“If it is true, it’s a very nasty story,” Gregor said. “But this still doesn’t deal with the poisoning. And you were poisoned, Mark. There had to be a motive for that.”
“I know. I’m just saying, if I have to go out anyway, I want to go out in a blaze of legend, if you know what I mean. Except they will probably ask me back now because they’ll be afraid that Mom will sue them if they don’t. But Mom won’t send me back, so the issue is decided anyway.”
“Do you have any idea why somebody would want to kill you?”
“For real?” Mark said. “Of course I don’t. I don’t even have enough property to leave a will. I don’t have any enemies that I know of. There’s no reason for anybody to kill me.”
“But somebody wanted to.”
“Apparently, yeah.”
“More than apparently,” Gregor said. “Of course, there’s always the possibility that the idea was just to disable you. Either way, it sounds pretty desperate. Did something happen after you came back from Christmas break?”
“Happen how? Lots of things happened.”
“I mean did something change,” Gregor said. “I’m told that Michael Feyre sold drugs, that he was having an affair with the headmaster’s wife, that he was something of a bad actor, but I don’t really know what was going on. You might. You roomed with him.”
“You think that’s what this is about? Michael?”
“Don’t you?” Gregor said. “There may be no reason for anybody to want to kill you, but a drug dealer has lots of people with knives out for him. It goes with the territory.”
“I guess,” Mark said. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Michael and Alice were not exactly discreet, but they never were. Alice was doing that thing, you know, talking politics instead of talking dirty. Like that Woody Allen movie. He was selling stuff to at least one of the teachers, did I tell you that?”
“No,” Gregor said. “Do you mean he was giving drugs to Alice Makepeace?”
“Well, yeah, maybe,” Mark said. “I mean, that goes without saying. But no, he was selling to at least one member of the faculty and maybe more. He told me about it one night after lights out. About how one of the teachers had to gethigh to get it up. Sorry, but that’s what he said. He didn’t say which teacher.”
“And what about last night?” Gregor asked. “What was different about last night?”
“Nothing,” Mark said. He looked suddenly and irrevocably tired. “The only thing that’s been different since Michael died is that I called you. It got around. People weren’t happy. And, you know, it made me think—about the hallucination.”
“What hallucination?”
“I told you yesterday. The night Michael died I saw this thing, only it didn’t seem real, it seemed like a hallucination. That’s why I wanted you to come. I figured you could find out if it was real or not. Only now that I mostly feel better-well, no. I’m not sure it was real. I’m just not so sure it probably wasn’t.”
“If what was real?” Gregor asked, patiently.
“What you need to do,” Mark said, “is go to the library and go up to the second floor to the catwalk. If you go along the catwalk, it ends at this little window space, this arched space, that looks out over Maverick Pond. I was there the night Michael died. I was trying to read but I wasn’t getting very far, and I looked out the window there and I saw what looked like a body lying on the ground under this little stand of evergreens at the end of the pond. It was freezing. It was way below zero, actually. And it was Friday. I thought that whoever it was had had too much to drink or, you know, something else, and had passed out; and if somebody didn’t do something, he’d freeze to death out there. So—”
“So?”
“So I went out to wake him up,” Mark said. “I figured I’d push him until I could get him moving, and then when I saw who it was I’d know where he was supposed to go. Only when I got out there, he was gone.”
“You’re sure it was a he?”
“No,” Mark said. “I’m not even sure it was a student. Whoever it was was dressed all in black, but that isn’t odd because there are lots of people here who do that kind ofthing, you know, to show how different they are. People around here like to show how different they are.”
“Do they?” Gregor said drily.
“And whoever it was was too big—no, that’s not it. Too solid. It’s not that he seemed tall. You couldn’t really tell with him lying down like that. But whoever it was seemed big somehow; solid; it was odd. But then I went down there and no one was there, and there wasn’t any sign anyone had ever been there. I mean, you know, maybe there wouldn’t have been because the snow was hard out there, and you wouldn’t get footprints. I don’t think I left any, but still…”