Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

“No, I don’t want him worked over. I like clean jobs. I want a few days more or maybe weeks to finish checking on Haines, then I’ll confront them both. I’m giving you this on Charles, because from now on I’m out of the case personally, so far as they’re to know. I’m going to Iowa for a vacation, I really am, and I’m going to let Charles know it.” Gerard’s face lighted with a big smile.

“It’s going to be hard to hold the boys back,” Howland said regretfully, “especially for all the time it’ll take you to get evidence against Guy Haines.”

“Incidentally—” Gerard picked up his hat and shook it at Howland. “You couldn’t crack Charles with all that, but I could crack Guy Haines with what I’ve got this minute.”

“Oh, you mean we couldn’t crack Guy Haines?”

Gerard looked at him with elaborate contempt, “But you’re not interested in cracking him, are you? You don’t think he’s the man.”

“Take that vacation, Gerard!”

Methodically, Gerard gathered his papers and started to pocket them.

“I thought you were going to leave those.”

“Oh, if you think you’ll need them.” Gerard presented the papers courteously, and turned toward the door.

“Mind telling me what you’ve got that’ll crack Guy Haines?”

Gerard made a disdainful sound in his throat. “The man is tortured with guilt,” he said, and went out.

Forty-four

“You know, in the whole world,” Bruno said, and tears started in his eyes so he had to look down at the long hearthstone under his feet, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here tonight, Anne.” He leaned his elbow jauntily on the high mantel.

“Very nice of you to say,” Anne smiled, and set the plate of melted cheese and anchovy canapes on the sawbuck table. “Have one of these while they’re hot.”

Bruno took one, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to get it down. The table looked beautiful, set for two with gray linen and big gray plates. Gerard was off on a vacation. They had beaten him, Guy and he, and the lid was off his brains! He might have tried to kiss Anne, he thought, if she didn’t belong to Guy. Bruno stood taller and adjusted his cuffs. He took great pride in being a perfect gentleman with Anne. “So Guy thinks he’s going to like it up there?” Bruno asked. Guy was in Canada now, working on the big Alberta dam. “I’m glad all this dumb questioning is over, so he won’t have to worry about it when he’s working. You can imagine how I feel. Like celebrating!” He laughed, mainly at his understatement.

Anne stared at his tall restless figure by the mantel, and wondered if Guy, despite his hatred, felt the same fascination she did. She still didn’t know, though, whether Charles Bruno would have been capable of arranging his father’s murder, and she had spent the whole day with him in order to make up her mind. He slid away from certain questions with joking answers, he was serious and careful about answering others. He hated Miriam as if he had known her. It rather surprised Anne that Guy had told him so much about Miriam.

“Why didn’t you want to tell anyone you’d met Guy on the train?” Anne asked.

“I didn’t mind. I just made the mistake of kidding around about it first, said we’d met in school. Then all those questions came up, and Gerard started making a lot out of it. I guess because it looked bad, frankly. Miriam killed so soon after, you know. I think it was quite nice of Guy at the inquest on Miriam not to drag in anybody he’d just met by accident.” He laughed, a single loud clap, and dropped into the armchair. “Not that I’m a suspicious character, by any means!”

“But that didn’t have anything to do with the questioning about your father’s death.”

“Of course not. But Gerard doesn’t pay any attention to logic. He should have been an inventor!”

Anne frowned. She couldn’t believe that Guy would have fallen in with Charles’ story simply because telling the truth would have looked bad, or even because Charles had told him on the train that he hated his father. She must ask Guy again. There was a great deal she had to ask him. About Charles’ hostility to Miriam, for instance, though he had never seen her. Anne went into the kitchen.

Bruno strolled to the front window with his drink, and watched a plane alternating its red and green lights in the black sky. It looked like a person exercising, he thought, touching fingertips to shoulders and stretching arms out again. He wished Guy might be on that plane, coming home. He looked at the dusky pink face of his new wristwatch, thinking again, before he read the time on its tall gold numerals, that Guy would probably like a watch like this, because of its modern design. In just three hours more, he would have been with Anne twentyfour hours, a whole day. He had driven by last evening instead of telephoning, and it had gotten so late, Anne had invited him to spend the night. He had slept up in the guest room where they had put him the night of the party, and Anne had brought him some hot bouillon before he went to sleep. Anne was terribly sweet to him, and he really loved her! He spun around on his heel, and saw her coming in from the kitchen with their plates.

“Guy’s very fond of you, you know,” Anne said during the dinner.

Bruno looked at her, having already forgotten what they had been talking about. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him! I feel a tremendous tie with him, like a brother. I guess because everything started happening to him just after we met each other on the train.” And though he had started out to be gay, even funny, the seriousness of his real feeling for Guy got the better of him. He fingered the rack of Guy’s pipes near him on an end table. His heart was pounding. The stuffed potato was beautiful, but he didn’t dare eat another mouthful. Nor the red wine. He had an impulse to try to spend the night again. Couldn’t he manage to stay again tonight, if he didn’t feel well? On the other hand, the new house was closer than Anne thought. Saturday he was giving a big party. “You’re sure Guy’ll be back this weekend?” he asked.

“So he said. ” Anne ate her green salad thoughtfully. “I don’t know whether he’ll feel like a party, though. When he’s been working, he usually doesn’t like anything more distracting than a sail.”

“I’d like a sail. If you wouldn’t mind company.”

“Come along. ” Then she remembered, Charles had already been out on the India, had invited himself with Guy, had dented the gunwail, and suddenly she felt puzzled, tricked, as if something had prevented her remembering until now. And she found herself thinking, Charles could probably do anything, atrocious things, and fool everyone with the same ingratiating naivete, the same shy smile. Except Gerard. Yes, he could have arranged his father’s murder. Gerard wouldn’t be speculating in that direction if it weren’t possible. She might be sitting opposite a murderer. She felt a little pluck of terror as she got up, a bit too abruptly as if she were fleeing, and removed the dinner plates. And his grim, merciless pleasure in talking of his loathing for Miriam. He would have enjoyed killing her, Anne thought. A fragile suspicion that he might have killed her crossed her mind like a dry leaf blown by the wind.

“So you went on to Santa Fe after you met Guy?” she almost stammered, from the kitchen.

“Uh-huh.” Bruno was deep in the big green armchair again.

Anne dropped a demitasse spoon and it made an outrageous clatter on the tiles. The odd thing, she thought, was that it didn’t seem to matter what one said to Charles or asked him. Nothing would shock him. But instead of making it simpler to talk to him, this was the very quality that she felt rattling her and throwing her off.