She got to the door of President’s House just as Sarah Lavenham and her mother were finishing their talk with the policeman outside Deverman House. Sarah had an enormous duffle bag. Her mother had a large box too full to close. Alice went up the steps to the President’s House front door and let herself inside. Peter would be away. He would be away all day. The last thing she wanted to do now was to see him.
The first thing she wanted to do was to have sex, and not sex with herself either. She had always despised masturbation. Masturbation was for people who couldn’t find partners, and she could always find partners. Masturbation was far too safe, even if you left the doors unlocked and risked being discovered in the act. Sex was danger before it was anything else. It was hanging off the edge of a cliff. It was risking the real, not only exposure but obliteration. Michael had been the best at that that she had ever had. He had felt more real than any other person she had ever known. When she had been afraid with him, she had known it was neither an act nor an exaggeration. She had been afraid because she had good reason to be afraid.
She went upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Peter and took off her cape. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the mounds the pillows made under the bedspread. She rubbed her hands together and then ran them through her hair.
She was afraid now because she had good reason to be afraid. She was scared to death.
Chapter Five
1
Gregor was standing just behind Ridenour Library watching the police set up corridors and perimeters on his orders. It was going to take some time to make sure the area was securely cordoned off, mostly because he didn’t really know what the area was or even what it was supposed to contain. He only knew there had to be something.
“It would make it a lot easier if we knew what we were protecting,” Brian Sheehy said at one point in the proceedings. Gregor knew he wasn’t really pressing. He was having the time of his life, watching the whole of the Windsor Academy campus fill up with uniformed men and seven different media vans, including one from the BBC World Service, arrayed on Main Street to film it. It was always dangerous to indulge a need for revenge, Gregor thought, but in this case it suited his purpose for Brian to do so. He wasn’t about to complain.
“I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for,” he said. “Something small, I’d guess. Something that could have been thrown or placed under those trees.”
“Danny Kelly looked under those trees an hour ago,” Brian pointed out. “He didn’t find a thing.”
“Neither did the person who went looking the night
Michael Feyre died,” Gregor said. “That’s why Michael Feyre did die. If our person had found what he or she was looking for, there would have been no need to kill Michael. At least not then.”
“You do understand that Michael Feyre’s death was ruled a suicide,” Brian said. “And I don’t see how you’re going to explain it as murder—yes, yes, I know, sex. But you know what I mean. Explain it so a jury would buy it and a decent defense attorney couldn’t get the jury to laugh at it.”
“Fortunately, I won’t have to explain it that well,” Gregor said. “We don’t need to bring it up if we don’t want to. Your prosecutor can go at this from any angle he wants to. We will be able to prove who poisoned Mark. And we’ll have at least good evidence for who poisoned Edith Braxner. Take your pick.”
“Her,” Brian said.
“Her who?”
“Our prosecutor. She’s a her. Siobhan Clanahan.”
“Right,” Gregor said. If he had belonged to one of those civil rights commissions looking into racism and favoritism in police departments, he would have started to suspect that there was a definite bias in favor of Irish Americans in Windsor’s municipal government.
“How are we going to find something that the person couldn’t find a week and a half ago?” Brian said. “I don’t know how long you think it’s been there, whatever it is—”
“Since the night Michael Feyre died,” Gregor said. “Or the afternoon before. The same day. I don’t think it would have been there any earlier. He was a sadist, and from all reports he didn’t have much in the way of impulse control.”
“Michael Feyre? No,” Brian said, “he didn’t. Was it Michael Mark saw?”
“No,” Gregor said. “It was Michael who put what we’re looking for under those evergreens. My guess is that he threw it well back, as hard as he could. Look at them. They’re very low to the ground. They scrape it in a couple of places. Of course Danny didn’t find anything just looking. Neither did the person who was out here looking that night.”