Ripley's Game

by Patricia Highsmith

  Jonathan had seen the flick of the latch that changed the colour from green to red. The silence was alarming to Jonathan. How long would it last? What was happening? How much time had passed? Jonathan kept glancing through the glass half of the door into the carriage.

  A man came from the restaurant car, started for the toilet, and seeing that it was occupied, went on into the carriage.

  Jonathan was thinking that Marcangelo’s friends Would appear at any moment, if Marcangelo was in the least long in getting back to his compartment. Now the coast was clear, and was it time to knock? There must have been time for Marcangelo to die. Jonathan went and rapped twice on the door.

  Tom stepped calmly out, closed the door and surveyed the situation, and a woman in a reddish tweed suit entered the platform just then – a smallish, middle-aged woman who was plainly headed for the toilet. The indicator was now showing green.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tom said to her. ‘Someone – a friend of mine is being sick in there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Bitte?’

  (Mein Freund ist da drinnen ziemlich krank.’ Tom said with an apologetic smile. ‘Entschuldigen Sie, gnädige Frau. Er kommt sofort heraus.’

  She nodded and smiled, and went back into the carriage.

  ‘Okay, give me a hand!’ Tom whispered to Jonathan, and started for the w.c.

  ‘Another one’s coming,’ Jonathan said. ‘One of the Italians.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ The Italian might simply wait on the platform, Tom thought, if he went into the loo and locked the door.

  The Italian, a sallow chap of about thirty, gave Jonathan and Tom a look, saw that the lavatory said libre, then went into the restaurant car, no doubt to see if Marcangelo was there.

  Tom said to Jonathan, ‘Can you bash him with the gun after I hit him?’

  Jonathan nodded. The gun was small, but Jonathan’s adrenalin was at last stirring.

  ‘As if your life depended on it,’ Tom added. ‘Maybe it does.’

  The bodyguard came back from the restaurant car, moving more quickly. Tom was on the Italian’s left, and pulled him by the shirtfront suddenly, out of view of the restaurant car’s doors, and hit him in the jaw. Tom followed this with a left fist in the man’s abdomen, and Jonathan cracked the Italian on the back of the head with the gun butt.

  The door!’ Tom said, jerking his head, trying to catch the Italian who was falling forward.

  The man was not unconscious, his arms flailed weakly, but Jonathan already had the side door open, and Tom’s instinct was to get him out without spending a second on another blow. The noise of the train wheels came with a sudden roar. They pushed, kicked and poured the bodyguard out, and Tom lost his balance and would have toppled out, if not for Jonathan catching him by his jacket tails. Bang went the door shut again.

  Jonathan pushed his fingers through his tousled hair.

  Tom motioned for Jonathan to go to the other side of the platform, where he could see down the aisle. Jonathan went, and Tom could see him making an effort to collect himself and look like the ordinary passenger again.

  Tom raised his eyebrows in a question, and Jonathan nodded, and Tom nipped into the w.c. and swung the latch, trusting that Jonathan would have the wit to knock again when it was safe. Marcangelo lay crumpled on the floor, head next to the basin pedestal, his face pale now with a touch of blue in it. Tom looked away from him, heard the rustle of doors outside – the restaurant car doors – and then a welcome two knocks. This time Tom opened the door just a crack.

  ‘Looks all right,’ Jonathan said.

  Tom kicked the door open past Marcangelo’s shoes which the door bumped, and signalled for Jonathan to open the side door of the train. But in fact they worked together, Jonathan having to help Tom with some of Marcangelo’s weight before the side door was in a fully open position. The door tended to close because of the direction of the train. They tumbled Marcangelo through it head-first, heels over head, and Tom, giving him a final kick, didn’t touch him at all, because his body had already fallen clear on to a cinder bank so close to Tom that he could see individual ashes and blades of grass. Now Tom held Jonathan’s right arm while Jonathan reached for the door’s lever and caught it.

  Tom pulled the toilet door shut, breathless, trying to assume a calm air. ‘Go back to your seat and get off at Strassburg,’ he said. They’ll be looking at everyone on this train.’ He gave Jonathan a nervous pat on the arm. ‘Good luck, my friend.’ Tom watched Jonathan open the door that went into the carriage aisle.

  Then Tom started to enter the restaurant car, but a party of four was coming out, and Tom had to step aside while they waddled, talked and laughed through the two doors. Tom at last entered and took the first vacant table. He sat down in a chair facing the door he had just come through. He was expecting the second bodyguard at any moment. He drew the menu towards him and casually studied it. Cole slaw. Tongue salad. Gulaschsuppe … The menu was in French, English and German.

  Jonathan, walking down the aisle of Marcangelo’s carriage, came face to face with the second Italian bodyguard who rudely bumped into him in getting past. Jonathan was glad he felt a bit dazed, otherwise he might have reacted with alarm at the physical contact. The train gave one whistle followed by two shorter ones. Did that mean something? Jonathan got back to his seat and sat down without removing his overcoat, careful not to glance at any of the four people in the compartment. His watch said 5.31 p.m. It seemed more than an hour since he had looked at his watch and it had been a couple of minutes past 5 p.m. Jonathan squirmed, closed his eyes, cleared his throat, imagining the bodyguard and Marcangelo, having rolled under the train wheels, being chewed into various bits. Or maybe they hadn’t rolled under. Was the bodyguard even dead? Maybe he’d be rescued and would describe him and Tom Ripley with accuracy. Why had Tom Ripley helped him? Or should he call it help? What did Ripley want out of it? He was now under Ripley’s thumb, he realized. Ripley probably wanted only money, however. Or was he due for worse? Some kind of blackmail? Blackmail had a lot of forms.

  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

  TOM, 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.