The Headmaster's Wife (44 page)

“How did you know they 'had words,' then?”

“Because of the way they looked, talking to each other,” Marta said. “Edith was definitely not part of Alice's fan club, not that too many people are around here. Alice is a force of nature, and they all do what she tells them to do, butthey don't like it. Maybe that's why I've always had so much trouble. I haven't always done what she's told me to do.”

“What kind of things does she tell people to do?”

“Oh, nothing outrageous,” Marta said. “She organizes things. We had a Winter Solstice party, for instance, because Alice fancies herself as a pagan, and she thinks pagan rituals are more environmentally sound than Christian or Jewish ones. Things like that.”

“And you had objections to a Winter Solstice party?”

“No,” Marta said. “It's not that I've ever objected to anything in particular; it's more that I've not been very happy with the whole tone of the place. I didn't even realize that until today. I mean, I probably did realize it. I just hadn't realized it consciously. And now of course I've killed any chance I ever had of staying on next year. They're very big on loyalty around here. They won't forget that performance I put on in the library last night.”

“It was a very informative performance,” Gregor said.

Marta shrugged. “I've been scared to death all night. I feel like I've set myself up to be the next victim. I'm the perfect target, the Woman Who Knows Too Much.”

“I doubt it,” Gregor said. “It's not common in real life, you know. Outside of organized crime, it's very unusual for murderers to run around killing people just because they think those people will say something inconvenient to the police. It's different, of course, if the witness actually knows. You didn't give the impression last night that you do actually know. Or do you?”

“Do you mean, know who murdered Edith?”

“Know that, yes, or know who might have murdered Michael Feyre, or who poisoned Mark DeAvecca. Actually know, actually have evidence. Not just speculate.”

“Of course I don't know,” Marta said. “I'd be surprised if anybody did.”

“Could Edith Braxner have known, and not have told the police about it or a neutral person?”

“I don't know who a neutral person would be,” Martasaid. “The Board of Trustees, maybe. But not even them. They wouldn't be neutral. They'd want to protect the school. Everybody does around here. The institution comes first. They like to say it doesn't, but it does.”

“I think that's normal, too, for institutions.”

“Maybe,” Marta said. “This is the first school I've ever been at where I wasn't a student. This is the first time I've ever not been a student. You can't count summer jobs, or jobs in the term, can you, because you're still a student even though you're temporarily doing something else. Do you know what I was thinking? Half the people in this place have never been out of school. Not ever. They've been students and they've been teachers, but they've never been anything else. Their whole lives have been caught up in grading and being graded and in semesters and in years that start in September. For most people, the year starts in January. You should hear us all talk. Cherie Wardrop said the other day that she really hoped that next year would be better than this one because she'd had so much trouble as a houseparent this year, and she wasn't talking about the things that have happened since Christmas. She was talking about the things that have happened since September. James Hallwood said the same thing. And Philip.” Marta shrugged. “Cherie probably hated it the worst, what with Michael in her house, but everybody's been complaining. They were complaining before Michael Feyre ever died.”

Marta was sure Mr. Demarkian was about to tell her that complaining was perfectly natural, too, but she already knew that. She trained her attention on John Whoever, now set up and talking in front of Hayes House's big front windows, looking appropriately solemn while reporting a story in which two people had died. The snow had been very bad overnight. It wasn't only media vans that were blocking traffic on Main, it was snow dunes as well, created by a road clearance department that liked to make big piles of white stuff in what were supposed to be parking spaces.

Marta just wanted to go home—not to Barrett House, or even back to Yale, but
home.

What worried her was that she didn't think such a place had ever existed.

Mark DeAvecca was bored. He was screamingly bored. He was outrageously bored. He had the television on in his hospital room and was sitting up in the visitor's chair with a tray of hospital food in front of him, and he
felt fine,
except, of course, that he was starving. It was impossible to get them to give you enough to eat around here, and he didn't need another lecture about how badly he'd handled the McDonald's Jimmy had brought for him the other day. Yesterday. It was only yesterday. His mother had brought him a copy of
Don Quixote,
which she said was one of his father's favorite books. That was good, especially since he was able to read again, but it wasn't enough to keep him from going crazy. Now there were all these news stories, and camera crews and television reporters standing right outside Hayes House, and he was stuck here staring at a little cup of tapioca pudding that the hospital nutritionist insisted on calling a “portion.” The woman was insane. A portion was half a gallon of ice cream, or one entire extra-large sausage and pepperoni pizza, or three or four of those Triple Play appetizer samplers you could get at Chili's. Mark's mother was not very fond of Chili's, but Jimmy absolutely loved it; and when they were all home in Connecticut, Mark and Geoff could get Jimmy to take them out to the one in Waterbury. Mark thought there was nothing on the planet he wanted right now more than he wanted to go to Chili's.

A reporter on CNN was saying, “Edith Braxner was born in 1948 in …”

Mark didn't catch where she'd been born, only the date. She was even more ancient than he'd thought she was. He poked at the tapioca pudding with his finger. It was a very odd consistency. He'd never had tapioca pudding before. He'd decided to hate it without trying it.

There was a cough on the other side of the room. Mark looked up from the chair and saw Gregor Demarkian standing in the doorway.

“Oh, good,” he said. “I'm so bored, you wouldn't believe it. Couldn't you tell these idiots it's okay for me to go? I feel fine. I really do. And it's not like I'm going to go drinking any more caffeine. Even I can get the message of 'it was enough to kill me.' I'm not stupid.”

Gregor came all the way into the room and sat down on the edge of Mark's bed. They never had put Mark into a single room, they'd just failed to fill the other bed in this one. Mark thought Gregor looked tired.

“I
am
fine, you know,” he said. “There's no reason to keep me cooped up here going stir-crazy while the only interesting thing that's ever happened at Windsor is in full-tilt boogie. All I want to do is go back to my dorm.”

“And give the person who tried to kill you another shot?”

“I promise not to eat any of the food at school at all,” Mark said solemnly. “I won't take so much as a LifeSaver from any person on campus. I'll have everything I eat brought in on delivery. I'll double-check the seal on every can of Sprite. How's that?”

“I think you ought to consider the possibility that your mother isn't going to let you go back to school at all, not even to finish the year,” Gregor said. “That's been the general drift of the conversations I've heard.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mark said. “It's stupid though. I mean, okay, under the circumstances, I can see my not coming back next year, if they'd even have me, which I don't think they would. But does it make sense to make me repeat my sophomore year of high school because my mother wants to blow this place up?”

“She's got good reason to want to blow this place up. And there might not be much of a year left for you to finish. I take it you've been watching the news.”

“Yeah. Somebody killed Dr. Braxner.”

“Poisoned her, yes. The usual result of this sort of thing is that parents take their children out, even once the murdereris caught and there is no more danger. It wouldn't be surprising if the school was forced to close down.”

“It won't be,” Mark said. “There's way too much money behind it. Just watch.”

“I will. Do me a favor and answer a few questions for me since you think you're feeling so much better.”

“Shoot. It's got to be better than sitting here waiting to see if they declare Windsor a war zone and send in Christiane Amanpour.”

Gregor stood up and went to the window. He was, Mark realized, very tense. He just hid it well so that it showed up only in the stiffness of his back. Mark began to feel a little uncomfortable. He wasn't as irrepressible as he was trying to appear. He was scared to death on about seven levels. He just didn't want to live his life that way. Fear caught up to you eventually, if you let it get to you at all. He'd seen that more times than he could count.

“Tell me again about the night Michael Feyre died,” Gregor said. “You were in the library, in the same nook where Edith Braxner was last night. You were doing what again—reading something.”

“Reading a medical encyclopedia,” Mark said. “Yeah. Well, you know, I didn't know I was being poisoned; I thought I was sick.”

“And you were sick, that's right, isn't it? You weren't feeling well, and you weren't thinking well.”

“Right,” Mark said. “That's why I thought what I saw could have been a hallucination. I mean, I'd never had a hallucination before, but with everything else that had been happening to me, I thought it was perfectly possible. And I didn't know the half of it. It's only in the last twenty-four hours that I've realized just how odd I had been. People around here must think I'm a real idiot.”

“We'll deal with that later,” Gregor said. “You saw this figure on the ground, dressed in black. You went out to see who it was. You found nothing. Who did you tell about it?”

“Philip Candor, like I said,” Mark said. “I ran into him going back to Hayes House. And then I got confused, like Isaid. I was sort of wandering around, and I'd forget where I was going. And I went back again. I think I talked to half a dozen other people.”

“Edith Braxner?”

“I don't remember.”

“Who else?”

“Well, I talked to Cherie when I got back to the dorm, right before I went up to my room. That's because Sheldon was screaming at me again. I was back late or not acting the way I was supposed to act or something. I didn't go into a lot of detail, or anything, I just sort of mentioned that I thought I'd seen somebody passed out in the snow because otherwise I just looked like an irresponsible jerk. You know. So I said I'd seen somebody and gone to look, and I didn't think I was bad. And then, you know.”

“You went upstairs and found the body.”

“Right. I think of a body as something on a slab, you know. But I guess that's what it was—Michael's body.”

“Do you know what autoasphyxiation erotica is?”

“That thing where guys hang themselves so they can jerk off?” Mark said. “Yeah, I know what that is, and don't ask. Yeah, I think Michael did that, sort of. But only sort of. According to him, masturbation was for losers.”

“Masturbation was for losers, but he practiced autoasphyxiation?”

“Not exactly. He got girls to do things for him. While he was, you know. This is according to what he said, though, and you can't trust that. I mean, let's face it, guys lie all the time, especially about sex. Michael said he'd get girls to tie him up like that and then blow him, you know. So it wasn't just him himself. He'd blackmail them into it.”

“Blackmail them how?”

“Well,” Mark said, “he sold drugs to people, right? At least he said he did, and other people said they bought them from him, so I guess we can believe that. He'd threaten them and tell them he'd tell the administration and they'd get expelled or something, you know. And not just the drugs. He had dirt on just about everybody. But it can't be that autoasphyxiation thing anyway, can it? Not even if he was doing it to himself.”

“Why not?” Gregor asked.

“Well,” Mark said, thinking that if Gregor was the great detective he was supposed to be, he should already know, “if there had been, there would have been semen, wouldn't there? And his dick would have been hanging out Excuse my language. But his dick wasn't hanging out when I found him. If it had been, I'd have noticed it. And I haven't heard anything about there being semen.”

Gregor looked impressed. “Very good. There was no semen mentioned in the medical report, no. As for his, uh, penis being exposed, if he was engaged in the act with another person, that person could have—”

“Not possible,” Mark said. “He couldn't have gotten a girl up there. We have parietal hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from two to five. That's it. Otherwise, no members of the other sex allowed in the Houses above the first-floor common rooms. And don't tell me he could have sneaked her in there or that she could have sneaked out. Go look at Hayes. There's one stairwell going up three floors, and there are doors opening on it all the way. Weekend nights, the place is full of people running back and forth. There aren't even any fire escapes except for one at each of the sides, and you have to go through the bathrooms to access those. He couldn't have gotten a girl up there without somebody seeing, and she couldn't have gotten out again without somebody seeing.”

“Maybe it's not a girl we're looking for,” Gregor said.

“Wrong again,” Mark said. “Michael was not a decent human being. I mean, okay, I think we get a little too trite and silly with all the hymns to tolerance at Windsor, but once I'd known Michael for a while I could almost see the point. He hated homosexuals. He truly and sincerely hated them. It wasn't homophobia and all that stuff people talk about. It was pure hostility. He might have raped some guy in the butt if he was feeling particularly vicious, but he wouldn't let another guy do something to him; and he really wouldn't have let some other guy get him tied up.”