“Stay there? At school? What’s the matter, is the place about to close down so that you no longer have to worry about your reputation?”
He deserved the flippancy, James thought. He had been flippant often enough himself. “It probably will close down,” he said, “but that’s not why I want you here. I think it’s cowardice. The place doesn’t feel safe.”
David stopped joking. “It isn’t safe, if you ask me. You could come here to stay instead. That way neither one of us would have to worry about being poisoned at dinner.”
“I don’t think we do have to worry. I don’t think it has anything to do with us. But I don’t know if I could leave tonight. The school is falling apart. Parents are showing up to take their children home. You can hardly blame them. I’ve got an … obligation … not to make things worse than they are. And I feel sorry for Peter Makepeace.”
“That’s new,” David said. “Both feeling sorry for Peter Makepeace and a sense of obligation. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“No, of course not. I’m feeling awful. I’m even feeling awful about poor Edith, and she and I were hardly the best of friends. It’s a nasty way to go, cyanide. I looked it up.”
“Come stay here,” David said again.
“No,” James said, “come here for the night. Maybe for the next few days. When this is over, if you’re still interested, I’ll move in full-time. Maybe I’ll even go looking for a college job in Boston, if there’s a college willing to take me after all this time in secondary schools and at my age.”
“They’d take you adjunct,” David said. “And you don’t have to work full-time. I work full-time.”
James laughed. “Thank you very much, but now you’re going straight off a cliff. Will you come? I don’t think I can stand another day by myself in this godforsaken place.”
“I’ll pick you up for dinner. We’ll go somewhere decent so that you don’t have to risk being poisoned in the cafeteria. And yes, I will stay.”
“Thank you. Bring along that material from the Matthew Shepard Scholarship Fund you wanted me to look at and I’ll look at it.”
“I think the world is coming to an end,” David said.
No, James wanted to say, only my world is coming to an end; but that sounded silly and melodramatic even in his own head, so he let it go. “I have to get off the phone,” he said. “That’s Alice coming up the walk, and she doesn’t look happy. This is what I really need you for, interviews with Alice. God only knows what it’s about this time.”
“Murders,” David suggested.
James laughed. “Alice wouldn’t even notice them if they didn’t threaten to upset her daily routine. Specifically, her routine of sleeping with students. Never mind. I’ll see you tonight.”
He put the phone back in its cradle and watched Alice coming steadily down the path to Doyle House. For some reason she looked shorter than he remembered her, and he was only remembering her from the night before. Maybe she was wearing lower heels. If she was, it had to have some significance, like respect for the dead. Alice liked her heels tobe as high and as spiked as possible. She talked a good game of feminism, but she preferred to see herself as a dominatrix.
James saw no reason to wait until the last minute. It wasn’t as if Alice would go away or the meeting would get more pleasant the more complicated he made her approach. He left his apartment and went out to open the Doyle House front door. Alice really did look shorter than he remembered her. She also looked nervous, and James couldn’t remember ever having seen her look nervous.
“Looking for me?” he asked her. The air was frigid. Keeping the door open like this made his teeth ache with the cold.
“Of course I’m looking for you,” she said, brushing past him.
He closed the door and followed her down to his own apartment. She wouldn’t expect the door to be locked. It wasn’t. She sailed on through, leaving him to close it behind them.
“Gregor Demarkian is making the police take fingerprints,” she said, as soon as he’d come into his own living room.
“Why do you think Gregor Demarkian is making them?” James asked. “There’s been a murder. I believe it’s customary for police to take fingerprints.”
“I think he’s directing the whole thing. He’s giving them ideas. And, of course, he’s getting the ideas from Mark. He thinks he knows Mark DeAvecca better than we do.”
“Well, he does, doesn’t he? He’s a friend of the family.”