Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'Yes, of course, but by and large we know it,' said Henry. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and spread it on the table.

Leaning over, I saw it was a map. 'He goes out the back door of his house, circles behind the tennis courts, and when he reaches the woods, heads not towards North Hampden but east, towards Mount Cataract. Heavily wooded, not much hiking out that way.

He keeps on till he hits that deer path – you know the one I mean, Richard, the trail marked with the white boulder – and bears hard southeast. That runs for three-quarters of a mile and then forks '

'But you'll miss him if you wait there,' I said. 'I've been with him on that road. He's as apt to turn west here as to keep heading south.'

'Well, we may lose him before then if it comes to that,' said Henry. 'I've known him to ignore the path altogether and keep heading east till he hits the highway. But I'm counting on the likelihood he won't do that. The weather's nice – he won't want such an easy walk.'

'But the second fork? You can't say where he'll go from there.'

'We don't have to. You remember where it comes out, don't you? The ravine.'

'Oh,' said Francis.

There was a long silence.

'Now, listen,' said Henry, taking a pencil from his pocket.

'He'll be coming in from school, from the south. We can avoid his route entirely and come in on Highway 6, from the west.'

'We'll take the car?'

'Partway, yes. Just past that junkyard, before the turnoff to Battenkill, there's a gravel road. I'd thought it might be a private way, in which case we'd have to avoid it, but I went down to the courthouse this afternoon and found that it's just an old logging road. Comes to a dead end in the middle of the woods. But it should take us directly to the ravine, within a quarter mile. We can walk the rest of the way.'

'And when we get there?'

'Well, we wait. I made Bunny's walk to the ravine from school twice this afternoon, there and back, and timed it both ways. It'll take him at least half an hour from the time he leaves his room.

Which gives us plenty of time to go around the back way and surprise him.'

'What if he doesn't come?'

'Well, if he doesn't, we've lost nothing but time.'

'What if one of us goes with him?'

He shook his head. 'I've thought of that,' he said. 'It's not a good idea. If he walks into the trap himself – alone, of his own volition – there's not much way it can be traced to us.'

'If this, if that,' said Francis sourly. 'This sounds pretty haphazard to me.'

'We want something haphazard.'

'I don't see what's wrong with the first plan.'

The first plan is too stylized. Design is inherent in it through and through.'

'But design is preferable to chance.'

Henry smoothed the crumpled map against the table with the flat of his palm. 'There, you're wrong,' he said. 'If we attempt to order events too meticulously, to arrive at point X via a logical trail, it follows that the logical trail can be picked up at point X and followed back to us. Reason is always apparent to a discerning eye. But luck? It's invisible, erratic, angelic. What could possibly be better, from our point of view, than allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death?'

Everything was still. Outside, the crickets shrieked with rhythmic, piercing monotony.

Francis – his face moist and very pale – bit his lower lip. 'Let me get this straight. We wait at the ravine and just hope he happens to stroll by. And if he does, we push him off – right there in broad daylight – and go back home. Am I correct?'

'More or less,' said Henry.

'What if he doesn't come by himself? What if somebody else wanders by?'

'It's no crime to be in the woods on a spring afternoon,' Henry said. 'We can abort at any time, up to the moment he goes over the edge. And that will only take an instant. If we happen across anybody on the way to the car -1 think it improbable, but if we should – we can always say there's been an accident, and we're going for help.'

'But what if someone sees us?'

'I think that extremely unlikely,' said Henry, dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee with a splash.

'But possible.'

'Anything is possible, but probability will work for us here if only we let it,' said Henry. 'What are the odds that some previously undetected someone will stumble into that very isolated spot, during the precise fraction of a second it will take to push him over?'

'It might happen.'

'Anything might happen, Francis. He might be hit by a car tonight, and save us all a lot of trouble.'

A soft, damp breeze, smelling of rain and apple blossoms, blew through the window. I had broken out in a sweat without realizing it and the wind on my cheek made me feel clammy and lightheaded.

Charles cleared his throat and we turned to look at him.

'Do you know…" he said. 'I mean, are you sure it's high enough? What if he '

'I went out there today with a tape measure,' Henry said. 'The highest point is forty-eight feet, which should be ample. The trickiest part will be to get him there. If he falls from one of the lower points, he'll end up with nothing worse than a broken leg.

Of course, a lot will rest on the fall itself. Backwards seems better than forward for our purposes.'

'But I've heard of people falling from airplanes and not dying,' said Francis. 'What if the fall doesn't kill him?'

Henry reached behind his spectacles and rubbed an eye. 'Well, you know, there's a little stream at the bottom,' he said. 'There's not much water, but enough. He'll be stunned, no matter what.

We'd have to drag him there, hold him face-down for a bit – shouldn't think that'd take more than a couple of minutes. If he was conscious, maybe a couple of us could even go down and walk him over…'

Charles passed a hand over his damp, flushed forehead. 'Oh, Jesus,' he said. 'Oh my God. Just listen to us.'

'What's the matter?'

'Are we insane?'

'What are you talking about?'

'We're insane. We've lost our minds. How can we possibly do this?'

'I don't like the idea any more than you do.'

'This is crazy. I don't even know how we can talk about this.

We've got to think of something else.'

Henry took a sip of his coffee. 'If you can think of anything,' he said, Td be delighted to hear it.'

'Well -1 mean, why can't we just leave'? Get in the car tonight and drive away?'

'And go where?' Henry said flatly. 'With what money?'

Charles was silent.

'Now,' said Henry, drawing a line on the map with a pencil.

'I think it will be fairly easy to get away without being seen, though we should be especially careful about turning into the logging road and coming out of it onto the highway.'

'Will we use my car or yours?' said Francis.

'Mine, I think. People tend to look twice at a car like yours.'

'Maybe we should rent one.'

'No. Something like that might ruin everything. If we keep it as casual as possible, no one will give us a second glance. People don't pay attention to ninety percent of what they see.'

There was a pause.

Charles coughed slightly. 'And after?' he said. 'We just go home?'

'We just go home,' said Henry. He lit a cigarette. 'Really, there's nothing to worry about,' he said, shaking out the match.

'It seems risky, but if you look at it logically it couldn't be safer.

It won't look like a murder at all. And who knows we have reason to kill him? I know, I know,' he said impatiently when I tried to interrupt. 'But I should be extremely surprised if he's told anyone else.'

'How can you say what he's done? He could have told half the people at the party.'

'But I'm willing to bank on the odds he hasn't. Bunny's unpredictable, of course, but at this point his actions still make a kind of rudimentary horse sense. I had very good reason to think he'd tell you first.'