Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
Patricia Schartle Myrer in 1963, Schartle continued as Patricia Highsmith's American literary agent. A. M. Heath served as Patricia Highsmith's British agents. Over time, Patricia Highsmith came to resent the 5% commission each literary agency took. Patricia Schartle Myrer fired Highsmith as her client in 1979. In 1965 Schartle helped Noah Gordon become a serious novelist by getting him a book contract with a publishing firm after he submitted an outline for a novel to Schartle. It was at Schartle's suggestion that Gordon then wrote the Cole trilogy, a series of books about the dynasty of a single family over many generations. Patricia