Ripley Under Ground (Ripley, #2)

by Patricia Highsmith

As usual, another person’s nervousness was making Tom feel calm.

“He walked with a slight stoop,” Bernard said. “His voice— He was a little shy in public. It was sort of a monotone, I suppose. Like this, if I can illustrate,” Bernard said in a monotone. “Now and then he laughed.”

Below the mirror on a little shelf three snapshots of Derwatt were propped up—Derwatt reading a book in shirtsleeves in a deckchair, Derwatt standing with a man Tom did not know, facing the camera. Derwatt had glasses in all the pictures.

“She is quite wonderful,” Bernard said dreamily, to nobody. He suddenly got up and darted for the bathroom, perhaps because he had to go there, but it might have been to throw up.

“Leonard Hayward,” Ed said. “He’s about twenty-six. Queer as Dick’s hatband, belongs in a King’s Road boutique, but he’s okay.

But Tom felt discouraged as he said it, and he knew why. Tom felt that it might be Bernard that they couldn’t count on any longer.

They were chasing the last morsels of sole and butter around their plates, with the last morsels of potato. The sole had been superb, the white wine still was.

It was the kind of lunch that under any other circumstances would have given contentment, even happiness, would have inspired lovers to go to bed—perhaps after coffee—and make love and then sleep.

“An artist does things naturally, without effort. Some power guides his hand. A forger struggles, and if he succeeds, it is a genuine achievement.”

On the drive homeward, they discussed, not very profoundly, Italian politics,

Tom was going to be very happy to get back home—to the scene of the crime, as they said.

“Italy is producing worse espresso. In the cafés,” the Count announced in a solemn baritone. “I am convince. Probably some Mafia business at the bottom of it.” He mused sourly out the window for a few moments, then continued, “And the hairdressers in Italy, my goodness! I begin to wonder if I know my own country! Now in my old favorite barbershop off the Via Veneto, they have new young men who ask me what kind of shampoo I want. I say, ‘Just wash my hair, please

the music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fabulous overture,

Moret-sur-Loing.

Tom barely hung on to this story, because he was thinking about disposing of Murchison.

ça serait un ƒait accompli.”

I feel myself very alone without you. Come back and we shall sleep in each other’s arms. Your solitary husband,

“I was trying since two hours to reach you. Even the telephone does not work here.” “It’s not supposed to work anywhere. It’s just a device to extort money.” Tom was pleased to hear her laugh a little—like a siren laughing beneath the sea.

Heloise was rather amoral, but she would not be able to take all this.

Tom sipped his coffee, letting its black magic creep through him, then he got up and dressed.

She was wearing brown leather sandals, pink, bell-bottomed trousers, an American Navy pea jacket. Tom wondered where and how she had acquired the pea jacket?

Heloise put them on in the dining room. They fitted well. “I love them!” Heloise said, and gave Tom a hug and a kiss on his cheek.

fous-moi-le-camp!

Frenchwomen had to leave a room, a house, or ask someone else to change his room, or go somewhere, and the more inconvenient it was for the other person, the better they liked it, but it was still less inconvenient than their screaming. Tom called it “The Law of French Displacement.”

“Now where is Bernard, and what did you mean by he’s supposed to think you’re dead?” Tom explained, briefly. Also about the burial, which he managed to make funny so that Jeff and Ed were enthralled, maybe morbidly fascinated, and laughing at the same time. “Just a small tap on the head,” Tom said.

Once Tom had almost crossed a track where it was forbidden to cross. The tracks had been empty, the station silent. Tom had decided not to risk it, and fifteen seconds later, two chromium express trains had passed each other going like hell, and Tom had imagined being chewed up between them, his body and his suitcase strewn for yards in either direction, unidentifiable.

Tom’s room had a view on the Sigmundsplatz at the rear of the hotel: to the right was the “horse bath” fountain backed by a small rocky cliff, and in front was an ornate well. In the morning, they sold fruit and vegetables from pushcarts here, Tom remembered. Tom took a few minutes to breathe, to open his suitcase, and walk in socked feet on the immaculately polished pinewood floors of his room. The furnishings were predominantly Austrian green, the walls white, the windows double-glazed with deep embrasures. Ah, Austria! Now to go down and have a Doppelespresso at the Café Tomaselli just a few steps away. And this might not be a bad idea, as it was a big coffee house and Bernard might be there.