“The problem,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne was saying, sipping at the cup of tea Ken had brought her while Ken paced around the room, wondering what he dared pick up, with Halloween only two days away and students rushing in and out to get what they needed to go on with their decorating, “is that I don’t know what the man wants. It’s the way I told you on the phone yesterday morning. We’re not exactly the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—”
“Meaning you don’t have any secrets,” Ken said.
“Exactly. Everything we do have is right out there in the files for anyone to see, in the original or on microfiche, depending on the state of the documents. We’ve always encouraged professors from the college to do their research with us. We’ve always encouraged scholarly interest in the history of the valley.”
“You certainly encouraged mine.”
Mrs. Winston Barradyne waved this away. “You’re local. I remember how dedicated your mother was to the Historical Society. It’s in your genes. But this man—”
“Dr. Donegal Steele,” Ken said.
Mrs. Winston Barradyne nodded vaguely, turning her head from left to right to take in the room behind Ken’s back. She always did this, and it always made Ken uncomfortable. What was back there, on the breakfront, was the collection of photographs Ken had brought from home after his mother had died. Most of the photographs were of her, stuck into silver frames, showing a progression from her days at Oldfields to the beginning of her last illness. Some of them were of the house where not only Ken, but his mother, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother had all grown up. The house was now on the National Historical Register and in limbo. No decision could be made about what to do with it until the intricacies of Ken’s mother’s will were cleared up. Ken always felt that Mrs. Winston Barradyne lusted after those pictures, the way he always thought she lusted after his house. President of the Historical Society or not, she lived in a brand-new ranch house in Belleville’s only subdivision. Her husband insisted on it.
Ken picked up his hiking boots from the patch of indoor-outdoor carpet he kept for them near the door and held them in his hands, blocking the woman’s view of the breakfront. Now she had nothing to look at but the picture of the college hiking club he kept on the coffee table next to Donegal Steele’s book.
“This man,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne said, “made me very uncomfortable. He seemed to be insinuating something.”
“He always does.”
“He treated our entire interview as a kind of—clandestine tryst, I suppose you’d have to say. As if we were a pair of counterspies.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Ken said. “He’s a very strange man.”
“I am perfectly aware of the fact that he’s a very strange man.” Mrs. Winston Barradyne picked up the picture of the hiking club. There were a dozen people in it. Ken was probably the only one she recognized. She put it down again. “Have you read Bernard Oldenston’s books on the American Revolution?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a lot of that sort of thing going on now,” she said. “Debunking. Digging up nasty personal scandals of national heroes. Making careers and reputations by blackening the names of the people who founded this country. It’s not just the Revolution, either. Have you read Oldenston’s book on Abraham Lincoln?”
“No.”
“All about how Lincoln was supposed to have hated black people and thought they were stupid,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne said. “I wrote Oldenston a letter after I read it, asking what possible difference it could make, even if it were true. It wasn’t what Lincoln thought that matters. It was what he did. That’s how I feel about Dr. Bernard Oldenston, too. I don’t care a fig for what his motives are. What his actions are is reprehensible.”
“Donegal Steele is no Bernard Oldenston,” Ken said.
“I know. But—” Mrs. Winston Barradyne rubbed at the tweed skirt of her suit. “I was thinking, after the talk I had with him yesterday, that he might be trying to turn himself into a Bernard Oldenston. You see what I mean. Dr. Steele has written this book.” She looked down at the book and frowned. “The book has sold a great many copies. Now what?”
“Now,” Ken said, “he does his damnedest to make sure that he gets installed as Head of the Program.”
“You ought to be installed as Head of the Program.”
“Actually, Dr. Elkinson ought to be installed as Head of the Program, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve been through all the files you’ve got, Mrs. Barradyne. Even if Donegal Steele is looking for someone’s reputation to destroy, he won’t find the ammunition to do it with over at the Historical Society. I know for a fact there’s nothing like that there.”