The Secret History - Donna Tartt [89]
“I can’t tell you how unfortunate it was that Bunny happened to be there,” said Henry, shaking his head. “But for heaven’s sake, we couldn’t just stand around and wait for him to leave. There was blood everywhere, the neighbors would soon be up, for all I knew the police would be pounding at the door any second.…”
“Well, it was too bad we alarmed him, but then, it wasn’t like we thought we were doing this in front of J. Edgar Hoover, either,” said Francis.
“Exactly,” said Henry. “I don’t want to convey the impression that Bunny’s presence seemed like a tremendous menace at that point. It was just a nuisance, because I knew he wondered what was going on, but at the moment he was the least of our troubles. If there’d been time, I would have sat him down and explained things to him the instant we got in. But there wasn’t time.”
“Good God,” Francis said, and shuddered. “I still can’t go in Henry’s bathroom. Blood smeared on the porcelain. Henry’s straight razor swinging from a peg. We were bruised and scratched to pieces.”
“Charles was the worst by far.”
“Oh, my God. Thorns stuck all over him.”
“And that bite.”
“You’ve never seen anything like it,” said Francis. “Four inches around and the teeth marks just gouged in. Remember what Bunny said?”
Henry laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Tell him.”
“Well, there we all were, and Charles was turning to get the soap—I didn’t even know Bunny was there, I suppose he was looking in the door—when all of a sudden I heard him say, in this weird businesslike way, ‘Looks like that deer took a plug out of your arm, Charles.’ ”
“He was standing there for part of the time, making comments of various sorts,” said Henry, “but the next thing I knew he wasn’t. I was disturbed by how suddenly he’d left but glad he was out of the way. We had a great deal to do and not too much time.”
“Weren’t you afraid he’d tell somebody?”
Henry looked at me blankly. “Who?”
“Me. Marion. Anybody.”
“No. At that point I had no reason to think he’d do anything of the sort. He’d been with us on previous tries, you understand, so our appearance didn’t seem as extraordinary to him as it might have to you. The whole thing was deadly secret. He’d been involved in it with us for months. How could he have told anyone without explaining the whole thing and making himself look foolish? Julian knew what we were trying to do, but I was still pretty certain Bunny wouldn’t talk to him without checking it with us first. And, as it happened, I was right.”
He paused and lit a cigarette. “It was almost daybreak, and things were still a dreadful mess—bloody footprints on the porch, the chitons lying where we’d dropped them. The twins put on some old clothes of mine and went out to take care of the porch and the inside of the car. The chitons, I knew, should be burnt, but I didn’t want to start a big fire in the back yard; nor did I want to burn them inside and risk setting off the fire alarm. My landlady is constantly warning me not to use the fireplace, but I’d always suspected it worked. I took a chance and as luck would have it, it did.”
“I was no help at all,” said Francis.
“No, you certainly weren’t,” said Henry crossly.
“I couldn’t help it. I thought I was going to throw up. I went back to Henry’s room and went to sleep.”
“I think we all would have liked to go to sleep but somebody had to clean up,” Henry said. “The twins came in around seven. I was still having a terrible time with the bathroom. Charles’s back was stuck full of thorns like a pincushion. For a while Camilla and I worked on him with a pair of tweezers; then I went back in the bathroom to finish up. The worst of it was over, but I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The towels weren’t so bad—we’d pretty much avoided using them—but there were stains on some of them so I put them in the washing machine and dumped in some soap. The twins were asleep, on that fold-out bed in the back room, and I shoved Charles over and was out like a light.”
“Fourteen hours,” said Francis. “I’ve never slept that