The Boy Who Followed Ripley Read online

“Would you mind if I washed my hands first?” the boy asked with earnest politeness.

  “Certainly not. Right there.” Tom put on his bathroom light.

  The boy bent at the basin, scrubbing away for nearly a minute. He had not shut the door. He returned smiling. He had smooth lips, strong teeth, straight dark brown hair. “That’s better. Hot water!” He smiled at his own hands, then picked up his beer. “What’s that smell in there, turpentine? Do you paint?”

  Tom laughed a little. “I do sometimes, but today I was attacking carpenter ants in the shelves there.” Tom did not want to talk about carpenter ants. When the boy had sat down—Tom was seated on another wooden chair—Tom asked, “How long do you intend to stay in France?”

  The boy appeared to think. “Maybe another month or so.”

  “Then you go back to college? Are you in college?”

  “Not yet. I’m not sure I want to go to college. I’ll have to decide.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, pushing it toward the left side of his head. Some of his hair wanted to stand straight up on top. He seemed embarrassed by Tom’s inspection, and took a gulp of beer.

  Now Tom noticed a small spot, a mole, on the boy’s right cheek. Tom said casually, “You’re welcome to take a hot shower. No trouble at all.”

  “Oh, no, thanks very much. Maybe I look grubby. But really I can wash in cold water. I do. Anybody can.” The full young lips attempted a smile. The boy set his beer bottle on the floor, and caught sight of something in the wastebasket by his chair. He looked more closely. “Auberge Réserve des Quatre Pattes,” Billy read from a discarded envelope. “Now that’s funny! You’ve been there?”

  “No.— They send me mimeographed letters now and then, asking for donations. Why?”

  “Because just this week I was walking in the woods somewhere—east of Moret on a dirt road, and I met a man and woman who asked me if I knew where this Auberge Réserve was, because it was supposed to be near Veneux les Sablons. These people said they’d been looking for it for a couple of hours. Said they’d sent money to it a couple of times and they wanted to see the place.”

  “They say in their bulletins they don’t welcome visitors, because they make the animals nervous. They try to find homes by post—then they write success stories about how happy the dog or cat is in his new home.” Tom smiled, recalling the sentimentality of some of the stories.

  “You’ve sent them money?”

  “Oh—thirty francs a couple of times.”

  “Where did you send it?”

  “They have a Paris address. Post box, I think.”

  Billy smiled now. “Wouldn’t it be funny if the place didn’t exist?”

  This possibility amused Tom too. “Yes. Just a charity racket. Why didn’t that occur to me?” Tom opened two more beers.

  “May I look at this?” asked Billy, meaning the envelope in the wastebasket.

  “Why not?”

  The boy fished out also the mimeographed pages that had come in the envelope. He glanced over them, and read out loud, “. . . ‘adorable little creature who deserves the paradisical home that providence has found her.’ That’s a kitten. ‘And now to our doorstep has strayed an extremely thin brown and white terrier—fox—who is in need of penicillin and other protective injections . . .’ ” The boy looked up at Tom. “I just wonder where their doorstep is? What if it’s a fraud?” He pronounced fraud as if he relished the word. “If that place exists, I’m not too lazy to find it. I feel curious.”

  Tom watched him with interest. Billy—Rollins, was it?—had suddenly come alive.

  “Post Restante Box two hundred eighty-seven, eighteenth arrondissement,” the boy read. “I wonder which post office in the eighteenth? Can I keep this, since you seem to be throwing it away?”

  The boy’s zeal impressed Tom. And what had given him, at such an early age, an enthusiasm for exposing frauds? “Of course, keep it.” Tom reseated himself. “You’ve been the victim of fraud yourself, perhaps?”

  Billy laughed quickly, then looked as if he were reflecting on the past to see if he had been. “No, not really. Not out and out fraud.”

  Some kind of deception, perhaps, Tom thought, but decided not to pry further. “And wouldn’t it be amusing,” Tom said, “to send these people a letter signed with a phony name saying we’re wise to you, making money on nonexistent animals, so prepare yourself for a visit from the police at your—post box.”

  “We shouldn’t warn them, we should find out where they’re based and crash in. Just suppose it’s a couple of tough guys living in a fancy Paris apartment! We’d have to trail them—from the post box.”

  Just then Tom heard a knock at his door and got up.

  Heloise stood in the hall, in pajamas and a pink seersucker robe. “Oh, you have someone with you, Tome! I thought the voices were your radio!”

  “An American I just met in the village. Billy—” Tom turned, drawing Heloise by the hand. “My wife, Heloise.”

  “Billy Rollins. Enchanté, madame.” Billy, on his feet made a small bow.

  Tom continued in French. “Billy is working in Moret as a gardener. He is from New York.— A good gardener, Billy?” Tom smiled.

  “My—intentions are good,” Billy replied. He ducked his head, and again set his beer bottle carefully on the floor beside Tom’s desk.

  “I hope you have a pleasant sojourn in France,” Heloise said lightly, but her quick eyes had looked the boy over. “I just came to say good night, Tome, and tomorrow morning—Noëlle and I go to the antique shop at Le Pavé du Roi, then to Fontainebleau for lunch at l’Aigle Noir. Want to join us for lunch?”

  “I don’t think so, thank you, dear. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll see you both tomorrow morning before you leave, won’t I?— Good night, sleep well.” He kissed Heloise on the cheek. “I’ll drive Billy home, so don’t be alarmed if you hear me come in later. I’ll lock the house when I go out.”

  Billy said he could catch a ride easily, he was sure, but Tom insisted on driving him. Tom wanted to see if the Moret house in the Rue de Paris existed.

  In the car with Billy, Tom said, “Your family’s in New York? What does your father do, if that’s not an impertinent question.”

  “He’s—in electronics. They make measuring equipment. For measuring all kinds of things electronically. He’s one of the managers.”

  Tom sensed that Billy was lying. “You’re on good terms with your family?”

  “Oh, sure. They—”

  “They write to you?”

  “Oh, sure. They know where I am.”

  “And after France, where’re you going? Home?”

  A pause. “I might go to Italy. Not sure.”

  “Is this the right road? We turn here?”

  “No, the other way,” the boy said just in time. “But it’s the right road, all right.”

  Then the boy indicated where Tom should stop, at a medium-sized, modest-looking house with windows all dark now, front garden bordered with a low white wall along the pavement, closed carriage gates to one side.

  “My key,” Billy said, fishing a rather long key from his inside jacket pocket. “I have to be quiet. I thank you very much, Mr. Ripley.” He opened the car door.

  “Tell me what you find out about the animal home.”

  The boy smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  Tom watched him walk to the dark gates, shine the torch on the lock, then turn the key. Billy passed through, waved at Tom, then closed the gates. As Tom backed to turn the car, he saw the number 78 plainly visible on its blue official metal plaque beside the main door. Odd, Tom thought. Why should the boy want a boring job like this, even for a short time, unless he was hiding from something? But Billy didn’t look like a delinquent. The most likely thing, Tom thought, was that Billy had had a quarrel with his parents or suffered a disappointment with a girl, and had hopped on an airplane to try to forget it. Tom had the feeling the boy had plenty of money, and was in no need of garden work at fifty francs a day.

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  Three days later, on a Friday, Tom and Heloise sat at the table in the alcove off the living room, breakfasting and looking over letters and newspapers that had arrived at 9:30. It was Tom’s second coffee, Mme. Annette having brought the first to him, along with Heloise’s tea, at eight or so. A storm was blowing up, or brewing, creating an atmosphere of tension that had awakened Tom at eight, before Mme. Annette’s arrival. It was now ominously dark, not a breeze stirred outside, and there were distant rumbles of thunder.

  “A postcard from the Cleggs!” Heloise exclaimed, discovering it under letters and a magazine. “Norway! They’re on their cruise. Remember, Tome? Look! Isn’t that beautiful?”

  Tom looked up from his International Herald Tribune, and took the postcard Heloise extended. It showed a white ship cruising up a fjord between very green mountains, with a few cottages nestling in a crease of the shore in the foreground. “Looks deep,” Tom said, for some reason suddenly thinking of drowning. He was afraid of deep water, hated swimming or trying to, and often thought that somehow his end might be watery.

  “Read the postcard,” Heloise said.

  It was in English, signed by both Howard and Rosemary Clegg, their English neighbors who had a house about five kilometers away. “ ‘Divinely restful cruise. We play Sibelius on the cassette to keep in the mood. Love from Rosemary. Wish you both were here in the midnight sunshine with us—’ ” Tom paused as thunder cracked and rumbled like a determined dog. “We’re going to get it today,” Tom said. “I hope the dahlias stand up.” He had staked them all, however.

  Heloise reached for the card, which Tom handed back. “You’re so nervous, Tome. We have had storms before. I am glad it comes now and not tonight at six. I have to go to Papa’s, you know.”

  Tom knew. Chantilly. Heloise had a standing date with her parents for dinner on Friday nights, and usually she kept it. Sometimes Tom went and sometimes he didn’t. He preferred not to go, because her parents were stuffy and they bored him, not to mention that they had never cared much for him. Tom found it interesting that Heloise always said she had to go to “Papa’s” instead of to her “parents.’” Papa held the purse strings. Mama was considerably more generous by nature, but in case of a real crisis—if Tom stepped out of line in some way as had nearly happened in the Derwatt mess with Bernard and the American Murchison—Tom doubted if Mama would have much clout if Papa wanted to cut off Heloise’s allowance. The proper running and upkeep of Belle Ombre depended on Heloise’s allowance. Tom lit a cigarette, braced himself for the next shaft of lightning with a mixture of pleasure and anxiety, and thought of Jacques Plisson, Heloise’s father, a plump, pompous man with the strings of destiny in his hands (purse strings) which he held like a twentieth-century charioteer. A pity money had such power, yet of course it had.

  “Monsieur Tome, encore du café?” Mme. Annette stood suddenly at Tom’s elbow with the silver pot that Tom noticed trembled ever so slightly.

  “I’m all right, Madame Annette, but leave the pot, I may want some later.”

  “I’m going to check the windows,” Mme. Annette said, setting the pot on a mat in the center of the table. “Such a darkness! This will be a storm!” Her blue eyes under the Norman lids met Tom’s for an instant, then she bustled away toward the staircase. She had checked the windows once, Tom thought, maybe even closed some shutters, but to check them again pleased her. It pleased Tom too. He got up restlessly, went near the window, where there was a bit more light, and looked at the People column on the back page of the Trib. Frank Sinatra was making another final appearance, this time in a forthcoming film. Sixteen-year-old Frank Pierson, favorite son of the late super-food tycoon John Pierson, had taken off from the family home in Maine, and the family was anxious after nearly three weeks with no word from him. Frank had been extremely upset by his father’s death in July.

  Tom remembered a write-up of John Pierson’s death. Even the Sunday Times of London had given it a few inches. John Pierson had been a wheelchair case, something like George Wallace of Alabama, and for the same reason—someone had attempted to assassinate him. He had been enormously wealthy, not quite as wealthy as Howard Hughes, but still with a fortune that went into hundreds of millions gained by his food products: gourmet, health, and diet foods. Tom had remembered the obituaries especially because it had not been determined whether he had committed suicide by pushing himself off a cliff on his estate or whether it had been an accident. John Pierson had been fond of watching the sunsets from a cliff, and had refused to have a handrail put up, because it would have spoiled the view.

  Ka-a-rack!

  Tom flinched from the French windows, and looked wide-eyed outside to see if his greenhouse’s glass windows were still intact. Now the wind came, rattling something down the tiles of the roof, Tom hoped nothing more than a twig.

  Heloise was reading a magazine, indifferent to the elements.

  “Must get dressed,” Tom said. “You haven’t a lunch date, have you?”

  “Non, chéri. I am not going out till five. You are always nervous about the wrong things. This house is very solid!”

  Tom managed to nod, but it seemed natural to be nervous with lightning striking all over the place. He took the Trib from the table and went upstairs, and showered and shaved, daydreaming. When was old Plisson going to die, die a natural death? Not that Tom and Heloise needed money, more money, not at all. But he was such a pain in the neck, classic, like the awful mother-in-law. Jacques Plisson was of course plumping for Chirac too. Dressed now, Tom opened the side window in his bedroom and got a gust of rain-filled wind in his face, which he breathed in because it was refreshing and exciting, but he closed the window at once. What a good smell, rain over dry land! Tom went to Heloise’s bedroom, and saw that the windows were closed. They hissed with the rain now. Mme. Annette was just tucking the bedcover properly over the pillows on the double bed where he and Heloise had slept.

  “All secure, Monsieur Tome,” she said, patting a pillow, finished, straightening herself up. Her rather short, sturdy figure seemed charged with energy like that of a much younger person. She was in her late sixties, but she had many more years ahead of her, Tom thought, and the thought was comforting.

  “I’m going to take a quick look at the garden,” Tom said, and turned and left the room.

  He ran down the stairs, out the front door and around to the back lawn. His dahlia stakes and their strings were still holding. The Crimson Sunbursts nodded their heads crazily, but they weren’t going to be blown over, neither were the frizzy orange dahlias, Tom’s favorites.

  Lightning broke out in the slate-colored sky to the southwest, and Tom stood waiting for the thunder as the rain wet his face. It came with an arrogant, rending sound, hollow.

  What if the boy he met the other night were Frank Pierson? Sixteen years old. That was certainly more like it than the nineteen the boy had told him. Maine, not New York. When old Pierson died, hadn’t there been a picture of the whole family in the IHT? There had been a picture of the father, anyway, whose face Tom realized he couldn’t at all remember. Or had that been in the Sunday Times? But the boy of three days ago he remembered better than he usually remembered people. The boy’s face was rather brooding and serious, and he didn’t smile easily. A firm mouth, and level dark eyebrows. And the mole on his right cheek, not large enough to show up in the average photograph, perhaps, but a mark. The boy had been not only polite, but cautious.

  “Tome!— Come in!” That was Heloise, shouting from the French windows.

  Tom ran toward her.

  “Do you want to be hit by the lightning?”

  Tom wiped his desert boots on the doormat. “I’m not wet! I was thinking of something else!”

  “Of what? Dry your hair.” She handed him a blue towel from the downstairs loo.

  “Roger’s coming this afternoon at three,” Tom said, wiping his face. “Scarlatti for me. I must practice this morning and after lunch too.”

  Heloise
smiled. In the rainlight, her blue-gray eyes showed lavender spokelike radiations from their pupils, which Tom adored. Had she chosen a lavender-colored dress especially for today, Tom wondered? Probably not, and it was merely a piece of aesthetic luck.

  “I was just sitting down to practice myself,” Heloise replied primly in English, “when I saw you standing on the lawn like an idiot.” She went to the harpsichord and sat down, sat up straight and shook her hands—like a professional, Tom thought.

  He went to the kitchen. Mme. Annette was clearing out the cabinet above the sideboard to the right of the sink. She had a dust-rag in her hand, and was wiping one spice jar after another from her perch of a three-legged wooden stool. It was too early for lunch preparations, and she had probably postponed her shopping in the village to this afternoon, because of the rainstorm.

  “Just want to have a look at the old newspapers,” Tom said, stooping near the threshold of the next hall, which led to Mme. Annette’s quarters on the right. The old newspapers were kept in a basket with a handle, the type of basket used for firewood.

  “Something in particular, Monsieur Tome? May I help you?”

  “Thank you.— I’ll know in a minute. American newspapers I need. I think I can do it.” Tom spoke absently as he riffled through July IHTs. Obituary page or the news, that was the question, but he had a recollection of the Pierson items being in an upper left column of a right-hand page, with a photograph. There were only ten or so IHTs to look at, the others having been discarded. Tom went up to his room. Here he found more IHTs, but none had the write-up of John Pierson.

  Heloise’s Bach Invention sounded quite good from Tom’s room. Was he jealous? Tom wanted to laugh. Was his own Scarlatti not going to be as good (in the ears of Roger Lepetit, of course) as Heloise’s Bach this afternoon? Now Tom did laugh, put his hands on his hips, and looked at the little heap of newspapers on the floor with disappointment. Who’s Who, he thought, and crossed the hall to the other front, turreted room which was their library. Tom pulled the Who’s Who down, and found no entry for John Pierson. He tried Who’s Who in America, an older volume than the English, but still found nothing on John Pierson. Both his Who’s Whos were about five years old. And John Pierson might have been the type to refuse permission for an entry.