Donna Tartt - The Secret History

But it didn't. Wednesday dawned bright and cold and two more inches of snow had accumulated in the night.

'Of course,' said Julian, 'I don't mind if Edmund misses a class now and then. But three in a row. And you know what a hard time he has catching up.'

'We can't go on like this much longer,' said Henry at the twins' apartment that night, as we were smoking cigarettes over uneaten plates of bacon and eggs.

'What can we do?'

'I don't know. Except he's been missing now for seventy-two hours, and it'll start to look funny if we don't act worried pretty soon.'

'No one else is worried,' said Charles. 5 'No one else sees as much of him as we do. I wonder if Marion's home,' he said, glancing at the clock.

'Why?'

'Because maybe I should give her a call.'

'For God's sake,' said Francis. 'Don't drag her into it.'

'I have no intention of dragging her into anything. I just want to make it plain to her that none of us have seen Bunny for three days.'

'And what do you expect her to do about it?'

'I hope she'll call the police.'

'Have you lost your mind?'

'Well, if she doesn't, we're going to have to,' said Henry impatiently. The longer he's gone, the worse it will look. I don't want a big ruckus, people asking questions.'

Then why call the police?'

'Because if we go to them soon enough, I doubt there'll be any ruckus at all. Perhaps they'll send one or two people out here to poke around, thinking it's probably a false alarm '

'If no one's found him yet,' I said, 'I don't see what makes you think that a couple of traffic cops from Hampden will do any better.'

'No one's found him because no one's looking. He's not half a mile away.'

It took whoever answered a long time to bring Marion to the telephone. Henry stood patiently, gazing down at the floor; gradually his eyes began to wander, and after about five minutes he made an exasperated noise and looked up. 'My goodness,' he said. 'What's taking them so long? Let me have a cigarette, would you, Francis?'

He had it in his mouth and Francis was lighting it for him when Marion came on the line. 'Oh, hello, Marion,' he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke and turning his back to us. 'I'm glad I caught you. Is Bunny there?'

A slight pause. 'Well,' said Henry, reaching for the ashtray, 'do you know where he is, then?'

'Well, frankly,' he said at last, 'I was going to ask you the same thing. He hasn't been in class for two or three days.'

Another long silence. Henry listened, his face pleasantly blank.

Then, all of a sudden, his eyes widened. 'What?' he said, a little too sharply.

All of us were jarred awake. Henry wasn't looking at any of us but at the wall above our heads, his blue eyes round and glassy.

'I see,' he said finally.

More talk on the other end.

'Well, if he happens to stop by, I'd appreciate it if you would ask him to call me. Let me give you my number.'

When he hung up he had a strange look on his face. We all stared at him.

'Henry?' said Camilla. 'What is it?'

'She's angry. Not worried a bit. Expecting him to walk in the door any moment. I don't know,' he said, staring at the floor.

'This is very peculiar, but she said that a friend of hers – a girl named Rika Thalheim – saw Bunny standing around outside the First Vermont Bank this afternoon.'

We were too stunned to say anything. Francis laughed, a short, incredulous laugh.

'My God,' said Charles. 'That's impossible.'

'It certainly is,' Henry said dryly.

'Why would somebody just make that up?'

'I can't imagine. People think they see all kinds of things, I suppose. Well, of course, she didn't see him,' he added testily to Charles, who looked rather troubled. 'But I don't know what we should do now.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, we can't very well call and report him missing when somebody saw him six hours ago.'

'So what are we going to do? Wait?'

'No, said Henry, biting his lower lip.111 have to think of something else.'

'Where on earth is Edmund?' said Julian on Thursday morning.

'I don't know how long he plans on being absent, but it is very thoughtless of him not to have got in touch with me.'

No one answered him. He looked up from his book, amused at our silence.

'What's wrong?' he said teasingly. 'All these shameful faces.

Perhaps,' he said more coolly, 'some of you are ashamed at how insufficiently you were prepared for yesterday's lesson.'

I saw Charles and Camilla exchange a look. For some reason, this week of all weeks, Julian had loaded us down with work.

We'd all managed, somehow or other, to bring in the written assignments; but no one had kept up with the reading, and in class the day before there had been several excruciating silences which not even Henry had been able to break.

Julian glanced down at his book. 'Perhaps, before we begin,' he said, 'one of you should go call Edmund on the telephone and ask him to join us if he's at all able. I don't mind if he hasn't read his lesson, but this is an important class and he ought not to miss it.'

Henry stood up. But then Camilla said, quite unexpectedly, 'I don't think he's at home.'

Then where is he? Out of town?'

I'm not sure.'

Julian lowered his reading glasses and looked at her over the tops of them. 'What do you mean?'

'We haven't seen him for a couple of days.'

Julian's eyes widened with childish, theatrical surprise; not for the first time, I thought how much he was like Henry, that same strange mixture of chill and warmth. 'Indeed,' he said. 'Most peculiar. And you have no idea where he might be?'

The mischievous, open-ended note in his voice made me nervous.1 stared at the aqueous, rippling circles of light that the crystal vase cast over the tabletop.

'No,' said Henry. 'We're a bit puzzled.'

'I should think so.' His eyes met Henry's, for a long, strange moment.

He knows, 1 thought, with a rush of panic. He knows we're lying.

He just doesn't know what we're lying about.

After lunch, after my French class, I sat on the top floor of the library with my books spread across the table in front of me. It was a strange, bright, dreamlike day. The snowy lawn – peppered with the toylike figures of distant people – was as smooth as sugar frosting on a birthday cake; a tiny dog ran, barking, after a ball; real smoke threaded from the dollhouse chimneys.

This time, I thought, a year ago. What had I been doing? Driving a friend's car up to San Francisco, standing around in the poetry sections of bookstores worrying about my application to Hamp den. And now here I was, sitting in a cold room in strange clothes and wondering if I might go to prison.

Nihil sub sole novum. A pencil sharpener complained loudly somewhere. I put my head down on my books – whispers, quiet footsteps, the smell of old paper in my nostrils. Several weeks earlier, Henry had become angry when the twins were voicing moral objections at the idea of killing Bunny. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he snapped.

'But how,' said Charles, who was close to tears, 'how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?'

Henry lit a cigarette. 'I prefer to think of it,' he had said, 'as redistribution of matter.'

I woke, with a start, to find Henry and Francis standing over me.

'What is it?' I said, rubbing my eyes and looking up at them.

'Nothing,' said Henry. 'Will you come with us to the car?'

Sleepily 1 followed them downstairs, where the car was parked in front of the bookstore.

'What's the matter?' I said after we had got in.

'Do you know where Camilla is?'

'Isn't she at home?'

'No. Julian hasn't seen her, either.'

'What do you want with her?'

Henry sighed. It was cold inside the car, and his breath came out white. 'Something's up,' he said. 'Francis and I saw Marion at the guard booth with Cloke Rayburn. They were talking to some people from Security.'