The Headmaster's Wife(120)

“I don’t see how,” Peter said. “You’re welcome to go up and look for yourself if the police will let you. There’s nothing to see. Oh, that catwalk’s better than the other one. The nook on the other one is crammed right against the faculty wing so that all you see is a building on one side and a little lawn right in front of you. But even the nook you saw Edith in doesn’t look out on much. There’s the pond, yes, and a small stand of evergreens, and some benches. It’s mostly deserted this time of year.”

“Do you know if anybody on this campus would have regular access to cyanide?” Gregor asked. “What about arsenic?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ’regular access,’ “ Peter Makepeace said.

“I mean access as a matter of course. Somebody who works with pesticides, for instance. Or chemicals. Somebody who would not have to do anything special to get his hands on poison.”

“Well, the groundskeepers work with pesticides, I’m sure,” Peter said. “We have a student protest or two every year over their use of them, but they do use them. In the end nothing else is practical in taking care of a property this size. And the Chemistry Department has chemicals. I’ll admit I don’t know which ones. I suppose some of them must be poisonous.”

“Is chemistry a separate department?” Gregor asked.

“No,” Peter said, “it’s part of the Sciences Department. We offer chemistry, biology, and physics. We’re very proud of the physics. It wasn’t offered when this was a girls’ school. Many girls’ schools didn’t in the old days. It was considered too mathematical and alienating for girls, especially since it was expected that most of them would marry as soon as they graduated from their colleges, if not before. Some of the girls’ schools that have remained girls’ schools don’t offer physics even now.”

“Who would have access to the chemicals in the Sciences Department?” Gregor asked. “Only the chemistry teachers, or all the science teachers? Or all the teachers? Or all the students? Are they locked up?”

“All the science teachers would be able to get to the science materials closet, which is where the things needed for lab courses are kept,” Peter said. “There’s a key, but I think all the science teachers would have to have it, because it’s not just chemicals for chemistry that are kept in there. I know the fetal pigs are—in glass jars. None of the other teachers are likely to have one of those keys, though, since they’d have no need to go into that closet. And none of the students would have them, unless they’d been sent by a teacher to get something from the closet. Then they’d have the key for however long the errand took and be required to hand it back when the errand was complete. We are carefulabout safety, Mr. Demarkian, no matter what it might seem like given the problems with the catwalks.”

“Was Edith Braxner particularly close to Mark DeAvecca?” Gregor asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Peter said. “Nobody was, really. Cherie Wardrop was fond of him, but the consensus of most of the teachers was that he either had no commitment to academic work, or he just wasn’t all that bright. He was one of our top picks last spring, too. We had doubts about some of the people we admitted, but we had no doubts about Mark. His record in his previous school was outstanding. It happens sometimes, no matter how careful you are.”

“What happens?” Gregor asked.

“That you bring in unsuitable people,” Peter said. “Students are a mystery. We screen until we’re blue in the face, but we always miss a few of the ones we should have screened out.”

“Was Michael Feyre one of the ones you should have screened out?” Gregor asked.

Peter Makepeace shrugged. “Michael Feyre was a concern from the beginning. We knew before we admitted him that he was a long shot. Sometimes you want to take long shots. In Michael’s case, we were sensitive to his mother’s position. His mother—”

“Won a lottery,” Gregor said. “We know.”

“She didn’t just win a lottery, she won the biggest lottery in history,” Peter said. “And she was very isolated because of it, and so were her children. We had the whole family up here when Michael applied. The younger children are adjusting well, and at least one of them is very bright. Michael wasn’t adjusting very well. There was some question that he might have a drug problem, although that was never proved. But I don’t see how you can say all this is connected. Michael committed suicide. He wasn’t poisoned.”