Donna Tartt - The Secret History

I put my face in my hands.

'Tell anybody you want,' Bunny said. 'Tell the goddamn mayor. I don't care. Lock 'em right up in that combination post office and jail they got down by the courthouse. Thinks he's so smart,' he muttered. 'Well, if this wasn't Vermont he wouldn't be sleeping so well at night, let me tell you. Why, my dad's best friends with the police commissioner in Hartford. He ever finds out about this – geez. He and Dad were at school together. Used to date his daughter in the tenth grade…" His head was drooping and he shook himself again. 'Jesus,' he said, nearly falling out of his chair.

I stared at him.

'Give me that shoe, would you?'

I handed it to him, and his sock too. He looked at them for a moment, then stuffed them in the outside pocket of his blazer.

'Don't let the bedbugs bite,' he said, and then he was gone, leaving the door of my room open behind him. I could hear his peculiar limping progress all the way down the stairs.

The objects in the room seemed to swell and recede with each thump of my heart. In a horrible daze, I sat on my bed, one elbow on the windowsill, and tried to pull myself together.

Diabolical rap music floated from the opposite building, where a couple of shadowy figures were crouched on the roof, throwing empty beer cans at a disconsolate band of hippies huddled around a bonfire in a trash can, trying to smoke a joint. A beer can sailed from the roof, then another, which hit one of them on the head with a tinny sound. Laughter, aggrieved cries.

I was gazing at the sparks flying from the garbage can when suddenly I was struck by a harrowing thought. Why had Bunny decided to come to my room instead of Cloke's, or Marion's? As I looked out the window the answer was so obvious it gave me a chill. It was because my room was by far the closest. Marion lived in Roxburgh, on the other end of campus, and Cloke's was on the far side of Durbinstall. Neither place was readily apparent to a drunk stumbling out into the night. But Monmouth was scarcely thirty feet away, and my own room, with its conspicuously lighted window, must have loomed in his path like a beacon.

I suppose it would be interesting to say that at this point I felt torn in some way, grappled with the moral implications of each of the courses available to me. But 1 don't recall experiencing anything of the sort. I put on a pair of loafers and went downstairs to call Henry.

The pay phone in Monmouth was on a wall by the back door, too exposed for my taste, so I walked over to the Science Building, my shoes squelching on the dewy grass, and found a particularly isolated booth on the third floor near the chemistry labs.

The phone must've rung a hundred times. No answer. Finally, in exasperation, I pressed down the receiver and dialed the twins.

Eight rings, nine; then, to my relief, Charles's sleepy hello.

'Hi, it's me,' I said quickly. 'Something happened.'

'What?' he said, suddenly alert. I could hear him sitting up in bed.

'He told me. Just now.'

There was a long silence.

'Hello?' I said.

'Call Henry,' said Charles abruptly. 'Hang up the phone and call him right now.'

'I already did. He's not answering the phone.'

Charles swore under his breath. 'Let me think,' he said. 'Oh, hell. Can you come over?'

'Sure. Now?'

'I'll run down to Henry's and see if I can get him to the door.

We should be back by the time you get here. Okay?'

'Okay,' I said, but he'd already hung up.

When I got there, about twenty minutes later, I met Charles coming from the direction of Henry's, alone.

'No luck?'

'No,' he said, breathing hard. His hair was rumpled and he had a raincoat on over his pajamas.

'What'll we do?'

'I don't know. Come upstairs. We'll think of something.'

We had just got our coats off when the light in Camilla's room came on and she appeared in the doorway, blinking, cheeks aflame. 'Charles? What are you doing here?' she said when she saw me.

Rather incoherently, Charles explained what had happened.

With a drowsy forearm she shielded her eyes from the light and listened. She was wearing a man's nightshirt, much too big for her, and I found myself staring at her bare legs – tawny calves, slender ankles, lovely, dusty-soled boy-feet.

'Is he there?' she said.

'I know he is.'

'You sure?'

'Where else would he be at three in the morning?'

'Wait a second,' she said, and went to the telephone. 'I just want to try something.' She dialed, listened for a moment, hung up, dialed again.

'What are you doing?'

'It's a code,' she said, the receiver cradled between shoulder and ear. 'Ring twice, hang up, ring again.'

'Code?'

'Yes. He told me once – Oh, hello, Henry,' she said suddenly, and sat down.

Charles looked at me.

'Well, I'll be damned,' he said quietly. 'He must have been awake the whole time.'

'Yes,' Camilla was saying; she stared at the floor, bobbing the foot of her crossed leg idly up and down. 'That's fine. I'll tell him.'

She hung up. 'He says to come over, Richard,' she said. 'You should leave now. He's waiting for you. Why are you looking at me like that?' she said crossly to Charles.

'Code, eh?'

'What about it?'

'You never told me about it.'

'It's stupid. I never thought to.'

'What do you and Henry need a secret code for?'

'It's not a secret.'

'Then why didn't you tell me?'

'Charles, don't be such a baby.'

Henry – wide awake, no explanations – met me at the door in his bathrobe. I followed him into the kitchen, and he poured me a cup of coffee and sat me down. 'Now,' he said, 'tell me what happened.'

I did. He sat across the table, smoking cigarette after cigarette with his dark blue eyes fastened on mine. He interrupted with questions only once or twice. Certain parts he asked me to repeat.

I was so tired that I rambled a bit, but he was patient with my digressions.

By the time I finished, the sun was up and the birds were singing. Spots were swimming in front of my eyes. A damp, cool breeze shifted in the curtains. Henry switched off the lamp and went to the stove and began, rather mechanically, to make some bacon and eggs. I watched him move around the dim, dawn-lit kitchen in his bare feet.

While we ate, I looked at him curiously. He was pale, and his eyes were tired and preoccupied, but there was nothing in his expression that gave me any indication what he might be thinking.

'Henry,' I said.

He started. It was the first time either of us had said a word for half an hour or more.

'What are you thinking about?'

'Nothing.'

'If you've still got the idea of poisoning him '

He glanced up with a quick flash of anger that surprised me.

'Don't be absurd,' he snapped. 'I wish you'd shut up a minute and let me think.'

I stared at him. Abruptly he stood up and went to pour himself some more coffee. For a moment he stood with his back to me, hands braced on the counter. Then he turned around.

'I'm sorry,' he said wearily. 'It's just not very pleasant to look back on something that one has put so much effort and thought into, only to realize it's completely ridiculous. Poisoned mushrooms.

The whole idea is like something from Sir Walter Scott.'

I was taken aback. 'But I thought it was kind of a good idea,'

I said.

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. 'Too good,' he said. 'I suppose that when anyone accustomed to working with the mind is faced with a straightforward action, there's a tendency to embellish, to make it overly clever. On paper there's a certain symmetry. Now that I'm faced with the prospect of executing it I realize how hideously complicated it is.'

'What's wrong?'

He adjusted his glasses. 'The poison is too slow.'