The Secret History (88 page)

“What about downstairs?”

“The thing is, I think they’re on an upper floor. Camilla said something about carrying bags upstairs. There might be fire stairs, but I wouldn’t know how to go about finding them.”

We stepped up onto the porch. Through the screen door we could see a dark, cool lobby and, behind the desk, a man of about sixty, his half-moon glasses pulled low on his nose, reading a copy of the Bennington
Banner
.

“Is that the guy you talked to?” I whispered.

“No. His wife.”

“Has he seen you before?”

“No.”

I pushed open the door and stuck my head in for a moment, then went inside. The innkeeper glanced from his paper and gave us a supercilious up-and-down look. He was one of those prissy retirees one sees frequently in New England, the sort who subscribe to antique magazines and carry those canvas tote bags they give as gift premiums on public TV.

I gave him my best smile. Behind the desk, I noticed, was a pegboard with room keys. They were arranged in tiers according to floor. There were three keys—2-B, -C, and -E—missing on the second floor, and only one—3-A—on the third.

He was looking at us frostily. “How may I help you?” he said.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but do you know if our parents have arrived yet from California?”

He was surprised. He opened a ledger. “What’s the name?”

“Rayburn. Mr. and Mrs. Cloke Rayburn.”

“I don’t see a reservation.”

“I’m not sure they made one.”

He looked at me over the tops of his glasses. “Generally, we require a reservation, with deposit, at least forty-eight hours in advance,” he said.

“They didn’t think they’d need one this time of year.”

“Well, there’s no guarantee that there’ll be room for them when they arrive,” he said curtly.

I would have liked to have pointed out that his inn was more
than half-empty, and that I didn’t see the guests exactly fighting to get in, but I smiled again and said, “I guess they’ll have to take their chances, then. Their plane got into Albany at noon. They should be here any minute.”

“Well, then.”

“Do you mind if we wait?”

Obviously, he did. But he couldn’t say so. He nodded, his mouth pursed—thinking, no doubt, about the lecture on reservation policy he would deliver to my parents—and, with an ostentatious rattle, went back to his paper.

We sat down on a cramped Victorian sofa, as far from the desk as possible.

Francis was jittery and kept glancing around. “I don’t want to stay here,” he whispered, his lips barely moving, close to my ear. “I’m afraid the wife will come back.”

“This guy is from hell, isn’t he?”

“She’s worse.”

The innkeeper was, very pointedly, not looking in our direction. In fact, his back was to us. I put my hand on Francis’s arm. “I’ll be right back,” I whispered. “Tell him I went looking for the men’s room.”

The stairs were carpeted and I managed to get up them without making much noise. I hurried down the corridor until I saw 2-C, and 2-B next to it. The doors were blank and foreboding, but this was no time to hesitate. I knocked on 2-C. No answer. I knocked again, louder this time. “Camilla!” I said.

At this, a small dog began to raise a racket, down the hall in 2-E.
Nix that
, I thought, and was about to knock on the third door, when suddenly it opened and there stood a middle-aged lady in a golfing skirt. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you looking for someone?”

It was funny, I thought, as I shot up the last flight of stairs, but I’d had a premonition they’d be on the top floor. In the corridor I passed a gaunt, sixtyish woman—print dress, harlequin glasses, sharp nasty face like a poodle—carrying a stack of folded towels. “Wait!” she yelped. “Where are you going?”

But I was already past her, down the hall, banging at the door of 3-A. “Camilla!” I shouted. “It’s Richard! Let me in!”

And then, there she was, like a miracle: sunlight streaming behind her into the hall, barefoot and blinking with surprise.
“Hello,” she said, “hello! What are you doing here?” And, behind my shoulder, the innkeeper’s wife: “What do you think you’re doing here? Who are you?”

“It’s all right,” Camilla said.

I was out of breath. “Let me in,” I gasped.

She pulled the door shut. It was a beautiful room—oak wainscoting, fireplace, only one bed, I noticed, in the room beyond, bedclothes tangled at the foot.… “Is Henry here?” I said.

“What’s wrong?” Bright circles of color burned high in her cheeks. “It’s Charles, isn’t it? What’s happened?”

Charles
. I’d forgotten about him. I struggled to catch my breath. “No,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain. We’ve got to find Henry. Where is he?”

“Why—” she looked at the clock—“I believe he’s at Julian’s office.”

“
Julian’s?
”

“Yes. What’s the matter?” she said, seeing the astonishment on my face. “He had an appointment, I think, at two.”

I hurried downstairs to get Francis before the innkeeper and his wife had a chance to compare notes.

“What should we do?” said Francis on the drive back to school. “Wait outside and watch for him?”

“I’m afraid we’ll lose him. I think one of us better run up and get him.”

Francis lit a cigarette. The match flame wavered. “Maybe it’s okay,” he said. “Maybe Henry managed to get hold of it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I was thinking the same thing. If Henry saw the letterhead, I was pretty sure he’d try to take it, and I was pretty sure he’d be more efficient about it than Francis or me. Besides—it sounded petty but it was true—Henry was Julian’s favorite. If he put his mind to it, he could coerce away the whole letter on some pretext of giving it to the police, having the typing analyzed, who knew what he might come up with?

Francis glanced at me sideways. “If Julian found out about this,” he said, “what do you think he would do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. It was such an unthinkable prospect that the only responses I could imagine him having were melodramatic and improbable. Julian suffering a fatal heart attack. Julian weeping uncontrollably, a broken man.

“I can’t believe he’d turn us in.”

“I don’t know.”

“But he couldn’t. He
loves
us.”

I didn’t say anything. Regardless of what Julian felt for me, there was no denying that what I felt for him was love and trust of a very genuine sort. As my own parents had distanced themselves from me more and more—a retreat they had been in the process of effecting for many years—it was Julian who had grown to be the sole figure of paternal benevolence in my life, or, indeed, of benevolence of any sort. To me, he seemed my only protector in the world.

“It was a mistake,” said Francis. “He has to understand.”

“Maybe,” I said. I couldn’t conceive of his finding out, but as I tried to visualize myself explaining this catastrophe to someone, I realized that we would have an easier time explaining it to Julian than to anyone else. Perhaps, I thought, his reaction would be similar to my own. Perhaps he would see these murders as a sad, wild thing, haunted and picturesque (“I’ve done everything,” old Tolstoy used to boast, “I’ve even killed a man”), instead of the basically selfish, evil act which it was.

“You know that thing Julian used to say,” said Francis.

“Which thing?”

“About a Hindu saint being able to slay a thousand on the battlefield and it not being a sin unless he felt remorse.”

I had heard Julian say this, but had never understood what he meant. “We’re not Hindus,” I said.

“
Richard
,” Julian said, in a tone which simultaneously welcomed me and let me know that I had come at a bad time.

“Is Henry here? I need to talk to him about something.”

He looked surprised. “Of course,” he said, and opened the door.

Henry was sitting at the table where we did our Greek. Julian’s empty chair, on the side by the window, was pulled close to his. There were other papers on the table but the letter was in front of them. He glanced up. He did not look pleased to see me.

“Henry, may I speak to you?”

“Certainly,” he said coldly.

I turned, to step into the hall, but he didn’t make a move to follow. He was avoiding my eye.
Damn him
, I thought. He thought I was trying to continue our earlier conversation in the garden.

“Could you come out here for a minute?” I said.

“What is it?”

“I need to tell you something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You mean, it’s something you want to tell me in
private?
” he said.

I could have killed him. Julian, politely, had been pretending not to follow this exchange, but his curiosity was aroused by this. He was standing, waiting, behind his chair. “Oh, dear,” he said. “I hope nothing’s wrong. Shall I leave?”

“Oh, no, Julian,” said Henry, looking not at Julian but at me. “Don’t bother.”

“Is everything all right?” Julian asked me.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I just need to see Henry for a second. It’s kind of important.”

“Can’t it wait?” said Henry.

The letter was spread out on the table. With horror, I saw that he was turning through it slowly, like a book, pretending to examine the pages one by one. He hadn’t seen the letterhead. He didn’t know it was there.

“Henry,” I said. “It’s an emergency. I have to talk to you
right now.
”

He was struck by the urgency in my voice. He stopped, and pivoted in his chair to look at me—they were both staring, now—and as he did, as part of the motion of turning, he turned over the page in his hand. My heart did a somersault. There was the letterhead, face-up on the table. White palace drawn in blue curlicues.

“All right,” said Henry. Then, to Julian: “I’m sorry. We’ll be back in a moment.”

“Certainly,” said Julian. He looked grave and concerned. “I hope nothing’s the matter.”

I wanted to cry. I had Henry’s attention; I had it, now, but I didn’t want it. The letterhead lay exposed on the table.

“What’s wrong?” said Henry, his eyes locked on mine.

He was attentive, poised as a cat. Julian was looking at me too. The letter lay on the table, between them, directly in Julian’s line of vision. He had only to glance down.

I darted my eyes at the letter, then at Henry. He understood in an instant, turned smooth but fast; but he wasn’t fast enough, and in that split-second, Julian looked down—casually, just an afterthought, but a second too soon.

I do not like to think about the silence that followed. Julian leaned over and looked at the letterhead for a long time. Then
he picked up the page and examined it.
Excelsior. Via Veneto
. Blue-inked battlements. I felt curiously light and empty-headed.

Julian put on his glasses and sat down. He looked through the whole thing, very carefully, front and back. I heard kids laughing, faintly, somewhere outside. At last he folded the letter and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Well,” he said at last. “Well, well, well.”

As is true of most incipient bad things in life, I had not really prepared myself for this possibility. And what I felt, standing there, was not fear or remorse but only terrible, crushing humiliation, a dreadful, red-faced shame I hadn’t felt since childhood. And what was even worse was to see Henry, and to realize that he was feeling the same thing, and if anything, more acutely than myself. I hated him—was so angry I wanted to kill him—but somehow I was not prepared to see him like that.

Nobody said anything. Dust motes floated in a sunbeam. I thought of Camilla at the Albemarle, Charles in the hospital, Francis waiting trustfully in the car.

“Julian,” said Henry, “I can explain this.”

“Please do,” said Julian.

His voice chilled me to the bone. Though he and Henry had in common a distinct coldness of manner—sometimes, around them, the very temperature seemed to drop—I had always thought Henry’s coldness essential, to the marrow, and Julian’s only a veneer for what was, at bottom, a warm and kind-hearted nature. But the twinkle in Julian’s eye, as I looked at him now, was mechanical and dead. It was as if the charming theatrical curtain had dropped away and I saw him for the first time as he really was: not the benign old sage, the indulgent and protective good-parent of my dreams, but ambiguous, a moral neutral, whose beguiling trappings concealed a being watchful, capricious, and heartless.