The Secret History - Donna Tartt [229]
I rubbed my eyes, trying to collect my thoughts. “But I knew that,” I said finally.
“You did?” He was astonished. “Who told you?”
“I think it was Cloke.”
“Cloke? When was this?”
I explained, as far as memory allowed. “I forgot about it,” I said.
“Forgot? How could you forget something like that?”
I sat up a bit. Fresh pain surged through my head. “What difference does it make?” I said, a little angrily. “If she wants to leave I don’t blame her. Charles will just have to straighten up. That’s all.”
“But the Albemarle?” said Francis. “Do you have any idea how expensive it is?”
“Of course I do,” I said irritably. The Albemarle was the nicest inn in town. Presidents had stayed there, and movie stars. “So what?”
Francis put his head in his hands. “Richard,” he said, “you’re dense. You must have brain damage.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about two hundred dollars a night? Do you think the twins have that kind of money? Who the hell do you think is paying for it?”
I stared at him.
“Henry, that’s who,” said Francis. “He came over when Charles was out and moved her there, lock, stock and barrel. Charles came home and her things were gone. Can you imagine? He can’t even get in touch with her, she’s registered under a different name. Henry won’t tell him anything. For that matter, he won’t tell me anything, either. Charles is absolutely beside himself. He asked me to call Henry and see if I could get anything out of him, I couldn’t, of course, he was like a brick wall.”
“What’s the big deal? Why are they making such a secret of it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know Camilla’s side but I think Henry is being very foolish.”
“Maybe she has reasons of her own.”
“She doesn’t think that way,” said Francis, exasperated. “I know Henry. This is just the sort of thing he’d do and it’s just the way he’d do it. But even if there’s a good reason it’s the wrong way to go about it. Especially now. Charles is in a state. Henry should know better than to antagonize him after the other night.”
Uncomfortably, I thought of the walk home from the police station. “You know, there’s something I’ve meant to tell you,” I said, and I told him about Charles’s outburst.
“Oh, he’s mad at Henry all right,” said Francis tersely. “He’s told me the same thing—that Henry pushed it all off on him, basically. But what does he expect? When you get down to it, I don’t think Henry asked all that much of him. That’s not the reason he’s angry. The real reason is Camilla. Do you want to know my theory?”
“What?”
“I think Camilla and Henry have been slipping around with each other for quite some time. I think Charles has been suspicious for a while but until lately he didn’t have any proof. Then he found something out. I don’t know what, exactly,” he said, raising his hand as I tried to interrupt, “but it’s not hard to imagine. I think it’s something he found out down at the Corcorans’. Something he saw or heard. And I think it must’ve happened before we arrived. The night before they left for Connecticut with Cloke, everything seemed fine, but you remember what Charles was like when we got there. And by the time we left they weren’t even speaking.”
I told Francis what Cloke had said to me in the upstairs hallway.
“God knows what happened, then, if Cloke was smart enough to catch on,” said Francis. “Henry was sick, probably wasn’t thinking too clearly. And the week we came back, you know, when he holed up in his apartment, I think Camilla was there a lot. She was there, I know, the day I went to take him that Mycenaean book and I think she might have even spent the night a couple of times. But then he got well and Camilla came home and for a while after that, things were okay. Remember? Around the time you took me to the hospital?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. I told him about the glass I had seen lying broken in the fireplace at the