The Secret History - Donna Tartt [152]
Henry stood up. “Where? Is he alone?”
“Yes,” said Camilla, running to the door.
She ran down to meet him on the landing and in a few moments the two of them were back.
Charles’s eyes were wild and his hair was disordered. He took off his coat, threw it on a chair, flung himself on the couch. “Somebody make me a drink,” he said.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Where’s that drink?”
Impatiently, Henry splashed some whiskey in a dirty glass and shoved it at him. “Did it go well? Did the police come?”
Charles took a long swallow, winced and nodded.
“Where’s Cloke? At home?”
“I guess.”
“Tell us everything from the first.”
Charles finished the glass and set it down. His face was a damp, feverish red. “You were right about that room,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It was eerie. Terrible. Bed unmade, dust everywhere, half an old Twinkie lying on his desk and ants crawling all over it. Cloke got scared and wanted to leave, but I called Marion before he could. She was there in a few minutes. Looked around, seemed kind of stunned, didn’t say much. Cloke was very agitated.”
“Did he tell her about the drug business?”
“No. He hinted at it, more than once, but she wasn’t paying much attention to him.” He looked up. “You know, Henry,” he said abruptly, “I think we made a bad mistake by not going down there first. We should’ve gone through that room ourselves before either of them even saw it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look what I found.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
Henry took it from him quickly and looked it over. “How did you get this?”
He shrugged. “Luck. It was on top of his desk. I slipped it off the first chance I had.”
I looked over Henry’s shoulder. It was a Xerox of a page of the Hampden Examiner. Wedged between a column by the Home Extension Service and a chopped-off ad for garden hoes, there was a small but conspicuous headline.
MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN BATTENKILL COUNTY
Battenkill County Sheriff Department, along with Hampden police, are still investigating the brutal November 12 homicide of Harry Ray McRee. The mutilated corpse of Mr. McRee, a poultry farmer and former member of the Egg Producers Association of Vermont, was found upon his Mechanicsville farm. Robbery did not appear to be a motive, and though Mr. McRee was known to have several enemies, both in the chicken-and-egg business and in Battenkill county at large, none of these are suspects in the slaying.
Horrified, I leaned closer—the word mutilated had electrified me, it was the only thing I could see on the page—but Henry had turned the paper over and begun to study the other side. “Well,” he said, “at least this isn’t a photocopy of a clipping. Odds are he did this at the library, from the school’s copy.”
“I hope you’re right but that doesn’t mean it’s the only copy.”
Henry put the paper in the ashtray and struck the match. When he touched it to the edge a bright red seam crawled up the side, then licked suddenly over the whole thing; the words were illumined for a moment before they curled and darkened. “Well,” he said, “it’s too late now. At least you got this one. What happened next?”
“Well, Marion left. She went next door to Putnam House and came back with a friend.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her. Uta or Ursula or something. One of those Swedish-looking girls who wears fishermen’s sweaters all the time. Anyway, she had a look around, too, and Cloke was just sitting there on the bed smoking a cigarette and looking like his stomach hurt him, and finally she—this Uta or whatever—suggested we go upstairs and tell Bunny’s house chairperson.”
Francis started laughing. At Hampden, the house chairpeople were who you complained to if your storm windows didn’t work or someone was playing their stereo too loud.
“Well, it’s a good thing she did or we might still be standing there,” said Charles. “It was that loud, red-haired girl who wears hiking boots all the time—what’s her name? Briony Dillard?”
“Yes,” I said. Besides being a house chairperson and