The Headmaster's Wife(137)

“All right,” Gregor said.

“You mean you don’t want to interrogate me any further?

You don’t have a thousand clever questions that will prove I broke Michael’s neck with my bare hands and strung him up like a sausage in his own bedroom? I’m disappointed in you.”

“I’d like to keep these papers, if I could.”

“Do what you want. I have copies.”

“All right.”

“She’s going to get what she wants after all,” James said. “She’s going to get to see one of us arrested, and she’s going to stand by and gloat. And you’re going to help her do it.”

Gregor didn’t think he was helping anybody do anything, but he knew there was no point in arguing with somebody in the mood James Hallwood had sunk himself in. Gregor left James standing with his back to the rest of the living room and let himself out Martinson House’s backdoor. He had to remind himself again that the school Houses did not face the quad. They backed onto it.

He didn’t think that was significant, but it was the kind of detail that was much too easy to ignore until it tripped you up.





Chapter Four



1


Cherie Wardrop had to admit it. It only made sense. It was a matter of practical reality. Windsor may have been the best place they had ever had, and the only school where they had stayed more than two years, but all good things must come to an end. Even without murders and publicity, they would have been on their way next year or the year after. It got boring to stay in one place for too long. It also got difficult. It got to the point where you knew everything about the place, and it knew everything about you. After that, things always got to be a little tense.

“I know the normal thing would be to stay ’til the end of the year,” Melissa said, “but I don’t think there’s going to be any school to stay at in a day or two. And what would we do here? Answer questions from the police. There’s that. But we can answer questions anywhere. We don’t have to be sitting here in an empty dormitory for five months while Gregor Demarkian figures out that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“The dormitory isn’t empty,” Cherie pointed out.

“It’s not empty now,” Melissa said, “but give it a minute or two. We’ve already had, what, six calls today? The entire third floor is due to be picked up before evening. The only reason there will be anybody left on the second is that allthree of the Korean boys are there, and their parents don’t have any place for them to go yet. At the most we have a week before this building will clear out. It will only be the middle of March. You really don’t expect those students to come back for this school year, or ever?”

“If the police make an arrest,” Cherie said.

“If the police make an arrest in the next hour, the kids are going to go,” Melissa said. “Let’s face it. Half these people wouldn’t recognize their own children if they passed them in the street. And even if they would recognize them, they don’t like them. But they all feel guilty about it, Cherie. Every last one of them. So when something like this happens, they panic. They feel they need to do something. And what they do is find the kid another school.”

“Well,” Cherie said lamely, “at least we can get Mark DeAvecca out of Sheldon’s apartment.”

“Mark DeAvecca isn’t going to be back either,” Melissa said. “What do you think his mother is doing up here? She would recognize him if she passed him on the street, and I think she may even like him; but one way or another, she’s here, and he’s going. And you know it.”

Cherie shook her head. “It feels wrong, somehow. That he’d just go, right from the hospital, and not come back to say good-bye. That they’d all just go. As if we didn’t mean anything to them.”

“They don’t mean anything to us, Cherie. Be sensible.”

Cherie was being sensible; she just didn’t think what Melissa said was true. They did mean something to her. They always did, in every dorm she’d lived in, although she needed to get away from them as much as she needed to get away from their schools when the end came.

“We don’t even have a place to go next year,” Cherie said. “We weren’t expecting this, and we should have been. When Michael—well, when Michael. We should have started looking for a new place then. And we didn’t.”

“It’s only March. We’ll find something.”

“Not as good.”

“Maybe not,” Melissa said, “or maybe we’ll find something better. We should check out some of the places in California. The weather would be nicer. And in the meantime, we should take a vacation. It’s been a long time since we had one of those.”