“No, I just came over on a hop,” Bernard said.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got everything you might want.” Tom felt Chris’s eyes on him and Bernard, speculating probably as to how and how well they knew each other. “Hungry?” Tom asked Bernard. “My housekeeper loves to make sandwiches.” There were only petits fours with the tea. “Her name’s Mme. Annette. Ask her for anything you want.”
“No, thank you.” Bernard’s cup made three distinct clicks against the saucer as he set it down.
Tom wondered if Jeff and Ed had so sedated Bernard that he was in need of something now? Bernard had finished his tea, and Tom took him upstairs to show him his room.
“You’ll have to share the bath with Chris,” Tom said. “You go across the hall here and through my wife’s room.” Tom left the doors open. “Heloise isn’t here, she’s in Greece. I hope you can rest a bit here, Bernard. What’s the matter, really? What’s worrying you?”
They were back in Bernard’s “little bedroom,” and the door was shut.
Bernard shook his head. “I feel as if I’m at the end. That’s all. The show was the end. It’s the last show I can paint. The last picture. ‘The Tub.’ And now they’re trying to bring—you know—bring him back to life.”
And I succeeded, Tom might have said, but his face remained as serious as Bernard’s. “Well—he’s presumably been alive for the past five years. I’m sure they’re not going to force you to go on painting if you don’t want to, Bernard.”
“Oh, they’re going to try, Jeff and Ed. But I’ve had enough, you see. Quite enough.”
“I think they know that. Don’t worry about that. We can—Look, Derwatt can go into seclusion again. In Mexico. Let’s say he’s painting for the next many years, and refuses to show anything.” Tom walked up and down as he spoke. “Years can pass. When Derwatt dies—we’ll have him burn all his last paintings, something like that, so no one will ever see them!” Tom smiled.
Bernard’s somber eyes, staring at the floor, made Tom feel as if he had told a joke that his audience didn’t get. Or worse, committed a sacrilege, cracked a bad joke in a cathedral.
“You need a rest, Bernard. Would you like a phenobarb? I have some mild ones, quarter grains.”
“No, thanks.”
“Want to wash up? Don’t worry about Chris and me. We’ll leave you in peace. Dinner at eight if you want to join us. Come down earlier if you want a drink.”
The wind just then made a “Whoo-oo-oo” and a huge tree bent—they both glanced at the window and saw it, it was in Tom’s back garden—and it seemed to Tom as if the house bent, too, and he instinctively braced his feet. How could anyone be calm in this weather?
“Want me to close these curtains?” Tom asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” Bernard looked at Tom. “What did Murchison say when he saw ‘Man in Chair’?”
“He said he thought it was a forgery—at first. But I persuaded him it wasn’t.”
“How could you? Murchison told me what he thought about—the lavenders. He’s right. I made three mistakes, ‘Man in Chair,’ ‘The Clock,’ and now ‘The Tub.’ I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why. I wasn’t thinking. Murchison is right.”
Tom was silent. Then he said, “Naturally it was a scare for all of us. Derwatt alive might have lived it down. It was the danger—the danger of his nonexistence being exposed. But we’re over that hump, Bernard.”
Bernard might not have followed this at all. He said, “Did you offer to buy ‘The Clock’ or something like that?”
“No. I persuaded him that Derwatt must’ve gone back—for a painting or two or maybe three—to a lavender he’d used before.”
“Murchison was even talking to me about the quality of the painting. Oh, Christ!” Bernard sat down on the bed and slumped back. “What’s Murchison doing now in London?”
“I don’t know. But I know he’s not going to see an expert, not going to do anything, Bernard—because I persuaded him our way,” Tom said soothingly.
“I can think of only one way you persuaded him, one wild way.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked, smiling, a little frightened.
“You persuaded him to let me alone. As a thing of pity, a thing to be pitied. I don’t wish to be pitied.”
“There was no mention of you—naturally.” You’re mad, Tom felt like saying. Bernard was mad, or at least temporarily deranged. Yet what Bernard had said was exactly what Tom had tried to do in the cellar before he killed Murchison: persuade him to let Bernard alone, because Bernard would never paint any more “Derwatts.” Tom had even tried to make Murchison understand Bernard’s worship of Derwatt, his dead idol.
“I don’t think Murchison could be persuaded,” Bernard said. “You’re not trying to make me feel better by lying to me, are you, Tom? Because I’ve had just about enough of lies.”
“No.” But Tom felt uncomfortable because he was lying, to Bernard. It was seldom Tom felt uncomfortable, lying. Tom foresaw that he would have to tell Bernard at some time that Murchison was dead. It was the only way to reassure Bernard—reassure him partially, on the forgery score at least. But Tom couldn’t tell him now, not in this nerve-racking storm, not in the state Bernard was in now, or Bernard would really go berserk. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Tom said.
Bernard got up from the bed at once and walked toward the window, just as the wind threw a hard spray of rain against the panes.
Tom winced at it, but Bernard did not. Tom went into his room, got some pajamas and a Madras dressing gown for Bernard, also house slippers, and a new toothbrush still in its plastic box. He put the toothbrush in the bathroom in case Bernard had none, and brought the other things into Bernard’s room. He told Bernard he would be downstairs if he wanted anything, and that he would leave him to rest for a while.
Chris had gone into his room, Tom saw from his light. The storm had made the house unnaturally dark. Tom went into his own room and got the Count’s toothpaste from his top drawer. By rolling the bottom up, the tube was usable, and it was better that he use it than throw it away and run the risk of Mme. Annette’s seeing it in the garbage: inexplicable and wanton waste. Tom took his own toothpaste from the basin and put it in the bathroom used by Chris and Bernard.
What the hell would he do with Bernard, Tom wondered? And what if the police came back and Bernard was present, as Chris had been present? Bernard understood French pretty well, Tom thought.
Tom sat down and wrote a letter to Heloise. Writing to her always had a calming effect on him. When he was dubious about his French, he usually didn’t bother running to the dictionary, because his errors amused Heloise.
Oct. 22, 19——
Heloise chérie,
A cousin of Dickie Greenleaf, a nice boy named Christophe, is visiting for a couple of days. He is making his first visit to Paris. Imagine seeing Paris for the first time at the age of twenty? He is very astonished by its size. He is from California.
Today there is a terrible storm. Everyone is nervous. Wind and rain.
I miss you. Did you get the red bathing suit? I told Mme. Annette to airmail it and gave her lots of money, so if she did not send it airmail, I will hit her. Everyone asks when you are coming home. I had tea with the Grais. I feel myself very alone without you. Come back and we shall sleep in each other’s arms.
Your solitary husband,
Tom
Tom stamped the letter and took it downstairs to put on the hall table.
Now Christopher was in the living room, reading on the sofa. He jumped up. “Listen—” He spoke quietly. “What’s the matter with your friend?”
“He’s had a crisis. In London. He’s depressed about his work. And I think he’s had a— He’s broken off with his girlfriend or she has with him. I don’t know.”
“You know him well?”
“Not too. No.”
“I was wondering—since he’s in such a funny state—if you’d like me to take off. Tomorrow morn
ing. Even tonight.”
“Oh, certainly not tonight, Chris. In this weather? No, it doesn’t bother me, your being here.”
“But I had the feeling it bothered him. Bernard.” Chris jerked his head toward the stairs.
“Well—there’s plenty of room in this house for us to talk, Bernard and I, if he wants to. Don’t worry.”
“All right. If you mean it. Till tomorrow then.” He shoved his hands in his back pockets and walked toward the french windows.
At any moment now, Mme. Annette would come in and draw the curtains, Tom thought, which would at least be something calm in all this chaos.
“Look!” Chris pointed out toward the lawn.
“What is it?” A tree had fallen, Tom supposed, a minor matter. It took him a moment to see what Chris had seen, because it was so dark. Tom made out a figure walking slowly across the lawn, and his first thought was Murchison’s ghost, and he jumped. But Tom didn’t believe in ghosts.
“It’s Bernard!” Chris said.
It was Bernard, of course. Tom opened the French windows and stepped out into the rain, which was now a cold spray blown in all directions. “Hey, Bernard! What’re you doing?” Tom saw that Bernard wasn’t reacting, was still walking slowly, his head lifted, and Tom dashed off toward him. Tom tripped on the top step of his stone stairs, nearly fell down the rest of them, and caught himself only at the bottom, turning an ankle at the same time. “Hey, Bernard, come in!” Tom yelled, limping toward him now.
Chris ran down and joined Tom. “You’ll get soaking wet!” Chris said with a laugh, and started to grab Bernard’s arm, but evidently didn’t dare.
Tom took Bernard’s wrist firmly. “Bernard, are you trying to catch a sensational cold?”
Bernard turned to them and smiled, and the rain dripped down his black hair that was plastered to his forehead. “I like it. I really do. I feel like this!” He lifted his arms high, breaking Tom’s hold.
“But you’re coming in now? Please, Bernard.”
Bernard smiled at Tom. “Oh, all right,” he said, as if he were humoring Tom.
The three walked back to the house together, but slowly, because Bernard seemed to want to absorb every drop. Bernard was in good humor, and made some cheerful comment as he removed his shoes at the French windows, so as not to soil the rug. He also removed his jacket.
“You’ve really got to change,” Tom said. “I’ll get something for you.” Tom was taking off his own shoes.
“Very well, I’ll change,” Bernard said, in the same tone of condescension, and slowly climbed the stairs, shoes in hand.
Chris looked at Tom and frowned intently, like Dickie. “That guy’s nuts!” he whispered. “Really nuts!”
Tom nodded, strangely shaken—shaken as he always was when in the presence of someone genuinely a bit off in the head. It was a feeling of being shattered. The sensation was setting in early: usually it took twenty-four hours. Tom stepped cautiously on his ankle and worked it around. It was not going to be serious, his ankle, he thought. “You may be right,” he said to Chris. “I’ll go up and find some dry clothes for him.”
11
Around ten o’clock that evening, Tom knocked on Bernard’s door. “It’s me. Tom.”
“Oh, come in, Tom,” Bernard’s voice said calmly. He was sitting at the writing table, pen in hand. “Please don’t be alarmed by my walking in the rain tonight. I was myself in the rain. And that’s become a rare thing.”
Tom understood, only too well.
“Sit down, Tom! Shut the door. Make yourself at home.”
Tom sat down on Bernard’s bed. He had come to see Bernard as he had promised during dinner, in the presence of Chris, in fact. Bernard had been more cheerful during dinner. Bernard was wearing the Madras dressing gown. There were a couple of sheets of paper covered with Bernard’s black ink handwriting on the table, but Tom had the feeling Bernard was not writing a letter. “I suppose a lot of the time you feel you’re Derwatt,” Tom said.
“Sometimes. But who could be really him? And when I walk down a London street, no. Just sometimes when I paint, for seconds at a time, I’ve felt I’m him. And you know, I can talk easily now about it, and it’s a pleasure, because I’m going to give it up. I have.”
And that was perhaps a confession on the writing table, Tom thought. A confession to whom?
Bernard put his arm over the back of his chair. “And you know, my faking, my forgeries, have evolved in four or five years the way Derwatt’s painting might have evolved. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Tom didn’t know what to say that would be correct, even respectful enough. “Maybe it’s not funny. You understood Derwatt. And critics have said the same thing, that the painting has developed.”
“You can’t imagine how strange it is to paint like—Bernard Tufts. His painting hasn’t developed as much. It’s as if I’m faking Tufts now, because I’m painting the same Tufts as I did five years ago!” Bernard gave a real laugh. “In a way, I have to make more of an effort to be myself than I do to be Derwatt. I did. And it was making me mad, you see. You can see that. I’d like to give myself a chance, if there’s anything of me left.”
He meant give Bernard Tufts a chance, Tom knew. “I’m positive that can be done. You should be the one that calls the tune.” Tom took his Gauloises from a pocket and offered Bernard one.
“I want to start with a clean slate. I intend to admit what I’ve done and start from there—or try to.”
“Oh, Bernard! You’ve got to get rid of that idea. You’re not the only one involved. Think what it’d do to Jeff and Ed. All the pictures you’ve painted would— Really, Bernard, confess it to a priest, if you want to, but not the press. Or the English police.”
“You think I’m mad, I know. Well, I am sometimes. But I have only one life to lead. I’ve nearly ruined it. I don’t intend to ruin the rest. And that’s my affair, isn’t it?”
Bernard’s voice shook. Was he strong or weak, Tom wondered? “I do understand,” Tom said gently.
“I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I have to see if people will accept me—see if they’ll forgive me, if you like.”
They won’t, Tom thought. The world absolutely wouldn’t. Would it smash Bernard if he said this? Probably. Bernard might commit suicide instead of making a confession. Tom cleared his throat and tried to think, but nothing, nothing came to him.
“For another thing, I think Cynthia would like it if I made a clean breast of things. She loves me. I love her. I know she didn’t want to see me just now. In London. Ed told me. I don’t blame her. Jeff and Ed presenting me like an invalid case: ‘Come to see Bernard, he needs you!’” Bernard said in a mincing voice. “What woman would?” Bernard looked at Tom and opened his arms, smiling. “You see how much good the rain did me, Tom? It did everything but wash away my sins.”
His laugh came again, and Tom envied him the carefreeness of it.
“Cynthia’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. I don’t mean—Well, she’s had an affair or two since me, I’m sure. I was the one who more or less ended it. I got so—nervous, even scared in a way, when I began imitating Derwatt.” Bernard gulped. “But I know she still loves me—if I’m me. Can you understand that?”
“I certainly can. Of course. Are you writing to Cynthia now?”
Bernard waved an arm at the sheets of paper and smiled. “No, I’m writing—to anyone. It’s just a statement. It’s for the press or anyone.”
And that had to be stopped. Tom said calmly, “I wish you’d think things over for a few days, Bernard.”
“Haven’t I had enough time to think?”
Tom tried to think of something stronger, clearer to say to Bernard that would stop him, but half his mind was on Murchison, on the possibility of the police returning. How hard would they search here for clues? Would they look in the woods? Tom Ripley’s reputation was already a bit—stained, perhaps, by the Dickie Greenleaf story. Though he’d been cleared of suspicion, he had for a time been
under suspicion, there had been a story there, despite its happy ending. Why hadn’t he put Murchison in the station wagon and driven him miles away to bury him, somewhere in the forest of Fontainebleau, camped out in the woods to get the job done, if he’d had to? “Can we talk about it tomorrow?” Tom said. “You might see things differently, Bernard.”
“Of course, we can talk about it anytime. But I’m not going to feel any different tomorrow. I wanted to talk to you first, because you thought of the whole idea—of resurrecting Derwatt. I want to start with first things first, you see. I’m quite logical.” There was a touch of the insane in his dogmatic delivery of this, and Tom felt again a profound unease.
The telephone rang. There was a telephone in Tom’s room, and the sound came clearly across the hall of the house.
Tom jumped up. “You mustn’t forget the others involved—”
“I won’t drag you into it, Tom.”
“The telephone. Good night, Bernard,” Tom said quickly, and dashed across the hall to his room. He didn’t want Chris to pick up the phone downstairs.
It was the police again. They apologized for ringing this late, but—
Tom said, “I’m sorry, m’sieur, but could you ring back in perhaps five minutes? I am just now—”
The courteous voice said of course he could ring back.
Tom hung up and sank his face in his hands. He was sitting on the edge of his bed. He got up and shut his door. Events were getting a bit ahead of him. He’d been in a hurry about burying Murchison because of the damned Count. What a mistake! The Seine, the Loing were snaking around everywhere in the district, there were quiet bridges, quiet especially after one o’clock in the morning. The telephone call from the police could mean only bad news. Mrs. Murchison—Harriet, had Murchison said her name was?—might have engaged an American or English detective to find her husband. She knew what Murchison’s mission had been, to find out if a painting by an important artist was a forgery or not. Wouldn’t she suspect foul play? If Mme. Annette were questioned, wouldn’t she say that she hadn’t actually seen M. Murchison leave the house Thursday afternoon?
Ripley Under Ground Page 12
