The Headmaster's Wife(41)

She went up the front steps of Martinson House and into the hall. She went down the back hall and stopped at Philip’s door. He was listening, she thought, to Eminem. She only knew it was Eminem because Philip had once told her.

She knocked twice and waited. The music was not turned up very high. She was sure he could hear her. Then again Philip sometimes didn’t answer if he didn’t want to answer.

The music stopped. The door opened. Philip looked out. He was, Marta thought, the calmest person she had ever known.

He stepped back and held the door all the way open.

“Marta,” he said, “don’t tell me you’re worried about Gregor Demarkian, too.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Philip closed the door behind her. “I’ve had a few visits today, that’s all. I thought you must have been hanging out in the faculty lounge with practically everybody else. Can I get you some coffee? Or tea. I’ve got herb tea, if you want it.”

“Oh, yes,” Marta said. “I would like herb tea. Camomile, if you have it.”

“I always have it.”

“I don’t like the faculty lounge,” Marta said, sitting on the edge of the couch. There were two things you learned early in your acquaintance with Philip Candor. You didn’t sit in his favorite chair, and you didn’t ask him to put out his cigarette in his own apartment. He had a cigarette going now. He always had one going.

“I don’t like the faculty lounge much myself,” he said. “They don’t let me smoke there, but that can’t be your problem.”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just—I don’t know. I feel on display, as if I had to put on a performance: dedicated prep school teacher with all the right attitudes.”

“So what’s the problem? Don’t you have all the right attitudes?”

“I don’t know,” Marta said. “Maybe not. Sometimes I just get so angry here I don’t know what to do with myself. I mean, here’s this beautiful school, with every possible facility, and there are all these kids, with parents with money and with opportunities I couldn’t have dreamed of when I was their age, and, I don’t know. So many of them don’t deserve it. I would have killed for a place like this when I was their age. I didn’t even know places like this existed.”

Philip came back with a teacup and a small plate to put it on instead of a saucer. Marta didn’t bother to be surprised. Philip always had hot water ready and cookies from the bakery on Main Street. If he’d had a house of his own instead of a faculty apartment, he’d have had a fire in the fireplace, too.

They weren’t allowed to light fires in the fireplaces of the faculty apartments, although some people did it. It caused too much havoc with the fire insurance.

Marta put her teacup down on the coffee table. It took at least five minutes before it tasted like anything. “The thing is,” she said, “I was wondering. They really are sure that Michael Feyre committed suicide, aren’t they?”

“From what I’ve heard, yes,” Philip said. “In fact, definitely yes, and I got that from one of the women in the dispatcher’s office, not from Peter Makepeace. It wasn’t the kind of thing somebody else would have found easy to stage.”

“That’s what I thought. Somebody said something about the tongue and the eyes, you know, but I didn’t understand it. And no, don’t explain it. I don’t even like thinking about it. It’s not about that anyway. It’s not about what makes them sure Michael didn’t commit suicide.”

“What is it about?”

Marta looked down at her hands. “It’s about Alice Makepeace.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, don’t say ’ah,’ Philip. Everybody on campus knew she was sleeping with that boy, and from what I’ve heard there have been other boys. And she’s, I don’t know, she’s such a compelling person, isn’t she? She’s somebody you have to pay attention to.”

“She’s very beautiful, even at forty-five,” Philip said, “and she’s the headmaster’s wife. Of course you have to pay attention to her.”

“You know what I mean. She commands attention. She does. She’s just one of those people, charismatic people, something.”

“And that’s what you were thinking about, Alice Makepeace?”

“What? Oh no. It was about the night Michael Feyre died. I saw her the night Michael Feyre died.”

“Where?”

“In the library,” Marta said. “Not in the library proper butin the office and classroom wing. I was correcting papers, and she came in to talk to me.”