Donna Tartt - The Secret History

We rose for the judge. Charles's case was called first.

He padded through the doors like a sleepwalker, in his stocking feet, a court officer following close behind him. His face was blurry and thick. They'd taken his belt and tie as well as his shoes and he looked a little like he was in his pajamas.

The judge peered down at him. He was sour-faced, about sixty, with a thin mouth and big meaty jowls like a bloodhound's.

'You have an attorney?' he said, in a strong Vermont accent.

'No, sir,' said Charles.

'Wife or parent present?'

'No, sir.'

'Can you post bail?'

'No, sir,' Charles said. He looked sweaty and disoriented.

I stood up. Charles didn't see me but the judge did. 'Are you here to post bail for Mr Macaulay?' he said.

'Yes, I am.'

Charles turned to stare, lips parted, his expression as blank and trancelike as a twelve-year-old's.

'It'll be five hundred dollars you can pay it at the window down the hall to your left,' said the judge in a bored monotone.

'You'll have to appear again in two weeks and I suggest you bring a lawyer. Do you have a job for which you need your vehicle?'

One of the shabby middle-aged men at the front spoke up.

'It's not his car, Your Honor.'

The judge glowered at Charles, suddenly fierce. 'Is that correct?' he said.

The owner was contacted. A Henry Winter. Goes to school up at the college. He says he lent the vehicle to Mr Macaulay for the evening.'

The judge snorted. To Charles he said gruffly: 'Your license is suspended pending resolution and have Mr Winter here on the twenty-eighth.'

The whole business was amazingly quick. We were out of the courthouse by ten after nine.

The morning was damp and dewy, cold for May. Birds chattered in the black treetops. I was reeling with fatigue.

Charles hugged himself. 'Christ, it's cold,' he said.

Across the empty streets, across the square, they were just pulling the blinds up at the bank. 'Wait here,' I said. Till go call a cab.'

He caught me by the arm. He was still drunk, but his night of boozing had done more damage to his clothes than to anything else; his face was fresh and flushed as a child's. 'Richard,' he said.

'What?'

'You're my friend, aren't you?'

I was in no mood to stand around on the courthouse steps and listen to this sort of thing. 'Sure,' I said, and tried to disengage my arm.

But he only clutched me tighter. 'Good old Richard,' he said. "I know you are. I'm so glad it was you who came. I just want you to do me this one little favor.'

'What's that?'

'Don't take me home.'

'What do you mean?'

'Take me to the country. To Francis's. I don't have the key but Mrs Hatch could let me in or I could bust a window or something – no, listen. Listen to this. I could get in through the basement. I've done it millions of times. Wait,' he said as I tried to interrupt again. 'You could come, too. You could swing by school and get some clothes and '

'Hold on,' I said, for the third time. 'I can't take you anywhere.

I don't have a car.'

His face changed, and he let go my arm. 'Oh, right,' he said with sudden bitterness. 'Thanks a lot.'

'Listen to me. I can't. I don't have a car. I came down here in a taxicab.'

'We can go in Henry's.'

'No we can't. The police took the keys.'

His hands were shaking. He ran them through his disordered hair. 'Then come home with me. I don't want to go home by myself.' 1 'All right,' I said. I was so tired I was seeing spots. 'All right. j| Just wait. I'll call a cab.'

'No. No cab,' he said, lurching backwards. 'I don't feel so hot.

I think I'd rather walk.'

This walk, from the courthouse steps to Charles's apartment in North Hampden, was not an inconsiderable one. It was three miles, at least. A good portion of it lay along a stretch of highway.

Cars whooshed past in a rush of exhaust. I was dead tired. My head ached and my feet were like lead. But the morning air was cool and fresh and it seemed to bring Charles around a little.

About halfway, he stopped at the dusty roadside window of a Tastee Freeze, across the highway from the Veterans Hospital, and bought an ice-cream soda.

Our feet crunched on the gravel. Charles smoked a cigarette and drank his soda through a red-and-white-striped straw.

Blackflies whined around our ears.

'So you and Henry had an argument,' I said, just for something to say.

'Who told you? Him?'

'Yes.'

'I couldn't remember. It doesn't matter. I'm tired of him telling me what to do.'

'You know what I wonder,' I said.

'What?'

'Not why he tells us what to do. But why we always do what he says.'

'Beats me,' said Charles. 'It's not as if much good has come of it.'

'Oh, I don't know.'

'Are you kidding? The idea of that fucking bacchanal in the first place – who thought of that? Whose idea was it to take Bunny to Italy? Who the hell wrote that diary and left it lying around? The son of a bitch. I blame every bit of this on him.

Besides, you have no idea how close they were to finding us out.'

'Who?' I said, startled. 'The police?'

The people from the FBI. There was a lot towards the end we didn't tell the rest of you. Henry made me swear not to tell.'

'Why? What happened?'

He threw down his cigarette. 'Well, I mean, they had it confused,' he said. 'They thought Cloke was mixed up in it, they thought a lot of things. It's funny. We're so used to Henry. We don't realize sometimes how he looks to other people.'

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, I don't know. I can think of a million examples.' He laughed sleepily. 'I remember last summer, when Henry was so gung-ho about renting a farmhouse, driving with him to a realtor's office upstate. It was perfectly straightforward. He had a specific house in mind – big old place built in the i Soos, way out on some dirt road, tremendous grounds, servants' quarters, the whole bit. He even had the cash in hand. They must've talked for two hours. The realtor called up her manager at home and asked him to come down to the office. The manager asked Henry a million questions. Called every one of his references. Everything was in order but even then they wouldn't rent it to him.'

'Why?'

He laughed. 'Well, Henry looks a bit too good to be true, doesn't he? They couldn't believe someone his age, a college student, would pay so much for a place that big and isolated, just to live all by himself and study the Twelve Great Cultures.'

'What? They thought he was some kind of a crook?'

'They thought he wasn't entirely above-board, let's put it that way. Apparently the men from the FBI thought the same thing.

They didn't think he killed Bunny, but they thought he knew something he wasn't telling. Obviously there had been a disagreement in Italy. Marion knew that, Cloke knew it, even Julian did.

They even tricked me into admitting it, though I didn't tell that to Henry. If you ask me, I think what they really thought was that he and Bunny had some money sunk in Cloke's drug-dealing business. That trip to Rome was a big mistake. They could've done it inconspicuously but Henry spent a fortune, throwing money around like crazy, they lived in a palazzo, for Christ sake.

People remembered them everywhere they went. I mean, you know Henry, that's just the way he is but you have to look at it from their point of view. That illness of his must've looked pretty suspicious, too. Wiring a doctor in the States for Demerol. Plus those tickets to South America. Putting them on his credit card was about the stupidest thing he ever did.'

They found out about that?' I said, horrified.

'Certainly. When they suspect somebody is dealing drugs, the financial records are the first thing they check – and good God, of all places, South America. Luckily Henry's dad really does own some property down there. Henry was able to cook up something fairly plausible – not that they believed him; it was more a matter of their not being able to disprove it.'