Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

Of course, she thought, that might explain it: that Guy had known Charles intended to kill his father, and had tried to stop him, had fought with him, in a bar. “He could have, I suppose,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“How did your husband seem around the month of March, if you can remember, Mrs. Haines?”

“He was nervous. I think I know the things he was nervous about.”

“What things?”

“His work—” Somehow she couldn’t grant him a word more than that about Guy. Everything she said, she felt Gerard would incorporate in the misty picture he was composing, in which he was trying to see Guy. She waited, and Gerard waited, as if he vied with her not to break the silence first.

Finally, he tapped out his cigar and said, “If anything does occur to you about that time in regard to Charles, will you be sure and tell me? Call me any time during the day or night. There’ll be somebody there to take messages.” He wrote another name on his business card, and handed it to Anne.

Anne turned from the door and went directly to the coffee table to remove his glass. Through the front window, she saw him sitting in his car with his head bent forward, like a man asleep, while, she supposed, he made his notes. Then with a little stab, she thought of his writing that Guy might have seen Charles in March without her knowing about it. Why had she said it? She did know about it. Guy said he hadn’t seen Charles, between December and the wedding.

When Guy came in about an hour later, Anne was in the kitchen, tending the casserole that was nearly done in the oven. She saw Guy put his head up, sniffing the air.

“Shrimp casserole,” Anne told him. “I guess I should open a vent.”

“Was Gerard here?”

“Yes. You knew he was coming?”

“Cigars,” he said laconically. Gerard had told her about the meeting on the train, of course. “What did he want this time?” he asked.

“He wanted to know more about Charles Bruno.” Anne glanced at him quickly from the front window. “If you’d said anything to me about suspecting him of anything. And he wanted to know about March.”

“About March?” He stepped onto the raised portion of the floor where Anne stood.

He stopped in front of her, and Anne saw the pupils of his eyes contract suddenly. She could see a few of the hair-fine scars over his cheekbone from that night in March, or February. “Wanted to know if you suspected Charles was going to have his father killed that month.” But Guy only stared at her with his mouth in a familiar straight line, without alarm, and without guilt. She stepped aside, and went down into the living room. “It’s terrible, isn’t it,” she said, “murder?”

Guy tapped a fresh cigarette on his watch face. It tortured him to hear her say “murder.” He wished he could erase every memory of Bruno from her brain.

“You didn’t know, did you, Guy—in March?”

“No, Anne. What did you tell Gerard?”

“Do you believe Charles had his father killed?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s possible. But it doesn’t concern us.” And he did not realize for seconds that it was even a lie.

“That’s right. It doesn’t concern us.” She looked at him again. “Gerard also said you met Charles June before last on the train.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well—what does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it because of something Charles said on the train? Is that why you dislike him?”

Guy shoved his hands deeper in his jacket pockets. He wanted a brandy suddenly. He knew he showed what he felt, that he could not hide it from Anne now. “Listen, Anne,” he said quickly. “Bruno told me on the train he wished his father were dead. He didn’t mention any plans, he didn’t mention any names. I didn’t like the way he said it, and after that I didn’t like him. I refuse to tell Gerard all that, because I don’t know if Bruno had his father killed or not. That’s for the police to find out. Innocent men have been hanged because people reported their saying something like that.”

But whether she believed him or not, he thought, he was finished. It seemed the basest lie he had ever told, the basest thing he had ever done—the transferring of his guilt to another man. Even Bruno wouldn’t have lied like this, wouldn’t have lied against him like this. He felt himself totally false, totally a lie. He flung his cigarette into the fireplace and put his hands over his face.

“Guy, I do believe you’re doing what you should,” Anne’s voice said gently.

His face was a lie, his level eyes, the firm mouth, the sensitive hands. He whipped his hands down and put them in his pockets. “I could use a brandy.”

“Wasn’t it Charles you fought with in March?” she asked as she stood at the bar.

There was no reason not to lie about this also, but he could not. “No, Anne.” He knew from the quick sidelong glance she gave him that she didn’t believe him. She probably thought he had fought with Bruno to stop him. She was probably proud of him! Must there always be this protection, that he didn’t even want? Must everything always be so easy for him? But Anne would not be satisfied with this. She would come back to it and back to it until he told her, he knew.

That evening, Guy lighted the first fire of the year, the first fire in their new house. Anne lay on the long hearthstone with her head on a sofa pillow. The thin nostalgic chill of autumn was in the air, filling Guy with melancholy and a restless energy. The energy was not buoyant as autumnal energy had been in his youth, but underlaid with frenzy and despair, as if his life were winding down and this might be his last spurt. What better proof did he need that his life was winding down than that he had no dread of what lay ahead? Couldn’t Gerard guess it now, knowing that he and Bruno had met on the train? Wouldn’t it dawn on him one day, one night, one instant as his fat fingers lifted a cigar to his mouth? What were they waiting for, Gerard and the police? He had sometimes the feeling that Gerard wanted to gather every tiniest contributing fact, every gram of evidence against them both, then let it fall suddenly upon them and demolish them. But however they demolished him, Guy thought, they would not demolish his buildings. And he felt again the strange and lonely isolation of his spirit from his flesh, even from his mind.

But suppose his secret with Bruno were never found out? There were still those moments of mingled horror at what he had done, and of absolute despondency, when he felt that secret bore a charmed inviolability. Perhaps, he thought, that was why he was not afraid of Gerard or the police, because he still believed in its inviolability. If no one had guessed it so far, after all their carelessness, after all Bruno’s hints, wasn’t there something making it impregnable?

Anne had fallen asleep. He stared at the smooth curve of her forehead, paled to silver by the fire’s light. Then he lowered his lips to her forehead and kissed her, so gently she would not awaken. The ache inside him translated itself into words: “I forgive you.” He wanted Anne to say it, no one but Anne.

In his mind, the side of the scale that bore his guilt was hopelessly weighted, beyond the scale’s measure, yet into the other side he continually threw the equally hopeless featherweight of selfdefense. He had committed the crime in selfdefense, he reasoned. But he vacillated in completely believing this. If he believed in the full complement of evil in himself, he had to believe also in a natural compulsion to express it. He found himself wondering, therefore, from time to time, if he might have enjoyed his crime in some way, derived some primal satisfaction from it—how else could one really explain in mankind the continued toleration of wars, the perennial enthusiasm for wars when they came, if not for some primal pleasure in killing?—and because the capacity to wonder came so often, he accepted it as true that he had.