The Secret History (58 page)

The day passed like a dream. Voices, dogs barking, the whap of a helicopter overhead. The wind was strong and the roar of it in the trees was like an ocean. The helicopter had been sent from the New York State Police headquarters in Albany; it had, we were told, a special infrared heat sensor. Someone had also volunteered something called an “ultra-light” aircraft which swooped overhead, barely clearing the tops of the trees. There were real ranks now, squadron leaders with bullhorns, we marched over the snowy hills wave upon wave.

Cornfields, pastures, knolls heavy with undergrowth. As we approached the base of the mountain the land took a downward slope. A thick fog lay in the valley below, a smoldering cauldron of white from which only the treetops protruded, stark and Dantesque. By degrees, we descended, and the world sank from view. Charles, beside me, stood out sharp and almost hyper-realistic with his ruddy cheeks and labored breaths but further down, Henry had become a wraith, his large form light and strangely insubstantial in the mist.

When the ground rose several hours later, we came up on the rear of another, smaller party. In it were some people I was surprised and somehow touched to see. There was Martin Hoffer,
an old and distinguished composer on the music faculty; the middle-aged lady who checked IDs in the lunch line, looking inexplicably tragic in her plain cloth coat; Dr. Roland, the blares of his nose-blowing audible even at a distance.

“Look,” said Charles. “That’s not Julian, is it?”

“Where?”

“Surely not,” said Henry.

But it was. Rather characteristically, he pretended not to see us until we were so close it was impossible for him to ignore us any longer. He was listening to a tiny, fox-faced lady whom I knew to be a housekeeper in the dorms.

“Goodness,” he said, when she had finished talking, drawing back in mock surprise. “Where did you come from? Do you know Mrs. O’Rourke?”

Mrs. O’Rourke smiled shyly. “I seen all of you before,” she said. “The kids think the maids don’t notice them, but I know you all by sight.”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Charles. “You haven’t forgotten me, have you? Bishop House, number ten?”

He said this so warmly that she flushed with pleasure.

“Sure,” she said. “I remember you. You was the one was always running off with my broom.”

During this exchange Henry and Julian were talking softly. “You should have told me before now,” I heard Julian say.

“We did tell you.”

“Well, you did, but still. Edmund’s missed class before,” said Julian, looking distressed. “I thought he was playing sick. People are saying that he’s been kidnapped but I think that’s rather silly, don’t you?”

“I’d rather one of mine be kidnapped than out in this snow for six days,” said Mrs. O’Rourke.

“Well, I certainly hope that nothing has happened to him. You know, don’t you, that his family is here? Have you seen them?”

“Not today,” said Henry.

“Of course, of course,” said Julian hastily. He disliked the Corcorans. “I haven’t been to see them either, it’s really not the time to intrude.… This morning I did run into the father quite by accident, and one of the brothers as well. He had a baby with him. Riding it on his shoulders as if they were on their way to a picnic.”

“Little one like him had no business being out in this weather,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “Hardly three years old.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I
agree
. I can’t imagine why anyone would have a baby along on something like this.”

“I certainly wouldn’t have let one of mine yell and carry on like that.”

“Perhaps it was cold,” murmured Julian. The tone he used was a delicate cue that he had tired of the subject and wished to stop talking about it.

Henry cleared his throat. “Did you talk to Bunny’s father?” he said.

“Only for a moment. He—well, I suppose we all have different ways of handling these things.… Edmund looks a great deal like him, doesn’t he?”

“All the brothers do,” said Camilla.

Julian smiled. “Yes! And so many of them! Like something from a fairy story.…” He glanced at his watch. “Goodness,” he said, “it’s late.”

Francis started from his morose silence. “Are you leaving now?” he asked Julian anxiously. “Do you want me to drive you?”

This was a blatant attempt at escape. Henry’s nostrils flared, not so much in anger as in a kind of exasperated amusement: he gave Francis a dirty look, but then Julian, who was gazing into the distance and quite unaware of the drama which hinged on his reply, shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he said. “Poor Edmund. I’m really quite worried, you know.”

“Just think how his parents must feel,” said Mrs. O’Rourke.

“Yes,” said Julian, in a tone of voice which managed to convey at once both sympathy with and distaste for the Corcorans.

“I’d be wild if it was me.”

Unexpectedly, Julian shuddered and turned up the collar of his coat. “Last night I was so upset I could hardly sleep,” he said. “He’s such a sweet boy, so silly; I’m really very fond of him. If anything should have happened to him I don’t know if I could bear it.”

He was looking over the hills, at all that grand cinematic expanse of men and wilderness and snow that lay beneath us; and though his voice was anxious there was a strange dreamy look on his face. The business had upset him, that I knew, but I also knew that there was something about the operatic sweep of the search which could not fail to appeal to him and that he was pleased, however obscurely, with the aesthetics of the thing.

Henry saw it, too. “Like something from Tolstoy, isn’t it?” he remarked.

Julian looked over his shoulder, and I was startled to see that there was real delight on his face.

“
Yes,
” he said. “Isn’t it, though?”

At about two in the afternoon, two men in dark overcoats walked up to us from nowhere.

“Charles Macaulay?” said the shorter of the two. He was a barrel-chested fellow with hard, genial eyes.

Charles, beside me, stopped and looked at him blankly.

The man reached in his breast pocket and flipped out a badge. “Agent Harvey Davenport, Northeast Regional Division, FBI.”

For a moment I thought Charles might lose his composure. “What do you want?” he said, blinking.

“We’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

“It won’t take long,” said the taller man. He was an Italian with stooped shoulders and a sad, doughy nose. His voice was soft and pleasant.

Henry, Francis, Camilla had all stopped and were staring at the strangers with varying degrees of interest and alarm.

“Besides,” said Davenport snappily. “Good to get out of the cold for a minute or two. Bet you’re freezing your balls off, huh?”

After they left, the rest of us were bristling with anxiety, but of course we couldn’t talk and so we continued to shuffle along, eyes on the ground and half afraid to look up. Soon it was three o’clock, then four. Things were far from over, but at the first premature signs that the day’s search was breaking up we headed rapidly and silent for the car.

“What do you suppose they want with him?” said Camilla for about the tenth time.

“I don’t know,” said Henry.

“He gave them a statement already.”

“He gave the police one. Not these people.”

“What difference does it make? Why would they want to talk to him?”

“I don’t know, Camilla.”

When we got to the twins’ apartment we were relieved to find Charles there, alone. He was lying on the couch, a drink on the table beside him, talking to his grandmother on the telephone.

He was a little drunk. “Nana says hi,” he said to Camilla when he got off the phone. “She’s all worried. Some bug or something has got up into her azaleas.”

“What’s that all over your hands?” said Camilla sharply.

He held them out, palms up, none too steadily. The tips of the fingers were black. “They took my fingerprints,” he said. “It was kind of interesting. I’d never had it done before.”

For a moment we were all too shocked to say anything. Henry stepped forward, took one of his hands and examined it beneath the light. “Do you know why they did it?” he said.

Charles wiped his brow with the back of his free wrist. “They’ve sealed off Bunny’s room,” he said. “Some people are in there dusting for prints and putting things in plastic bags.”

Henry dropped his hand. “But why?”

“I don’t know why. They wanted the fingerprints of everybody who’d been in the room on Thursday and touched things.”

“What good will that do? They don’t have Bunny’s fingerprints.”

“Apparently they do have them. Bunny was in the Boy Scouts and his troop went in and was fingerprinted for some kind of Law Enforcement badge, years ago. They’re still on file somewhere.”

Henry sat down. “Why did they want to talk to you?”

“That was the first thing they asked me.”

“What?”

“ ‘Why do you think we want to talk to you.’ ” He dragged the heel of his hand down the side of his face. “These people are smart, Henry,” he said. “A lot smarter than the police.”

“How did they treat you?”

Charles shrugged. “The one called Davenport was pretty brusque. The other one—the Italian—was nicer, but he scared me. Didn’t say much, just listened. He’s much more clever than the other one.…”

“Well?” said Henry impatiently. “What is it?”

“Nothing. We … I don’t know. We’ve got to be really careful, that’s all. They tried to trip me up more than once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when I told them Cloke and I had gone down to Bunny’s room around four on Thursday, for instance.”

“That’s when you did go,” said Francis.

“I know that. But the Italian—really, he’s a very pleasant man—began to look all concerned. ‘Can that be right, son?’ he said. ‘Think.’ I was really confused, because I
knew
we went at four, and then Davenport said, ‘You’d better think about it, because your buddy Cloke told us you two were down at that room for a solid hour before you called anybody.’ ”

“They wanted to see if you and Cloke had anything to hide,” Henry said.

“Maybe. Maybe they just wanted to see if I would lie about it.”