Read Online The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online Page A

mind that he must call him Billy and not Frank.
    The boy stood up from the grass and smiled. “You delivered it? Did you see her?” he asked, just as gently, as if someone in the woods beyond might hear.
    Tom was also wary of the woods behind the garden—after ten yards of scrubby underbrush the trees became thicker. Tom had once been buried there, for maybe a quarter of an hour. One couldn’t see through the waist-high nettles, the wild and thorny blackberry vines three or four yards long that produced no fruit, not to mention the tall limes just beyond, so thick that their trunks could conceal a man who wished to hide behind one. Tom jerked his head, and the boy came closer to him. They moved toward the friendly structure of the greenhouse. “Something about you in the gossip rag,” Tom said, opening the newspaper. He had turned his back on the house, whence Heloise’s playing was still audible. “I thought you should see it.”
    Frank took the paper, and Tom saw his shock in the sudden twitch of his hands. “Damn,” he said softly. He read it with his jaw clenched.
    “Do you think your brother might come over?”
    “I think it’s—yes. But to say my family’s ‘desperate’—that’s absurd.”
    Tom said lightly, “What if Johnny were to turn up here today and say, ‘Well, here you are!’ ”
    “Why should he turn up here?” asked Frank.
    “Did you ever talk about me, mention me to your family? Or to Johnny?”
    “No.”
    Tom was whispering now. “What about the Derwatt painting? Weren’t there conversations about that? Do you remember? A year or so ago?”
    “I remember. My father mentioned it, because of what was in the newspapers. It wasn’t particularly about you , not at all.”
    “But when you—you said you read about me—in the newspapers.”
    “In the Public Library in New York. That was just a few weeks ago.”
    He meant the newspaper archives. “You didn’t mention me then to your family or to anybody?”
    “Oh, no .” Frank looked at Tom, then his eyes fixed on something behind Tom, and his anxious frown came back.
    Tom turned around, and what should he see but the Old Bear Henri ambling toward them, looking big and tall as something out of a kid’s fairy tale. “Our part-time gardener. Don’t run and don’t worry. Mess your hair up a little. And let it grow—for future use. Don’t talk, just say ‘Bonjour.’ He’ll quit at noon.”
    By this time the French giant was almost within hearing, and Henri’s own booming voice, deep and loud, called out, “’Jour, Monsieur Reeply!”
    “’Jour,” Tom replied. “François,” Tom said, gesturing toward Frank. “Cleaning out some weeds.”
    “Bonjour,” Frank said. He had mussed his hair by scratching the top of his head, and now he assumed a slouch, and went off to where he had been pulling horsetail weeds and convolvulus at the back edge of the lawn.
    Tom was pleased by Frank’s performance. In his scruffy blue jacket, he might have been a local boy who had asked to do a couple of hours’ work at the Ripley house, and God knew Henri couldn’t be depended on, so Henri could hardly complain about competition. Henri could not tell the difference between Tuesday and Thursday, it seemed. Any day he set for himself was never the day he appeared. Henri didn’t show surprise now at the sight of the boy, but kept his absentminded smile, visible in encircling brown mustache and untrimmed beard. He wore baggy blue work trousers, a checked lumberjack shirt and a pale blue-and-white striped cotton cap with a bill, like an American railwayman’s cap. Henri had blue eyes. He gave the impression of being slightly fuzzy with drink always, but was never very drunk as far as Tom could see, and Tom thought perhaps that drink had done its damage at some period in the past. Henri was about forty. Tom paid him fifteen francs an hour, whatever he did, even if they just stood around and discussed potting soil or the methods of storing