Donna Tartt: The Secret History

I must have fallen asleep on the couch, and I don't know how much later it was – not a whole lot later, because it was still light out – when Francis shook me awake, not too gently.

'Richard,' he said. 'Richard, you've got to wake up. Charles is gone.'

I sat up, rubbed my eyes. 'Gone?' I said. 'But where could he go?'

'I don't know. He's not in the house.'

'Are you sure?'

'I've looked everywhere.'

'He's got to be around somewhere. Maybe he's in the yard.'

'I can't find him.'

'Maybe he's hiding.'

'Get up and help me look.'

I went upstairs. Francis ran outside. The screen door slammed behind him.

Charles's room was in disarray and a half-empty bottle of Bombay gin – from the liquor cabinet in the library – was on the night table. None of his things were gone.

I went through all the upstairs rooms, then up to the attic.

Lampshades and picture frames, organdy party dresses yellowed with age. Gray wide-plank floors, so worn they -were almost fuzzy. A shaft of dusty cathedral light filtered through the stained glass porthole that faced the front of the house.

I went down the back staircase – low and claustrophobic, scarcely three feet wide – through the kitchen and butler's pantry, and out onto the back porch. Some distance away, Francis and Mr Hatch were standing in the driveway. Mr Hatch was talking to Francis. I had never heard Mr Hatch say much of anything to anyone and he was plainly uncomfortable. He kept running a hand over his scalp. His manner was cringing and apologetic. i!

I met Francis on his way back to the house.

'Well,' he said, 'this is a hell of a note.' He looked a bit stunned.

'Mr Hatch says he gave Charles the keys to his truck about an hour and a half ago.'

'What?'

'He said Charles came looking for him and said he had to run an errand. He promised to have the truck back in fifteen minutes.'

We looked at each other.

'Where do you think he went?' I said.

'How should I know?'

'Do you think he just took off?'

'Looks that way, doesn't it?'

We went back in the house – dim now with twilight – and sat by the window on a long davenport that had a sheet thrown over it. The warm air smelled like lilac. Across the lawn, we could hear Mr Hatch trying to get the lawn mower started up again.

Francis had his arms folded across the back of the davenport and his chin resting on his arms. He was looking out the window.

'I don't know what to do,' he said. 'He's stolen that truck, you know.'

'Maybe he'll be back.'

'I'm afraid he'll have a wreck. Or a cop will pull him over. I'll bet you anything he's plastered. That's all he needs, getting stopped for drunk driving.'

'Shouldn't we go look for him?'

'I wouldn't know where to start. He could be halfway to Boston for all we know,' 'What else can we do? Sit around and wait for the phone to ring?'

First we tried the bars: the Farmer's Inn, the Villager, the Boulder Tap and the Notty Pine. The Notch. The Four Squires. The Man of Kent. It was a hazy, gorgeous summer twilight and the gravel parking lots were packed with trucks but none of the trucks was Mr Hatch's.

Just for the hell of it, we drove by the State Liquor Store. The aisles were bright and empty, splashy rum displays ('Tropical Island Sweepstakes!') competing with somber, medicinal rows of vodka and gin. A cardboard cutout advertising wine coolers twirled from the ceiling. There were no customers, and a fat old Vermonter with a naked woman tattooed on his forearm was leaning against the cash register, passing time with a kid who worked at the Mini-Mart next door.

'So then,' I heard him say in an undertone, 'so then the guy pulls out a sawed-off shotgun. Emmett's standing here beside me, right where I am now. "We don't have the key to the cashbox," he says. And the guy pulls the trigger and I seen Emmett's brains' – he gestured – 'splatter all over that wall back there We drove to campus, to the library ('He's not there,' said Francis, Till bet a million dollars') and back to the bars again.

'He's left town,' said Francis. 'I know it,' 'Do you think Mr Hatch will call the police?'

'What would you do? If it was your truck? He won't do anything without talking to me, but if Charles isn't back, say, by tomorrow afternoon…"

We decided to drive by the Albemarle. Henry's car was parked out front. Francis and I went in the lobby cautiously, not knowing quite how we were going to deal with the innkeeper, but, miraculously, there was no one at the desk.

We went upstairs to 3-A. Camilla let us in. She and Henry were eating their dinner, from room service – lamb chops, bottle of burgundy, yellow rose in a bud vase.

Henry was not pleased to see us. 'What can I do for you?' he said, putting down his fork.

'It's Charles,' said Francis. 'He's gone AWOL.'

He told them about the truck. I sat down beside Camilla. I was hungry and her lamb chops looked pretty good. She saw me looking at them and pushed the plate at me distractedly. 'Here, have some,' she said.

I did, and a glass of wine, too. Henry ate steadily as he listened.

'Where do you think he's gone?' he said when Francis had finished.

'How the hell should I know?'

'You can keep Mr Hatch from pressing charges, can't you?'

'Not if he doesn't get the truck back. Or if Charles cracks it up.'

'How much could a truck like that possibly cost? Assuming your aunt didn't buy it for him in the first place.'

'That's beside the point.'

Henry wiped his mouth with a napkin and reached in his pocket for a cigarette. 'Charles is getting to be quite a problem,' he said. 'You know what I've been thinking? I wonder how much it would cost to hire a private nurse.'

'To get him off drink, you mean?'

'Of course. We can't send him to the hospital, obviously.

Perhaps if we got a hotel room – not here, of course, but somewhere – and if we found some trustworthy person, maybe someone who didn't speak English all that well…"

Camilla looked ill. She was slumped back in her chair. She said: 'Henry, what are you going to do? Kidnap him?'

'Kidnap is not the word that I would use.'

'I'm afraid he'll have a wreck. I think we ought to go look for him.'

'We've looked all over town,' said Francis. 'I don't think he's in Hampden.'

'Have you called the hospital?'

'No.'

'What I think we really ought to do,' said Henry, 'is call the police. Ask if there have been any traffic accidents. Do you think Mr Hatch will agree to say that he lent Charles the truck?'

'He did lend Charles the truck.'

'In that case,' said Henry, 'there should be no problem. Unless, of course, he gets stopped for drunk driving.'

'Or unless we can't find him.'

'From my point of view,' said Henry, 'the best thing that Charles could do right now is to disappear entirely from the face of the earth.'

Suddenly there was a loud, frenetic banging at the door. We looked at one other.

Camilla's face had gone blank with relief. 'Charles,' she said, 'Charles,' and she jumped up from her chair and started to the door; but no one had locked it behind us, and before she got there it flew open with a crash.

It was Charles. He stood in the doorway, blinking drunkenly around the room, and I was so surprised and glad to see him that it was a moment before I realized that he had a gun.

He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him. It was the little Beretta that Francis's aunt kept in the night table, the one we'd used for target practice the fall before. We stared at him, thunderstruck.

At last Camilla said, and in a voice which was fairly steady: 'Charles, what do you think you are doing?'

'Out of the way,' said Charles. He was very drunk.

'So you've come to kill me?' said Henry. He was still holding his cigarette. He was remarkably composed. 'Is that it?'