The Headmaster's Wife(132)

“What about the description Mark gave? Somebody all in black, from head to foot.”

“It sounds like Alice, doesn’t it?” Philip said. “You must have seen her by now, last night if not before. She’s always wandering around in that cape and black leather pants as if she thinks she’s about to be cast in a movie with the young Marlon Brando. But it needn’t have been Alice. Black is very fashionable around here. People think it distinguishes them from the rah-rah cheerleader types they came here to escape. They think it’s intellectual.”

Philip Candor would not be susceptible to that kind of symbolism, Gregor thought. He switched directions. “According to Mark, Michael Feyre had a habit of blackmailing people, specifically women, by threatening to expose the fact that they’d bought drugs from him and taking payment for the blackmail in sexual favors.”

Now Philip looked very, very amused. “You mean in blow jobs? Yes, Mr. Demarkian, I’d heard all about that. But it wasn’t just blackmail about the drugs, and it wasn’t just women, and it wasn’t just sex. Michael was an out-and-out psychopath, the proverbial bad seed. He had no conscience at all, and he had a limitless appetite for sadism.”

“Did he find out about your secret? Did he threaten to expose the fact that you are actually Leland Beech.”

“No,” Philip said. “I’m not a fool, Mr. Demarkian. I don’t keep reminders of that part of my life lying around loose forpeople to find. There’s nothing to connect me to Leland Beech here or anywhere else in the state of Massachusetts. To expose me, Michael would have had to be someone like you, someone with a connection to the case, or a true-crime buff who watched all the little documentaries on Court TV and A&E and the Unsolved Mysteries episodes. I’ve—well, we’ve, my family and myself—we’ve been the subject of one of those episodes and of an episode of City Confidential. I watched them both. More stupidity.”

“And Michael had not watched them?”

“Michael’s tastes in entertainment ran mostly to the pornographic. He was not all that bright, Mr. Demarkian. And he had nothing at all in the way of cultural literacy. He didn’t read newspapers. He would have looked on City Confidential as just another newspaper, even if it is a television show. And I’m way out of his league. A lot of people here weren’t though.”

“Weren’t out of his league?”

“Exactly.”

“Such as who? Who do you think Michael Feyre had information on?”

“James Hallwood, for one,” Philip said. “He was definitely pushing Hallwood on the drugs, if nothing else. There’s no other way to explain the grade he got in English. Hallwood is not a pushover. He’s never heard of grade inflation. Michael should have been flunking that course. He wasn’t coming close.”

Gregor checked his notebook. “Hallwood is Mark’s English teacher?”

“And Michael’s, yes. He does most of the sophomore English classes.”

“Who else?”

“I don’t really know, Mr. Demarkian. I only know who was nervous, and I probably don’t know everybody who was nervous. Marta, for instance, was very nervous. But I can’t see her buying drugs, and she doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who has a deep, dark secret.”

“What about Alice Makepeace?”

Philip laughed. “Michael was already getting everything he wanted out of Alice, and probably more.”

“She was sleeping with a student. She would have been rightly afraid of having that exposed.”

“Maybe,” Philip said, “but I don’t see why she’d suddenly be afraid of that with Michael when she was never afraid of it before. Michael wasn’t the first one. There’ve been a string of them. It’s what she does. I always thought she’d be happier than not to get thrown out of this place. I don’t think her idea of a good time was growing old as a headmaster’s wife.”

“What about the houseparents in Hayes? Cherie Wardrop and Sheldon—nobody has ever used any name for him but Sheldon.”

“Sheldon LeRouve. No, nobody does use any other name for him. A bitter, small-minded, spiteful man. The first time I ever had any sympathy for Mark DeAvecca was when he got stuck rooming with Sheldon. Cherie is gay and lives with her partner, Melissa.”

“I know that. I’ve been in their apartment.”

“So you must have been,” Philip said. “They seem nice enough. They’re school hoppers, though, which never makes administrations happy.”

“What’s a school hopper?”