The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith Page B

am unable as yet to realize what I did, and for this reason can walk around like a more or less ordinary human being, although I should not, and inside I feel different, uptight, and maybe I will never get over it. This is why after I did it I decided to look up T.R. who for some reason I felt very interested in. This was partly because of the Derwatt picture mystery. My family has a Derwatt, my father was interested a couple of years ago when some Derwatt paintings were suspected of being fakes or forgeries. I was around 14. Several names mentioned in the newspapers, mainly English names in London, Derwatt lived in Mexico, and I was reading a lot of spy stuff then, and I got interested and went to the big library in NY and looked up the records of all those names in the newspaper files, the way detectives have to do in their work. T.R.’s entries seemed the most interesting, American living in Europe, had lived in Italy, something about a friend of his bequeathing him his income when he died—so he must have liked T.R.—and also something about a missing American called Murchison, in connection with the Derwatt mystery, the American disappearing after visiting T.R.’s house. I thought T.R. might also have killed someone, just maybe, but that anyway he did not look tough or like a stuffed shirt even, because there were two pictures of him in the newspaper items I saw. He was rather good looking and did not look cruel. And whether he killed anybody seemed rather unproven.
    (Frank here picked up the pen again.)
    I thought that day, not for the first time, why should I join the old system, which had already killed the rats who joined it? Or had killed and would kill a lot of them with suicide, breakdowns, maybe simple insanity? Johnny had already absolutely refused, and he was older than I and therefore must know what he is doing, I thought. Why shouldn’t I follow Johnny instead of my father?
    This is a confession, and I confess now to only one person T.R. that I killed my father. I sent his chair over that cliff. Sometimes I cannot believe that I did it and yet I know that I did it. I have read about cowards who do not want to face up to what they have done. I do not want to be like that. Sometimes I have a cruel thought: my father had lived long enough. He was cruel and cold to Johnny and me—most of the time. He could switch. Okay. But he tried to break us or change us. He had his life, with two wives, girls in the past, money galore, luxury. He was not able to walk for the last eleven years, because a “business enemy” tried to shoot him dead. How bad is what I did?
    I am writing these lines to T.R. only, because he is the only person in the world I would tell these facts to. I know he does not detest me, because at this moment I am under his roof and he is giving me hospitality.
    I want to be free and feel free. I just want to be free and be myself, whatever that is. I think T.R. is free in spirit, in his attitudes. He also seems kind and polite to people. I think I should stop here. Maybe it’s enough.
    Music is good, any kind of music, classic or whatever it is. Not to be in any kind of prison, that is good. Not to manipulate other people, that is good.
    Frank Pierson
    The signature was straight and clear, and underlined with what looked like an attempt at a dash. Tom suspected that the underlining was not usual for Frank.
    Tom was touched, but he had hoped for a description of the very instant when Frank had sent his father over the cliff’s edge. Was that hoping for too much? Had the boy blotted it out of his memory, or was he incapable of putting the instant of violence into words—which would require an analysis as well as a description of physical action? Probably, Tom thought, a healthy drive toward self-preservation was preventing Frank from going back in thought to that very moment. And Tom had to admit to himself that he would not care to analyze or relive the seven or eight murders he had committed,