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 Highsmith if she could be into men in that way because she so much more preferred their company." In 1943, Highsmith had an affair with artist Allela Cornell who, despondent over unrequited love from another woman, committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid. During her stay at Yaddo, Highsmith met writer Marc Brandel, son of author J.D. Beresford. Even though she told him about her homosexuality, they soon entered into a short-lived relationship. He convinced her to visit him in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he introduced her to Ann Smith, a painter and designer with a previous métier as a "Vogue"