The Twisted Thread (28 page)

Porter shook his head and said, “Stan, I owe you an explanation. I am more than aware of that. It will all become clear very soon.” Fred was too shocked to speak. He wanted only to get himself and Madeline out of there. But she was rooted to the floor. She was whispering, “He did it. He was the one who killed Claire. She told the girls about an older man. It must be Porter.” Fred looked at her. “Madeline, that's not possible,” he hissed. Lucinda was still standing there, though she watched the room of teachers with unconcealed contempt and then started to walk quickly up the stairs.

Porter turned to follow her and stopped once, to look around the crowd, but he said nothing. Fred said to Madeline, “We have to get out of here,” and grabbed her hand. He wanted to believe she was wrong. He wanted more than anything to know that the fine man who had made those speeches was innocent. But he thought instantly of his grandfather and knew it was impossible to say what people were really like, to know motives fully, to be aware of all the layers that constituted human beings.

The last thing Fred saw as he steered Madeline out the far door and through an exit in the kitchen—he knew this house, after all; he had grown up in it partly—was Marie-France sobbing in Forrest's arms. Finally, they were outside. The air was cool on their faces, and it was starting to rain, and Fred couldn't tell if Madeline was crying or not in the suddenly steady downpour.

He didn't care who saw them. He didn't care what anyone thought. He opened the door to his apartment and unplugged the phone and planned not to turn on any computer or any device that might tell him one scrap of what was going on. He settled Madeline on the sofa and poured her some Scotch. He took off his jacket and tie and poured himself a drink, too, and sat next to her. She was still shaking and on the verge of tears.

“He was in Castine with Claire. I think he must have raped her or gotten involved with her somehow. He was the father of the baby,” Madeline said, gulping the Scotch. “God, that's strong. That's why she stayed. She was going to humiliate him, humiliate the school. Show everyone that his beautiful family wasn't what they thought. But then Porter killed her and took the baby, or someone did. Fred, it doesn't make sense.” She told him then about the mirrors between Scotty's room and Claire's, and that she thought it was a signal the girl could send to him if she were in trouble.

“Porter? Rape a student? And why wouldn't Scotty and Claire just call each other? Madeline, it's all insane,” Fred said, but as he said it, he thought again of Llewellan and how intensely unknowable people were.

Madeline was crying now. “I don't want to believe it's true,” she said. “He's a good man, I know he's a good man.” And in spite of himself, of his imminent departure, Fred folded her in his arms and found himself kissing away her tears.

“Fred,” she said and pushed him slightly away. “You have to stop that. It feels way too nice and then you'll be gone and painting away and going on dates with girls named Ilsa and I'll be up here grading papers and spilling cranberry juice on myself and missing you.” She smacked him on the arm quite hard and smiled, even as the tears kept rolling.

“Ilsa?” he asked and kissed her cheek again.

“Yes. Or Simone or Vanessa. And they'll be video-installation artists and half-Brazilian, half-Norwegian, and—” She was clearly going to continue in this vein for some time so he was forced to kiss her mouth, just to keep her from talking, which was effective for a while.

But after a minute, she went on just where she'd stopped, though she also said, “That was even nicer, Fred, in fact I've been dying for that to happen for some time, but those girls won't have straggly hair or talk too much.”

He kissed her again, and it was indeed the best thing that had happened in a long time. It felt both incredibly new and wonderful—she tasted like honey with some Scotch in it—and also just as he'd known it would: she was so darling, this woman, and he liked her immensely. It was so delightful to show her that. But she was right, even though she was kissing him back with passion and surprise and pleasure. There was no predicting the Ilsas, Simones, or Vanessas he might encounter.

“Madeline,” he said as he delicately pulled her hair back in order to gain access to the buttons on her shirt, “what about you and all the Andrews and Jakes and Peters who are going to be lining up in front of your door? What are we going to do about them?”

She snorted. “My door? Here at the convent of Armitage? Do you think it's an accident that Marie-France is leaving a virgin, Fred?” But she helped with the buttons and got her own fingers working on his. Her hands were cool and her fingers lean and nimble and delicious on his warm skin.

“But that won't be your fate, will it?” Fred asked as he pulled her shirt away to reveal round shoulders and a plain bra and Madeline's sudden shyness at being half-naked in the room of her closest friend on campus.

“No,” she said as she pulled his own shirt free from his body and began tracing her fingers across his chest. “But that wasn't the state that I arrived in, either.” And then, thank God, she stopped talking altogether.

At one point in the night, Madeline had woken up and said, “Fred? Porter didn't do it, did he?” and Fred had said, “No, he's not capable of that,” and they had both gone back to sleep, reassured and wrapped around each other. When he woke up again, it was fully dark in his bedroom. He lay there and listened to Madeline breathing deeply, snuggled below the covers. He had no idea if it was midnight or three in the morning. All he knew was that he was ravenously hungry and torn with more than a little misgiving. Making love with Madeline had been, his body told him, total pleasure. She was as passionate a lover as she was a talker, generous and full of humor and sweetly curved in exactly the right proportions. Careful not to wake her, he wondered at the edge of anxiety, almost fear that followed him as he tiptoed into the kitchen to find something to eat.

His hand on the refrigerator door, he remembered. Porter. His resignation. The utter trouble the academy was in. What a dark note on which to start a relationship. Was that what had happened? Yes, he thought, as he looked at the rather bare shelves. That was exactly what had happened. Then he felt rather than heard Madeline behind him, and he turned to find her warm and naked in his arms again and saying, unsurprisingly, “I am starved. Can you cook? And aren't you never supposed to spoil a friendship with sex?”

“Yes, to both, absolutely. And especially about the friendship part. Except when you should and it turns out to be a great decision.” They made a plate of eggs and sausages slathered in ketchup for Madeline and hot sauce for Fred and sat in his bed to eat it. “This is great, Fred,” she said, and he knew she meant the whole thing. The lovemaking, the food, the unexpected joy of it amid the sadness. “You're a great kisser, Madeline,” he said and kissed her some more. “Thanks, Fred,” she said.

Which led to more time below the covers and another long nap, after which they woke to find it was dawn. “I should go,” she said. “It's Claire's service this morning. And I bet there are a thousand e-mails and announcements, and all of it will come crashing down today.”

“Not yet,” he said. “Don't go yet.” He wanted, he realized, to tell her why he was leaving Armitage for good. He wanted to tell her about Llewellan. “I know it's been a bad week for revelations,” he said and held her hand, “but there's more.” To her credit, she sat and listened to the entire story. To Malcolm Smith coming into the studio. To Fred's search in the archives and Scotty's sudden appearance there. To the eventual discovery of the file and of Naomi Beardsley's note. He ended with his visit to Fox Marsh. “I can't,” he finished, “come back. I have to find out what it's like to live outside this place,” and he gestured around the room, which was strewn with clothes, some of which were, he was happy to note, Madeline's.

She looked at him and said, “You know, there's no way to be sure what happened. Edward's family blamed the school, blamed your grandfather. But who knows what those masters did or what sort of state that boy was in. Is it possible to judge him so clearly? It's disgusting that people thought that way about kids, that they could judge a boy who was probably gay so harshly, but wasn't it the way of the world then?”

Fred sat up straighter. He was surprised, but he kept listening. “I'm not apologizing for him or excusing him. It is creepy and irrevocable and all those things, and maybe, hopefully, it's a little better now. But isn't it easier to look at it today and cast all that harsh criticism his way? Isn't he also the same man who taught you how to fish and swim? Wasn't he beloved by all those people for real reasons? All I'm saying, Fred, is that people are complex. It doesn't mean he wasn't responsible for what happened to Edward, but it doesn't mean that the good pieces of him weren't real, too.”

“You're also saying that I can't use him as an excuse to leave,” he said. How smart she was. Just stepping on the high-mindedness of it and grounding him more firmly in what his leaving really amounted to, which was doing what he desired.

She smiled. “That's right, sweetie. It's your choice. Own up to it. It's what you want, no matter what your grandfather did. But what you did, sending the file to the family. That was the right thing to do. Now they have to deal with it or not. It's up to them. That was brave, since anything could happen,” she finished. “They could file a suit, make it all public, create a huge stink. I think you did the right thing, but I would have wanted to burn it.” She told him then that her own sister had been part of the Reign and had refused to talk about it with her, protecting something evil even years past necessity. “And I wanted to pretend for a minute that I was going to stay here to root it out and make things better at Armitage, to make up for Kate's sins. If you think about it, the Reign's just an extension of the kind of terror that was probably inflicted on poor Edward. But if I were really truthful, I'd have to say I want to stay because I like teaching.” You have to be honest in the end, she said, if you even want to try to sleep through the night.

“I thought about not sending on the file,” Fred told her, extremely close to kissing her neck again. “But Malcolm chose me for a reason. He bided his time. He made a very precise shot. And he had no idea what we had our hands on. What was lurking in the basement.”

“But I know,” Madeline said and edged herself out of his range. “And we don't have time. And I need to make myself presentable.”

She dressed quickly and leaned over to give him a long, happy kiss. “Bye, Fred. See you later,” and she was out the door with a loud bang, neither of them caring what the kids or teachers saw, heard, knew. He leaned back, aware he should follow suit, get showered, dressed, roused for another impossible series of events. But he lay there thinking about this lovely woman, her warmth and spirit still on his body, in the room. She hadn't said a word about what was next, how they were going to manage. Madeline, stinted on love as a child, took affection where she found it, gratefully. Or perhaps he was underestimating her, he thought as he made his way to the shower. She was grown-up enough to know that you couldn't predict what was going to happen next and that staking claims or making commitments when every element of her life was in transition was something it was wiser to avoid. All he knew as he turned the shower to the hottest possible temperature was that he couldn't wait to see her again. My girl, he thought, and then, Not yet. Haven't earned her, and he washed himself clean.

CHAPTER 22

T
he call had come in at 6:25 on Saturday morning. A man
claiming Tamsin Lovell had attacked him in Nicholson House had dialed 911. Would someone please go and arrest her, and by the way, could an ambulance be sent to the academy? And quickly? His cell phone was low on batteries. Matt and Vernon had just arrived at the station, disheveled, in foul moods, and in a moment, Vernon was racing to go and try to find Tamsin and Matt had sped immediately to Jim French.

Vernon had been lucky. He knew the make and model of Tamsin's car and had seen it speeding away from Armitage as he lurched onto Main Street. “Made it easy,” he said. “She was thirty miles over the limit.” She was still wearing her jogging gear and ponytail, and had bent her head in apparent awareness of the futility of her situation. Vernon said he'd experienced a rough and uncomfortable pleasure seeing her there in her diminutive car. He had spent much of the last two days having her dodge his questions about what she'd had in the bag. Yes, she had argued with Mrs. McLellan, but “everyone knew she was a stroppy sort.” Which made Tamsin what? Vernon had asked. “Discreet,” she had answered and more or less kicked him out of her office. Since her arrest, she had maintained a glassy silence, despite five interrogations, all of which she had sat through with a rough smile and utter disdain. Her lawyer, more expensive than she might have been expected to come up with, had stood by with a mixture of professional cool and mystification. No one seemed to understand her complete refusal to cooperate despite ample evidence of assault and the threat of more charges coming. The documents she'd been shredding were slowly being pieced together. Vernon was trying to trace the call she'd been making. Porter claimed to know nothing, a stance that was becoming increasingly hard to fathom or believe. By four that afternoon, Angell had said, “Put her in the holding cell for a few hours. See what happens when she gets a load of her new roommates,” and there, among some drug addicts and a few drunk drivers, she sat in hostile stillness while her lawyer scurried about trying to secure bail.

By six thirty that evening, Matt had needed to go outside and assume a horizontal position on the seat of the picnic bench. He lay there and noticed it was about to rain and couldn't care about an imminent drenching. Scotty Johnston's lawyer had just sprung him, and the boy had managed to leave yet again without saying anything about the mirrors, Claire, or the whereabouts of her baby. The warrant to search Harvey Fuller's apartment had been delayed. Jim French was hazy about the entire assault. He remembered that Tamsin had been talking on the phone and loudly, but he had no idea to whom. At least he was out of the hospital and nursing nothing more than a mild concussion and a bad headache. At least no one else was dead. It was soothing in the semidark below the table, with the heavy air about to slide into rain, and the only element marring the very temporary peace the acrid smell of a cigarette. Matt sat up and, to his surprise, saw Vernon creeping out of the scraggly woods that edged the station's parking lot. He was grinding a butt beneath his sole and obviously hadn't spotted Matt prone on the bench. Spying him now, he lifted both hands in surrender.

“Just don't blow my cover,” he said. “It's this whole thing. It's that Englishwoman who will not explain what she was up to. It's that Scotty kid. It's the whole damn thing. I just couldn't be good anymore.”

“But why not a cheeseburger or some fries, Vernon? As far as sins go, aren't they a little more comforting?”

“I don't really like smoking. Could never get addicted. But a good burger? One bite and I'd be gone.” He sat down opposite Matt. “It's raining,” he said.

“That it is,” said Matt, but neither of them moved. Drops began to spatter the warm tarmac in the parking lot and sink into the dark fabric of their jackets.

“Do we go and arrest him now?” Vernon asked. “We're not even sure where he is.”

“Soon,” said Matt, “but it's not going to be smooth. Not one bit of it will be smooth.”

“And still no baby,” Vernon said.

“No baby,” Matt said, and then they turned around. A car had rolled into the parking lot. A Volvo station wagon. He and Vernon both stood. “So it's going to start like this,” Vernon said. “That's not what I would have predicted.” They watched as Porter McLellan unfolded himself from the car. He turned, not seeing them, and instead of walking toward the station, he stood there for a moment and appeared to watch the water beading on the hoods of all the squad cars. Porter was not wearing a raincoat, either, and seemed as immune as they were to the dampness. He didn't move for a moment and appeared merely to be breathing in the spring air. But then he did something that was both strange and oddly beautiful. He lifted his face to the sky and let the rain pelt down on his skin. He turned his hands palm up and let the water, falling harder now, gather there.

“Shall we?” Matt said to Vernon, and together they walked over to the man in the rain, who by this time had lowered his hands and was standing there, looking at the policemen come toward him. “Let's go inside, Mr. McLellan,” Matt said, and the tall man followed him. The station was silent as they walked in, three tall, dripping men. Uniformed officers, secretaries, ubiquitous FBI watched the shining puddles they left in their wake. Matt opened the door to his office, and Vernon gave Porter a seat. Matt sat at his desk. None of them spoke. Rain lashed the window. Vernon clicked on a small light, but otherwise, the room was almost dark.

“I have a letter here,” Porter said at last and pulled out an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is my confession, Detective. I am sorry I did not make it right away.” His face was ashen, his words robotic. “I cannot apologize enough for having prolonged this horrible time.” His voice was growing thinner, frayed like an old cloth.

“Does your wife know you're here, Mr. McLellan?” Matt asked.

Porter shook his head. “No.” He appeared to be about to add something, then caught himself, and shrank back into his chair. He stared at his own hands.

Matt removed the letter and read it aloud. “It is with profound guilt and regret that I confess to murdering Claire Harkness in her room on the morning of May 22, 2009. She was planning to implicate me as the father of her baby. I went to reason with her and found myself carried away with rage. My crime was unintentional, but nonetheless I bear full responsibility. There are no limits to my regret. I will add, however, that I do not know what happened to her child, who was gone by the time I reached her room.”

“Mr. McLellan, would you like to call your wife?” Porter shook his head. Matt continued, “I would also suggest you call your lawyer.” Again, Porter shook his head. “How did you find out that Claire had had a baby and that she was planning this accusation?” Matt asked.

“A girl in her dorm came to tell me,” Porter said and stared out the window, apparently unable to meet anyone's eyes.

“Mr. McLellan, I don't think the baby is dead. I think he's nearby. But I need to know what you saw. What you did.”

“I wish I could help, but I can't.” Porter was almost whispering. “He was gone. Claire wouldn't say where he was. Someone had taken him away.”

Matt said then, “The reason you can't help us, Mr. McLellan, is because none of this is true, is it? It wasn't you who was there. You had nothing to do with Claire's death or the disappearance of the baby. But you know who did. And that's what we need to talk about.”

But Porter again said nothing and kept staring at his hands, his jaw slack and his head low. It was then that Matt heard shouting in the hallway, an intense reversal of volume given Porter's deadened silence. Porter shrank further in his chair, clearly recognizing the voice. The next moment, Matt's door flew open, and Lucinda almost tumbled into his office, followed by two spluttering officers. The young men hadn't stood a chance of containing the headmaster's wife. “Porter, say nothing. Stop now.” Her eyes flew to the paper that Matt was still holding and said, “Let Robert handle this. You have to, for all of us.” She was commanding him, also pleading with him. “Let Robert take over, Porter,” she begged, holding her husband by his limp arm. He would not meet her eye, either. There was something dulled and cooling in Porter, some loss of essential heat.

He continued to sit in the chair. He could barely breathe, much less move. And then another person burst into the room. In the commotion Lucinda was making, Matt hadn't heard what must have been the rush of his footsteps down the hall. It was a boy, a tall, dark boy, in jeans and a button-down shirt. So this is how it ends, Matt thought. They had never met him though they had been on the brink of arresting him before his father had arrived at the station. Miles McLellan. Porter's youngest son and a senior at Armitage. Who else could he be? He looked exactly like his father.

Matt watched the soaked and shivering boy, the raging wife, and the broken man over whom she towered, and knew he'd guessed correctly. It had been Miles who had fathered the baby last August in Castine. Claire had seduced the boy and then hidden the resulting pregnancy. It had been Miles who had gone to Claire and argued with her about their son. It had been Miles who had pushed her against the bedstead. It had been Miles, crying, in his father's disreputable old jacket, whom Betsy Lowery had mistaken for his father.

The boy had run or, more likely, biked from the academy or wherever he had been hiding. Admittedly, it was all downhill, but he must have cycled with incredible speed to have followed his mother so closely. He had decided to step forward. What a beautiful child, Matt thought. High cheekbones, dark, clear skin, and glowing eyes. Tall and well built. The son he and Claire had made could have been astonishing. “You can't do it, Dad,” the boy said softly now. “It was my fault. It was all my fault.” His parents turned to him then, and as he watched their faces, Matt moved toward them. “Miles,” Matt heard himself say. Porter's son looked at him, his cheeks flushed, his chest heaving. He started to speak, but Matt said again, “Miles, don't say a word. Wait for your lawyer. Listen to your parents.” Matt felt Vernon rise beside him, and what his feeling was, Matt couldn't say without turning to look at him, but his partner chose to stay silent. He didn't interrupt what Matt was doing.

Lucinda and Porter stared at Matt, not quite grasping what it was he was offering them, not quite believing this stroke of good fortune. Miles rushed to his parents and broke down in sobs. Matt couldn't stop looking at them, their arms twisted around one another, a knot of self-protection, grief, and humiliation. Lucinda and Porter tried to soothe their boy as they must have done when he was small. They stroked his hair and paid attention to no one but him.

But he wasn't a young child. He was old enough to have gotten a girl pregnant. He was strong enough to have killed her. Matt remembered the bruises that had ringed Claire's wrists and dotted her neck. Her death could easily have been accidental, as the pregnancy must have been, too. But then Claire had made the momentous decision not to have an abortion. Claire had planned to use the scandal as an elaborate attempt to shame her family, her school, her entire heritage. She was the one who had lost. She was the one they had all lost sight of, the person whose rage and abandonment they had mismeasured. Her gamble hadn't worked, had folded back on her with irrevocable consequences. To think of her anger, her frustration, and her misguided calculation almost made Matt weak. He felt sick and empty. Vernon, too, looked washed of the capacity to act.

There was so much to do, Matt thought, watching them, and in his mind, the scenario played itself out. Through the sly manipulations of a lawyer, most likely the Robert whom Lucinda had invoked, Miles would most likely be convicted, if he were even formally accused, of manslaughter or the like. He might not even serve time. Kids of his kind went to New Zealand to work on sheep farms for a couple of years then off to college, their names not untarnished, but their lives more or less back on track.

It was his father who would suffer most. He would have to leave not only a world to which he was born but a world in which he had wielded a high degree of power and control, influence and importance. But he had been willing to forfeit it all for that boy weeping in his arms. Everything for a son. Matt turned to leave the room, Vernon close behind him, bumping into Angell as they left. “Corelli? Cates? Where are you going?” But neither of them could talk. They walked through the station, which was still close to entirely silent. Vernon stole a couple of umbrellas from a bin by the door, and together, they went out in the rain. “Friendly's?” Vernon asked. “Ali's,” Matt answered. “This situation is not worth reigniting a cheeseburger addiction, Vernon.”

But Ali's was closed, and they wound up with pizza in Matt's car, parked near the train tracks that separated Greenville from Armitage, unable to face a restaurant, cheer, smiling waitresses.

“This bites,” said Vernon.

“At least you didn't get the pepperoni,” Matt said. His car would smell forever of tomato sauce and stale crust. He couldn't care at the moment. “Roll down the window. It's hot in here.” It was better with the windows open; the cool rain washed from time to time over the greasy food.

“I'm not talking about the pizza,” said Vernon, inhaling most of a slice.

“Clearly,” said Matt.

“She gets pregnant by the son of the headmaster, and she's going to spring it on the whole school. Then she gets scared. It's actually real. It happens and she's got to deal with it. So she sets up a system with Scotty; he's going to get the baby out if she can't handle it, and she can't. And then Miles hears and goes to talk to her. But the baby's gone and he gets mad and knocks her down and at some point runs to Dad.”