The Two Faces of January

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Ah! Pende! Five,” said the man.

  The floor below, Chester thought. He was almost too tired to care. Then, as he sat in the ghastly, lumpy armchair, after tossing his damp coat on the bed, waiting for the rest of his luggage, he thought, no need to worry Rydal’s going to get away from you, because Rydal’s not going to let you get away from him. Chester smiled bitterly. All he needed was Athens, any big city, and he’d telephone a message in to the police about Rydal Keener. He wouldn’t have to give his own name to the police—Chamberlain, or anything else. If they suspected he was Chamberlain, or if Rydal told the police he was MacFarland alias Chamberlain, when they picked Rydal up, Chester could be miles away by then, in some other country. He’d arrange, before anything else, to get still another passport from Niko, one Rydal wouldn’t know about. He’d pay enough to Niko for him to keep his mouth shut. Which of course might be plenty, but he had it. Yes, he had it.

  Here it came, the money, in his big tan suitcase, and here came the duffel with his Scotch bottles. Chester tipped the panting manager, and, as soon as he had gone, poured himself a badly needed drink.

  He’d catch the plane tomorrow. They’d both be on the plane tomorrow back to Athens. It was funny.

  Then Chester realized that he couldn’t afford to wait until 3:30 to catch the plane. Better that he took the boat tomorrow morning at 9, even if the boat took twenty-four hours (which it did) to get to Piraeus. They would certainly find her body tomorrow morning, when it became light, find it as soon as they opened the place to the public. Chester vaguely believed that she wouldn’t be found tonight, even if a guard went through the place calling everybody out. A guard wouldn’t necessarily or very likely flash a torch around on all the terraces to see if anyone was still there. But by 9 or at latest 10 tomorrow morning, the body would certainly be found. Chester tried now not to think about her body, just the fact that it would be found.

  Chester drank off his Scotch, and poured another. There was water from a basin in the room. The bath was down the hall somewhere, the proprietor had said, and Chester supposed that he would be able to find it.

  He took off his shirt and bathed himself with a face towel at the basin. He stank of sweat. His face in the mirror shocked him—haggard and old, grey and exhausted-looking. Like a man moving in his sleep, Chester dragged on his jacket, for warmth, without putting on a shirt, and lay down on the bed on his back. He did not sleep. Consciousness was like a little whirling knot in the center of his brain, indestructible, useless also, for he was not thinking. The creaking of a floorboard in the hall made him go tense. Then he flew from the bed, saw the key in the lock, and turned it. The door had not been locked. His heart pounded as if he had been in mortal danger.

  There were no more creaks in the hall.

  He fell into a half sleep. The rain peppered the windows now and then, when the wind blew. Somewhere outside, there was a cat fight. Chester saw two mangy cats fighting on the edge of a roof, clinching in battle, falling over the edge together. He woke up with a start, sat up.

  What’s the matter with now, he thought. Call the police now, tell them where Rydal Keener is. Tell them Rydal Keener killed his wife, because he couldn’t get her away from her husband. Tell them Rydal Keener is off his rocker, Rydal Keener killed the police agent in the King’s Palace Hotel, and threatened to kill him, if he told anyone about it. Chester had seen the murder in the hall. Chester was a victim of circumstance. Chester had paid the fellow five thousand dollars to get free of him. The money was on Rydal Keener, the police could find it, if they looked. Yes, go the whole way—No, Chester changed his mind about that. He wouldn’t be able to say he was Chamberlain, had always been Chamberlain, when he’d been registered at the Hotel King’s Palace as Chester MacFarland. How would he explain the passport with the name Chamberlain on it? Well, he’d acquired it as a last, desperate measure, to keep himself from being caught and blamed for the Greek agent’s murder, for a murder that Rydal Keener had done. The motive? Worry about that later. Rydal Keener was a psychopath, that was it. Rydal Keener had murdered his wife to spite him, murdered her because he couldn’t get her. Chester had heard of men doing that.

  What was the matter with now?

  Chester stood up. There was no telephone in the room. He could go downstairs, go to a telephone outside somewhere. Of course. That was better, anyway. Chester could hear himself saying, You will find the body of Mary Ellen Chamberlain on a terrace of the Knossos palace. . . . Yes. Now. The murderer is Rydal Keener. He is at the Hotel Hephaestou. K-e-e-n-e-r. . . .

  It could be done. It could be done. Just tell them, he thought. Just say, Rydal Keener is also responsible for the death of George Papanopolos in Athens last week. . . .

  Chester opened his suitcase to get a fresh shirt. Lifting the suitcase to the bed had sent a pain of fatigue through his right arm. With the clean shirt in his hand, he realized he was not going to go out and call tonight. The town was too small. How many Americans in it? It was ridiculous. He’d have to check out of the hotel before the police came for Rydal, Rydal wouldn’t let him check out—No, it was impossible. But Athens, that was another matter. Chester decided to go down and speak to the proprietor about the boat tomorrow. He might have to buy his ticket in advance. Chester put on the clean shirt.

  There was a knock at the door. Then the knob turned.

  Chester knew that it was Rydal. He went to the door. “Who is it?”

  “You know who it is. Open the door.”

  “I don’t care to see you.”

  Rydal’s shoulder crashed against the door, made the wood creak, but the lock held.

  Chester opened the door.

  “Thanks,” Rydal said, and came in.

  Chester thought for a moment that Rydal was drunk. But his eyes did not look drunk. Rydal swung the door shut carelessly behind him. He stood looking at Chester for several seconds, his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. Chester looked away from his eyes, then back again.

  “Just what do you want?” Chester asked.

  “I came in to kill you,” Rydal said, his fingers moving a little at his waist. “You know—I’ll just say you were a suicide. I’ve already planted the idea in the hotel-keeper’s mind.”

  Chester had started to sweat, though he was not at all afraid. It was too absurd. He smiled slightly. “And how were you proposing to do it?”

  “Hang you. A couple of ties’ll do it. That light fixture looks substantial.”

  Chester glanced up. The light fixture was not at all substantial, he thought, not at all. He shifted his feet to a firmer stance. “Get out of my room.”

  “Oh, no.” Rydal smiled. “Maybe you’d like to turn me in to the police first. You wouldn’t want to die before you’d done that, would you? Do it now, what’re you waiting for? See how far you get! You disgusting swine, haven’t you a brain in your head?” Rydal’s voice was suddenly loud. He leaned forward. A vein stood out in his neck. “Swine!”

  “Get out of here. You’re hysterical.” Now Chester was afraid of him.

  Rydal bit his lip. He became visibly calmer, as quickly as he had flared up. “I don’t think I’ll bother talking to you,” he said, and walked to the door. “We’ll continue this in Athens, all right? You’d better take the boat tomorrow, not the plane.”

  Chester did not say anything. He was looking at Rydal, but he had not moved from where he stood.

  “Unfortunately I’d better, too. The police might pick me up before three tomorrow, and that’d give you time to get away from me.” Rydal went out and closed the door.

  Chester did not want to go down and ask about the boat now. Let Rydal take care of it, as long as they both had to catch it. He went to the door and turned the key. Then he undressed slowly, and slipped between the sheets without bothering with pyjamas. But he left the light on. He felt safer with the light on. He realized
that he was afraid to turn Rydal in to the police, even turn him in by means of a telephone call in which he would not give his own name, and even in Athens. Rydal had too much against him. Rydal could call Niko in as a witness, as a corroborator of the passport falsification, if he had to. Rydal could tell the police about his Chamberlain alias—and God knew what Colette had told Rydal about him, maybe plenty. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get rid of Rydal by killing him. On his second try, he mustn’t fail. The safest, Chester thought, was to get someone else to do it. Maybe someone Niko in Athens would know. Tell Niko he had a dangerous job for someone, an important job he was willing to pay a lot of money for. Niko would know the right person. Don’t tell Niko what it’s all about. Just talk to the one man who would do it. Chester would be able to tell as soon as he saw the man. If the first man weren’t right, he might know someone who would be right. It could be done.

  13

  Rydal was surprised the next morning at 7:30 not to get any response from his knock on Chester’s door. He knocked several times and called Chester’s name. No answer. Then he ran downstairs.

  The same man was on duty behind the desk, dozing now, tipped back against the wall in a straight chair. He sat upright when Rydal rapped on the counter.

  “Excuse me. The gentleman in number ten. Has he checked out?”

  “Who?”

  “Number ten. Mr. Chamberlain.”

  “Ah, no, he went out at . . . oh, four or five o’clock.”

  “This morning? With his luggage?”

  “No, no,” the man said, smiling. “Not with his luggage. I don’t know, maybe he was going for an early morning walk.”

  “Thanks.” Rydal walked to the front door and looked up and down the little street. Well, relax, he thought. Chester would be back. Unless of course he’d taken all his money from his suitcase and gone off with it, left his luggage behind. Rydal couldn’t believe that. Just as he was about to turn and go back into the hotel, Chester came around the corner. Rydal walked back into the lobby. “He’s coming,” he said to the man.

  “Ah, good. He sleeps badly, your friend, maybe.”

  “I suppose. We’ll be leaving in half an hour, so could you make up our bills?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rydal walked slowly towards the stairway, not wanting the proprietor to see any hostility between him and Chester. As Chester approached the stairway, Rydal, on the fourth step, turned and said, “Good morning. I’ve just asked the man to make up our bills. We ought to leave as soon as possible. The boat leaves at nine.”

  Chester looked puffy-eyed and pale. “Okay,” he said.

  Rydal went to his room on the second floor, and Chester went on to the third. “See you downstairs at eight,” Rydal said.

  Around 8, they paid their bills in silence, loaded their baggage into the same taxi, and set off for the port. There was a newsboy on the dock near the ship. Rydal bought an Iraklion paper. One glance at the front page and he saw there was no mention of a body having been found at Knossos. Rydal spoke to a ship’s steward on the dock, and was told that tickets could be bought in the main saloon on the main deck. Rydal asked a porter to take their luggage on board.

  Fortunately, there were still state-rooms available in first class. Rydal did not care to go even second class on such a ship. There was a third class probably relegated to the ship’s bowels, and the open stern of the main deck was already jammed with people who had no shelter at all for the twenty-four hour trip, people who were eating oranges and bananas and sandwiches and throwing the remains over the side or simply dropping them at their feet. A glimpse of them as he had gone up the gangway had depressed Rydal. They looked like cattle in a pen, except that these were already pushing and squabbling over sleeping room for the night, some providently holding positions by lying down on the deck and refusing to budge: man was capable of thinking ahead.

  “I can give you a state-room together,” said the purser.

  “No, no, that’s quite all right,” Rydal said, almost too vehemently. He was speaking in English to the purser, who sat behind a desk in the main saloon, and Chester was standing four feet away. “Separate ones are fine.” The prospect of sharing a state-room with Chester had brought a reaction that he felt was visible.

  Chester got a number 27, Rydal a number 12. They were on opposite sides of the ship.

  To Rydal’s great joy, his state-room, a room for two, was empty, and more than likely it would stay empty. He hadn’t seen anyone else buying tickets from the purser. As soon as his suitcase was inside, he took off his jacket, pushed the curtain of his porthole aside and glanced out—getting a glimpse of Iraklion that looked like yellow-white stones tumbled down a hill, and a close-up of a blue-capped porter hurrying by just outside on the deck—then he sat down on a bunk and put his hands over his face. Now, he thought, surely just about now, they were finding Colette’s body. That was what this morning’s sunlight would bring, Colette’s body. Rydal lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed, listening to the ordinary, workaday shouts, bumps, clanks and footfalls all around him and above him. The news would come in on the ship’s radio before noon, he thought. The news would get around the ship, among the passengers. It was bizarre enough. Rydal thought of Colette’s pocketbook—it had been under her right arm, under the elbow—and wondered what was in it. Not her passport, Rydal thought, but maybe a driver’s license, for Mrs. Howard Cheever, maybe a photo of herself and Chester, maybe a photograph of Chester, or had Chester thought to make her take all such things out of her billfold? He imagined the ticket-seller at the Knossos palace, chattering away now, telling the police about the young man with the American accent who had asked him if anyone had driven away in a taxi. Yes, the young man had behaved more suspiciously than the older man. In fact, he hadn’t seen the older man leave at all, perhaps. Rydal imagined the police speculating as to whether Chester might also have been murdered by the young man, his body still somewhere on the grounds, down in one of the oil-vat pits, or in a corner of one of the labyrinthine rooms, or lying in some drainage depression in a floor, perhaps behind the queen’s bathtub.

  Rydal realized he could be out of it, if he chose. Chester was under his heel, not the other way around. Rydal quite expected that Chester would try to kill him, probably try to hire someone to do it, because he wouldn’t have the cleverness or the courage to do it himself. Yes, Chester was in a very, very bad position, his morale worsened by the death of his wife. Rydal enjoyed seeing Chester in a bad position, enjoyed seeing terror in his face. It was not at all that he was playing policeman, avenger of Colette, Rydal told himself. He was simply amusing himself, and he was going to grow tired of it in about four days, he thought, even if they got to Italy or France in that time, and then he would quit it. He would leave Chester, after giving him some worse scare than he had yet known. After perhaps preparing a way for Chester to run right into the police. That was his idea, in principle. Rydal slid the chain bolt in the door, so that the door could open only about three inches, if anyone tried to open it, and then he shaved at the basin. To the right of the basin was a narrow door which gave on to a shower. The boat was getting under way.

  Around 10:30 he went on deck to look at the sea. But he did not look behind, at Crete. He did not want to see Crete disappearing. Ahead and on either side, there was no island in view, nothing but blue, rolling, and slightly choppy water. The sky seemed unusually bright and clear, as if yesterday’s rain had swept the world of clouds. Rydal explored the boat, went through the little main saloon again, where the purser’s desk had been, and down some central stairs covered with worn linoleum that was held down by fixtures of brass-plated tin, stairs with a heavy wooden balustrade that might have had a certain elegance in the days of Queen Victoria. The ship was fairly clean, but everything on it had been allowed to wear out. The first-class lounge had a dreary atmosphere. It wa
s a round room at the stern, above the open deck where the cabinless passengers were crammed. There were not enough chairs, and only one sofa, fully occupied. There was not a piano or a card table. A few men—two looked Italian, one might have been French—leaned against the partitions between the wide windows, smoking quietly, gazing out at the water. A Greek radio program of dance music was on. The ship had begun to roll. Rydal heard a plump woman on the sofa say in French that, if this kept up, there wouldn’t be many for lunch. The rolling of the ship made the floor alternately push and fall away from his feet. There was a tiny bar to the left of the door, Rydal saw now, only a short counter, with no seats provided, and no barman, either.

  And here, standing at a window smoking, Rydal heard it on the 11 o’clock news. It was the first item:

  . . . the body of a young woman found on the south terrace of the Palace of Knossos . . . killed by a large vase which came from an upper terrace . . . not yet been identified (static obliterated a phrase here and there) . . . believed to be American. . . . are certain she was the victim of a deliberate attack, as there had been no vase directly above her on the parapet . . . Police are withholding other information until . . .

  “Knossou?” One of the men Rydal had thought were Italian was taking it up in Greek. “What a place for a murder, eh?” And the two laughed a little.

  Rydal turned his eyes drearily away from them.

  “What’s the news?” asked the Frenchwoman. She was knitting away briskly at something beige.

  “A murder in the Palace of Knossos,” answered her companion in Greek-accented French.

  “Tiens! A murder! And we were just there Sunday! A murder of whom?” The knitter sat up.

  “Une jeune américaine! Mon Dieu, ces américains!” Head shaking.

  Rydal watched it spread slowly, like a small fire as yet undangerous, through the lounge, watched the smiles, the shrugs, the eyebrows lifted with interest, and dropped again. Many had no doubt just been to the palace. It was a tourist must. The interest in the lounge was only mild, but enough to make people ignore the rest of the news.