The Secret History - Donna Tartt [129]
Charles was silent.
“Now,” said Henry, drawing a line on the map with a pencil. “I think it will be fairly easy to get away without being seen, though we should be especially careful about turning into the logging road and coming out of it onto the highway.”
“Will we use my car or yours?” said Francis.
“Mine, I think. People tend to look twice at a car like yours.”
“Maybe we should rent one.”
“No. Something like that might ruin everything. If we keep it as casual as possible, no one will give us a second glance. People don’t pay attention to ninety percent of what they see.”
There was a pause.
Charles coughed slightly. “And after?” he said. “We just go home?”
“We just go home,” said Henry. He lit a cigarette. “Really, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, shaking out the match. “It seems risky, but if you look at it logically it couldn’t be safer. It won’t look like a murder at all. And who knows we have reason to kill him? I know, I know,” he said impatiently when I tried to interrupt. “But I should be extremely surprised if he’s told anyone else.”
“How can you say what he’s done? He could have told half the people at the party.”
“But I’m willing to bank on the odds he hasn’t. Bunny’s unpredictable, of course, but at this point his actions still make a kind of rudimentary horse sense. I had very good reason to think he’d tell you first.”
“And why’s that?”
“Surely you don’t think it an accident that, of all the people he might have told, he chose to come to you?”
“I don’t know, except that I was handier than anyone else.”
“Who else could he tell?” said Henry impatiently. “He’d never go to the police outright. He stands to lose as much as we do if he did. And for the same reason he doesn’t dare tell a stranger. Which leaves an extremely limited range of potential confidants. Marion, for one. His parents for another. Cloke for a third. Julian as an outside possibility. And you.”
“And what makes you think he hasn’t told Marion, for instance?”
“Bunny might be stupid, but not that stupid. It would be all over school by lunch the next day. Cloke’s a poor choice for different reasons. He isn’t quite so apt to lose his head but he’s untrustworthy all the same. Skittish and irresponsible. And very much out for his own interests. Bunny likes him—admires him too, I think—but he’d never go to him with something like this. And he wouldn’t tell his parents, not in a million years. They’d stand behind him, certainly, but without a doubt they’d go right to the police.”
“And Julian?”
Henry shrugged. “Well, he might tell Julian. I’m perfectly willing to concede that. But he hasn’t told him yet, and I think the chances are he won’t, at least not for a while.”
“Why not?”
Henry raised an eyebrow at me. “Because who do you think Julian would be more apt to believe?”
No one said a thing. Henry drew deeply on his cigarette. “So,” he said, and exhaled. “Process of elimination. He hasn’t told Marion or Cloke, for fear of their telling other people. He hasn’t told his parents, for the same reason, and probably won’t except as a last resort. So what possibilities does that leave him? Only two. He could tell Julian—who wouldn’t believe him—or you, who might believe him and wouldn’t repeat it.”
I stared at him. “Surmise,” I said at last.
“Not at all. Do you think, if he’d told anyone else, we’d be sitting here now? Do you think now, once he’s told you, that he’d be foolhardy enough to tell a third party before he even knows what your response will be? Why do you suppose he called you this afternoon? Why do you suppose he’s pestered the rest of us all day?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Because,” said Henry, “he was testing the waters. Last night he was drunk, full of himself. Today he’s not quite sure what you think. He wants another opinion. And he’ll look to your response for the cue.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Henry took a sip of his coffee. “What don’t you understand?”
“Why you’re in such a goddamned rush to kill him if you think he won’t tell anyone but me.”
He shrugged. “He hasn’t told anyone yet. Which is