Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith Page A

room, Tom got the tube of Vademecum toothpaste from his drawer, tried to open the bottom with a thumbnail, and failed. He went into the room where he painted, and got some pliers from his worktable. Back in his room, he cut the tube open, and out came a black cylinder. A microfilm, of course. Tom wondered if it could survive rinsing, decided against it, and merely wiped the thing with a Kleenex. It smelled of peppermint. He addressed an envelope to:
    M. Jean-Marc Cahannier
16 Rue de Tison
Paris IX
    then put the cylinder into a couple of sheets of writing paper and stuck it all into the envelope. Tom swore to himself to pull out of this silly business, because it was degrading. He could tell Reeves without offending him. Reeves had a strange idea that the more an item changed hands, the safer it was. Reeves was fence-minded. But surely he lost money paying everybody, even paying them a little bit. Or did some people take it out in favors asked from Reeves?
    Tom got into pajamas and dressing gown, looked into the hall, and was gratified to see that there was no light showing under Eduardo’s door. He went quietly down to the kitchen. There were two doors between the kitchen and Mme. Annette’s bedroom, because there was a little hall with servants’ entrance beyond the kitchen, so she was not likely to hear him or see the kitchen light. Tom got a sturdy gray cleaning rag and a container of Ajax, took a lightbulb from a cabinet and put it in a pocket. He went down to the cellar. He shivered. Now he realized he had to have a flashlight and a chair to stand on, so he went back to the kitchen and took one of the wooden stools that belonged to the kitchen table, and picked up a flashlight from the hall table drawer.
    He held the flashlight under his arm, and removed the shattered bulb and put in the new one. The cellar lit up. Murchison’s shoes still showed. Then Tom realized to his horror that the legs had straightened with rigor mortis. Or he wasn’t possibly still alive? Tom forced himself to make sure, or he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. Tom put the back of his fingers against Murchison’s hand. That was enough. Murchison’s hand was cold and also stiff. Tom pulled the gray rag over Murchison’s shoes.
    There was a sink with cold water in a corner. Tom wet his cleaning rag and got to work. Some color came off on the rag, which he washed out, but he could not see much improvement in the color of the floor, though the dark of it might be due to its wetness now. Well, he could say to Mme. Annette that he dropped a bottle of wine, in case she asked anything. Tom got up the last fragments of broken lightbulb and wine bottle, rinsed the rag out in the sink cautiously, recovered the pieces of glass from the sink’s drain, and put them into his dressing-gown pocket. He again worked on the floor with the rag. Then he went back upstairs, and in the better light of the kitchen made sure that the reddish tint in the rag was gone or almost gone. He laid the rag over the drainpipe under the sink.
    But the blasted body. Tom sighed, and thought of locking the cellar until he returned tomorrow after seeing Eduardo off, but wouldn’t this look pretty strange if Mme. Annette wanted to go in? And she had her own key, and one to the outside door as well, which had a different lock. Tom took the precaution of bringing up a bottle of rosé and two of Margaux, and put them on the kitchen table. There were times when having a servant was annoying.
    When Tom went to bed, more tired than the night before, he thought of putting Murchison into a barrel. But it would take a cooper to get the damned hoops back on it properly, he supposed. And Murchison would have to be in liquid of some sort or he would bump around in an empty barrel. And how could he manage Murchison’s weight in a barrel by himself? Impossible.
    Tom thought of Murchison’s suitcase and “The Clock” at Orly. Surely someone had removed them by now. Murchison