Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

“Gerard was talking about your calling him last summer. What was all that?”

“Oh, Mom, I get so damn sick of Gerard’s dumb steers!”

Forty

A few moments later that morning, Guy stepped out of the director’s office at Hanson and Knapp Drafters, happier than he had felt in weeks. The firm was copying the last of the hospital drawings, the most complex Guy had ever supervised, the last okays had come through on the building materials, and he had gotten a telegram early that morning from Bob Treacher that made Guy rejoice for his old friend. Bob had been appointed to an advisory committee of engineers for the new Alberta Dam in Canada, a job he had been looking forward to for the last five years.

Here and there at one of the long tables that fanned out on either side of him, a draftsman looked up and watched him as he walked toward the outer door. Guy nodded a greeting to a smiling foreman. He detected the smallest glow of self-esteem. Or maybe it was nothing but his new suit, he thought, only the third suit in his life he had ever had made for him. Anne had chosen the gray-blue glen plaid material. Anne had chosen the tomato-colored woolen tie this morning to go with it, an old tie but one that he liked. He tightened its knot in the mirror between the elevators. There was a wild gray hair sticking up from one black, heavy eyebrow. The brows went up a little in surprise. He smoothed the hair down. It was the first gray hair he had ever noticed on himself.

A draftsman opened the office door. “Mr. Haines? Lucky I caught you. There’s a telephone call.”

Guy went back, hoping it wouldn’t be long, because he was to meet Anne for lunch in ten minutes. He took the call in an empty office off the drafting room.

“Hello, Guy? Listen, Gerard found that Plato book… . Yeah, in Santa Fe. Now, listen, it doesn’t change anything….”

Five minutes had passed before Guy was back at the elevators. He had always known the Plato might be found. Not a chance, Bruno had said. Bruno could be wrong. Bruno could be caught, therefore. Guy scowled as if it were incredible, the idea Bruno could be caught. And somehow it had been incredible, until now.

Momentarily, as he came out into the sunlight, he was conscious again of the new suit, and he clenched his fist in frustrated anger with himself. “I found the book on the train, see?” Bruno had said. “If I called you in Metcalf, it was on account of the book.

But I didn’t meet you until December…” The voice more clipped and anxious than Guy had ever heard it before, so alert, so harried, it hardly seemed Bruno’s voice. Guy went over the fabrication Bruno had just given him as if it were something that didn’t belong to him, as if it were a swatch of material he indifferently considered for a suit, he thought. No, there were no holes in it, but it wouldn’t necessarily wear. Not if someone remembered seeing them on the train. The waiter, for instance, who had served them in Bruno’s compartment.

He tried to slow his breathing, tried to slow his pace. He looked up at the small disc of the winter sun. His black brows with the gray hair, with the white scar, his brows that were growing shaggier lately, Anne said, broke the glare into particles and protected him. If one looks directly into the sun for fifteen seconds, one can burn through the cornea, he remembered from somewhere. Anne protected him, too. His work protected him. The new suit, the stupid new suit. He felt suddenly inadequate and dullwitted, helpless. Death had insinuated itself into his brain. It enwrapped him. He had breathed its air so long, perhaps, he had grown quite used to it. Well, then, he was not afraid. He squared his shoulders superfluously.

Anne had not arrived when he got to the restaurant. Then he remembered she had said she was going to pick up the snapshots they had made Sunday at the house. Guy pulled Bob Treacher’s telegram from his pocket and read it again and again: JUST APPOINTED TO ALBERTA COMMITTEE. HAVE RECOMMENDED YOU. THIS IS A BRIDGE, GUY. GET FREE SOON AS POSSIBLE. ACCEPTANCE GUARANTEED. LETTER COMING. BOB

Acceptance guaranteed. Regardless of how he engineered his life, his ability to engineer a bridge was beyond question. Guy sipped his martini thoughtfully, holding the surface perfectly steady.

Forty-one

“We wandered into another case,” Gerard murmured pleasantly, gazing at the typewritten report on his desk. He had not looked at Bruno since the young man had come in. “Murder of Guy Haines’ first wife. Never been solved.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I thought you’d know quite a lot about it. Now tell me everything you know.” Gerard settled himself.

Bruno could tell he had gone all the way into it since Monday when he had the Plato book. “Nothing,” Bruno said. “Nobody knows. Do they?”

“What do you think? You must have talked a great deal with Guy about it.”

“Not particularly. Not at all. Why?”

“Because murder interests you so much.”

“What do you mean, murder interests me so much?”

“Oh, come, Charles, if I didn’t know from you, I’d know that much from your father!” Gerard said in a rare burst of impatience.

Bruno started to reach for a cigarette and stopped. “I talked with him about it,” he said quietly, respectfully. “He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t even know his wife very well then.”

“Who do you think did it? Did you ever think Mr. Haines might have arranged it? Were you interested maybe in how he’d done it and gotten away with it?” At his ease again, Gerard leaned back with his hands behind his head, as if they were talking about the good weather that day.

“Of course I don’t think he arranged it,” Bruno replied. “You don’t seem to realize the caliber of the person you’re talking about.”

“The only caliber ever worth considering is the gun’s, Charles.” Gerard picked up his telephone. “As you’d be the first to tell me probably.—Have Mr. Haines come in, will you?”

Bruno jumped a little, and Gerard saw it. Gerard watched him in silence as they listened to Guy’s footsteps coming closer in the hall. He had expected Gerard would do this, Bruno told himself. So what, so what, so what?

Guy looked nervous, Bruno thought, but his usual air of being nervous and in a hurry covered it. He spoke to Gerard, and nodded to Bruno.

Gerard offered him his remaining chair, a straight one. “My whole purpose in asking you to come down here, Mr. Haines, is to ask you a very simple question. What does Charles talk with you about most of the time?” Gerard offered Guy a cigarette from a pack that must have been years old, Bruno thought, and Guy took it.

Bruno saw Guy’s eyebrows draw together with the look of irritation that was exactly appropriate. “He’s talked to me now and then about the Palmyra Club,” Guy replied.

“And what else?”

Guy looked at Bruno. Bruno was nibbling, so casually the action seemed nonchalant, at a fingernail of the hand that propped his cheek. “Can’t really say,” Guy answered.

“Talked to you about your wife’s murder?”

“Yes.”

“How does he talk to you about the murder?” Gerard asked kindly. “I mean your wife’s murder.”

Guy felt his face flush. He glanced again at Bruno, as anybody might, he thought, as anybody might in the presence of a discussed party who is being ignored. “He often asked me if I knew who might have done it.”

“And do you?”

“No.”

“Do you like Charles?” Gerard’s fat fingers trembled slightly, incongruously. They began playing with a match cover on his desk blotter.

Guy thought of Bruno’s fingers on the train, playing with the match cover, dropping it onto the steak. “Yes, I like him,” Guy answered puzzledly.