The Secret History - Donna Tartt [91]
“It was the stupidest thing,” Francis said. “He never reads the newspaper. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for that blasted Marion.”
“She has a subscription, something to do with the Early Childhood Center,” said Henry, rubbing his eyes. “Bunny was with her in Commons before lunch. She was talking to one of her friends—Marion, that is—and Bunny I suppose had got bored and started to read her paper. The twins and I went up to say hello and the first thing he said, practically across the room, was ‘Look here, you guys, some chicken farmer got killed out by Francis’s house.’ Then he read a bit of the article out loud. Fractured skull, no murder weapon, no motive, no leads. I was trying to think of some way to change the subject when he said: ‘Hey. November tenth? That’s the night you guys were out at Francis’s. The night you ran over that deer.’ ”
“ ‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘how that could be right.’
“ ‘It was the tenth. I remember because it was the day before my mom’s birthday. That’s really something, isn’t it?’
“ ‘Why yes,’ we said, ‘it certainly is.’
“ ‘If I had a suspicious mind,’ he said, ‘I’d guess you’d done it, Henry, coming back from Battenkill County that night with blood from head to toe.’ ”
He lit another cigarette. “You have to remember that it was lunch time, Commons was packed, Marion and her friend were listening to every word, and besides, you know how his voice carries.… We laughed, naturally, and Charles said something funny, and we’d just managed to get him off the topic when he looked at the paper again. ‘I can’t believe this, guys,’ he said. ‘An honest-to-God murder, out in the woods too, not three miles from where you were. You know, if the cops had pulled you over that night, you’d probably be in jail right now. There’s a phone number to call if anybody’s got any information. If I wanted to, I bet I could get you guys in a heck of a lot of trouble …’ et cetera, et cetera.
“Of course, I didn’t know what to think. Was he joking, did he really suspect? Eventually I got him to drop it but still I had an awful feeling that he’d felt how uneasy he’d made me. He knows me so well—he has a sixth sense about that kind of thing. And I was uneasy. Goodness. It was right before lunch, all these security guards were standing around, half of them are connected with the police force in Hampden … I mean, there was no way our story could stand up to even peremptory examination and I knew it. Obviously we hadn’t hit a deer. There wasn’t a scratch on either of the cars. And if anyone made even a casual connection between us and the dead man … So, as I say, I was glad when he dropped it. But even then I had a feeling we hadn’t heard the last of it. He teased us about it—quite innocently, I believe, but in public as well as private—for the rest of the term. You know how he is. Once he gets something like that on the brain he won’t give it up.”
I did know. Bunny had an uncanny ability to ferret out topics of conversation that made his listener uneasy and to dwell upon them with ferocity once he had. In all the months I’d known him he’d never ceased to tease me, for instance, about that jacket I’d worn to lunch with him that first day, and about what he saw as my flimsy and tastelessly Californian style of dress. To an impartial eye, my clothes were in fact not at all dissimilar from his own but his snide remarks upon the subject were so inexhaustible and tireless, I think, because in spite of my good-natured laughter he must have been dimly aware that he was touching a nerve, that I was in fact incredibly self-conscious about these virtually imperceptible differences of dress and of the rather less imperceptible differences of manner and bearing between myself and the rest of them. I am gifted at blending myself into any given milieu—you’ve never seen such a typical California