The Headmaster's Wife (47 page)

“What about Edith Braxner?” Gregor asked. “Could Michael have been blackmailing her?”

“Not likely. Edith was our resident saint. She's the only person in the history of Windsor Academy ever to turn in house accounts that actually balanced.”

“House accounts?”

“The houseparents have to turn in house accounts,” Philip said. “We've got operating budgets for the Houses for things like Christmas parties and birthday parties for the boarding students and that kind of thing. They're not large and they're not important, but Edith kept them down to the penny. The student accounts, too. That's what our boarding students do for money. They have House accounts they can draw from. The houseparents act as bankers, and we're always shelling out cash and forgetting who we shelled it out to and having to backtrack. There's a memo from administration every month, but Edith never got one. Her student accounts were perfect. And she was a demon about maintaining the heirlooms.”

“What are the heirlooms?”

“Go into the common room here and see,” Philip said. “We've got at least four pieces of seriously expensive furniture, art furniture, really. Lytton, where Edith lived, has a table that belonged to Henry David Thoreau. It's worth thousands of dollars. All the Houses have antiques. The insurance company must have a cow knowing they're around where students can get to them. But Edith's House always has the best ones because she's the only one of us who really is diligent about caring for them. Was. I'll admit it, she's one of the few people I know here I'm sorry to see gone.”

Gregor stood up. “You've been very helpful,” he said. “I need to know where to find Doyle House. That should be the next one closer to the library from here, yes?”

“Yes,” Philip said.

“I will have to tell the police where you are and who you are.”

“I know,” Philip said, “I didn't expect anything else. But you've got no way of holding me here against my will, Mr. Demarkian. I'm younger than you are and stronger than you are, and if it ever came down to a fight, I'd win. So I suggest that you leave here and make your call from next door. And I'll do what I have to do.”

“If you're thinking of staging some kind of confrontation, it would be very foolish.”

“I gave up staging confrontations years ago.”

“If you're thinking of running, that would be very foolish, too.”

“Would it? Well, it probably would be. Good-bye, Mr. Demarkian. I hope you found it interesting.”

Gregor was about to say he had when he found himself deposited unceremoniously onto the porch. Philip Candor had ushered him out of the apartment and out of Martinson House so adeptly that he'd hardly noticed he was moving.

Gregor made the call to Brian Sheehy and then to the federal fugitive hotline from his cell phone, but what Philip Candor had said was true. He had no way of holding him against his will, and not much he could do to keep Philip from leaving if he wanted to leave. Even if he stood here in the quad and watched the door he'd just come out of, Philip could probably go through a different door or out a window or a fire escape. He stood for a moment or two, looking at Martinson House, but in the end he felt silly. He thought it mattered enormously that Philip Candor be returned to his identity as Leland Beech and sent back to prison. He just didn't see that there was anything else he could do to make it happen.

He made his way along the frozen paths to Doyle House's front door and rang that bell. He'd barely put his finger to the button when the door was flung open and he found himself staring at a tall, thin, elegant man in impeccable tailoring, holding a sheaf of papers in one hand.

“Mr. Demarkian,” the man said. “Mr. Demarkian. I went over to the inn a little while ago looking for you, but you'd already gone out. I'm James Hallwood.”

This was almost too convenient to be believed, but Gregor didn't think he ought to turn down good luck. He didn't have that much of it. James Hallwood was standing back and motioning him inside. Gregor went, wondering what the papers were. James closed the door behind them both.

“It's very difficult to know what the right thing to do might be,” James said. “You think and you think. And, of course, if I'd received this paper, Michael's paper, at any other time, I would have brought it to the attention of the administration. Ever since Columbine, we're all very careful to focus on any sign of impending violence. But then he was dead. You can see that, can't you? There was no point making a fuss of it if he was dead. It would only have hurt his family to no good purpose.”

Gregor noticed that James Hallwood was not leading him into an apartment. He had opted instead to go to the large Doyle House living room, a gigantic empty space with more couches than Gregor would have thought any room needed. There was also a television set, tucked in between the shelves of a built-in bookcase. It was not a large television set, and it had dust on it. James motioned for him to sit down.

“Don't worry,” he said, “they're not anywhere around at this hour of the day. On days when class is in session, they're not permitted in the Houses after breakfast until two thirty. That's to make sure that none of them hide. There are no classes today, of course, but they're all at an assembly at the moment. We'll have the grief counselors in any minute now.”

“Other faculty members can be here, can't they?” Gregor said. “Houses have more than one houseparent, as far as I can tell.”

“Yes, yes they do,” James said. “But you don't have to worry about that either. Linda and Donald Corby are away for the day. They've gone to visit Linda's mother. About to jump ship, if you ask me, although I don't expect there's going to be much of a ship to jump by the end of the week. The news is out now. It's all over the place. This school will be on the verge of collapse by tomorrow morning. I wanted to show you these, both of them. The first one is Mark DeAvecca's. The second one is Michael Feyre's. They're short stories they wrote for my English class a few weeks ago. Take a look.”

Gregor sat down on one of the big couches, took off his coat again—this was what he hated most about winter, getting in and out of all the extra clothes—and read the first few paragraphs of the story on the top.

“That's remarkable,” Gregor said. “Mark wrote this?”

James Hallwood nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. Whatever else we may all want to say about Mark DeAvecca, he writes like a professional. Better than his mother does, and she's been at it and getting paid for it for longer than he's been born. But that's not the point. Look at the other one.”

Gregor ran through page after page—Mark had written a very long story—and finally came to the last few, badly typed and almost illegible under a cascade of Inkjet printer smear. The first few lines were impossible to read. The next few were not, but he wished they were.

Gregor put the papers down on his lap. “For God's sake.”

“It's hard to read, I know it is,” James Hallwood said. “It took me three tries before I managed to get through it. But I did get through it. And that's when I realized.”

“Realized what?” Gregor said. “That Michael Feyre was apparently deeply mentally disturbed? I think everybody knew that already.”

“They did,” James Hallwood said, “but that's not the point either. The point is that those two, uh, papers, are about the same thing. Or they're supposed to be. They're about Michael having sex with a faculty member. And Michael's paper is so awful that you don't pay attention to details after a while because your mind is reeling. But if you do pay attention to details, you see it. Mark wrote his paper about Michael and Alice. Michael wrote his paper about himself and someone else.”

Gregor looked down at the papers on his lap again. He didn't want to read any more of Michael Feyre's. James leaned forward, impatient.

“Look at that,” he said, flipping to the next to the last page and pointing to the middle paragraph. “Look at it. He says he wants to take an Exacto knife to her tattoo, do you see that?”

What Gregor saw was a sentence that had that information in it, but a lot of other words as well, most of them obscene.

“I see it,” he said.

“Whoever it is, she has a tattoo on her inner right thigh. A tattoo of numbers: 75744210. He says it right here.”

“It might still refer to Mrs. Makepeace,” Gregor said.

“No, it couldn't. Alice does not have tattoos, and I know she doesn't have them on her inner thighs. We have a pool here, and I've seen her swim.”

“It could refer to someone he knew before he ever came here,” Gregor said, “or someone he knows in town rather than in school. Or it could refer to a student.”

“No,” James said again. He grabbed the papers and rifled through them another time. “Look here.
Sit in class and watch her teach see her naked tell her next time she should strip right there and then get the knife, get something serious and cut her eyes
… It sounds like one of his teachers, doesn't it? One of his teachers here.”

“Maybe,” Gregor said cautiously. “Did Michael have many women teachers?”

“He had Edith,” James said. “Not that I think for a moment that this could be Edith. She's not the type to give in to sexual blackmail, and she's not the type for a boy like that to want to, well, to do what he's suggesting he did here. And I can't imagine Edith had a tattoo, although they'll find that out at the autopsy, won't they?”

“Yes,” Gregor said, “if there's a tattoo, they'll make a note of it.”

“I think the best bet is Marta Coelho,” James said. “She's his history teacher. Was his history teacher. And she's new this year. Nobody's seen her at the pool or walking around in shorts. She could have a tattoo. I wonder what the numbers mean.”

James's eyes were gleaming. He looked, Gregor thought, like a man who had just spied a prize he'd wanted desperately or an addict about to score a fresh fix. His hunger was so intense it was difficult to stay in the same room with him. Gregor was suddenly more aware than he liked of the utter silence of the House around them.

“Here,” James said, thrusting the papers at him again. “Take them. They may help you.”

“They may help me what?” Gregor asked.

“They may help you,” James insisted. “It's too late for theschool, of course. It doesn't matter what Peter Makepeace thinks. He's not God and he's not Superman. The school is finished. But that doesn't mean she should get away with it.”

“She? Do you mean Marta Coelho?”

“Of course I mean Marta Coelho,” James said, impatient now. “Do you know what she's been doing for days? She's been running around campus, accusing people—accusing people of things. Spreading rumors and gossip about people. Trying to make all of us look guilty.”

“Guilty of what exactly?”

“Of trying to poison Mark, that's what,” James said. “At least that, if not more.”

“But nobody knew Mark had been poisoned until yesterday.”

“Then of causing Michael to kill himself,” James said. “What difference does it make? Not that I ever believed Michael killed himself, not for a moment. He wasn't the type. Homicidal maniacs don't kill themselves; they kill other people.”

“What makes you think Michael Feyre was a homicidal maniac?”

“Well, look at that thing,” James said. “Don't tell me you don't think he wouldn't have ended up a serial killer if he hadn't died here. He's got the mind of a serial killer. He spent enough time working out the methods of attack, too.”

“I don't understand what you're getting at,” Gregor said. “Are you trying to tell me that Michael Feyre was murdered, and Marta Coelho killed him?”

“It's possible, isn't it?” James said. “It's entirely possible.”

“How?” Gregor said.

“What do you mean, how?”

“How did she kill him?” Gregor insisted. “You know the particulars of Michael Feyre's death, I presume. From what I understand, they were common knowledge. How did Marta Coelho kill Michael Feyre?”

“She knocked him out with something, strung him up while he was unconscious, and then staged the rest.”

“Very good. Not plausible,” Gregor said, “but very good.

Unfortunately, that particular scenario won't fit the autopsy report. But never mind. I can think of a scenario that would. Tell me how she managed to get into Hayes House without being seen on a night when most students and both houseparents were at home.”

“How am I supposed to know?” James said. “That's not my job. It's your job. Maybe she was seen. Maybe nobody has mentioned it.”

“There was a death and an autopsy and a police investigation,” Gregor said. “If somebody had seen her on the third floor of Hayes House, where she had no business being either as a resident—which she wasn't, she's a resident of Barrett—or as a visitor, somebody would have mentioned it. It would have been in the autopsy report, or Mark would have said something, or one of the other people I talked to would have said something. If the descriptions I've heard of that House on that night are in any way accurate, she could not have been on that floor at any time between dinner and when Mark found the body without having been noticed, and she was not noticed.”