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- Rome
‘I know I sound ridiculous,’ Marge gives a rueful smile. ‘It’s not as if he’s never gone gallivanting off before – but it’s never, never been for this long. I’ve barely heard from him in weeks.’
Peter shakes his head sympathetically. ‘It’s appalling that he hasn’t called you. I really don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at.’
Marge sighs, taking a sip of her martini. ‘I feel like I’m going crazy – chasing him all the way to Rome, when he said he wanted to be left alone. Perhaps I ought to just – just cut my losses, but…’
‘But you love him,’ Peter supplies, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘And he loves you. We all know what he’s like, but he always comes back to you.’ Then, smiling, but only partly joking, ‘Though I will be advising you to drop him if he doesn’t stop messing you about soon. Believe you me, when he finally comes to his senses he’ll be getting a very stern talking-to.’
Marge laughs. ‘Dear Peter, you always take my side. You always have, even when – ’ here, she stops, coming up against that door which guards the one topic they never really speak of. On this occasion, however, she does not laugh blithely as she usually does and pass over the subject entirely. Instead, she glances at him with a small, sad smile. ‘Even when Dickie didn’t want to hear it.’
For his part, Peter does not respond directly, but gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘I defy anyone to look at this mess and take Dickie’s side. He’s lucky you’ve only brought me along and not an armed guard.’
‘He really has been awfully thoughtless, even for him. I mean, not even just telling me to my face – not even calling me! I know he wanted to leave Mongi, but he didn’t even come back to pack his things! I’ve since lost track of poor Tom, of course, but he was awfully cut up about having to break the news. He said we’d been abandoned – that’s the word he used, abandoned. I honestly think he took it nearly as hard as I did.’ Marge sighs. Then, with an effort at brightening, ‘I did tell you about Tom, didn’t I? Tom Ripley?’
‘That’s your mystery man, isn’t it? The one Dickie didn’t remember from university?’
‘That’s the one! Rather a queer fish, but really very sweet – and awfully keen on seeing Venice, too.’ Here, her smile goes from strained to conspiratorial. ‘I took the liberty of telling him to look you up if he ever made it over there.’
‘Oh, did you?’ Peter rolls his eyes with great affection, picking up his drink.
Marge gives him a nod, her lips twisting neatly into a self-satisfied smile. ‘You’d get on famously, I just know it – you couldn’t help but get on with someone who calls The Complete Shakespeare holiday reading. Really, he must have packed about five times more books than he did clothes. And he plays piano. When he was with us, he mostly played at that vile little club in Naples – do you remember it? – so I didn’t hear much, but Dickie says he’s quite a talent.’
Peter laughs, though in truth the description intrigues him. ‘You sound as though you’re trying to persuade me to adopt a stray dog.’
‘Perhaps I am, a little. I haven’t heard from him since he left Mongi, and he was so upset about the whole thing – he really hero-worshipped Dickie. You know what that can be like.’ There’s a stiffness to this last statement, and, for a moment, Marge looks as though she might be thinking of elaborating. She doesn’t, of course, breaking the brief, taut silence not with words but with a gently pitying sigh.
Peter drains the rest his glass in one, making a face as the gin hits the back of his throat. ‘Dickie has a way of making people worship him.’ It’s the most he’s said on the subject since the first time, and he feels the need to temper it at once. ‘That’s why he always comes back to you. You understand him in a way nobody else does.’ He’s not sure he really believes it, but it feels like the right thing to say.
But then the true sadness is back in Marge’s smile again, and Peter regrets saying anything. ‘I hope so. Sometimes, it feels as though I don’t understand him at all.’
In an attempt to steer the subject back to something more light-hearted, he says, ‘So – is there anything else I ought to know about the elusive Mister Ripley, before he conceivably shows up in Venice and I have to play tour guide?’
It’s obvious that Marge sees the change of subject for what it is, but she smiles gratefully anyway. ‘Oh, don’t act as though you don’t love playing tour guide – but really, apart from the books and the piano, Tom’s a bit of a puzzle. He never talked about himself, not really, and half of what he did say didn’t add up. Dickie and I used to spend ages speculating about him.’
‘Ah, yes – I think I recall your saying that Dickie’s new house-guest was probably in espionage.’
‘The truth will out, I suppose – I do hope you get to meet him. He needs someone, I think. There’s this – forlorn quality to him, sometimes.’
Peter shakes his head with a smile, trying not to wonder what this means she thinks of him. ‘Now you’re absolutely describing a stray.’
Marge laughs at that, and Peter resolves to keep the conversation away from Dickie Greenleaf for as long as possible. At least the performance tonight should give them an easy alternative topic – hopefully, Eugene Onegin and its doomed lovers won’t strike a chord too close to the heart.
- Venice
When Peter gets back to his flat, Marge is smoking on the sofa, nursing a glass of the single malt Peter keeps around in case of company. She is still wearing her coat over her dressing-gown, though the hat has been discarded, and she glares up at him with red-rimmed eyes as though it was a betrayal to let her go ahead. To stay with Tom, even just long enough to tend to the wound on his palm.
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?’ Peter asks, keeping his tone gentle. Coaxing.
Marge is not in the mood to be coaxed. ‘Didn’t Tom tell you?’ Her tone is acidic.
Peter has been wondering the same thing, all the walk back. ‘Not really,’ he admits. ‘You know how he is.’ He can’t help the fondness in his voice, and Marge flinches at it.
‘Yes. I know.’
‘So tell me. Start with this evening – what happened?’
This earns him a baleful look. ‘Don’t try to baby me, Peter, just don’t even try it. I’ve had quite enough of that.’
‘I’m not babying you, Marge–’
‘Did he tell you I did that, with the razor?’
‘I – not exactly.’
Marge smiles, but it’s bitter. ‘Just let you assume. He does that, doesn’t he?’
‘So you didn’t?’
‘He did it himself.’
‘Why would he cut his own hand with his own razor?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t think he did it on purpose. I think he was going to – to—’ She cuts herself off, shaking her head. Downs her whiskey.
‘He threatened you?’ Peter tries not to sound incredulous. The idea of shy, gentle Tom threatening someone would be almost comical, under any other circumstances.
‘Not – exactly.’ Tears are forming in Marge’s eyes again, and her voice is trembling. ‘He – he was saying all this stuff – about Dickie, and about – but it was just words, you know, he wasn’t making any sense – and then there was blood in his pocket—’
‘There, now, slow down—’
‘For God’s sake, Peter, I told you not to baby me!’
‘I’m sorry!’ Peter holds up his hands, defensive, conciliatory. ‘Marge, I’m sorry. I’m only confused – and for what it’s worth, I think Tom is, too.’
Marge stares. ‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you? You can’t trust him!’
‘Can’t trust Tom?’
‘It was in Rome that it all started piling up, and now…’ She shakes her head. ‘He wasn’t supposed to be there. I told you, didn’t I, that night at the opera? But he seemed so cut up about Dickie running off that I – and then tonight – he had Dickie’s rings, Peter, and you know Dickie swore he’d never take them off! How could Tom have them?’
‘What did Tom actually say, when you asked him?’
‘He didn’t say anything, not really.’ Marge sniffs. ‘He – he – he talked about Dickie, and – I told you, it was all nonsense, it was like he was just stalling me – just trying to get close enough with the – the – ’
‘Are you sure he hadn’t just forgotten about the razor? He was in the bath when you asked to talk, wasn’t he?’
Marge glares. ‘He didn’t have the razor when he first came out of the bathroom – he went back in to put something on, and – and there was a noise like he was knocking stuff over – and then when he came back, he had it in his pocket.’
‘It might have been in that pocket already.’
The look Marge gives him now is one that he has seen before, but never directed at him – her jaw is set so firmly it trembles a little with the effort. It’s the way she used, sometimes, to look at Dickie, back when she had bothered trying to argue with him when he lied about where he’d been, and who with. ‘Do you even hear yourself?’ She asks, in the tone she always adopts when trying to rise above her opponent. ‘You’re making excuses for him, and they’re not even that good!’
Peter really doesn’t think he can be blamed for getting defensive. ‘I’m not making excuses, Marge. I just think it’s more likely that Tom forgot where he put his shaving-kit than that he was trying to stab you!’
‘Why?’ Marge’s eyes are over-bright once more with tears, and she’s blinking them back furiously when she hits back. ‘Tom hated Freddie, did you know that? He hated him, and now he’s dead, and everyone thinks Dickie did it, but Dickie’s gone too! The only one left is Tom!’
‘Tom barely knew Freddie – I hardly think you come to hate someone enough to kill them in the space of a week or two.’ It’s not hard to believe that they didn’t get on – universally loved at parties, Freddie has a polarising effect in daily life – had – but Peter thinks better of admitting as much. Besides, polarising or not, Freddie was more or less harmless. Not that even that would be relevant, because Tom wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t—
Marge ignores him completely. ‘Tom was the last one to see Dickie alive apart from the police, and that letter – I don’t believe it, I just can’t. Dick wouldn’t have – you know, Peter, you know he wouldn’t have killed himself. Tell me you didn’t think the same thing when you heard!’
An hour ago, Peter would have admitted it easily. Now, he finds himself bristling, defensive. ‘Just to be clear, you’re now accusing Tom of two murders?’
‘Oh, don’t you dare act like I’m making something out of nothing—’
Unable to bear it, Peter interrupts. ‘On the basis of what? Dickie having given Tom the ring you got him? Because all that tells me is either Dickie forgot about that promise – something you and I can both agree is far from outside the realm of possibility – or he did it on purpose because he wanted that ring kept safe, because he knew what he was about to do!’
Marge just looks at him, a long, disbelieving look. ‘I,’ she begins. Stops. Swallows. ‘I think I’d like to go to bed now, Peter. Is the guest room made up?’
She’s gone by the time he gets up in the morning.