The Headmaster's Wife(138)

“We should just be sure not to leave anything behind,” Cherie said.

They were standing in the living room of the apartment, putting things into boxes. Or rather, Melissa was putting things into boxes. Cherie had woken up to find her with the boxes out and a checklist on a clipboard, as if they had decided on their next move, when they hadn’t even talked about it. It was true, things were definitely different now that Edith was dead. Even the air was different. Up until now they had all been able to pretend that nothing really awful had happened. Michael had committed suicide. Mark was, well, Mark: a perpetual screwup and slacker, a druggie, one of those people who should never have been admitted in the first place. People thought that of him even now that they knew it wasn’t true, or might not be. Once you got a reputation in a boarding school, it was nearly impossible to change it. Edith was the best teacher the school had and the most conscientious houseparent.

“Do you think it’s true?” Cherie said. “What Sheldon was saying last night. Do you think that anybody who was willing to kill Edith would be willing to kill anybody?”

“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “What do you think?”

“I think I need some air.”





2


James Hallwood knew, even while he was doing it, that he had approached his interview with Gregor Demarkian in exactly the way he shouldn’t have. He had heard his own voice, and the petulance and pettiness had been unmistakable. So had the panic. It was a terrifying prospect. Here was the truth about teachers in schools like this one. They came in only three types. First and best were the natural teacherswith too much respect for the traditions of Western culture to be willing to put up with public school bureaucracies that, except in the very best places, seemed to be concerned with everything and anything but academics. Next were the young ones on their way up and out. They were taking a year to teach while they made up their minds between doing doctoral work in Slavic literature or going into publishing. Finally, there were the men and women who had failed at everything else, not because they were inadequate as a matter of constitution, but because they lacked the courage or the ambition to try. That last group made up the smallest percentage of faculty at a good school, but they were very visible and very easy to spot. Sheldon LeRouve was one, scratching for his security in any way possible, angry at his colleagues and his students and the boarders in his house, angry especially at boys like Mark DeAvecca, who seemed to be so worthless and yet had no need to worry about the future. Oh, that family money, James thought. He hadn’t had it either, and he could remember himself in college, envying the hell out of the boys who did. He didn’t think he was like Sheldon, not yet. He was not angry most of the time, and he was not bitter. He could get that way. That was what his interview with Gregor Demarkian had made him understand.

Left to himself, he put in a call to David and was surprised to find him in. He realized with a pang that, in spite of all the years they had been together, he did not have David’s weekday schedule imprinted on his brain. He didn’t even have it memorized in outline. He thought about the night Michael Feyre had died, the way he had sat in this living room and told himself that his relationship with David was about to come to an end. The truth was, it had never really had a beginning. He had been with David as he had been with his work, here at Windsor and everyplace else he had ever been. It had seemed to him not only easier but more sensible not to allow himself to get too involved, not to allow too much to matter to him. It wasn’t that he was cold. It wasn’t even that he was afraid of commitment, although David would probably say he was, and had said so, more often than James liked to remember. The real issue was this: once you got involved, once you made a commitment, then all other options were closed off. You had chosen your road, and all other roads were barred to you.

When James thought of making decisions, it was closed doors he t hought of, a whole corridor full of open doors crashing eternally shut. Even now, even when he knew better, even when he could hear the sound of his voice rising into panic, and see Gregor Demarkian’s startled look of surprise, the idea of getting himself settled made him feel suddenly claustrophobic, irrevocably out of air. He had to force himself to dial David’s number, and when David’s voice came on the line he had to force himself to respond to it. For a moment he experienced a brand-new panic. David hadn’t called this morning when the news had hit about the murder of Edith Braxner. Maybe James had left it too long. Maybe David had given up.

“I was wondering,” James said, when David had made all the right noises about the mess at Windsor, “if you’d mind coming to stay here with me tonight.”