The Headmaster's Wife(160)

“Aha,” Gregor said. “And when you got back and looked at your student account, it was short more than it should have been.”

Mark looked surprised. “Yeah, it was. A hundred dollars. I looked in the book and it said I’d withdrawn it at ten o’clock, but I hadn’t. I’d been in Boston at the time. I hadn’t taken any money out for that trip because Mom had been up a few days before and she’d taken me out to lunch, and when she does that she always ends up slipping me more cash than I know what to do with. I’d forgotten all about that.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said.

Brian Sheehy cleared his throat. “I thought you wanted to go over to Hayes and look at the death scene,” he said. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to find, but if you want to do it, we probably ought to do it now. This place looks like it’s about to become a ghost town.”

They all looked out over the campus, at the Student Center in front of them to their left, at the beginnings of the quad to their right. The campus was not deserted. It was full of students and their parents. They were all leaving.





2


Hayes House was full, too. The last time Gregor had been there, he had been aware of the sound of students moving just out of sight on the upper floors and in the common rooms. This time, he could see them everywhere. The front door was propped open with a clay pot filled with dirt, making it easier for students to come and go with boxes in their hands. A middle-aged woman in a long, formal coat and good gray flannel dress pants was standing near the front staircase directing a tall young man who looked buried beneath suitcases. How much stuff could these kids cram into their rooms? Gregor decided not to ask. The man he remembered as Sheldon had come out onto the front porch, livid.

“It’s freezing in here, don’t they understand that?” he demanded. “We have to keep this door closed. This is intolerable.”

“The door will remain open,” the woman in the gray flannel pants said, “until Max has his room cleared of his things. I have no intention of being held up. And if you try to stop me, I’ll sue you. You personally. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

Sheldon shrank a little and retreated inside, muttering to himself. If he had noticed Mark, or Gregor Demarkian, or Brian Sheehy, he gave no indication of it.

“We can start with Sheldon,” Gregor said. “What’s his last name anyway?”

“LeRouve,” Mark said. “Do you mind if I just stay out of sight? He’s only going to yell at me again. I can’t take it. I’m recuperating.”

“Relax,” Gregor said. “I just want to check one thing.”

They went through past the milling students and knocked on Sheldon LeRouve’s door. He opened up, looked at the three of them, and practically spat.

“I’ve said as much as I’m going to to any policeman. I’mnot saying any more. If you want to talk to me, talk to my lawyer.”

“I don’t think that’s really necessary,” Gregor said. “I just want to know one thing. On the night that Michael Feyre died, did you go to the upper floors of this house at any time?”

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” Sheldon said. “Get out of here.”

“Then I will assume that you did go to the upper floors during the evening,” Gregor said.

Sheldon reared back. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t go upstairs. I don’t even do bed checks anymore. What do you take me for? It’s enough that I’m stuck with these idiots day after day, I don’t have to go climbing two flights of stairs five times a night to check on what kind of stupidity they’re up to next. Especially that one,” he cocked his head toward Mark. “That one is a real mess. A bigger one than his roommate was.”

“Then you weren’t upstairs that night?”

“No.”

“And you would say that it is so seldom your custom to go upstairs that if you had gone, somebody would have noticed it as odd?”

“How the hell would I know what somebody would notice as odd?” Sheldon said. “They’re all so drugged out most of the time, they’d probably think pink elephants were perfectly normal.”

“But it would have been odd,” Gregor insisted.

Sheldon looked them all over again and slammed the door in their faces.

“Well,” Brian said, “that was helpful.”

“It was helpful,” Gregor said, “but I needed to be sure. It’s the kind of man he is, though, don’t you think? Everything, no matter what, would be too much trouble. Even the smallest obligation will be chucked onto somebody else if at all possible. I take it he’s got seniority as a houseparent.”