“Somebody—well—” Tom stopped, because Reeves didn’t go into detail with Heloise, ever, and Heloise professed to be uninterested, even bored, with Tom’s and Reeves’s doings. It was safer: the less she knew, the better, Tom supposed Heloise thought. And who could say that wasn’t true?
“Tome, tomorrow we go and buy the tickets—to Maroc. All right?” She had tucked her bare feet up on the yellow silk sofa like a comfortable kitten, and now she looked at him calmly with her pale lavender eyes.
“Y-yes. All right.” He had promised, he reminded himself. “We fly first to Tangier.”
“Oui, chéri, and then we go on from there. Casablanca—of course.”
“Of course,” Tom echoed. “Right, dear, we’ll buy the tickets tomorrow—Fontainebleau.” They always went to the same travel agency there, where they knew the staff. Tom hesitated, then decided to say it now, “Darling, do you remember the pair—the American-looking couple we saw in Fontainebleau one day—on the pavement? Walking toward us, and I said later I thought he was staring at us? Dark-haired man with glasses?”
“I think—yes. Why?”
Tom could tell that she did remember. “Because he just spoke to me in the bar-tabac.” Tom unbuttoned his jacket and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. He had not sat down. “I don’t care for him.”
“I remember the woman with him, with lighter hair. Americans, no?”
“He is, anyway. Well—they’ve rented a house here in Villeperce. Remember the house where the—”
“Vraiment? Villeperce?”
“Oui, ma chère! The house where the pond water is reflected on the ceiling—in the living room?” He and Heloise had marveled at the oval moving like water itself on the white ceiling.
“Yes. I remember the house. Two-story white, not such a pretty fireplace. Not very far from the Grais’, is it not? Someone with us thought about buying it.”
“Yes. Right.” An American acquaintance of an acquaintance, looking for a country house not too far from Paris, had asked Tom and Heloise to accompany him while he inspected a couple of houses in the vicinity. He had bought nothing, at least nothing near Villeperce. That had been more than a year ago. “Well—to the point, the dark-haired man with glasses intends to be neighborly with me or us, and I’m not having it. Just because we speak English or American, ho-ho! Seems he’s connected with INSEAD— that big school near Fontainebleau.” Tom added, “How does he know my name in the first place, and why is he interested?” Lest he seem too concerned, he calmly sat down. Now he faced Heloise from his straight chair with the coffee table between them. “David and Janice Pritchard, they’re called. If they manage to telephone, we’re—polite, but we’re busy. All right, dear?”
“Of course, Tome.”
“And if they have the nerve to ring the bell, they’re not to be let in. I’ll warn Madame Annette, you can be sure.”
Heloise’s usually clear blonde brow became thoughtful. “What is the matter with them?”
The simplicity of the question made Tom smile. “I have a feeling—” Tom hesitated. He did not usually talk to Heloise about his intuitions, but in this case he might be protecting her if he did. “They don’t look normal to me.” Tom glanced down at the carpet. What was normal? Tom couldn’t have answered that question. “I have the feeling they’re not married.”
“And—so what?”
Tom laughed, and reached for the blue pack of Gitanes on the coffee table, lit one with Heloise’s Dunhill lighter. “True, my dear. But why are they eyeing me? Didn’t I tell you, I think I recall the same man, and maybe the pair, staring at me at some airport not long ago?”
“No, you didn’t,” said Heloise.
He smiled. “There’ve been people before this we didn’t like. No great problem.” Tom got up, walked around the coffee table, and pulled Heloise up by the hand that she extended. He embraced her, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the fragrance of her hair, her skin. “I love you. I want to keep you safe.”
She laughed. They loosened their embrace. “Belle Ombre looks very safe.”
“They won’t set foot here.”
Copyright © 1980 by Patricia Highsmith
Copyright © 1993 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich
First published as a Norton edition 2008
Published in Great Britain by Heinemann, London, in 1980
Published in the United States by Lippincott & Crowell, Publishers,
New York, in 1980
Lyrics from Lou Reed’s “Make Up” and “Satellite of Love”
reprinted with the kind permission of the Esther Creative Group.
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Highsmith, Patricia, 1921–1995.
The boy who followed Ripley / Patricia Highsmith.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-393-33211-7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-393-34475-2 (e-book)
1. Ripley, Tom (Fictitious character)—Fiction.
2. Serial murderers—Fiction. 3. Psychopaths—Fiction.
4. Criminals—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.I366B69 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008005021
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Patricia Highsmith, The Boy Who Followed Ripley
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