The Secret History - Donna Tartt [261]
“How the hell should I know?”
“You can keep Mr. Hatch from pressing charges, can’t you?”
“Not if he doesn’t get the truck back. Or if Charles cracks it up”
“How much could a truck like that possibly cost? Assuming your aunt didn’t buy it for him in the first place.”
“That’s beside the point.”
Henry wiped his mouth with a napkin and reached in his pocket for a cigarette. “Charles is getting to be quite a problem,” he said. “You know what I’ve been thinking? I wonder how much it would cost to hire a private nurse.”
“To get him off drink, you mean?”
“Of course. We can’t send him to the hospital, obviously. Perhaps if we got a hotel room—not here, of course, but somewhere—and if we found some trustworthy person, maybe someone who didn’t speak English all that well.…”
Camilla looked ill. She was slumped back in her chair. She said: “Henry, what are you going to do? Kidnap him?”
“Kidnap is not the word that I would use.”
“I’m afraid he’ll have a wreck. I think we ought to go look for him.”
“We’ve looked all over town,” said Francis. “I don’t think he’s in Hampden.”
“Have you called the hospital?”
“No.”
“What I think we really ought to do,” said Henry, “is call the police. Ask if there have been any traffic accidents. Do you think Mr. Hatch will agree to say that he lent Charles the truck?”
“He did lend Charles the truck.”
“In that case,” said Henry, “there should be no problem. Unless, of course, he gets stopped for drunk driving.”
“Or unless we can’t find him.”
“From my point of view,” said Henry, “the best thing that Charles could do right now is to disappear entirely from the face of the earth.”
Suddenly there was a loud, frenetic banging at the door. We looked at one other.
Camilla’s face had gone blank with relief. “Charles,” she said, “Charles,” and she jumped up from her chair and started to the door; but no one had locked it behind us, and before she got there it flew open with a crash.
It was Charles. He stood in the doorway, blinking drunkenly around the room, and I was so surprised and glad to see him that it was a moment before I realized that he had a gun.
He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him. It was the little Beretta that Francis’s aunt kept in the night table, the one we’d used for target practice the fall before. We stared at him, thunderstruck.
At last Camilla said, and in a voice which was fairly steady: “Charles, what do you think you are doing?”
“Out of the way,” said Charles. He was very drunk.
“So you’ve come to kill me?” said Henry. He was still holding his cigarette. He was remarkably composed. “Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you suppose that will solve?”
“You’ve ruined my life, you son of a bitch.” He had the gun pointed at Henry’s chest. With a sinking feeling, I remembered what an expert shot he was, how he’d broken the rows of mason jars one by one.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Henry snapped; and I felt the first prickle of real panic at the back of my neck. This belligerent, bullying tone might work with Francis, maybe even with me, but it was a disastrous tack to take with Charles. “If anyone’s to blame for your problems, it’s you.”
I wanted to tell him to shut up, but before I could say anything Charles lurched abruptly to the side, to clear his shot. Camilla stepped into his path. “Charles, give me the gun,” she said.
He pushed the hair from his eyes with his forearm, holding the gun remarkably steady with his other hand. “I’m telling you, Milly.” It was a pet name he had for her, one he seldom used. “You better get out of the way.”
“Charles,” said Francis. He was white as a ghost. “Sit down. Have some wine. Let’s just forget about this.”
The window was open and the chirrup of the crickets washed in harsh and strong.
“You bastard,” said Charles, reeling backwards, and it was a moment before I realized, startled, that he was speaking not to Francis or Henry but to me. “I trusted you. You told him where I was.”
I was too petrified to answer. I blinked at him.