You have a bet, M. Tome?’
Mme Annette knew he didn’t bet. ‘No, I want to see how a friend made out.’
Tom found what he was looking for at the bottom of page one, a short item about three inches long. Italian garrotted. Another gravely wounded. The garrotted man was identified as Vito Marcangelo, fifty-two, of Milan. Tom was more interested in the gravely wounded Filippo Turoli, thirty-one, who had also been pushed from the train and suffered multiple concussions, broken ribs and a damaged arm that might require amputation in a hospital of Strassburg. Turoli was said to be in a coma and in critical condition. The report went on to say that a passenger had seen one body on the train embankment and alerted a train official, but not before kilometers had been covered by the luxurious Mozart Express, which had been going
à pleine vitesse
towards Strassburg. Then two bodies had been discovered by the rescue team. It was estimated that four minutes had elapsed between the fall of each body, and police were actively pursuing their inquiries.
Obviously there would be more on the subject, with photographs probably, in later editions, Tom thought. That was a nice Gallic touch of detection, the four minutes, like a problem in arithmetic for children also, Tom thought. If a train is going at one hundred kilometers per hour, and one Mafioso is tossed out, and a second Mafioso is found tossed out six and two-thirds of a kilometer distant from the first Mafioso, how much time has elapsed between the tossing out of each Mafioso? Answer: four minutes. There was no mention of the second bodyguard who was evidently keeping his mouth shut and lodging no complaints about the service on the Mozart Express.
But the bodyguard Turoli wasn’t dead. And Tom
realized that Turoli had perhaps had a look at him before Tom hit him in the jaw, had some idea of him. He might be able to describe him or identify him, if he ever saw Tom again. But Turoli had probably not taken in Jonathan at all, since Jonathan had hit him from behind.
Around 3.30 p.m., when Heloise had gone off to visit Agn£s Grais on the other side of Villeperce, Tom looked up Trevanny’s shop number in Fontainebleau, and found that he had it correct in his memory.
Trevanny answered.
‘Hello. This is Tom Ripley. Um-m – about my picture – Are you alone just now?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to see you. I think it’s important. Can you meet me, say – after you close today? Around seven? I can —’
‘Yes.’ Trevanny sounded as tense as a cat.
‘Suppose I hold my car around the Salamandre bar? You know the bar I mean on the Rue Grande?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘Then we’ll drive somewhere and have a talk. Quarter to seven?’
‘Right,’ said Trevanny as if through his teeth.
Trevanny was going to be pleasantly surprised, Tom thought as he hung up.
A little later that afternoon, when Tom was in his atelier, Heloise telephoned.
‘Hello, Tome! I am not coming home, because Agnes and I are going to cook something wonderful and we want you to come. Antoine is here, you know. It’s Saturday! So come around seven-thirty, all right?’
‘How is eight, darling? I’m working a little.’
‘Tu travailles?’
Tom smiled. ‘I’m sketching. I’ll be there at eight.’
Antoine Grais was an architect with a wife and two small children. Tom looked forward to a pleasant, relaxing evening with his neighbours. He drove off for
Fontainebleau early so that he could buy a plant – he chose a camellia – as a present for the Grais, and give this as an excuse for being a little late, in case he was,