The Twisted Thread (8 page)

It was the bareness of the desk. Every other surface—the mantel, certain of the shelves, the walls—held the sorts of decorations one would expect in a head's office. Discreet bronzes. Silver cups commemorating some achievement or other. Metal and wood and gleaming glass, polished and subdued. But the desk held nothing. Not a pad, a computer, an orchid, nothing. Yet it had, and recently. Matt could still see the dried smear of droplets that indicated a recent cleaning, which had been thorough but not meticulous. A corner of wood still held a low, barely perceptible fuzz of dust. What had Porter McLellan removed or had removed from that long length of carved oak?

As he settled himself in his chair, Matt ran through what he needed to discuss with Porter. Any dark history around Claire, the faculty in her dorm, the teachers who had had her this year.

“I understand you interviewed Scott Johnston yesterday,” Porter began. “But that he's been released pending further investigation, as his parents said.” His tone implied he knew what Matt might be dealing with when it came to handling the Johnstons; he even managed to imply that he, too, had been on the receiving end of their formidable capacity for outrage.

What alarmed Matt as he adjusted himself in the overly comfortable seat was how readily he wanted to take Porter's offer of commiseration. It would have been so easy to raise eyebrows over the barbed, hysterical wall of protection the Johnstons were trying to erect around their son. It was clear that this kind of drama was part of what they considered appropriate parenting, and it was equally clear that Scotty's arrogance had given them many opportunities to hone their approach. “It's true Scott's no longer being questioned,” Matt forced himself to say with some terseness. “But I actually need to discuss other issues with you, Mr. McLellan.”

“Of course,” Porter said. Quickly abandoning his attempt at camaraderie, he leaned forward in apparent eagerness to be of any help he could, in striking contrast to Grace Peters and Harvey Fuller. Brief interviews had proved two things to be true: they had no intention of admitting any wrongdoing—Grace had gone so far as to blame extra loads of committee work for her slightly less prominent presence in the dorm. And they were going to make a special effort to remember absolutely nothing useful about Claire or the last few weeks she spent in their care.

Matt stood then and chose another chair, far less padded, to sit in. He was going to try something now. It was daring, perhaps stupid, but it might yield the most interesting results. “You're probably aware of the difficulty I'm finding myself in here. I'm an alumnus, but not one with a perfect record.”

“Class of 'ninety-four, Penn 'ninety-eight,” Porter said thoughtfully. “And probably one of our few graduates in law enforcement.” He almost managed to make it sound as if Matt had made a respectable choice, at least in his eyes. And he added that he had heard from several faculty about what he called Matt's “experience” but didn't see why an event that had never been conclusively resolved should prevent him from dealing effectively with what the school was now facing. They were entirely different situations. “I'm assuming, Detective, if you felt yourself unable to handle the investigation with some degree of objectivity, that you wouldn't be here and that Captain Angell wouldn't have assigned you. And I'm assuming that your familiarity with Armitage will be useful to you.”

“Which means, Mr. McLellan, that you and I both understand that what Armitage pretends to represent doesn't always mesh with what happens here.”

The man was uncannily good. Matt felt a curious current run through his body, a feeling he hadn't had on a case in a long time. It was uncomfortably exhilarating to be dealing with a potential suspect this sophisticated. Certainly what he'd gone through at Armitage had made a difference in the career he'd chosen; being a police officer had been a repudiation of the cozy world to which Charlie so effortlessly belonged, to the ease with which his classmates expected to move into handsome homes and well-feathered professions. But what had been grueling about his work was how petty most of the crimes were, even those that resulted in murder. This was going to be more complicated than he'd thought this morning, the resolutions more knotty than he'd feared. Porter might well be involved, and he was already delicately, insistently on the offensive, prepared to protect his school, his place.

“By that,” Porter answered, “I assume you mean that not only students had issues or concerns to hide. But to discuss Claire first, there was no hint of trouble in her past.” Porter leaned back in his chair. “She was a very good student, a respected athlete, and she came from a family with a long history at Armitage.” He paused, and his fingers fluttered slightly. Matt realized he was looking for a pen to tap, a restless movement. He was used to finding one on his desk, but that had suddenly been cleared.

“Most of the faculty in Portland and Claire's teachers this year have stellar reputations. Many of them have spent the entirety of their careers here. Even those with less experience have received excellent evaluations.” He produced a file and pushed it toward Matt, no doubt expertly organized by Tamsin, that he said included the most recent reports on each of the adults who'd had dealings with Claire. “You can see for yourself that, while they and we all might have been guilty of a lack of observation, there is no reason to suspect any one of them of harboring some motive to harm her or her child.” And here, Porter's face darkened and his voice grew softer. “I am sorry to have to caution you about this, but there's nothing for it.” He leaned forward a bit more assertively and said, “Last year, a student complained that Harvey Fuller had made her very uncomfortable in class. According to the student, he had stared at her. It sounds mild enough and impossible to turn into an actual allegation of harassment, but she was insistent that he had made her very uneasy. What gave her claim more weight was that another student complained of the same problem first semester.”

“But neither of these was Claire,” Matt asked.

“No,” Porter answered. “Though both were tall and blond and on the lacrosse team with her. She would have been almost sure to know. Students aren't always as discreet as they might be.” He looked at one of the portraits hanging in the gloom at the back of his office. “It's one of the most difficult aspects of life at a boarding school. As you know, we live in such close proximity to one another. It's often a case of one person's word against another's. Looks and appearances can be misjudged. I am confident in Harvey's case that nothing untoward happened, but he has been cautioned—not with a letter in his file, merely verbally—to be careful in his dealings with female students.”

“Be careful? And with what kind of supervision to ensure that, Mr. McLellan? Who was paying attention to him? It might be wise to be a little more straightforward.” Matt was abruptly irritated with Porter's detachment. “We could both probably name three teachers in the last twenty years who'd had relationships with students and were allowed to stay on the job.”

Porter grew very still. He might, Matt thought, be remembering not only what had been allowed to happen at Armitage but scandals that had leaked out at other schools. Teachers videotaping boys in locker rooms. Others caught soliciting teens on the Internet. It was galling no matter where it happened, but all the more so at institutions that prided themselves on their impeccability. An actual death, an actual baby eclipsed everything. “I'll be very grateful if that's not the case here, but you should be prepared to find out otherwise.”

Porter said nothing for a moment. “What you just mentioned, Mr. Corelli, improprieties between students and teachers, are situations we can't tolerate now. Too much is at stake, for the school, for the students. Even the mildest hints or allegations are thoroughly investigated. That's precisely why I alerted you to my concerns about Harvey.” He was impressively calm, even when confronted directly. He was no doubt masterful at board meetings. Matt made a note to get Vernon to check into Fuller's background, an assignment he knew his partner would relish.

Matt took the file the headmaster offered and stood. It was almost 7:30, and he wanted to get to Harvey Fuller even before he talked to the girls. He had had him as a teacher and had never liked the man, too dried up by far, though a commanding presence in the classroom. It would be interesting to see what he would say when asked about an entirely different aspect of biology.

At that moment, a tall, extremely good-looking woman entered the room, and it was clear she was itchily displeased to find Matt closeted with Porter. “Police,” she said with undisguised contempt, as if what had just happened at Armitage didn't warrant such scrutiny. “They're everywhere.” She was broad-shouldered, fit, with a strong nose and long, dark blond hair.

Porter rose and made a fluent introduction. This was his wife, Lucinda, but she barely acknowledged Matt. Her fingers in his were ringed but rough. She worked outside, he guessed. She was tanned, and fans of wrinkles spread from her eyes. Her hands had spent time with earth, tools, a garden. He watched her as she spoke impatiently to her husband. “The boys,” she said. “Porter, the boys need to talk to you. They're not being allowed on campus.” She cast another scathing look in Matt's direction.

“I'll handle it,” said Porter. “I'm sorry, Detective. I'll happily speak with you later.”

Matt tucked the file in the crook of his elbow and made his way out of the office. The assistant again avoided his glance. His phone chirped with a text from Vernon. “Zilch on phones. Zilch on baby. Teacher in dorm named Madeline wants to talk to you ASAP.”

Matt walked down the steps and headed toward Portland to deal with Harvey Fuller and now Madeline, the young teacher with the messy hair, whom he had just remembered. He assumed that Porter had given him information on her as well, and he was curious to see what had been said about her. As he strode toward the dorm, he realized what was lacking in Porter's office. He and his wife made a strikingly attractive pair. They had two, three children, and Lucinda had been distraught about at least two of them not being able to return to the school. Heads came as packages. The full complement of wife or husband, family, dog, all of whose personalities really ought to blend with and mirror what the school said about itself. In the case of Armitage, they had to be as confident and accomplished as they expected their faculty and graduates to be. It seemed ridiculous to reduce the issue to one inadequate word, but their image mattered.

No photos. Porter's desk and office ought to have been littered with photos. Lucinda's face was abruptly familiar to Matt. He'd seen her often enough presiding over parties in the alumni magazine. But in her husband's office, where she would naturally have assumed pride of place, there was no sign of her or of their children.

CHAPTER 8

I
t had been a long time since Fred had broken in anywhere.
Prying open his father's liquor cabinet all those weekends when he was a teenager should have counted for something, but he'd forgotten how fear accompanied the transgression. And he had to admit that rooting around in Armitage's archives carried heavier consequences than filching booze, even forty-year-old Scotch.

It was early Tuesday morning, and he was in the tunnels below Nicholson House with a set of keys he'd persuaded one of the dimmer B and G workers to loan him on the pretext of needing to get into the gym. He didn't feel right about taking advantage of the slight edge of power that faculty had over staff. Nor could he persuade himself that the ends justified the means. Still, it was what he had done and what had led directly to groping in the dark at such an hour. He was also ashamed to admit that he was using the distracting furor of Claire's death and her baby's disappearance. No one was remotely interested in what the art teacher was up to at the moment.

The fistful of keys must have weighed close to two pounds, a circular mass of spiked, dull bronze. Quite effective as a weapon if you slipped the individual bits of metal between your fingers and made a fist. One of them had to be a skeleton. Fred held a penlight between his teeth and swore softly as he slipped one after the other into the lock. Finally, a key clicked to the right and he heard the tumblers slide into place. The door opened and released the pleasant staleness of old paper, the unmistakable funk of libraries, into the corridor. Fred slipped inside and pulled the door to as gently as possible. Why were archives always underground? What was it about history that required it to be buried? Institutions loved preserving what had happened to them, especially when it was flattering, but even so these rooms were always stuck somewhere damp and inconvenient.

From an earlier, legitimate visit, Fred knew the walls were hung with photographs of Armitage from another day: early hockey teams; classes from 1912, when only twenty boys a year graduated, all of them bound for colleges even the best students would kill now to get into, a berth secured merely with a letter from the headmaster, in brutal contrast to the heavy dossiers of achievement required now. Even so, maybe those old guys deserved their spots at Princeton and Yale. Their faces were full of stern dedication to duty, boys who would serve in the great wars. Most long dead. But Harvey Fuller could probably name the raw-faced teenagers in those faded pictures and also list the four or so students who had chosen military service as their career since Korea. Although he wasn't technically the archivist—that job belonged to an ancient local alumnus named Samuel Briggs—everyone leaned on Harvey to pluck out the most telling details of the school's past. When people spoke about institutional memory, they usually meant something rather abstract. In Harvey, this idea had condensed in an actual person, like a toxic nugget of musk.

It was not useful to have his mind wander toward Harvey at the moment. A memory of the man's face—he'd been Fred's teacher—triggered guilt, and he felt enough at odds with himself as it was. He wasn't sure where he should start looking, though he knew the papers he was after wouldn't be in the actual files for the 1950s; nothing was officially on record about the incident on which he wanted information. He wasn't even entirely certain that the papers of former heads were kept here. But he'd confirmed that they weren't in the library, and without exciting the suspicions of Mary Manchester, no small feat. Mary had doggedly guarded the card catalog in the basement out of some dragonlike loyalty to the old ways, though the heavy drawers took up space Porter wanted to use for new computers. She'd recently lost the battle to have them saved indefinitely, but Fred had found and pocketed the card he needed before the movers could come. The manila rectangle had merely said, “Papers of a personal nature, correspondence 1954–1955, archives,” and had no Dewey number attached. The handwriting was like no other he had seen in the catalog, delicate but firm, and that fragile, human trace was what he was looking for now.

Though the room was compact, Fred realized it contained an enormous amount of material. Bound volumes lined one wall, file cabinets another, and low shelves the two others. He felt a twinge of despair. It could take months to sort through it all, and he didn't want to spend months on this dubious project. He flashed his light around the room and saw with a start that he'd briefly illuminated a picture of his grandfather Llewellan Naylor. He edged closer to the photo, taken, its typewritten caption said, in 1953. In it, Llewellan looked exhilarated. He had his arm around the shoulder of a student and was smiling into the lens, looking straight at the camera, his strong teeth a blinding slash of white, his hair dark and curly, the very image of confidence, intelligence, good humor. A person worthy of trust.

Fred thought about his grandfather, who had died last year, and knew with a flush of shame that Llewellan would have been enraged that Fred was rooting around in these old papers, searching for the details of a story that might well turn out to be wholly false. But that was wishful thinking. Fred's intuition was uncomfortably certain that something deeply unpleasant could indeed emerge about his grandfather. Llewellan had been a dominant force in his life, the presiding male. Fred had acquired the deepest, fiercest lessons from him, and to search seriously for flaws in a powerful mentor was to invite betrayal.

Fred started with the file cabinets, opening the bottom drawer, his hands slipping with sweat, his teeth clenched on the penlight. The headings on the cardboard files were handwritten, in curling penmanship, in what was probably India ink. “Admissions,” “Assembly programs, 1941.” The wrong years, the wrong writing.

As he flicked through the contents, Fred thought about the man named Malcolm Smith, whose visit this April had prompted his descent into the archives. Not finding what he was looking for, Fred shut the drawer for the 1940s a little more sharply than he'd intended. Smith had had squirrel-bright eyes, rounded shoulders, tweedy clothes, very much like most of the graduates who wandered back to stroll the campus and engage in diluted versions of the competitions that had stirred their lives as young men. Smith had sought Fred out, claiming to want to observe an art class and the work of current students. “He's an artist,” said Sarah Talmadge, the assistant head and an admired colleague. “Sorry, Fred. Would you mind? I know it's a bit of a drag, but he's an alum.” Fred and Sarah, old-school Armitage, knew better than to offend any former student. Big gifts could come from unexpected sources, and it was always wise to court them.

Besides, Fred honestly didn't mind. Unlike some of his colleagues, sensitive to the point of paranoia, Fred didn't really care who observed him. He was confident in the classroom, a natural. As a teacher, he had nothing to hide. When it came time for his annual evaluations, he tended not to notice Porter or Sarah or whoever had been slated to write up his report sitting in the corner of the room. Malcolm Smith had produced a sharply different effect the moment he stepped in the studio. In spite of the old man's silence, something in his presence was obtrusive. Fred could feel Smith's eyes on him as he discussed two-point perspective with his ninth graders. He couldn't shake the unease he felt when the old man took his hand and looked searchingly in his face. Searchingly, but not kindly. “You look like him,” Smith said firmly. “You look very much like your grandfather.”

It was something people who had known them both commented on frequently. Apart from their hair color—Fred was blond and Llewellan very dark—they shared not just similar bones but similar voices and even mannerisms. Bizarrely, Fred's father seemed to have been passed over genetically, as if nature had known the son's personality wasn't quite worth replicating. “You knew my grandfather?” Fred asked, guessing Smith was the right age to have been at Armitage during Llewellan's tenure.

“Oh yes, indeed,” said Smith. Students were inspecting their easels. In these beginning classes, Fred considered it his job to get the kids to like art. Not just looking at it but making it. To that end, they began most classes with a free-drawing assignment. He played a piece of music, Xeroxed a poem or a joke, gave them an image or a quote to work from. The students enjoyed the space he allowed them, this easing into the period, especially since the classes were often the first of the day. Today, the assignment was to think about their favorite place on campus and try to re-create it from memory, using perspective. They were working in charcoal, and Fred could hear the soft scratch of the sticks on the large pads of paper.

“Were you a student of his?” Fred asked Malcolm Smith, fumbling for more information. What did he want, this man?

“Not exactly, in that none of us was. As you know, he didn't teach,” Smith answered. “But I was here when he was headmaster. He was quite a personality, your grandfather.”

“He was,” said Fred with more warmth than he intended. He could tell Smith had something harsh to add. Usually, when these old guys figured out who Fred was, they wanted to regale him with stories about his grandfather's savvy handling of young boys. Scrapes they found themselves in that he helped get them out of. His swiftness on hockey skates the years the pond froze before it snowed and they could all sweep out across the black, bubbled ice. The worst thing former charges ever said about him concerned his radically off-key but enthusiastic singing and the battle that Higgins, the organist, had ineffectively waged to keep him silent during Christmas services. Apparently, Llewellan always answered that God would rather hear himself praised than not, even by someone with a tin ear. Well-worn, harmless anecdotes.

But this man clearly felt differently about Fred's grandfather. What he had to say was not going to be wedged inside a cheerful anecdote. Just then, however, a student asked a question about how to achieve shadings in charcoal. Fred took his time explaining, hoping Smith would take the hint and leave.

He did not. The moment Fred had finished with his student, the old man was back at his elbow, whispering savagely, “He wasn't what he seemed, Llewellan Naylor. You might want to learn more about the events of the winter of 1955. You might, Mr. Naylor, need to revise your opinion of your grandfather.”

Fred's first reaction had been rage. His memories of Llewellan were banked in clear, clean light: the man had taught him to fish, swim, pitch a tent, hike a mountain. He'd been a bearer of practical wisdom. Not kind. No one ever described Llewellan as warm. But present, firm, and above all, strong. Intelligent and strong. So much more effective than Fred's father, Harrison, the son so weak he couldn't even pass his looks on to his boys. It was for Llewellan that Fred had come to Armitage as a student and returned to it as a teacher.

“What do you want to say, Mr. Smith?” Fred asked, keeping his voice low. The students were busy working, and if they sensed tension, they'd immediately start staring.

Smith gave a terse, smug smile. “I'll let you discover the particulars for yourself, Mr. Naylor. You might want to find out what you can about a student named Edward Smith, my older brother. The Class of 1955. No longer a contributing alumnus. He died.” Then he turned, as quickly as it was possible for a man of sixty-nine to turn, and left the studio.

“Who was that guy, Mr. Naylor?” asked Quinn Foster at the end of class. “He gave me the creeps,” she said, and Fred silently agreed.

Worse than the creeps, he thought. He'd been malevolent. Some acid ball of memory had been roiling inside him, rotting his stomach until he'd needed to spit up the whole, vile mess. He had probably planned this moment for years, deciding finally that Fred was the person he was heading toward, waiting until he couldn't stand it any longer. Fred shook his head, trying to clear it of such targeted hatred. But Smith's ploy had worked; the man had gotten his attention.

For the first week after Smith's visit, Fred had tried to forget about him and the story he brought. But as April wore on, he found himself increasingly distracted by the idea that Llewellan had been involved in something shameful. Slowly, and with deeply assumed casualness, he began to search for traces of Edward Smith. He first ran a quick Google search, but the name was so common that even with keywords like “Armitage” attached, nothing useful emerged, and Fred decided that he would start with sources closer to home. He looked then for Edward on the wooden plaques that listed the names of all the graduating seniors for each class, boards that ran down the walls of the dining hall and the many long corridors of the school: rosters of boys from distinguished families, many names crowned with Roman numerals. But Edward's wasn't there. Fred's next attempt to locate him centered on the yearbook for 1955, but Edward barely appeared in that, either. He had no senior page; no announcement mourning his death had been published; and Fred found him only once, in a sea of white faces in a photo of the Glee Club, which must have been taken early in the fall. Yet in the book for 1954, to Fred's concern, he discovered far more evidence of Edward's existence: there he was, a short boy with a wide smile, a junior in Greaves, a member of the chorus and the theater club. He appeared as well in the books for 1952 and 1953, his only pursuits apparently music and theater. In 1952, he had played Ophelia, and on page 73, Fred found a picture of him in blond braids, arm thrown dramatically over his brow.

By the end of April, Fred had started looking in academy records, and his worry increased by small but measurable degrees. A thorough examination of admissions files had shown nothing. Every other student who had graduated from Armitage in 1955, and several who had made it only through their sophomore or junior years, had their records intact. But Edward's papers were nowhere to be found.

Fred enlarged the scope of his search, fitting the project in with growing unease on weekends or late at night when not on duty. Malcolm was amply documented. A good student, top of his class, won the art prize. Went to Brown. From Providence, Rhode Island, living now in Little Compton. A painter of more than competent if rather boring landscapes if the pictures on the Web from his gallery were to be trusted. Married, though no children appeared to have attended Armitage. No record, even of his having come back for reunions or having given a cent, though the development people guarded their information zealously and Fred might be wrong on that front. The Smiths had money, but none of it appeared to have filtered down to the academy.