The Secret History - Donna Tartt [125]
“Charles, don’t be such a baby.”
Henry—wide awake, no explanations—met me at the door in his bathrobe. I followed him into the kitchen, and he poured me a cup of coffee and sat me down. “Now,” he said, “tell me what happened.”
I did. He sat across the table, smoking cigarette after cigarette with his dark blue eyes fastened on mine. He interrupted with questions only once or twice. Certain parts he asked me to repeat. I was so tired that I rambled a bit, but he was patient with my digressions.
By the time I finished, the sun was up and the birds were singing. Spots were swimming in front of my eyes. A damp, cool breeze shifted in the curtains. Henry switched off the lamp and went to the stove and began, rather mechanically, to make some bacon and eggs. I watched him move around the dim, dawn-lit kitchen in his bare feet.
While we ate, I looked at him curiously. He was pale, and his eyes were tired and preoccupied, but there was nothing in his expression that gave me any indication what he might be thinking.
“Henry,” I said.
He started. It was the first time either of us had said a word for half an hour or more.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“If you’ve still got the idea of poisoning him—”
He glanced up with a quick flash of anger that surprised me. “Don’t be absurd,” he snapped. “I wish you’d shut up a minute and let me think.”
I stared at him. Abruptly he stood up and went to pour himself some more coffee. For a moment he stood with his back to me, hands braced on the counter. Then he turned around.
“I’m sorry,” he said wearily. “It’s just not very pleasant to look back on something that one has put so much effort and thought into, only to realize it’s completely ridiculous. Poisoned mushrooms. The whole idea is like something from Sir Walter Scott.”
I was taken aback. “But I thought it was kind of a good idea,” I said.
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Too good,” he said. “I suppose that when anyone accustomed to working with the mind is faced with a straightforward action, there’s a tendency to embellish, to make it overly clever. On paper there’s a certain symmetry. Now that I’m faced with the prospect of executing it I realize how hideously complicated it is.”
“What’s wrong?”
He adjusted his glasses. “The poison is too slow.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“There are half a dozen problems with it. Some of them you pointed out. Control of the dose is risky, but time, I think, is the real concern. From my standpoint the longer the better, but still … A person can do an awful lot of talking in twelve hours.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen this all along. The idea of killing him is so repellent that I haven’t been able to think of it as anything but a chess-problem. A game. You have no idea how much thought I’ve put into this. Even to the strain of poison. It’s said to make the throat swell, do you know that? Victims are said to be struck dumb, unable to name their poisoner.” He sighed. “Too easy to beguile myself with the Medicis, the Borgias, all those poisoned rings and roses … It’s possible to do that, did you know? To poison a rose, then present it as a gift? The lady pricks her finger, then falls dead. I know how to make a candle that will kill if burned in a closed room. Or how to poison a pillow, or a prayer book …”
I said: “What about sleeping pills?”
He glanced at me, annoyed.
“I’m serious. People die from them all the time.”
“Where are we going to get sleeping pills?”
“This is Hampden College. If we want sleeping pills, we can get them.”
We looked at each other.
“How would we give them?” he said.
“Tell him they’re Tylenol.”
“And how do we get him to swallow nine or ten Tylenol?”
“We could break them open in a glass of whiskey.”
“You think Bunny is likely to drink a glass of whiskey with a lot of white powder at the bottom?”
“I think he’s just as apt to do that as eat a dish of toadstools.”
There was a long silence, during which a bird trilled noisily outside the window. Henry closed his eyes for a long