Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'Henry, that's who,' said Francis. 'He came over when Charles was out and moved her there, lock, stock and barrel. Charles came home and her things were gone. Can you imagine? He can't even get in touch with her, she's registered under a different name. Henry won't tell him anything. For that matter, he won't tell me anything, either. Charles is absolutely beside himself. He asked me to call Henry and see if I could get anything out of him, I couldn't, of course, he was like a brick wall.'

'What's the big deal? Why are they making such a secret of it?'

'I don't know. I don't know Camilla's side but I think Henry is being very foolish.'

'Maybe she has reasons of her own.'

'She doesn't think that way,' said Francis, exasperated. 'I know Henry. This is just the sort of thing he'd do and it's just the way he'd do it. But even if there's a good reason it's the wrong way to go about it. Especially now. Charles is in a state. Henry should know better than to antagonize him after the other night.'

Uncomfortably, I thought of the walk home from the police station. 'You know, there's something I've meant to tell you,' I said, and I told him about Charles's outburst.

'Oh, he's mad at Henry all right,' said Francis tersely. 'He's told me the same thing – that Henry pushed it all off on him, basically. But what does he expect? When you get down to it, I don't think Henry asked all that much of him. That's not the reason he's angry. The real reason is Camilla. Do you want to know my theory?'

'What?'

'I think Camilla and Henry have been slipping around with each other for quite some time. I think Charles has been suspicious for a while but until lately he didn't have any proof. Then he found something out. I don't know what, exactly,' he said, raising his hand as I tried to interrupt, 'but it's not hard to imagine.

I think it's something he found out down at the Corcorans'.

Something he saw or heard. And I think it must've happened before we arrived. The night before they left for Connecticut with Cloke, everything seemed fine, but you remember what Charles was like when we got there. And by the time we left they weren't even speaking.'

I told Francis what Cloke had said to me in the upstairs hallway.

'God knows what happened, then, if Cloke was smart enough to catch on,' said Francis. 'Henry was sick, probably wasn't thinking too clearly. And the week we came back, you know, when he holed up in his apartment, I think Camilla was there a lot. She was there, I know, the day I went to take him that Mycenaean book and I think she might have even spent the night a couple of times. But then he got well and Camilla came home and for a while after that, things were okay. Remember? Around the time you took me to the hospital?'

'I don't know about that,' I said. I told him about the glass I had seen lying broken in the fireplace at the twins' apartment.

'Well, who knows what was really happening. At least they seemed better. And Henry was in good spirits too. Then there was that quarrel, the night Charles ended up in jail. Nobody seems to want to say exactly what that was all about but I'll bet it had something to do with her. And now this. Good God.

Charles is in a bloody rage.'

'Do you think he's sleeping with her? Henry?'

'If he's not, he's certainly done everything he possibly can to convince Charles that he is.' He stood up. 'I tried to call him again before I came over here,' he said. 'He wasn't in. I expect he's over at the Albemarle. I'm going to drive by and see if his car is there.'

'There must be some way you can find out what room she's in.'

'I've thought about that. I can't get anything out of the desk clerk. Maybe I'd have better luck talking to one of the maids, but I'm afraid I'm not very good at that sort of thing.' He sighed. 'I wish I could see her for just five minutes.'

'If you find her, do you think you can talk her into coming home?'

'I don't know. I must say, I wouldn't care to be living with Charles right now. But I still think everything would be okay if Henry would just keep out of it.'

After Francis left I fell asleep again. When I woke up it was four in the morning. I had slept for nearly twenty-four hours.

The nights that spring were unusually cold; this one was colder than most and the heat was on in the dormitories – steam heat, full blast, which made it unbearably stuffy even with the windows open. My sheets were damp with sweat. I got up and stuck my head out the window and took a few breaths. The chill air was so refreshing that I decided to put on some clothes and go for a walk.

The moon was full and very bright. Everything was silent except for the chirp of the crickets and the full foamy toss of the wind in the trees. Down at the Early Childhood Center, where Marion worked, the swings creaked gently to and fro, and the corkscrewed slide gleamed silver in the moonlight.

The most striking object in the playground was without question the giant snail. Some art students had built it, modeling it after the giant snail in the movie of Doctor Dolittle. It was pink, made of fiberglass, nearly eight feet tall, with a hollow shell so kids could play inside. Silent in the moonlight, it was like some patient prehistoric creature that had crawled down from the mountains: dumb, lonely, biding its time, untroubled by the articles of playground equipment which surrounded it.

Access to the snail's interior was gained by a child-sized tunnel, maybe two feet high, at the base of the tail. From this runnel, I was extremely startled to see protruding a pair of adult male feet, shod in some oddly familiar brown-and-white spectator shoes.

On hands and knees, I leaned forward and stuck my head in the tunnel and was overwhelmed by the raw, powerful stink of whiskey. Light snores echoed in the close, boozy darkness. The shell, apparently, had acted as a brandy snifter, gathering and concentrating the vapors until they were so pungent I felt nauseated just to breathe them.

I caught and shook a bony kneecap. 'Charles.' My voice boomed and reverberated in the dark interior. 'Charles.'

He began to flounder wildly, as if he had waked to find himself in ten feet of water. At length, and after repeated assurances that I was who I said I was, he fell on his back again, breathing hard.

'Richard,' he said thickly. 'Thank God. I thought you were some kind of creature from space.'

At first it had been completely dark inside but now my eyes had adjusted I was aware of a faint, pinkish light, moonlight, just enough to see by, glowing through the translucent walls. 'What are you doing here?' I asked him.

He sneezed. 'I was depressed,' he said. 'I thought if I slept here it might make me feel better.'

'Did it?'

'No.' He sneezed again, five or six times in a row. Then he slumped back on the floor.

I thought of the nursery-school kids, huddled round Charles the next morning like Lilliputians round the sleeping Gulliver.

The lady who ran the Childhood Center – a psychiatrist, whose office was down the hall from Dr Roland's – seemed to me a pleasant, grandmotherly sort, though who could predict how she'd react to finding a drunk passed out on her playground.

'Wake up, Charles,' I said.

'Leave me alone.'

'You can't sleep here.'

'I can do whatever I want,' he said haughtily.

'Why don't you come home with me? Have a drink.'

'I'm fine.'

'Oh, come on.'

'Well -just one.'

He bumped his head, hard, while crawling out. The little kids were certainly going to love that smell of Johnnie Walker when they came to school in a few hours.

He had to lean on me on the way up the hill to Monmouth House.

'Just one,' he reminded me.

I was not in terrific shape myself and had a hard time hauling him up the stairs. Finally I reached my room and deposited him on my bed. He offered little resistance and lay there, mumbling, while I went down to the kitchen.