The Secret History - Donna Tartt [239]
I was still trying to force back the blackest thought of all; the merest suggestion of it sent the rat’s feet of panic skittering up my spine. Had Henry intended to make me the patsy if his plan had fallen through? If so, I wasn’t quite sure how he’d meant to manage it, but if he’d felt like doing it, there was no doubt in my mind he would have been able to. So much of what I knew was only secondhand, so much of it was only what he’d told me; there was an awful lot, when you got right down to it, that I didn’t even know. And—though the immediate danger was apparently gone—there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t surface again a year, twenty years, fifty years from now. I knew, from television, that there was no statute of limitations on murder. New evidence discovered. The case reopened. You read about these things all the time.
It was still dark. Birds were chirping in the eaves. I pulled out my desk drawer and counted the rest of the sleeping pills: candy-colored pretties, bright on a sheet of typing paper. There were still quite a lot of them, plenty for my purposes. (Would Mrs. Corcoran feel better if she knew this twist: that her stolen pills had killed her son’s killer?) So easy, to feel them go down my throat: but blinking in the glare of my desk lamp, I was struck with a wave of revulsion so strong it was almost nausea. Horrific as it was, the present dark, I was afraid to leave it for the other, permanent dark—jelly and bloat, the muddy pit. I had seen the shadow of it on Bunny’s face—stupid terror; the whole world opening upside down; his life exploding in a thunder of crows and the sky expanding empty over his stomach like a white ocean. Then nothing. Rotten stumps, sowbugs crawling in the fallen leaves. Dirt and dark.
I lay on my bed. I felt my heart limping in my chest, and was revolted by it, a pitiful muscle, sick and bloody, pulsing against my ribs. Rain streamed down the windowpanes. The lawn outside was sodden, swampy. When the sun came up, I saw, in the small, cold light of dawn, that the flagstones outside were covered with earthworms: delicate, nasty, hundreds of them, twisting blind and helpless on the rain-dark sheets of slate.
In class on Tuesday, Julian mentioned he’d spoken to Charles on the telephone. “You’re right,” he murmured. “He doesn’t sound well. Very groggy and confused, don’t you think? I suppose they have him under sedation?” He smiled, sifting through his papers. “Poor Charles. I asked where Camilla was—I wanted to get her on the line, I couldn’t make any sense of what he was trying to tell me—and he said”—(here his voice changed slightly, in imitation of Charles, a stranger might assume; but it was really Julian’s own voice, cultured and purring, only raised slightly in tone, as if he could not bear, even in mimicry, to substantively alter its own melodious cadence)—“he said, in the most melancholy voice, ‘She’s hiding from me.’ He was dreaming, of course. I thought it was rather sweet. So, to humor him, I said, ‘Well, then. You must hide your eyes and count to ten and she’ll come back.’ ”
He laughed. “But he got angry at me. It was really rather charming of him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no she won’t.’ ‘But you’re dreaming,’ I said to him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no I’m not. It’s not a dream. It’s real.’ ”
The doctors couldn’t figure out quite what was wrong with Charles. They’d tried two antibiotics over the course of the week, but the infection—whatever it was—didn’t respond. The third try was more successful. Francis, who went to see him Wednesday and Thursday, was told that Charles was improving, and that if everything went well he could come home over the weekend.
About ten o’clock on Friday, after another sleepless night, I walked over to Francis’s. It was a hot, overcast morning, trees shimmering in the heat. I felt haggard and exhausted. The warm air vibrated with the thrum of wasps and the drone of lawn mowers. Swifts chased and chittered, in fluttering pairs, through the sky.
My head hurt. I wished I had a pair of sunglasses. I wasn’t supposed to meet Francis until eleven-thirty