Venice
28 Feb, 19—
Dear Mr Greenleaf:
I thought under the circumstances you would not take it amiss if I wrote you whatever personal information I have in regard to Richard—I being one of the last people, it seems, who saw him.
I saw him in Rome around 2 February at the Inghilterra Hotel. As you know, this was only two or three days after the death of Freddie Miles. I found Dickie upset and nervous. He said he was going to Palermo as soon as the police finished their questioning him in regard to Freddie's death, and he seemed eager to get away, which was understandable, but I wanted to tell you that there was a certain depression underlying all this that troubled me much more than his obvious nervousness. I had the feeling he would try to do something violent—perhaps to himself. I knew also that he didn't want to see his friend Marjorie Sherwood again, and he said he would try to avoid her if she came up from Mongibello to see him because of the Miles affair. I tried to persuade him to see her. I don't know if he did. Marge has a soothing effect on people, as perhaps you know.
What I am trying to say is that I feel Richard may have killed himself. At the time of writing he has not been found. I certainly hope he will be before this reaches you. It goes without saying that I am sure Richard had nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with Freddie's death, but I think the shock of it and the questioning that followed did do something to upset his equilibrium. This is a depressing message to send to you and I regret it. It may be all completely unnecessary and Dickie may be (again understandably, according to his temperament) simply in hiding until these unpleasantness blow over. But as the time goes on, I begin to feel more uneasy myself. I thought it my duty to write you this, simply by way of letting you know...
Munich
March, 19—
Dear Tom:
Thanks for your letter. It was very kind of you. I've answered the police in writing, and one came up to see me. I won't be coming by Venice, but thanks for your invitation. I am going to Rome day after tomorrow to meet Dickie's father, who is flying over. Yes, I agree with you that it was a good idea for you to write to him.
I am so bowled over by all this, I have come down with something resembling undulant fever, or maybe what the Germans call Foehn, but with some kind of virus thrown in. Literally unable to get out of bed for four days, otherwise I'd have gone to Rome before now. So please excuse this disjointed and probably feeble-minded letter which is such a bad answer to your very nice one. But I did want to say I don't agree with you at all that Dickie might have committed suicide. He just isn't the type, though I know all you're going to say about people never acting like they're going to do it, etc. No, anything else but this for Dickie. He might have been murdered in some back alley of Naples—or even Rome, because who knows whether he got up to Rome or not after he left Sicily? I can also imagine him running out on obligations to such an extent that he'd be hiding now. I think that's what he's doing.
I'm glad you think the forgeries are a mistake. Of the bank, I mean. So do I. Dickie has changed so much since November, it could easily have changed his handwriting, too. Let's hope something's happened by the time you get this. Had a wire from Mr Greenleaf about Rome—so must save all my energy for that.
Nice to know your address finally. Thanks again for your letter, your advice, and invitations.
Best,
Marge
P.S. I didn't tell you my good news. I've got a publisher interested in 'Mongibello'! Says he wants to see the whole thing before he can give me a contract, but it really sounds hopeful I Now if I can only finish the damn thing!
She had decided to be on good terms with him, Tom supposed. She'd probably changed her tune about him to the police, too.
Dickie's disappearance was stirring up a great deal of excitement in the Italian press. Marge, or somebody, had provided the reporters with photographs. There were pictures in Epoca of Dickie sailing his boat in Mongibello, pictures of Dickie in Oggi sitting on the beach in Mongibello and also on Giorgio's terrace, and a picture of Dickie and Marge—'girl friend of both il sparito Dickie and il assassinate Freddie'—smiling, with their arms around each other's shoulders, and there was even a businesslike portrait of Herbert Greenleaf, Sr. Tom had gotten Marge's Munich address right out of a newspaper. Oggi had been running a life story of Dickie for the past two weeks, describing his school years as 'rebellious' and embroidering his social life in America and his flight to Europe for the sake of his art to such an extent that he emerged as a combination of Errol Flynn and Paul Gauguin. The illustrated weeklies always gave the latest police reports, which were practically nil, padded with whatever theorising the writers happened to feel like concocting that week. A favourite theory was that he had run off with another girl—a girl who might have been signing his remittances—and was having a good time, incognito, in Tahiti or South America or Mexico. The police were still combing Rome and Naples and Paris, that was all. No clues as to Freddie Miles's killer, and nothing about Dickie Greenleaf's having been seen carrying Freddie Miles, or vice versa, in front of Dickie's house. Tom wondered why they were holding that back from the newspapers. Probably because they couldn't write it up without subjecting themselves to charges of libel by Dickie. Tom was gratified to find himself described as 'a loyal friend' of the missing Dickie Greenleaf, who had volunteered everything he knew as to Dickie's character and habits, and who was as bewildered by his disappearance as anybody else. 'Signor Ripley, one of the young well-to-do American visitors in Italy,' said Oggi, 'now lives in a palazzo overlooking San Marco in Venice.' That pleased Tom most of all. He cut out that write-up.
Tom had not thought of it as a 'palace' before, but of course it was what the Italians called a palazzo—a two-storey house of formal design more than two hundred years old, with a main entrance on the Grand Canal approachable only by gondola, with broad stone steps descending into the water, and iron doors that had to be opened by an eight-inch-long key, besides the regular doors behind the iron doors which also took an enormous key. Tom used the less formal 'back door' usually, which was on the Viale San Spiridione, except when he wanted to impress his guests by bringing them to his home in a gondola. The back door—itself fourteen feet high like the stone wall that enclosed the house from the street—led into a garden that was somewhat neglected but still green, and which boasted two gnarled olive trees and a birdbath made of an ancient-looking statue of a naked boy holding a wide shallow bowl. It was just the garden for a Venetian palace, slightly run down, in need of some restoration which it was not going to get, but indelibly beautiful because it had sprung into the world so beautiful more than two hundred years ago. The inside of the house was Tom's ideal of what a civilised bachelor's home should look like, in Venice, at least: a checkerboard black-and-white marble floor downstairs extending from the formal foyer into each room, pink-and-white marble floor upstairs, furniture that did not resemble furniture at all but an embodiment of cinquecento music played on hautboys, recorders, and violas da gamba. He had his servants—Anna and Ugo, a young Italian couple who had worked for an American in Venice before, so that they knew the difference between a Bloody Mary and a créme de menthe frappé—polish the carved fronts of the armoires and chests and chairs until they seemed alive with dim lustrous lights that moved as one moved around them. The only thing faintly modern was the bathroom. In Tom's bedroom stood a gargantuan bed, broader than it was long. Tom decorated his bedroom with a series of panoramic pictures of Naples from 1540 to about 1880, which he found at an antique store. He had given his undivided attention to decorating his house for more than a week. There was a sureness in his taste now that he had not felt in Rome, and that his Rome apartment had not hinted at. He felt surer of himself now in every way.
His self-confidence had even inspired him to write to Aunt Dottie in a calm, affectionate and forbearing tone that he had never wanted to use before, or had never before been able to use. He had inquired about her flamboyant health, about her little circle of vicious friends in Boston, and had explained to her why he liked Europe and intended to live here for a while, explained so eloquently that he had copied that section of his letter and put it into his desk. He had written this inspired letter one morning after breakfast, sitting in his bedroom in a new silk dressing-gown made to order for him in Venice, gazing out of the window now and then at the Grand Canal and the Clock Tower of the Piazza San Marco across the water. After he had finished the letter he had made some more cotree and on Dickie's own Hermes he had written Dickie's will, bequeathing him his income and the money he had in various banks, and had signed it Herbert Richard Greenleaf, Jr. Tom thought it better not to add a witness, lest the banks or Mr Greenleaf challenge him to the extent of demanding to know who the witness was, though Tom had thought of making up an Italian name, presumably someone Dickie might have called into his apartment in Rome for the purpose of witnessing the will. He would just have to take his chances on an unwitnessed will, he thought, but Dickie's typewriter was so in need of repair that its quirks were as recognisable as a particular handwriting, and he had heard that holograph wills required no witness. But the signature was perfect, exactly like the slim, tangled signature on Dickie's passport. Tom practised for half an hour before he signed the will, relaxed his hands, then signed a piece of scrap paper, then the will, in rapid succession. And he would defy anybody to prove that the signature on the will wasn't Dickie's. Tom put an envelope into the typewriter and addressed it To Whom It May Concern, with a notation that it was not to be opened until June of this year. He tucked it into a side pocket of his suitcase, as if he had been carrying it there for some time and hadn't bothered unpacking it when he moved into the house. Then he took the Hermes Baby in its case downstairs and dropped it into the little inlet of the canal, too narrow for a boat, which ran from the front corner of his house to the garden wall. He was glad to be rid of the typewriter, though he had been unwilling to part with it until now. He must have known, subconsciously, he thought, that he was going to write the will or something else of great importance on it, and that was the reason why he had kept it.
Tom followed the Italian newspapers and the Paris edition of the Herald-Tribune on the Greenleaf and Miles cases with the anxious concern befitting a friend of both Dickie and Freddie. The papers were suggesting by the end of March that Dickie might be dead, murdered by the same man or men who had been profiting by forging his signature. A Rome paper said that one man in Naples now held that the signature on the letter from Palermo, stating that no forgeries had been committed against him, was also a forgery. Others, however, did not concur. Some man on the police force, not Roverini, thought that the culprit or culprits had been 'intimo' with Greenleaf, that they had had access to the bank's letter and had had the audacity to reply to it themselves. 'The mystery is,' the officer was quoted, 'not only who the forger was but how he gained access to the letter, because the porter of the hotel remembers putting the registered bank letter into Greenleaf's hands. The hotel porter also recalls that Greenleaf was always alone in Palermo...'
More hitting around the answer without ever hitting it. But Tom was shaken for several minutes after he read it. There remained only one more step for them to take, and wasn't somebody going to take it today or tomorrow or the next day? Or did they really already know the answer, and were they just trying to put him off guard—Tenente Roverini sending him personal messages every few days to keep him abreast of what was happening in the search for Dickie—and were they going to pounce on him one day soon with every bit of evidence they needed?
It gave Tom the feeling that he was being followed, especially when he walked through the long, narrow street to his house door. The Viale San Spiridione was nothing but a functional slit between vertical walls of houses, without a shop in it and with hardly enough light for him to see where he was going, nothing but unbroken house-fronts and the tall, firmly locked doors of the Italian house gates that were flush with the walls. Nowhere to run to if he were attacked, no house door to duck into. Tom did not know who would attack him, if he were attacked. He did not imagine police, necessarily. He was afraid of nameless, formless things that haunted his brain like the Furies. He could go through San Spiridione comfortably only when a few cocktails had knocked out his fear. Then he walked through swaggering and whistling.
He had his pick of cocktail parties, though in his first two weeks in his house he went to only two. He had his choice of people because of a little incident that had happened the first day he had started looking for a house. A rental agent, armed with three huge keys, had taken him to see a certain house in San Stefano parish, thinking it would be vacant. It had not only been occupied but a cocktail party had been in progress, and the hostess had insisted on Tom and the rental agent, too, having a cocktail by way of making amends for their inconvenience and her remissness. She had put the house up for rent a month ago, had changed her mind about leaving, and had neglected to inform the rental agency. Tom stayed for a drink, acted his reserved, courteous self, and met all her guests, who he supposed were most of the winter colony of Venice and rather hungry for new blood, judging from the way they welcomed him and offered their assistance in finding a house. They recognised his name, of course, and the fact that he knew Dickie Greenleaf raised his social value to a degree that surprised even Tom. Obviously they were going to invite him everywhere and quiz him and drain him of every last little detail to add some spice to their dull lives. Tom behaved in a reserved but friendly manner appropriate for a young man in his position—a sensitive young man, unused to garish publicity, whose primary emotion in regard to Dickie was anxiety as to what had happened to him. He left that first party with the addresses of three other houses he might look at (one being the one he took) and invitations to two other parties. He went to the party whose hostess had a title, the Condessa Roberta (Titi) della Latta-Cacciaguerra. He was not at all in the mood for parties. He seemed to see people through a mist, and communication was slow and difficult. He often asked people to repeat what they had said. He was terribly bored. But he could use them, he thought, to practise on. The naive questions they asked him ('Did Dickie drink a lot?' and 'But he was in love with Marge, wasn't he?' and 'Where do you really think he went?') were good practice for the more specific questions Mr Greenleaf was going to ask him when he saw him, if he ever saw him. Tom began to be uneasy about ten days after Marge's letter, because Mr Greenleaf had not written or telephoned him from Rome. In certain frightened moments, Tom imagined that the police had told Mr Greenleaf that they were playing a game with Tom Ripley, and had asked Mr Greenleaf not to talk to him.
Each day he looked eagerly in his mailbox for a letter from Marge or Mr Greenleaf. His house was ready for their arrival. His answers to their questions were ready in his head. It was like waiting interminably for a show to begin, for a curtain to rise. Or maybe Mr Greenleaf was so resentful of him (not to mention possibly being actually suspicious) that he was going to ignore him entirely. Maybe Marge was abetting him in that. At any rate, he couldn't take a trip until something happened. Tom wanted to take a trip, the famous trip to Greece. He had bought a guidebook of Greece, and he had already planned his itinerary over the islands.
Then, on the morning of April fourth, he got a telephone call from Marge. She was in Venice, at the railroad station.
'I'll come and pick you up!' Tom said cheerfully. 'Is Mr Greenleaf with you?"
'No, he's in Rome. I'm alone. You don't have to pick me up. I've only got an overnight bag.'
'Nonsense!' Tom said, dying to do something. 'You'll never find the house by yourself.'
'Yes, I will. It's next to della Salute, isn't it? I take the motoscafo to San Marco's, then take a gondola across.'
She knew, all right. 'Well, if you insist.' He had just thought that he had better take one more good look around the house before she got here. 'Have you had lunch?'
'No.'
'Good! We'll lunch together somewhere. Watch your step on the motoscafo!'
They hung up. He walked soberly and slowly through the house, into both large rooms upstairs, down the stairs and through his living-room. Nothing, anywhere, that belonged to Dickie. He hoped the house didn't look too plush. He took a silver cigarette box, which he had bought only two days ago and had had initialled, from the living-room table and put it in the bottom drawer of a chest in the dining-room.
Anna was in the kitchen, preparing lunch.
'Anna, there'll be one more for lunch,' Tom said. 'A young lady.'
Anna's face broke into a smile at the prospect of a guest. 'A young American lady?'
'Yes. An old friend. When the lunch is ready, you and Ugo can have the rest of the afternoon off. We can serve ourselves.'
'Va bene,' Anna said.
Anna and Ugo came at ten and stayed until two, ordinarily. Tom didn't want them here when he talked with Marge. They understood a little English, not enough to follow a conversation perfectly, but he knew both of them would have their ears out if he and Marge talked about Dickie, and it irritated him.
Tom made a batch of martinis, and arranged the glasses and a plate of canapés on a tray in the living-room. When he heard the door knocker, he went to the door and swung it open.
'Marge! Good to see you! Come in!' He took the suitcase from her hand.
'How are you, Tom? My!—Is all this yours?' She looked around her, and up at the high coffered ceiling.
'I rented it. For a song,' Tom said modestly. 'Come and have a drink. Tell me what's new. You've been talking to the police in Rome?' He carried her topcoat and her transparent raincoat to a chair.
'Yes, and to Mr Greenleaf. He's very upset—naturally.' She sat down on the sofa.
Tom seated himself in a chair opposite her. 'Have they found anything new? One of the police officers there has been keeping me posted, but he hasn't told me anything that really matters.'
'Well, they found out that Dickie cashed over a thousand dollars' worth of traveller's cheques before he left Palermo, Just before. So he must have gone off somewhere with it, like Greece or Africa. He couldn't have gone off to kill himself after just cashing a thousand dollars, anyway.'
'No,' Tom agreed. 'Well, that sounds hopeful. I didn't see that in the papers.'
'I don't think they put it in.'
'No. Just a lot of nonsense about what Dickie used to eat for breakfast in Mongibello,' Tom said as he poured the martinis.
'Isn't it awful! It's getting a little better now, but when Mr Greenleaf arrived, the papers were at their worst. Oh, thanks!' She accepted the martini gratefully.
'How is he?'
Marge shook her head. 'I feel so sorry for him. He keeps saying the American police could do a better job and all that, and he doesn't know any Italian, so that makes it twice as bad.'
'What's he doing in Rome?'
'Waiting. What can any of us do? I've postponed my boat again.—Mr Greenleaf and I went to Mongibello, and I questioned everyone there, mostly for Mr Greenleaf's benefit, of course, but they can't tell us anything. Dickie hasn't been back there since November.'
'No.' Tom sipped his martini thoughtfully. Marge was optimistic, he could see that. Even now she had that energetic buoyancy that made Tom think of the typical Girl Scout, that look of taking up a lot of space, of possibly knocking something over with a wild movement, of rugged health and vague untidiness. She irritated him intensely suddenly, but he put on a big act, got up and patted her on the shoulder, and gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek. 'Maybe he's sitting in Tangiers or somewhere living the life of Riley and waiting for all this to blow over.'
'Well, it's damned inconsiderate of him if he is!' Marge said, laughing.
'I certainly didn't mean to alarm anybody when I said what I did about his depression. I felt it was a kind of duty to tell you and Mr Greenleaf.'
'I understand. No, I think you were right to tell us. I just don't think it's true.' She smiled her broad smile, her eyes glowing with an optimism that struck Tom as completely insane.
He began asking her sensible, practical questions about the opinions of the Rome police, about the leads that they had (they had none worth mentioning), and what she had heard on the Miles case. There was nothing new on the Miles case, either, but Marge did know about Freddie and Dickie's having been seen in front of Dickie's house around eight o'clock that night. She thought the story was exaggerated Maybe Freddie was drunk, or maybe Dickie just had an arm around him. How could anybody tell in the dark? Don't tell me Dickie murdered him!'
'Have they any concrete clues at all that would make them think Dickie killed him?'
'Of course not!'
'Then why don't the so-and-so's get down to the business of finding out who really did kill him? And also where Dickie is?'
'Ecco!' Marge said emphatically. 'Anyway, the police are sure now that Dickie at least got from Palermo to Naples. A steward remembers carrying his bags from his cabin to the Naples dock.'
'Really,' Tom said. He remembered the steward, too, a clumsy little oaf who had dropped his canvas suitcase, trying to carry it under one arm. 'Wasn't Freddie killed hours after he left Dickie's house?' Tom asked suddenly.
'No. The doctors can't say exactly. And it seems Dickie didn't have an alibi, of course, because he was undoubtedly alone. Just more of Dickie's bad luck.'
'They don't actually believe Dickie killed him, do they?'
'They don't say it, no. It's just in the air. Naturally, they can't make rash statements right and left about an American citizen, but as long as they haven't any suspects and Dickie's disappeared—Then also his landlady in Rome said that Freddie came down to ask her who was living in Dickie's apartment or something like that. She said Freddie looked angry, as if they'd been quarrelling. She said he asked if Dickie was living alone.'
Tom frowned. 'I wonder why?'
'I can't imagine. Freddie's Italian wasn't the best in the world, and maybe the landlady got it wrong. Anyway, the mere fact that Freddie was angry about something looks bad for Dickie.'
Tom raised his eyebrows. 'I'd say it looked bad for Freddie. Maybe Dickie wasn't angry at all.' He felt perfectly calm, because he could see that Marge hadn't smelled out anything about it. 'I wouldn't worry about that unless something concrete comes tout of it. Sounds like nothing at all to me.' He refilled her glass. 'Speaking of Africa, have they inquired around Tangiers yet? Dickie used to talk about going to Tangiers.'
'I think they've alerted the police everywhere. I think they ought to get the French police down here. The French are terribly good at things like this. But of course they can't. This is Italy,' she said with the first nervous tremor in her voice.
'Shall we have lunch here?' Tom asked. 'The maid is functioning over the lunch hour and we might as well take advantage of it.' He said it just as Anna was coming in to announce that the lunch was ready.
'Wonderful!' Marge said. 'It's raining a little, anyway.'
'Pronto la collazione, signor,' Anna said with a smile, staring at Marge.
Anna recognised her from the newspaper pictures, Tom saw. 'You and Ugo can go now if you like, Anna. Thanks.'
Anna went back into the kitchen—there was a door from the kitchen to a little alley at the side of the house, which the servants used—but Tom heard her pottering around with the coffee maker, stalling for another glimpse, no doubt.
'And Ugo?' Marge said. 'Two servants, no less?'
'Oh, they come in couples around here. You may not believe it, but I got this place for fifty dollars a month, not counting heat.'
'I don't believe it! That's practically like Mongibello rates!'
'It's true. The heating's fantastic, of course, but I'm not going to heat any room except my bedroom.'
'It's certainly comfortable here.'
'Oh, I opened the whole furnace for your benefit,' Tom said, smiling.
'What happened? Did one of your aunts die and leave you a fortune?' Marge asked, still pretending to be dazzled.
'No, just a decision of my own. I'm going to enjoy what I've got as long as it lasts. I told you that job I was after in Rome didn't pan out, and here I was in Europe with only about two thousand dollars to my name, so I decided to live it up and go home—broke—and start over again.' Tom had explained to her in his letter that the job he had applied for had been selling hearing aids in Europe for an American company, and he hadn't been able to face it, and the man who had interviewed him, he said, hadn't thought him the right type, either. Tom had also told her that the man had appeared one minute after he spoke to her, which was why he had been unable to keep his appointment with her in Angelo's that day in Rome.
'Two thousand dollars won't last you long at this rate.'
She was probing to see if Dickie had given him anything, Tom knew. 'It will last till summer,' Tom said matter-of-factly. 'Anyway, I feel I deserve it. I spent most of the winter going around Italy like a gypsy on practically no money, and I've had about enough of that.'
'Where were you this winter?'
'Well, not with Tom, I mean, not with Dickie,' he said laughing, flustered at his slip of the tongue. 'I know you probably thought so. I saw about as much of Dickie as you did.'
'Oh, come on now,' Marge drawled. She sounded as if she were feeling her drinks.
Tom made two or three more martinis in the pitcher. 'Except for the trip to Cannes and the two days in Rome in February, I haven't seen Dickie at all.' It wasn't quite true, because he had written her that 'Tom was staying' with Dickie in Rome for several days after the Cannes trip, but now that he was face to face with Marge he found he was ashamed of her knowing, or thinking, that he had spent so much time with Dickie, and that he and Dickie might be guilty of what she had accused Dickie of in her letter. He bit his tongue as he poured their drinks, hating himself for his cowardice.
During lunch—Tom regretted very much that the main dish was cold roast beef, a fabulously expensive item on the Italian market—Marge quizzed him more acutely than any police officer on Dickie's state of mind while he was in Rome. Tom was pinned down to ten days spent in Rome with Dickie after the Cannes trip, and was questioned about everything from Di Massimo, the painter Dickie had worked with, to Dickie's appetite and the hour he got up in the morning.
'How do you think he felt about me? Tell me honestly. I can take it.'
'I think he was worried about you,' Tom said earnestly. 'I think—well, it was one of those situations that turn up quite often, a man who's terrified of marriage to begin with -'
'But I never asked him to marry me!' Marge protested.
'I know, but -' Tom forced himself to go on, though the subject was like vinegar in his mouth. 'Let's say he couldn't face the responsibility of your caring so much about him. I think he wanted a more casual relationship with you.' That told her everything and nothing.
Marge stared at him in that old, lost way for a moment, then rallied bravely and said, 'Well, all that's water under the bridge by now. I'm only interested in what Dickie might have done with himself.'
Her fury at his apparently having been with Dickie all winter was water under the bridge, too, Tom thought, because she hadn't wanted to believe it in the first place, and now she didn't have to. Tom asked carefully, 'He didn't happen to write to you when he was in Palermo?'
Marge shook her head. 'No. Why?'
'I wanted to know what kind of state you thought he was in then. Did you write to him?'
She hesitated. 'Yes—matter of fact, I did.'
'What kind of a letter? I only ask because an unfriendly letter might have had a bad effect on him just then.'
'Oh—it's hard to say what kind. A fairly friendly letter. I told him I was going back to the States.' She looked at him with wide eyes.
Tom enjoyed watching her face, watching somebody else squirm as they lied. That had been the filthy letter in which she said she had told the police that he and Dickie were always together. 'I don't suppose it matters then,' Tom said, with sweet gentleness, sitting back.
They were silent a few moments, then Tom asked her about her book, who the publisher was, and how much more work she had to do. Marge answered everything enthusiastically. Tom had the feeling that if she had Dickie back and her book published by next winter, she would probably just explode with happiness, make a loud, attractive ploop and that would be the end of her.
'Do you think I should offer to talk to Mr Greenleaf, too?' Tom asked. 'I'd be glad to go to Rome -' Only he wouldn't be so glad, he remembered, because Rome had simply too many people in it who had seen him as Dickie Greenleaf. 'Or do you think he would like to come here? I could put him up. Where's he staying in Rome?'
'He's staying with some American friends who have a big apartment. Somebody called Northup in Via Quattro Novembre. I think it'd be nice if you called him. I'll write the address down for you.'
That's a good idea. He doesn't like me, does he?'
Marge smiled a little. 'Well, frankly, no. I think he's a little hard on you, considering. He probably thinks you sponged off Dickie.'
'Well, I didn't. I'm sorry the idea didn't work out about my getting Dickie back home, but I explained all that. I wrote him the nicest letter I could about Dickie when I heard he was missing. Didn't that help any?'
'I think it did, but—Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Tom! All over this wonderful tablecloth!' Marge had turned her martini over. She daubed at the crocheted tablecloth awkwardly with her napkin.
Tom came running back from the kitchen with a wet cloth, 'Perfectly all right,' he said, watching the wood of the table turn white in spite of his wiping. It wasn't the tablecloth he cared about, it was the beautiful table.
'I'm so sorry,' Marge went on protesting.
Tom hated her. He suddenly remembered her bra hanging over the windowsill in Mongibello. Her underwear would be draped over his chairs tonight, if he invited her to stay here. The idea repelled him. He deliberately hurled a smile across the table at her. 'I hope you'll honour me by accepting a bed for the night. Not mine,' he added, laughing, 'but I've got two rooms upstairs and you're welcome to one of them.'
Thanks a lot. All right, I will.' She beamed at him.
Tom installed her in his own room—the bed in the other room being only an outsized couch and not so comfortable as his double bed—and Marge closed her door to take a nap after lunch. Tom wandered restlessly through the rest of the house, wondering whether there was anything in his room that he ought to remove. Dickie's passport had been in the lining of a suitcase which was now in his closet, he recalled, but the passport was with the rest of Dickie's possessions in Venice now. He couldn't think of anything incriminating in the room, and he tried to put his anxieties out of his mind.
Later he showed Marge all around the house, showed her the shelf of leather-bound books in the room next to his bedroom, books that he said had come with the house, though they were his own, bought in Rome and Palermo and Venice. He realised that he had had about ten of them in Rome, and that one of the young police officers with Roverini had bent close to them, apparently studying their tides. But it was nothing really to worry about, he thought, even if the same police officer were to come back. He showed Marge the front entrance of the house, with its broad stone steps. The tide was low and four steps were bared now, the lower two covered with thick wet moss. The moss was a slippery, long-filament variety, and hung over the edges of the steps like messy dark-green hair. The steps were repellent to Tom, but Marge thought them very romantic. She bent over them, staring at the deep water of the canal. Tom had an impulse to push her in.
'Can we take a gondola and come in this way tonight?' she asked.
'Oh sure.' They were going out to dinner tonight, of course. Tom dreaded the long Italian evening ahead of them, because they wouldn't eat until ten, and then she'd probably want to sit in San Marco's over espressos until two in the morning.
Tom looked up at the hazy, sunless Venetian sky, and watched a gull glide down and settle on somebody else's front steps across the canal. He was trying to decide which of his new Venetian friends he would telephone and ask if he could bring Marge over for a drink around five o'clock. They would all be delighted to meet her, of course. He decided on the Englishman Peter Smith-Kingsley. Peter had an Afghan, a piano, and a well-equipped bar. Tom thought Peter would be best because Peter never wanted anybody to leave. They could stay there until it was time for them to go to dinner.