Ripley's Game (13 page)

Last Sunday, Reeves had rung Tom from Orly in a dejected state, saying that Trevanny was so far declining the job, and could Tom come up with anybody else? Tom had said no. Reeves said he had written Trevanny a letter which would arrive Monday morning, inviting Trevanny to Hamburg for a medical examination. That was when Tom had said, ‘If he comes, you could perhaps see that the report is slightly worse.’

Tom might have gone to Fontainebleau on Friday or Saturday to satisfy his curiosity and catch a glimpse of Trevanny in his shop, perhaps bring a drawing to be framed (unless Trevanny was taking the rest of the week off to recuperate), and in fact Tom had intended to go to Fontainebleau Friday for stretchers from Gauthier’s shop, but Heloise’s parents had been due for the week-end – they had stayed Friday and Saturday nights – and on Friday the household had been in a tizzy preparing for them. Mme Annette was worried, unnecessarily, about her menu, the quality of the fresh
moules
for Friday night, and after Mme Annette had prepared the guest-room to perfection, Heloise had made her change the bed linen and the bathroom towels, because they all bore Tom’s monogram TPR and not the Plissot family’s. The Plissots had given the Ripleys two dozen magnificent heavy linen sheets from the family stock as a wedding present, and Heloise thought it only courteous and also diplomatic to use them when the Plissots visited. Mme Annette had suffered a slight slip of memory about this, for which she certainly wasn’t reprimanded by either Heloise or Tom. Tom knew the change of bed linen was also due to the fact that Heloise did not want her parents to be reminded by his monogram that she was married to him when they got into bed. The Plissots were critical and stuffy – a fact made somehow worse by the fact that Arlène Plissot, a slender, still attractive woman of fifty, made a real effort to be informal, tolerant of the young and all that. It just wasn’t in her. The week-end had been a real ordeal, in Tom’s opinion, and good heavens, if Belle Ombre wasn’t a well-run household, then what was? The silver tea-service (another wedding gift of the Plissots) was kept polished to perfection by Mme Annette. Even the birdhouse in the garden was swept of droppings daily as if it were a miniature guesthouse on the property. Everything of wood in the house gleamed and smelled pleasantly of lavender-scented wax that Tom brought over from England. Yet Arlène had said, while stretched out on the bearskin before the fireplace in a mauve trouser suit, warming her naked feet, ‘ Wax is not enough for such floors, Heloise. From time to time they need a treatment with linseed oil and white spirit –
warm,
you know, so it soaks better into the wood.’

When the Plissots left on Sunday afternoon after tea, Heloise had snatched her middy top off and flung it at a french window which had given an awful crack because of a heavy pin on the middy, but the glass had not broken.

‘Champagne!’ Heloise cried, and Tom dashed down to the cellar to fetch it.

They’d had champagne, though the tea things were not cleared away (Mme Annette was for once putting her feet up), and then the telephone had rung.

It was Reeves Minot’s voice, sounding downcast. ‘I’m at Orly. Just leaving for Hamburg. I saw our mutual friend in Paris today and he says no to the next – the next, you know. There’s got to be one more, I know that. I explained that to him.’

‘You’ve paid him something?’ Tom watched Heloise waltzing with her champagne glass in hand. She was humming the grand waltz from
Der Rosenkavalier.

‘Yes, about a third, and I think that’s not bad. I’ve put it in Switzerland for him.’

Tom thought he recalled a promised sum of nearly five hundred thousand francs. A third was not munificent, but it was reasonable, Tom supposed. ‘You mean another shooting.’ Tom said.

Heloise was singing and twirling. ‘La-da-da-la-dee-dee.. .’

‘No.’ Reeves’ voice cracked. He said softly, ‘It’s got to be a garrotte. On a train. I think that’s the hitch.’

Tom was shocked. Of course Trevanny wouldn’t do it. ‘Must it be on a train?’

‘I’ve got a plan …’

Reeves always had a plan. Tom listened politely. Reeves’ idea sounded dangerous and uncertain. Tom interrupted. ‘Maybe our friend has had enough at this stage.’

‘No, I think he’s interested. But he won’t agree – to come to Munich, and we need the job done by next week-end.’

‘You’ve been reading
The Godfather
again, Reeves. Make some arrangement with a gun.’

‘A gun makes noise,’ Reeves said without a flicker of humour. ‘I’m wondering – either I come up with someone else, Tom, or – Jonathan’s got to be persuaded.’

Impossible to persuade him, Tom thought, and Tom said rather impatiently, ‘There’s no better persuasion than money. If that doesn’t work, I can’t help you.’ Tom was unpleasantly reminded of the visit of the Plissots. Would he and Heloise have bent over backwards, strained themselves for nearly three days, if they didn’t need the twenty-five thousand francs a year that Jacques Plissot gave Heloise as an allowance?

‘I’m afraid if he’s paid any more,’ Reeves said, ‘he really will quit. I’ve told you, maybe, I can’t get it- the rest of the dough – until he does the second job.’

Tom was thinking that Reeves didn’t understand Trevanny’s type at all. If Trevanny was paid in full, he’d either do the job or return half the money.

‘If you think of something in regard to Aim,’ Reeves said with apparent difficulty, ‘or if you know of anyone else who could do it, telephone me, will you? In the next day or so?’

Tom was glad when they’d hung up. He shook his head quickly, and blinked his eyes. Reeves Minot’s ideas often gave Tom the feeling of being befogged by some heavy dream that hadn’t even the reality of most dreams.

Heloise hurdled the back of the yellow sofa, one hand gently touching the sofa back, the other holding her glass of champagne, and she landed silently, seated. Elegantly, she lifted her glass to him.
‘Grace à toi, ce week-end était très réussi, man trésor!’

‘Thank you, my darling!’

Yes, life was sweet again, they were alone again, they could dine tonight barefoot if they chose. Freedom!

Tom was thinking of Trevanny. Tom didn’t really care about Reeves, who always scraped through, or pulled out in the nick of time from a situation that became too dangerous. But Trevanny – there was a bit of a mystery. Tom cast about for a way of making better acquaintance with Trevanny. The situation was difficult, because he knew that Trevanny didn’t like him. But there was nothing simpler than taking a picture to Trevanny to frame.

On Tuesday, Tom drove to Fontainebleau and went first to Gauthier’s art supply shop to buy stretchers. Gauthier might volunteer some news about Trevanny, something about his Hamburg trip, Tom thought, since ostensibly Trevanny had gone to consult a doctor. Tom made his purchases at Gauthier’s, but Gauthier did not mention Trevanny. Just as he was leaving, Tom said:

‘And how is our friend – M. Trevanny?’

‘Ah, oui.
He went to Hamburg last week to see a specialist.’ Gauthier’s glass eye glared at Tom, while the five eye glistened and looked a bit sad. ‘I understand the news was not good. A little worse, perhaps, than what his doctor here tells him. But he is courageous. You know these English, they never show their real feelings.’

‘I’m sorry to hear he’s worse,’ Tom said.

‘Yes, well – so he told me. But he carries on.’

Tom put his stretchers in his car, and took a portfolio from the back seat. He had brought a watercolour for Trevanny to frame. His conversation with Trevanny might not go well today, Tom thought, but the fact that he would have to pick up his picture at some future date would ensure that he had a second chance to see Trevanny. Tom walked to the Rue des Sablons, and went into the little shop. Trevanny was discussing a frame with a woman, holding a strip of wood against the top of an etching. He glanced at Tom, and Tom was sure Trevanny recognized him.

‘It may look heavy now, but with a white mat –’ Trevanny was saying. Trevanny’s accent was quite good.

Tom looked for some change in Trevanny – a sign of anxiety, perhaps – but so far he saw none. At last it was Tom’s turn.
‘Bonjour.
Good morning. Tom Ripley,’ Tom said, smiling. ‘I was at your house in – in February, wasn’t it? Your wife’s birthday.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Tom could see in Trevanny’s face that his attitude hadn’t changed since that night in February when he had said, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you.’ Tom opened his portfolio. ‘I have a watercolour. Done by my wife. I thought perhaps a narrow dark-brown frame, a mat – say, two and a half inches at the widest, at the bottom.’

Trevanny gave his attention to the watercolour which lay on the notched, sleek-worn counter between them.

The picture was mainly green and purple, Heloise’s free interpretation of a corner of Belle Ombre backgrounded by the pine woods in winter. It was not bad, Tom thought, because Heloise had known when to stop. She had no idea Tom had saved it, and to see it framed was going to be a pleasant surprise for her, Tom hoped.

‘Something like this, perhaps,’ Trevanny said, pulling down a length of wood from a shelf where a confusion of pieces stuck out. He laid it above the picture at a distance that the mat would take up.

‘I think that’s nice, yes.’

‘Mat off-white or white? Such as this?’

Tom made his decision. Trevanny printed Tom’s name and address carefully on a pad. Tom gave his telephone number too.

What to say now? Trevanny’s coolness was almost palpable. Tom knew Trevanny would decline, but felt he had nothing to lose, so he said, ‘Perhaps you and your wife would come to my house for a drink some time. Villeperce isn’t far. Bring your little boy, too.’

‘Thanks. I have no car,’ Trevanny said with a polite smile. ‘We don’t go out very much, Pm afraid.’

‘A car’s no problem. I could fetch you. And of course count on having some dinner with us too.’ The words tumbled out of Tom. Now Trevanny shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat sweater, and shifted on his feet as if his will were shifting. Tom sensed that Trevanny was curious about him.

‘My wife’s shy,’ said Trevanny, smiling for the first time. ‘She doesn’t speak much English.’

‘Neither does my wife, really. She’s French too, you know. However – if my house is too far away, what’s the matter with a
pastis
now? Aren’t you about to close?’

Trevanny was. It was a little after noon.

They walked to a bar-restaurant at the corner of Rue de France and Rue St Merry. Trevanny had stopped at a bakery to buy bread. He ordered a draft beer, and Tom had the same. Tom put a ten-franc note on the counter.

‘How did you happen to come to France?’ Tom asked.

Trevanny told Tom about starting an antique shop in France with an English chum. ‘And you?’ asked Trevanny.

‘Oh, my wife likes it here. And so do 1.1 can’t think of a more pleasant life really. I can travel if I wish. I have lots of free time – leisure you’d call it. Gardening and painting. I paint like a Sunday painter, but I enjoy it. – Whenever I feel like it, I go to London for a couple of weeks.’ That was cards on the table, in a way, naïve, harmless. Except that Trevanny might wonder where the money came from. Tom thought it probable that Trevanny had heard the Dickie Greenleaf story, forgotten most of it as most people did, except that certain things stayed in the memory, like Dickie Greenleaf’s ‘mysterious disappearance’, though later Dickie’s suicide had been accepted as fact. Possibly Trevanny knew that Tom got some income from what Dickie Greenleaf had left in his will (a will that Tom had forged), because this had been in the papers. Then there’d been die Derwatt affair last year, not so much ‘Derwatt’ in the French papers as the strange disappearance of Thomas Murchison, the American who had been a guest at Tom’s home.

‘Sounds a pleasant life,’ Trevanny remarked dryly, and wiped foam from his upper lip.

Trevanny wanted to ask him something, Tom felt. What? Tom was wondering whether, for all his English cool, Trevanny could suffer a fit of conscience and either tell his wife or go to the police and confess? Tom thought he was right in assuming Trevanny hadn’t and wouldn’t tell his wife what he had done. Just five days ago Trevanny had pulled a trigger and killed a man. Of course Reeves would have given Trevanny pep-talks, morale-building lectures on the viciousness of the Mafia and the positive good Trevanny or anybody would do by eliminating one of them. Then Tom thought of the garrotte. No, he could not see Trevanny using a garrotte. How did Trevanny feel about the killing he had done? Or had he had time to feel anything yet? Maybe not. Trevanny lit a Gitane. He had large hands. He was the type who could wear old clothes, impressed trousers, and still have the air of a gentleman. And he had rugged good looks that he himself seemed quite unaware of.

‘Do you happen to know,’ said Trevanny, looking at Tom with his calm blue eyes, ‘an American called Reeves Minot?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘Lives here in Fontainebleau?’

‘No. But he travels a lot, I think.’

‘No.’ Tom drank his beer.

‘I’d better push off. My wife’s expecting me.’

They went out. They had to go in different directions.

‘Thanks for the beer,’ Trevanny said.

‘A pleasure!’

Tom walked to his car which was in the parking area in front of the Hôtel de l’Aigle Noir, and drove off for Villeperce. He was thinking about Trevanny, thinking that he was a rather disappointed man, disappointed in his present situation. Surely Trevanny had had aspirations in his youth. Tom remembered Trevanny’s wife, an attractive woman who looked steady and devoted, the kind of woman who would never push her husband to better his situation, never nag at him to earn more money. In her way, Trevanny s wife was probably as upright and decent as Trevanny himself. Yet Trevanny had succumbed to Reeves’ proposal. That meant that Trevanny was a man who could be pushed or pulled in any direction, if one did it intelligently.

Mme Annette greeted Tom with the message that Heloise would be a little late, because she had found an English
commode de bateau
in an antique shop in Chilly-en-Bière, had signed a cheque for it, but had to accompany the antique man to the bank. ‘She will be home with the commode at any minute!’ said Mme Annette, her blue eyes sparkling. ‘She asks you to wait lunch for her, M. Tome.’