Authors: Patricia Highsmith
‘The Mafia.’ Simone said, shaking her head. ‘They must’ve had a compartment with the blinds drawn to do that garrotting. Ugh!’ She got up to go to the kitchen.
Jonathan glanced at Georges, who was bent over an Astérix picture book at that instant. Jonathan would not have wanted to explain what garrotting meant.
That evening, though he felt a bit tense, Tom was in the best of spirits at the Grais’s. Antoine and Agnès Grais lived in a round stone house with a turret, surrounded by climbing roses. Antoine was in his late thirties, neat and rather severe, master in his own house and tremendously ambitious. He worked in a modest studio in Paris all week, and came to the country at week-ends to join his family, and knocked himself out further with gardening. Tom knew that Antoine considered him lazy, because if Tom’s garden was equally neat, what miracle was it, since Tom had nothing else to do all day? The spectacular dish that Agnès and Heloise had created was a lobster casserole with a great variety of sea-food in the rice, and a choice of two sauces to go with it.
‘I’ve thought of a wonderful way to start a forest fire.’ Tom said musingly when they were having coffee. ‘Especially good down in South of France, where there’re so many dry trees in summer. You fix a hand lens in a pine tree, you could do it even in winter, and then when the summer comes, the sun shines through it and the magnifying glass starts a little blaze in the pine needles. You place it near the
house of somebody you dislike, of course and – snap, crackle and pop! – the whole thing goes up in blazes! The police or the insurance people wouldn’t very likely find the hand lens in all the charred wood and even if they did – Perfect, isn’t it?’
Antoine chuckled grudgingly, while the women gave appreciative shrieks of horror.
‘If that happens to my property down South, I will know who did it!’ said Antoine in his deep baritone.
The Grais owned a small property near Cannes which they let in July and August when rents were highest, and used themselves in the other summer months.
Mainly, however, Tom was thinking of Jonathan Trevanny. A stiff, repressed kind of fellow, but basically decent. He was going to need some more assistance – Tom hoped merely moral assistance.
13
B
ECAUSE
of Vincent Turoli’s uncertain state, Tom drove to Fontainebleau on Sunday to buy the London papers, the
Observer
and the
Sunday Times,
which he usually bought from the Villeperce
journaux-tabac
on Monday morning. The news kiosk in Fontainebleau was in front of the Hôtel de l’Aigle Noir. Tom glanced around for Trevanny, who probably bought the London Sundays habitually too, but he didn’t see him. It was n a.m., and perhaps Trevanny already had the papers. Tom got into his car and looked at the
Observer
first. It had nothing about the train incident. Tom wasn’t sure the English papers would bother reporting the story, but he looked into the
Sunday Times
and found an item on page three, one short column which Tom fell upon eagerly. The writer had given it a light touch: ‘… It must have been an exceptionally fast Mafia job … Vincent Turoli of the Genotti family, one arm missing, one eye damaged, regained consciousness early on Saturday, and his condition is improving so rapidly he may soon be flown to a Milan hospital. But if he knows anything, he is not talking.’ That was no news to Tom, that he wasn’t talking, but plainly he was going to live. That was unfortunate. Tom was thinking that Turoli had probably already given a description of him to his chums. Turoli would have been visited in Strassburg by family members. Important Mafiosi in the hospital were protected day and night by guards, and maybe Turoli would get this treatment too, Tom thought, as soon as the idea of eliminating Turoli crossed his mind. Tom recalled the Mafia-guarded hospitalization of Joe Colombo, head of the Profaci family, in New York.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Colombo denied that he was a member of the Mafia or that the Mafia existed. Nurses had had to step over the legs of bodyguards sleeping in the halls when Colombo had been in. Best not to think about getting rid of Turoli. He had probably already talked about a man in his thirties, with brown hair, a little over average height, who had socked him in the jaw and the stomach, and there must have been another man behind him too, because he had got a crack on the back of the head. The question was would Turoli be absolutely sure if he spotted him again, and Tom thought there was a good chance of this. Oddly Turoli, if he had seen him, might recall Jonathan a little more clearly, simply because Jonathan didn’t look like everyone else, was taller and blonder than most people. Turoli of course would compare notes with the second bodyguard who was alive and well.
‘Darling,’ Heloise said when Tom walked into the living-room, ‘how would you like to go on a cruise on the Nile.’
Tom’s thoughts were so far away, he had to think for a moment what the Nile was and where. Heloise was barefoot on the sofa, browsing in travel brochures. Periodically she received a slew of them from an agency in Moret, sent on the agency’s initiative, because Heloise was such a good customer. ‘I don’t know. Egypt —’
‘Doesn’t this look
séduisant
?’ She showed Tom a picture of a little boat called the
Isis
which rather resembled a Mississippi steamboat, sailing past a reedy shore.
‘Yes. It does.’
‘Or somewhere eke. If you don’t want to go anywhere, I will see how Noëlle feels,’ she said, returning to the brochures.
Spring was stirring in Heloise’s blood. Tickling her feet. They had not been anywhere since just after Christmas, when they’d had a rather pleasant time on a yacht, sailing from Marseille to Portofino and back. The owners of the yacht, friends of Noëlle and rather elderly, had had a house
in Portofino. Just now Tom didn’t want to go anywhere, but he didn’t say this to Heloise.
It was a quiet and pleasant Sunday, and Tom made two good preparatory sketches of Mme Annette at her ironing board. She ironed in the kitchen on Sunday afternoons, watching her TV which she wheeled into position against the cupboards. There was nothing more domestic, more French, Tom thought, than Mme Annette’s sturdy little figure bent over her iron on a Sunday afternoon. He wanted to capture the spirit of this on canvas – the very pale orange of the kitchen wall in sunlight, and delicate blue-lavender of a certain dress of Mme Annette’s that set off so well her fine blue eyes.
Then the telephone rang just after 10 p.m., when Tom and Heloise were lying in front of the fireplace, looking at the Sunday papers. Tom answered.
It was Reeves, sounding extremely upset. The connection was bad.
‘Can you hold on? I’ll try it from upstairs,’ Tom said.
Reeves said he would, and Tom went running up the stairs, saying to Heloise, ‘Reeves! A lousy connection!’ Not that the telephone was necessarily better upstairs, but Tom wanted to be alone for this.
Reeves said, ‘I said
my flat
In Hamburg. It was
bombed
today.’
‘What? My God!’
‘I’m ringing you from Amsterdam.’
‘Were you hurt?’ Tom asked.
‘No!’ Reeves shouted, his voice cracking. ‘That’s the miracle. I just happened to be out around 5 p.m. So was Gaby because she doesn’t work Sundays. These guys, they – must’ve tossed a bomb through the
window.
Quite a feat. The people below heard a car rush up and rush away after a minute, then two minutes later an
awful
explosion – which knocked all the pictures off their walls, too.’
‘Look – how much are they on to?’
‘I thought I better get elsewhere for my health. I was out of town in less than an hour.’
‘How did
they find out?9
Tom yelled into the telephone.
‘I dunno. I really dunno. They might’ve got something out of Fritz, because Fritz failed to keep a
date
with me today. I sure hope old Fritz is okay. But he doesn’t know – you know, our friend’s name. I always called him Paul when he was here. An Englishman, I said, so Fritz thinks he lives in England. I honestly think they’re doing this on suspicion, Tom. I think our plan has essentially
worked9
Good old optimistic Reeves, with his flat bombed, his possessions lost, his plan was a success. ‘Listen, Reeves, what about — What are you doing with your stuff in Hamburg? Your papers, for instance?’
‘Strongbox at the bank,’ Reeves said promptly. ‘I can have those sent. Anyway what papers? If you’re worried – 1 just have
one
little address book and that’s always on me. I’m sure as hell sorry to lose a lot of records and paintings I’ve got there, but the police said they’d protect everything they could. Naturally they questioned me – nicely of course, for a few minutes, but I explained I was in a state of shock, damn near true, and I had to go somewhere for a while. They know where I am.’
‘Do the police suspect the Mafia?’
‘Didn’t say so if they did. Tom old boy, I’ll ring you again tomorrow maybe. Take my number, will you?’
Half reluctantly, though he realized he might need it for some reason, Tom took down Reeves’ hotel name, the Zuyder Zee, and its number.
‘Our mutual friend sure did one hell of a good job, even if that second bastard is still alive. For a fellow who’s anaemic —’ Reeyes broke off with a laugh that was almost hysterical.
‘You’ve paid him in full now?’
‘Did that yesterday,’ said Reeves.
‘So you don’t need him any more, I suppose.’
‘No. We’ve got the police interested here. I mean in
Hamburg. That’s what we wanted. I heard more Mafia have
arrived.
So that’s —’
Abruptly they were cut off. Tom felt a swift annoyance, a sense of stupidity, as he stood there with the buzzing, dead telephone in his hand. He hung up and stood in his room for a few seconds, wondering if Reeves would ring back, thinking he probably wouldn’t, trying to digest the news. From what Tom knew of the Mafia, he thought they might leave it at that, bombing Reeves’ flat. They might not be out for Reeves’ life. But evidently the Mafia knew that Reeves had had something to do with the killings, so the idea of creating the impression of rival Mafia gang-war had failed. On the other hand, the Hamburg police would make an extra effort to clear the Mafia out of the town, out of private gambling clubs, too. Like everything Reeves did, or dabbled in, this situation was vague, Tom thought. The verdict ought to be: not quite successful.
The only happy fact was that Trevanny had his money. He should be informed of that by Tuesday or Wednesday. Good news from Switzerland!
The next days were quiet. No more telephone calls and no letter from Reeves Minot. Nothing in the newspapers about Vincent Turoli in the hospital at Strassburg or Milan, and Tom also bought the Paris
Herald-Tribune
and the London
Daily Telegraph
in Fontainebleau. Tom planted his dahlias, a three-hour job one afternoon, because he had them in smaller packages within the burlap bags, labelled for colour, and he tried to plan his colour patches as carefully as if he were imagining a canvas. Heloise spent three nights at Chantilly, where her parents had their home, because her mother was undergoing a minor operation for a tumour somewhere, which luckily turned out to be benign. Mme Annette, thinking Tom was lonely, comforted him with American food which she had learned to prepare to please him: spareribs with barbecue sauce, clam chowder and fried chicken. Tom wondered from time to time about his own safety. In the peaceful atmosphere of Villeperce,
this sleepy, rather proper little village, and through the tall iron gates of Belle Ombre which appeared to guard the castle-like house but actually didn’t – anyone might scale them – a murderer might arrive, Tom thought, one of the Mafia boys who would knock on the door or ring the bell, push past Mme Annette, dash up the stairs and plug Tom. It would take the police from Moret a good fifteen minutes to get here, probably, assuming Mme Annette could telephone them at once. A neighbour hearing a shot or two might assume a hunter was trying his luck with owls, and probably wouldn’t attempt to investigate.
During the time that Heloise was in Chantilly, Tom decided to acquire a harpsichord for Belle Ombre – for himself, too, of course and possibly for Heloise. Once, somewhere, he had heard her playing some simple ditty on a piano. Where? When? He suspected she was a victim of childhood lessons, and knowing her parents Tom assumed they had knocked any joy out of her endeavours. Anyway, a harpsichord might cost a goodly sum (it would be cheaper to buy it in London, of course, but not with the
100
per cent tax the French would demand for bringing it in), but a harpsichord certainly came in the category of cultural acquisitions, so Tom did not reproach himself for the desire. A harpsichord was not a swimming pool. Tom telephoned an antique dealer in Paris whom he knew fairly well, and though the man dealt only in furniture, he was able to give Tom the name of a reliable place in Paris where he might buy a harpsichord.