The Talented Mr. Ripley: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Tom enjoys his life in Rome, and he continues to study Italian. He is careful, though, to keep himself from learning some of its proper usages, as Dickie often misused tenses here and there. Tom decorates his apartment with the help of Signora Buffi, his landlady. He makes a few acquaintances, but he only introduces himself as Dickie to a couple of people, and he avoids making close friends. He feels “alone yet not at all lonely, himself and yet not himself.” He is Dickie “from the moment he gets out of bed.”

While packing for a trip to Spain and Sicily, there comes a knock at Tom’s door. He answers it to find Freddie Miles in the hall. Tom quickly slips off Dickie’s rings, greeting Freddie and telling him that Dickie is out of the apartment and should be back soon. Freddie is surprised and intrigued to find Tom “staying with” Dickie, but Tom assures him that it’s “just for a few hours” while Dickie is at lunch. Freddie found “Dickie’s” address “by the damnedest luck.” Tom tells Freddie that Dickie is leaving on a trip “to be alone.” Freddie presses Tom for an answer as to whether he lives with Dickie, noting that Dickie has “loaded him up with all his jewelry” and implying that there is more going on between Tom and Dickie than meets the eye. Tom insists that it’s a loan, and urges Freddie to go looking for Dickie at a restaurant nearby. Freddie leaves.

Tom listens as Freddie descends the stairs, and he hears Freddie run into Signora Buffi, who insists that only “Signor Greenleaf” is upstairs and has not yet gone out today. Tom hears Freddie’ footsteps coming back up the stairs; when he reaches the door, Tom grabs a “heavy glass ashtray” and bludgeons Freddie with it until he’s dead.

After using a towel to soak up the blood and searching Freddie’s pockets to find car keys and a wallet, Tom concocts a plan to make the room look as if Dickie and Freddie enjoyed an afternoon of heavy drinking. As Tom stares at Freddie’s lifeless corpse, he thinks that Freddie is a “selfish, stupid bastard who had sneered at Dickie because he suspected him of sexual deviation.” Tom laughs, thinking: “Where was the sex? Where was the deviation?” Tom tells Freddie out loud that he is “a victim of his own dirty mind.”