The Secret History (44 page)

“But the second fork? You can’t say where he’ll go from there.”

“We don’t have to. You remember where it comes out, don’t you? The ravine.”

“Oh,” said Francis. There was a long silence.

“Now, listen,” said Henry, taking a pencil from his pocket. “He’ll be coming in from school, from the south. We can avoid his route entirely and come in on Highway 6, from the west.”

“We’ll take the car?”

“Partway, yes. Just past that junkyard, before the turnoff to Battenkill, there’s a gravel road. I’d thought it might be a private way, in which case we’d have to avoid it, but I went down to the courthouse this afternoon and found that it’s just an old logging road. Comes to a dead end in the middle of the woods. But it should take us directly to the ravine, within a quarter mile. We can walk the rest of the way.”

“And when we get there?”

“Well, we wait. I made Bunny’s walk to the ravine from school twice this afternoon, there and back, and timed it both ways. It’ll take him at least half an hour from the time he leaves his room. Which gives us plenty of time to go around the back way and surprise him.”

“What if he doesn’t come?”

“Well, if he doesn’t, we’ve lost nothing but time.”

“What if one of us goes with him?”

He shook his head. “I’ve thought of that,” he said. “It’s not a good idea. If he walks into the trap himself—alone, of his own volition—there’s not much way it can be traced to us.”

“If this, if that,” said Francis sourly. “This sounds pretty haphazard to me.”

“We want something haphazard.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with the first plan.”

“The first plan is too stylized. Design is inherent in it through and through.”

“But design is preferable to chance.”

Henry smoothed the crumpled map against the table with the flat of his palm. “There, you’re wrong,” he said. “If we attempt to order events too meticulously, to arrive at point X via a logical trail, it follows that the logical trail can be picked up at point X and followed back to us. Reason is always apparent to a discerning eye. But luck? It’s invisible, erratic, angelic. What could possibly be better, from our point of view, than allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death?”

Everything was still. Outside, the crickets shrieked with rhythmic, piercing monotony.

Francis—his face moist and very pale—bit his lower lip. “Let me get this straight. We wait at the ravine and just hope he happens to stroll by. And if he does, we push him off—right there in broad daylight—and go back home. Am I correct?”

“More or less,” said Henry.

“What if he doesn’t come by himself? What if somebody else wanders by?”

“It’s no crime to be in the woods on a spring afternoon,” Henry said. “We can abort at any time, up to the moment he goes over the edge. And that will only take an instant. If we happen across anybody on the way to the car—I think it improbable, but if we should—we can always say there’s been an accident, and we’re going for help.”

“But what if someone sees us?”

“I think that extremely unlikely,” said Henry, dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee with a splash.

“But possible.”

“Anything is possible, but probability will work for us here if only we let it,” said Henry. “What are the odds that some previously undetected someone will stumble into that very isolated
spot, during the precise fraction of a second it will take to push him over?”

“It might happen.”

“Anything
might
happen, Francis. He
might
be hit by a car tonight, and save us all a lot of trouble.”

A soft, damp breeze, smelling of rain and apple blossoms, blew through the window. I had broken out in a sweat without realizing it and the wind on my cheek made me feel clammy and light-headed.

Charles cleared his throat and we turned to look at him.

“Do you know …” he said. “I mean, are you sure it’s high enough? What if he—”

“I went out there today with a tape measure,” Henry said. “The highest point is forty-eight feet, which should be ample. The trickiest part will be to get him there. If he falls from one of the lower points, he’ll end up with nothing worse than a broken leg. Of course, a lot will rest on the fall itself. Backwards seems better than forward for our purposes.”

“But I’ve heard of people falling from airplanes and not dying,” said Francis. “What if the fall doesn’t kill him?”

Henry reached behind his spectacles and rubbed an eye. “Well, you know, there’s a little stream at the bottom,” he said. “There’s not much water, but enough. He’ll be stunned, no matter what. We’d have to drag him there, hold him face-down for a bit—shouldn’t think that’d take more than a couple of minutes. If he was conscious, maybe a couple of us could even go down and walk him over.…”

Charles passed a hand over his damp, flushed forehead. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Oh my God. Just listen to us.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Are we insane?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re insane. We’ve lost our minds. How can we possibly
do
this?”

“I don’t like the idea any more than you do.”

“This is crazy. I don’t even know how we can talk about this. We’ve got to think of something else.”

Henry took a sip of his coffee. “If you can think of anything,” he said, “I’d be delighted to hear it.”

“Well—I mean, why can’t we just
leave?
Get in the car tonight and drive away?”

“And go where?” Henry said flatly. “With what money?”

Charles was silent.

“Now,” said Henry, drawing a line on the map with a pencil. “I think it will be fairly easy to get away without being seen, though we should be especially careful about turning into the logging road and coming out of it onto the highway.”

“Will we use my car or yours?” said Francis.

“Mine, I think. People tend to look twice at a car like yours.”

“Maybe we should rent one.”

“No. Something like that might ruin everything. If we keep it as casual as possible, no one will give us a second glance. People don’t pay attention to ninety percent of what they see.”

There was a pause.

Charles coughed slightly. “And after?” he said. “We just go home?”

“We just go home,” said Henry. He lit a cigarette. “Really, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, shaking out the match. “It seems risky, but if you look at it logically it couldn’t be safer. It won’t look like a murder at all. And who knows we have reason to kill him? I know, I know,” he said impatiently when I tried to interrupt. “But I should be extremely surprised if he’s told anyone else.”

“How can you say what he’s done? He could have told half the people at the party.”

“But I’m willing to bank on the odds he hasn’t. Bunny’s unpredictable, of course, but at this point his actions still make a kind of rudimentary horse sense. I had very good reason to think he’d tell you first.”

“And why’s that?”

“Surely you don’t think it an accident that, of all the people he might have told, he chose to come to you?”

“I don’t know, except that I was handier than anyone else.”

“Who else could he tell?” said Henry impatiently. “He’d never go to the police outright. He stands to lose as much as we do if he did. And for the same reason he doesn’t dare tell a stranger. Which leaves an extremely limited range of potential confidants. Marion, for one. His parents for another. Cloke for a third. Julian as an outside possibility. And you.”

“And what makes you think he hasn’t told Marion, for instance?”

“Bunny might be stupid, but not
that
stupid. It would be all over school by lunch the next day. Cloke’s a poor choice for different reasons. He isn’t quite so apt to lose his head but he’s
untrustworthy all the same. Skittish and irresponsible. And very much out for his own interests. Bunny likes him—admires him too, I think—but he’d never go to him with something like this. And he wouldn’t tell his parents, not in a million years. They’d stand behind him, certainly, but without a doubt they’d go right to the police.”

“And Julian?”

Henry shrugged. “Well, he might tell Julian. I’m perfectly willing to concede that. But he hasn’t told him yet, and I think the chances are he won’t, at least not for a while.”

“Why not?”

Henry raised an eyebrow at me. “Because who do you think Julian would be more apt to believe?”

No one said a thing. Henry drew deeply on his cigarette. “So,” he said, and exhaled. “Process of elimination. He hasn’t told Marion or Cloke, for fear of their telling other people. He hasn’t told his parents, for the same reason, and probably won’t except as a last resort. So what possibilities does that leave him? Only two. He could tell Julian—who wouldn’t believe him—or you, who might believe him and wouldn’t repeat it.”

I stared at him. “Surmise,” I said at last.

“Not at all. Do you think, if he’d told anyone else, we’d be sitting here now? Do you think now, once he’s told you, that he’d be foolhardy enough to tell a third party before he even knows what your response will be? Why do you suppose he called you this afternoon? Why do you suppose he’s pestered the rest of us all day?”

I didn’t answer him.

“Because,” said Henry, “he was testing the waters. Last night he was drunk, full of himself. Today he’s not quite sure what you think. He wants another opinion. And he’ll look to your response for the cue.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Henry took a sip of his coffee. “What don’t you understand?”

“Why you’re in such a goddamned rush to kill him if you think he won’t tell anyone but me.”

He shrugged. “He hasn’t told anyone
yet
. Which is not to say he won’t, very soon.”

“Maybe I could dissuade him.”

“That’s frankly not a chance I’m willing to take.”

“In my opinion, you’re talking about taking a much greater one.”

“Look,” said Henry evenly, raising his head and fixing me with a bleary gaze. “Forgive me for being blunt, but if you think you have any influence over Bunny you’re sadly mistaken. He’s not particularly fond of you, and, if I may speak plainly, as far as I know he never has been. It would be disastrous if you of all people tried to intercede.”

“I was the one he came to.”

“For obvious reasons, none of them very sentimental.” He shrugged. “As long as I was sure he hadn’t told anyone, we might have waited indefinitely. But you were the alarm bell, Richard. Having told you—nothing happened, he’ll think, it wasn’t so bad—he’ll find it twice as easy to tell a second person. And a third. He’s taken the first step on a downward slope. Now that he has, I feel that we’re in for an extremely rapid progression of events.”

My palms were sweating. In spite of the open window, the room seemed close and stuffy. I could hear everybody breathing; quiet, measured breaths that came and went with awful regularity, four sets of lungs, eating at the thin oxygen

Henry folded his fingers and flexed them, at arm’s length, until they cracked. “You can go now, if you like,” he said to me.

“Do you want me to?” I said rather sharply.

“You can stay or not,” he said. “But there’s no reason why you must. I wanted to give you a rough idea, but in a certain sense the fewer details you know, the better.” He yawned. “There were some things you had to know, I suppose, but I feel I’ve done you a disservice by involving you this far.”

I stood up and looked around the table.

“Well,” I said. “Well well well.”

Francis raised an eyebrow at me.

“Wish us luck,” said Henry.

I clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Good luck,” I said.

Charles—out of Henry’s line of vision—caught my eye. He smiled and mouthed the words:
I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?

Suddenly, and without warning, I was overcome by a rush of emotion. Afraid I would say or do something childish, something I’d regret, I got into my coat and drank the rest of my coffee in a long gulp and left, without even the most perfunctory of goodbyes.

On my way home through the dark woods, my head down and my hands in my pockets, I ran virtually headlong into Camilla. She was very drunk and in an exhilarated mood.

“Hello,” she said, linking her arm though mine and leading me back in the direction from which I’d just come. “Guess what. I had a date.”

“So I heard.”

She laughed, a low, sweet chortle that warmed me to my heart. “Isn’t that funny?” she said. “I feel like such a spy. Bunny just went home. Now the problem is, I think Cloke kind of likes me.”

It was so dark I could hardly see her. The weight of her arm was wonderfully comfortable, and her gin-sweet breath was warm on my cheek.

“Did Cloke behave himself?” I said.

“Yes, he was very nice. He bought me dinner and some red drinks that tasted like Popsicles.”

We emerged from the woods into the deserted, blue-lit streets of North Hampden. Everything was silent and strange in the moonlight. A faint breeze tinkled in the wind chimes on someone’s porch.

When I stopped walking, she tugged at my arm. “Aren’t you coming?” she said.

“No.”