Ripley Under Ground Page 2

  Jeff took an instant to comprehend. “Oh, Tom, great! Can you be here for Tuesday?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Can you make it Monday. The day after tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think I can. But Tuesday, yes. Now listen, Jeff, the makeup—it’s got to be good.”

  “Don’t worry! Just a sec!” He left off to speak with Ed, then returned. “Ed says he has a source—of supply.”

  “Don’t announce it to the public,” Tom continued in his calm voice, because Jeff sounded as if he were leaping off his feet with joy. “And another thing, if it doesn’t work, if I fail—we must say it’s a joke a friend of yours dreamed up—me. That it has nothing to do with—you know.” Tom meant with validating Murchison’s forgery, but Jeff grasped this at once.

  “Ed wants to say a word.”

  “Hello, Tom,” Ed’s deeper voice said. “We’re delighted you’re coming over. It’s a marvelous idea. And you know—Bernard’s got some of his clothes and things.”

  “I’ll leave that to you.” Tom felt suddenly alarmed. “The clothes are the least. It’s the face. Get cracking, will you?”

  “Right you are. Bless you.”

  They hung up. Then Tom slumped back on the sofa and relaxed, almost horizontal. No, he wouldn’t go to London too soon. Go on stage at the last moment, with dash and momentum. Too much briefing and rehearsal could be a bad thing.

  Tom got up with the cold cup of tea. It would be amusing and funny if he could bring it off, he thought, as he stared at the Derwatt over his fireplace. This was a pinkish picture of a man in a chair, a man with several outlines, so it seemed one was looking at the picture through someone else’s distorting eyeglasses. Some people said Derwatts hurt their eyes. But from a distance of three or four yards, they didn’t. This was not a genuine Derwatt, but an early Bernard Tufts forgery. Across the room hung a genuine Derwatt, “The Red Chairs.” Two little girls sat side by side, looking terrified, as if it were their first day in school, or as if they were listening to something frightening in church. “The Red Chairs” was eight or nine years old. Behind the little girls, wherever they were sitting, the whole place was on fire. Yellow and red flames leapt about, hazed by touches of white, so that the fire didn’t immediately catch the attention of the beholder. But when it did, the emotional effect was shattering. Tom loved both pictures. But now he had almost forgotten to remember, when he looked at them, that one was a forgery and the other genuine.

  Tom recalled the early amorphous days of what was now Derwatt Ltd. Tom had met Jeffrey Constant and Bernard Tufts in London just after Derwatt had drowned—presumably intentionally—in Greece. Tom had just returned from Greece himself; it was not long after Dickie Greenleaf’s death. Derwatt’s body had never been found, but some fishermen of the village said they had seen him go swimming one morning, and had not seen him return. Derwatt’s friends—and Tom had met Cynthia Gradnor on the same visit—had been profoundly disturbed, affected in a way that Tom had never seen after a death, not even in a family. Jeff, Ed, Cynthia, Bernard had been dazed. They had spoken dreamily, passionately, of Derwatt not only as an artist but as a friend, and as a human being. He had lived simply, in Islington, eating badly at times, but he had always been generous to others. Children in his neighborhood had adored him, and had sat for him without expecting any payment, but Derwatt had always reached in his pockets for what were perhaps his last pennies to give them. Then just before he had gone to Greece, Derwatt had had a disappointment. He had painted a mural on a government assignment for a post office in a town in the north of England. It had been approved in sketch form, but rejected when finished: somebody was nude in it, or too nude, and Derwatt had refused to change it. (“And he was right, of course!” Derwatt’s loyal friends had assured Tom.) But this had deprived Derwatt of a thousand pounds that he had counted on. It seemed to have been a last straw in a series of disappointments—the depth of which Derwatt’s friends had not realized, and for this they reproached themselves. There had been a woman in the picture too, Tom recalled vaguely, the cause of another disappointment to Derwatt, but it seemed that the woman was not so important to him as his work disappointments. All Derwatt’s friends were professionals also, mostly freelance, and were quite busy, and in the last days when Derwatt had called on them—not for money but for company on several evenings—they had said they hadn’t time to see him. Unbeknownst to his friends, Derwatt had sold what furniture he had in his studio and got himself to Greece where he had written a long and depressed letter to Bernard. (Tom had never seen the letter.) Then had come the news of his disappearance or death.

  The first thing Derwatt’s friends, including Cynthia, had done was gather all his paintings and drawings and try to sell them. They had wanted to keep his name alive, had wanted the world to know and appreciate what he had done. Derwatt had had no relatives, and as Tom recalled, he had been a foundling without even known parents. The legend of his tragic death had helped instead of hindered; usually galleries were uninterested in paintings by a young and unknown artist who was already dead—but Edmund Banbury, a freelance journalist, had used his entrées and his talent for articles on Derwatt in newspapers, color supplements, and art magazines, and Jeffrey Constant had made photographs of Derwatt’s paintings to illustrate them. Within a few months of Derwatt’s death they found a gallery, the Buckmaster Gallery and moreover in Bond Street, which was willing to handle his work, and soon Derwatt’s canvases were selling for six and eight hundred pounds.

  Then had come the inevitable. The paintings were all sold, or nearly, and this was when Tom had been living in London (he had lived for two years in a flat in S.W.1, near Eaton Square) and had run into Jeff and Ed and Bernard one night in the Salisbury pub. They had again been sad, because Derwatt’s paintings were coming to an end, and it had been Tom who had said, “You’re doing so well, it’s a shame to end like this. Can’t Bernard knock off a few paintings in Derwatt’s style?” Tom had meant it as a joke, or a half-joke. He hardly knew the trio, only knew that Bernard was a painter. But Jeff, a practical type like Ed Banbury (and not a bit like Bernard), had turned to Bernard and said, “I’ve thought of that, too. What do you think, Bernard?” Tom had forgot Bernard’s exact reply, but he remembered that Bernard had lowered his head as if in shame or plain terror at the idea of falsifying his idol, Derwatt. Months later, Tom had encountered Ed Banbury in a street in London, and Ed had said cheerfully that Bernard had brought off two excellent “Derwatts” and they had sold one at the Buckmaster as genuine.

  Then still later, just after Tom had married Heloise, and was no longer living in London, Tom, Heloise, and Jeff were at the same party, a large cocktail party of the kind where you never meet or even see the host, and Jeff had beckoned Tom into a corner.

  Jeff had said, “Can we meet somewhere later? This is my address,” handing Tom a card. “Can you come round about eleven tonight?”

  So Tom had gone to Jeff’s alone, which had been simple, because Heloise—who at that time did not speak much English—had had enough after the cocktail party, and wanted to go back to their hotel. Heloise loved London—English sweaters and Carnaby Street, and the shops that sold Union Jack wastebaskets and signs that said things like “Piss off,” things that Tom often had to translate for her, but she said her head ached after trying to speak English for an hour.

  “Our problem is,” Jeff had said that night, “we can’t go on pretending we’ve found another Derwatt somewhere. Bernard is doing fine but— Do you think we could dare dig up a big trove of Derwatts somewhere, like Ireland where he painted for a bit, and sell them and then call it quits? Bernard isn’t keen about going on. He feels he’s betraying Derwatt—in a way.”

  Tom had reflected a moment, then said, “What’s the matter with Derwatt being still alive somewhere? A recluse somewhere, sending his paintings to London? That is, if Bernard can keep going.”

  “Um-m. Well—yes. Greece, maybe. What a super idea, Tom! It can go on forever!
”

  “How about Mexico? I think it’s safer than Greece. Let’s say Derwatt’s living in some little village. He won’t tell anyone the name of the village—except maybe you and Ed and Cynthia—”

  “Not Cynthia. She’s— Well, Bernard doesn’t see much of her anymore. Consequently neither do we. Just as well she doesn’t know too much about this.”

  Jeff had rung up Ed that night to tell him the idea, Tom recalled.

  “It’s just an idea,” Tom had said. “I don’t know if it’ll work.”

  But it had worked. Derwatt’s paintings had begun coming from Mexico, it was said, and the dramatic story of Derwatt’s “resurrection” had been exploited to advantage by Ed Banbury and Jeff Constant in more magazine articles, with photographs of Derwatt and his (Bernard’s) latest paintings, though not of Derwatt himself in Mexico, because Derwatt permitted no interviewers or photographers. The paintings were sent from Vera Cruz and not even Jeff or Ed knew the name of his village. Derwatt was perhaps mentally sick to be such a recluse. His paintings were sick and depressed, according to some critics. But were now among the highest priced paintings of any living artist in England or on the Continent or in America. Ed Banbury wrote to Tom in France, offering him ten percent of the profits, the loyal little group (now numbering only three, Bernard, Jeff, and Ed) being the sole beneficiaries of Derwatt’s sales. Tom had accepted, mainly because he considered it, his acceptance, rather a guarantee of his silence about the duplicity. But Bernard Tufts was painting like a demon.

  Jeff and Ed bought the Buckmaster Gallery. Tom was not sure if Bernard owned any part of it. Several Derwatts were in a permanent collection of the gallery, and the gallery showed the paintings of other artists as well, of course. This was more Jeff’s job than Ed’s, and Jeff had hired an assistant, a sort of manager for the gallery. But this step up, the purchase of the Buckmaster Gallery, had come after Jeff and Ed had been approached by an art materials manufacturer called George Janopolos or some such, who wanted to start a line of goods to be labeled “Derwatt,” which would include everything from erasers to oil paint sets, and for which he offered Derwatt a royalty of one percent. Ed and Jeff had decided to accept for Derwatt (presumably with Derwatt’s consent). A company had then been formed called Derwatt Ltd.

  All this Tom recollected at four in the morning, shivering a little despite his princely dressing gown. Mme. Annette always thriftily turned the central heating down at night. He held the cup of cold sweet tea between his hands and stared unseeing at a photograph of Heloise—long blonde hair on either side of a slender face, a pleasant and meaningless design to Tom just now rather than a face—and he thought of Bernard working in secret on his Derwatt forgeries in a closed, even locked room in his studio apartment. Bernard’s place was pretty crummy, as it always had been. Tom had never seen the sanctum sanctorum where he painted his masterpieces, the Derwatts that brought in thousands of quid. If one painted more forgeries than one’s own paintings, wouldn’t the forgeries become more natural, more real, more genuine to oneself, even, than one’s own painting? Wouldn’t the effort finally go out of it and the work become second nature?

  At last Tom curled up on the yellow sofa, slippers off and feet drawn under his robe, and slept. He did not sleep long before Mme. Annette arrived and awakened him with a shriek, or a shrill gasp, of surprise.

  “I must have fallen asleep reading,” Tom said, smiling, sitting up.

  Mme. Annette hurried off to make his coffee.

  2

  Tom booked a flight to London at noon on Tuesday. It would give him only a couple of hours to get made-up and to be briefed. Not enough time to grow nervous. Tom drove to Melun to pick up some cash—francs—at his bank.

  It was eleven-forty, and the bank closed at twelve. Tom was third in the queue at the window where people received cash, but unfortunately a woman was delivering payroll money or some such at this window, heaving up bags of coins, while keeping her feet braced against the bags that remained on the floor. Behind the grille, a clerk with wetted thumb was counting stacks of banknotes as quickly as possible and making notations of their sums on two separate papers. How long would this go on, Tom wondered, as the clock crept towards twelve. Tom watched with amusement as the queue broke up. Three men now and two women pressed near the grille, staring glassy-eyed, like fascinated snakes, at all the dough, as if it were a heritage left them by a relative who had worked a lifetime for it. Tom gave it up and left the bank. He could manage without the cash, he thought, and in fact he had only been thinking of giving it or selling it to English friends who might be coming to France.

  On Tuesday morning, when Tom was packing his bag, Mme. Annette knocked on his bedroom door. “I’m off for Munich,” Tom said cheerily. “There’s a concert.”

  “Ah, Munich! Bavière! You must take warm clothing.” Mme. Annette was used to his impromptu trips. “For how long, M. Tome?”

  “Two days, maybe three. Don’t worry about messages. I may ring to see if any has come.”

  Then Tom thought of something possibly useful, a Mexican ring that he had—he thought—in his studbox. Yes, there it was, among cuff links and buttons, a heavy ring of silver whose design was two coiled snakes. Tom disliked it and had forgot how he acquired it, but at least it was Mexican. Tom blew on it, rubbed it against a trousers leg, and pocketed it.

  The post at 10:30 a.m. brought three items: a telephone bill, lumpy in its envelope because of separate tabs for each non-Villeperce call; a letter from Heloise; and an American airmail letter addressed in a hand Tom didn’t know. He turned the envelope over and was surprised to see the name Christopher Greenleaf on the back with a San Francisco return address. Who was Christopher? He opened Heloise’s letter first.

  11 octobre 19–—

  Chéri,

  I am happy and very quite now. Very good repasts. We catch fishs off the boat. Zeppo sends love. [Zeppo was her swarthy Greek host and Tom could tell him what to do with his love.]

  I learn better to mount a bicycle. We have made many voyages into the land which is dry. Zeppo makes photos. How goes it at Belle Ombre? I miss you. Are you happy? Many invites? [Did that mean guests or invitations?] Are you painting? I have received no word from Papa.

  Kiss Mme. A. I embrace you.

  The rest was in French. She wanted him to send a red bathing-suit which he would find in the small commode in her bathroom. He should send it airmail. The yacht had a heated swimming pool. Tom at once went upstairs, where Mme. Annette was still working in his room, and entrusted this task to her, giving her a hundred-franc bill for it, because he thought she might be scandalized at the price of the airmail package and be tempted to send it slow post.

  Then he went down and opened the Greenleaf letter hastily, because he had to leave for Orly in a few minutes.

  Oct. 12, 19——

  Dear Mr. Ripley,

  I am a cousin of Dickie’s and am coming to Europe next week, probably going to London first, though I cannot make up my mind whether to go to Paris first. Anyway, I thought it would be nice if we could meet. My uncle Herbert gave me your address, and he says you are not far from Paris. Haven’t got your telephone number, but I can look it up.

  To tell you a bit about myself, I am twenty and I go to Stanford University. I spent one year in military service, during which my college was interrupted. I’ll return to Stanford for a degree in engineering but meanwhile I am taking a year off to see Europe and relax. Lots of fellows do this now. The pressure everywhere is quite something. I mean in America, but maybe you have been in Europe so long you don’t know what I mean.

  My uncle has told me a lot about you. He says you were a good friend of Dickie’s. I met Dickie when I was 11 and he was 21. I remember a tall blond fellow. He visited my family in California.

  Please tell me if you will be in Villeperce in late October, early November. Meanwhile here’s hoping to meet you.

  Sincerely

  Chris Greenleaf

  He would ge
t out of that one politely, Tom thought. No use making closer contact with the Greenleaf family. Once in a blue moon Herbert Greenleaf wrote him, and Tom always replied, nice polite letters.

  “Mme. Annette, keep the home fires burning,” Tom said as he took off.

  “What did you say?”

  He translated it into French as best he could.

  “Au revoir, M. Tome! Bon voyage!” Mme. Annette waved to him from the front door.

  Tom took the red Alfa Romeo, one of the two cars in the garage. At Orly, he put the car in the indoor garage, saying it was for two or three days. He bought a bottle of whiskey in the terminus to take to the gang. He had already a big bottle of Pernod in his suitcase (since he was permitted to enter London with only one bottle), because Tom had found that if he went through the green aisle and showed the visible bottle, the inspector never asked him to open his suitcase. On the plane he bought untipped Gauloises, always popular in London.

  It was raining lightly in England. The bus crept along on the left side of the road, past the family houses whose names always amused Tom, though now he could hardly read them through the murk. BIDE-A-WEE. Unbelievable. MILFORD HAVEN. DUN WANDERING. They hung on little signboards. INGLENOOK. SIT-YE-DOON. Good God. Then came the stretch of jammed-together Victorian houses that had been converted into small hotels with grandiose names in neon lights between Doric doorway pillars: MANCHESTER ARMS, KING ALFRED, CHESHIRE HOUSE. Tom knew that behind the genteel respectability of those narrow lobbies some of the best murderers of the present day took refuge for a night or so, looking equally respectable themselves. England was England, God bless it!

  The next thing that caught Tom’s attention was a poster on a lamppost on the left side of the road. DERWATT was written in bold black script slanting downward—Derwatt’s signature—and the picture reproduced in color looked in the dim light dark purple or black and somewhat resembled the raised top of a grand piano. A new Bernard Tufts forgery, doubtless. There was another such poster a few yards on. It was odd to feel so “announced” all over London, and to arrive so quietly, Tom thought as he stepped down from the bus at the West Kensington Terminal unnoticed by anyone.