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in the morning, they will find his body, booklet of sheet music still resting beside his head, as if he had simply grown tired of composing and thought to set his head down for just a minute. he will show no signs of violence or struggle, and it will only be much later, when they examine his corpse for the autopsy, will they see the petechial hemorrhages, the bloodshot eyes, the faint bruising where his head was held down with force. no one will know who entered his room that night, nor who killed him, nor why they would have killed an otherwise innocent man. peter smith-kingsley will be remembered at a small, private ceremony; they will play his favorite composition and they will remark about his talent and his gentleness and how he could always see the best in his companions. the police will investigate his murder in the interim, but the case will eventually become colder, staler, as such cases do. there are more important murders to worry about, after all.
in the morning, marge will hear the news, and she will know.
she has always known.
she knows how peter looks at ripley, because it is how dickie looked at ripley, too.
she knows that dickie greenleaf and tom ripley took a boat out one morning, and she knows that dickie greenleaf did not come back the same.
she knows that dickie greenleaf did not really come back at all.
thus, as she sits in her house in mongibello, trapped in the shell of one dead man and grieving the loss of a second, marge will wonder what kind of man tom ripley is. she will wonder if tom ripley was ever real, or if he only existed in the shadow of other men and other lies. she will remember how ripley approached her in his hotel room, with blood slowly staining the pocket of his bathrobe and a hollow look in his eyes, and she will realize, no, she has never known tom ripley at all. the only men that might have known ripley at all are dead, and perhaps, that is the consequence of knowing tom ripley. tom ripley is not meant to be known, not meant to understood, not meant to be loved.
tom ripley’s love is bloody hands and a boat trip.
marge will think about this for a long time. then she will close her eyes, roll dickie’s rings around in her hand, and let her anger cool into a hard pit in her stomach. tomorrow morning, she will beg the fishermen to dredge the shallows, and they will pull her husband’s bloated body from the clutches of the mediterranean. he will bear the marks of ripley’s love, and she will hold his body close to hers regardless of the stain, of the death, of the smell. it will be her last chance to know what kind of warmth a dead sun might leave behind.
(none. dead suns are cold and slack-jawed and hollowed out from the inside. dead suns will go where she cannot follow. dead suns— dead sons— don’t come back at all.)
when the police ask, she will talk about peter and ripley and dickie and boys in boats, and she will try to describe what she knows about sun-eaters.
he was kind but he bludgeoned my fiancé to death. he was tender with peter and he was tender when he smothered him. he had an earnest smile but he lent it out when it did not suit him. i don’t think i ever truly knew tom ripley. i don’t know if i even met tom ripley at all.
how does one kill a sun-eater?