The Twisted Thread (29 page)

“Most likely,” Matt said. “I cannot get over how young they all are.” Crouched in his car, rain pelting the windshield, he felt fantastically old.

“Manslaughter?” Vernon was pulling the cheese up from the pizza and watching the stretchy web it made between his fingers.

“That's revolting. Stop playing with your food. Maybe. Depends on forensics, the lawyer, the judge, venue, all of it. Miles is a minor.” Matt sighed. They both knew the answer was probably no.

“I just don't spend a lot of time with cheese. It's a novelty. Well, obstruction of justice at least. All the way around. And that English girl.”

Matt said that those charges would probably stick. And as for Tamsin, they had traced her call to Colson Trowbridge, and she had admitted having an affair with the chair of the board, which was why she'd even accepted a job at that ridiculous school in the first place. Porter had found out and was going to fire her, but then he needed her help when the whole debacle with Claire exploded. She had hidden Miles for several days, to keep his face out of view of the police, a stupid, desperate move that Lucinda, Tamsin claimed, had hatched. She'd removed the photos from Porter's desk for the same reason: they were panicked that someone would remark on the incredible resemblance between father and son and put it together that Betsy Lowery saw Miles, not Porter, that morning. The papers she'd been shredding had been photographs as well, but of Claire and Miles sitting together near a harbor, probably in Castine. She had no idea where they had come from. “Who took them?” Vernon wondered, then answered his own question. “Who cares?” he said, rummaging for napkins. “She's the one who's going to do time.”

Vernon still believed in the cleansing powers of time in the pen. Matt had dealt with ex-cons too long in Philadelphia to think of jail as much more than a training ground for further disaffection and rage. He also didn't think imprisonment would add that much suffering to what Porter was going through already. His ruin was complete.

Matt tried to breathe deeply, but something kept catching in his chest. “I also figured out one of the things old Fuller was lying about. He has a house in Castine. I saw a watercolor in his apartment, and the title finally clicked.
Castine Harbor at Sunset.
He was up there when Porter and Claire and Miles were. He must have seen them. He knew all along the family was involved. But there's something else, too. We'll get the warrant tomorrow.”

“Bastard,” Vernon said mildly. “Any pizza left?”

“He is, and yes, there's some left.”

Vernon mulled all this over as he indulged in another slice. “And we don't know about the baby. But Scotty does.”

“Indeed,” said Matt and reached for the car keys. “And that's who we're going to go and see now.”

“You okay?” Vernon asked as he crumpled the pizza box and stuffed it in the back of Matt's car.

“No, Vernon,” Matt said. “I am most decidedly not okay.” They drove fast through the rain, back to the school on the hill.

“God, I hate this rain,” Vernon muttered. “Been thinking about taking the kids and Kathy to a serious beach for a few days.”

“Really?” Matt asked as he turned onto the long drive leading to the campus. “Won't that enlarge your carbon footprint?”

“Ipanema,” said Vernon, almost sheepishly. “I've always wanted to go.”

But Scotty wasn't in his dorm. Scotty wasn't anywhere on campus. Scotty had, so it appeared, hastily packed some belongings and left Armitage without telling his dorm head, parents, or anyone else. In the hard rain that covered the campus, he had simply disappeared.

CHAPTER 23

R
eturning to her apartment Sunday morning, Madeline found
what she'd been dreading. Another note slid under her door, as always in lurid red pen. At least there were no more threatening quotations, but the contents more than made up for it. “We have pictures of you from last night. We know where you were and what you were doing.” At first, Madeline's heart seized. Pictures of her and Fred on the Internet or YouTube? It would be the end of their careers. Slowly, she calmed herself. Fred's bedroom had no windows. There was no way they could have gotten a camera in there. The worst they could have done was to take photos of her entering and leaving his apartment. And that, though frowned on, was not illegal. And, she reminded herself, she'd been fully clothed both times. Still, she was furious.

Just when she was stomping around her living room in rage, she heard a knock at the door. Of course it was Grace. The classics teacher looked at her in scorn and was close, Madeline knew, to asking her where she'd been. It was her reflex with people even a couple of years younger to treat them as if they were teenagers on the brink of malfeasance. Then she couldn't help herself and sputtered, “Were you out for a jog?”

“Not without my Nikes, Grace.” Madeline was wearing ballet flats.

Grace was already dressed for the memorial service, in a long brown skirt and a jacket of some somber material. “I tried to reach you last night and early this morning, but you didn't answer your phone. I wanted to be sure you knew that Miles McLellan had been arrested. That's why Porter resigned.” Although clearly still rattled by the outcome, she was savoring the triumph of her surprise.

Madeline sank abruptly to her futon. “Miles? Miles was the father?” she asked, and relief ran through her. Her instincts had been accurate. Porter could not have killed that girl.

Grace gave a firm nod, and Madeline saw at once that underneath the grim colors and the crisp, imperious tone, the woman looked undone and in her own way was seeking comfort. Madeline understood. Given the immediate options—Marie-France and Harvey—she would have chosen the intern, too. “Do you want to come in, Grace? Have some coffee? I've got to eat before I get ready for the service.” She also wanted to call Fred to be sure he knew. A wash of pleasure ran through her body at thinking his name, but it was tinged with something close to shame. They had been, well, the word was the old, silly one—
disporting
themselves—as Armitage imploded around them.

Grace peered cautiously across the threshold, wanting to accept. “It's fairly clean,” Madeline said, “and my coffee's the best in town.” Grace came in and sat at the very edge of the futon while Madeline ran water and fetched the beans. “They're still having the service? In spite of it all?” she asked, grateful for the dark scent of the roast spilling out across her fingers. Her sleep the night before had been spotty at best.

“You obviously didn't read your e-mail,” Grace said. Madeline put the coffee on the stove and popped a bagel in the toaster.

“No,” she said, “I was too busy not jogging.” It was quite liberating to speak so saucily to Grace, who even asked, quite timidly, if Madeline had an extra bagel she was willing to part with.

Which was how Madeline found herself sharing breakfast with her dorm head and discussing issues like graduation and who would now run Armitage. They assumed that a formal ceremony would be canceled and that Sarah Talmadge would be appointed to an interim position. And then Grace put down her coffee cup and with no warning burst into tears. “Madeline, it's so shameful. I really didn't see that Claire was pregnant. I really didn't know. And to think of everything that's happened because of that, it's just so distressing.”

Which was how Madeline found herself comforting the distraught woman, wrapping an arm around her small shoulders and telling Grace that she herself was just as responsible, had been just as blind. And that it was probably nothing they would ever forgive themselves for. But it didn't mean they had to run, did it? They could be brave and try to undo whatever bit was theirs to undo.

“So you're staying?” Grace sniffed. “Well, I'm glad. It takes courage not to leave when a situation looks bleak. But we'll come back,” she said, meaning the academy and its reputation. Then her face clouded, and Madeline thought they were both thinking that that kind of return might be possible for them but not, of course, for Claire, her baby, Porter McLellan, who though still alive, might well have wished himself dead.

“I'm sorry to unburden myself on you. I'll let you get dressed now,” Grace said, scarlet in the cheeks as she brushed bagel crumbs from her skirt to her palm.

“It's okay, Grace. I'm happy to help,” Madeline said, and she let her colleague out the door. Her colleague. This was what it meant to have them. They weren't your friends necessarily. They were people you worked with, often rather closely and on rather intimate issues. And now and then, they revealed themselves to you, and through those revelations you might begin to earn a mutual respect. “Thank you, Madeline,” Grace said and sniffed.

Once Grace was out the door, Madeline called Fred, but he didn't answer. He was probably in the shower or on his way to breakfast. He'd hear the news soon enough. Besides, she needed to get ready. How pathetic that such sad circumstances could devolve into such petty questions: who cared what anyone wore at a time like this? There was nothing for it; she still had to face her closet, and out of respect for Claire's youth, she refused black. But the heat was going to be powerful today and the limes and oranges of her summer clothing were far too festive. Madeline settled finally on a navy cotton skirt, a white blouse, and sensible flat shoes. She tried and at last succeeded in making her hair stick on the top of her head in the semblance of a chignon.

The service was called for 9:00, but it was just 8:15 and she was terribly restless. What was going to happen to Armitage? What was going to happen with Fred? Should she stay here at the academy as she'd agreed? There was time for a walk around campus, and as she crossed the Quad, she thought about Sarah Talmadge. Would she eventually apply for Porter's job? He had trained her well. She did her job with an efficiency and a compassion that everyone said reminded them of Porter. If appearances could be believed.

Madeline made her way down to the Bluestone, which was high with all the rain of the last week. It was Lucinda's elegant face she kept imagining. The way it had frozen at Last Tea as she watched the world she and Porter had created vanish with a few words. The destruction in front of her, all the hard work, all the years of service, ending in this disaster. Even if Miles wasn't convicted and Porter managed to stay out of jail—they could, after all, afford the most expensive legal help—it was a life in ruins. There was no way they wouldn't be drastically changed. There was no place they could move where the story wouldn't twist itself around them, dark, tarnishing.

The river was brown and running swiftly. Madeline threw in her last message from the Reign, balled into a crumpled sphere, and watched it bob almost instantly out of sight downstream. She turned around and went back up the bank, seeing the wide expanse of the campus sweep out before her.

There it was. The trees, the brick, the gleaming glass. A whole beautiful, well-oiled world. Its proportions lovely, its aims quite high, it spread there in the light before her. Armitage, like a castle that had survived a bomb, turrets and towers and buttresses still standing in spite of the smoke that swirled around it. As she walked back, Madeline knew with a not entirely positive certainty that Armitage would weather the disruptions of Claire's death and her baby's disappearance. The trustees would find another taker, another head, eager to be known as the one who pulled the school together after this blow. Its endowment was healthy enough to withstand the students who left, the students who protested, the parents and alumni who wouldn't give money. It was Armitage: there would always be people who wanted to come here and have a little of its glory conferred on them, a scrap of its reputation. Classes and dormitories would fill again. The shame and excitement of the crimes would eventually dissipate. It was what was meant by the idea of an institution. The school was larger and sturdier and more deeply rooted than anyone who lived, worked, or studied here. It had its own separate life.

Madeline took a deep breath as she walked under the elm tree in full, arching leaf near her apartment. She had never gone to a school where the trees grew that tall, the buildings were that grand, a place that confident of itself. Where she'd gone, bake sales made a difference. Here, a gift under five million could barely get your name on a plaque, much less a building. She stopped to look up at the saw-toothed edges of the trees and the gentle sway of the limbs.

Some of those inside this heady and entitled realm would also stay and stay, living off the school's sap. Harvey Fuller was going to die here, Madeline predicted; he'd have a stroke in the middle of the
Drosophila
lab and crush his skull on a microscope. Rob Barlow. Grace Peters. People whose identities were so wound into being teachers, and teachers at this very school, that they couldn't survive outside it. Like certain New Yorkers, whom you could never imagine off the island of Manhattan, more than a half block from a sushi bar and a dry cleaner. Some of these teachers grew so twisted into the place you couldn't tell when Armitage stopped and they started. But wasn't that precisely what the school said it didn't want? Wasn't the ethic supposed to be one of individual triumph and the ability to take risks? If the teachers didn't embody that ideal, then why should the students? Fred, in leaving, was doing what every student was encouraged to do: take a step beyond security and experiment. What Madeline was doing by staying was not exactly clear.

Across the Quad, a few faculty members were out walking their dogs. Madeline gave everyone a brief wave, which was returned just as briefly. No one wanted to reveal too much right now. It was still too sad, too raw, and nothing anyone could say could buffer the shock. Madeline could almost see Fred's dorm from where she stood. She was glad he was going, in spite of everything that had just happened between them.

Madeline noticed then that she had sweat through her white blouse and realized that she had just enough time to go back and change before heading over to the chapel. She knew, too, that she would honor her agreement to return and that she would try to stay for a few years. Then, who knew, she might go back and get a degree in writing and actually finish a collection for real. Or she might meet someone and get married and have a baby. Or study for a Ph.D. in literature and teach kids at college. She liked classes, she liked homework, she liked trying to make kids write clearer sentences. So what if irony were dead and this was earnest work done earnestly? She enjoyed it. She was going to push to move to a bigger apartment and get a slightly better coaching assignment and then the next crop of interns would come in and get the short end of the stick. Or the raw end of the deal. She could never get those expressions right. And that was how the system worked. But she would ask Sarah if she could be a mentor for the interns, if that could be part of her package. They should have someone they could talk to, someone to drink with at Mackey's.

In a shirt that was a little wrinkled, Madeline arrived at the chapel, which looked like it had been transported intact from a Norman village and deposited right here in the middle of New England. But it had had a face-lift on the way: every crenellation, every gargoyle was perfectly intact. Centuries of rain and angry mobs hadn't damaged this building, which was only about eighty-five years old, though the details that it strove to copy would have been at home in the thirteenth century.

It was almost full, though the service was still ten minutes off. The students and faculty had been required to attend, but what seemed to be the entire staff was also there: the housekeepers, the cafeteria workers, the landscapers. Everyone had dressed for the event. Sarah was at the lectern, looking drawn but composed. The glossy heads in the front row belonged, Madeline guessed, to Flora Duval and her former husband. She looked around for Fred, who was on the far side of the chapel, between another art teacher and his dorm head. He was busy studying the program and not distractible at the moment. Madeline slipped into a pew almost at the back and was startled when the man to her left turned toward her: it was Matt Corelli. He was wearing neatly pressed khakis and a navy jacket of heavy linen. His tie was also dark blue. He smiled at her and said, “I was hoping I'd see you here. Good thing you got in late.” He looked tired, as if he'd been up late, and he, like Sarah, also looked sad. Madeline doubted very much that he had wanted to arrest Miles and Porter. But he also looked very handsome: his dark hair combed back from his forehead, his large, square hand holding a creamy pamphlet, the program for Claire's service.

“I'm not late,” Madeline protested. “It doesn't start for ten more minutes.” She noticed that his partner was next to him. He also said hello.

“You're right,” Matt said and then looked away and said, so quietly she almost didn't hear him, “but I'm still glad to see you.” She didn't think that she was imagining the grin his partner broke into, either. Just then the music started, sonorous pumpings from the organ. A subdued fanfare of Bach. Henry Granding was an organist of the old school—was there any other kind? Madeline wondered—and he gave his renditions an athleticism that perhaps their composers did not intend.

It was a bit distracting to have the detective right next to her, but she was trying hard to take in the scene around her. The pews were filled to bursting, but with whom? The parents were in the front row as well as several handsome, blond children who must have been Claire's half siblings. Clearly, there were other members of her family in the rows behind Flora and William, too. Madeline could see only the back of Flora's golden head, but when she turned, Madeline saw she wore the same huge dark glasses as she had before. After the family came an array of the teachers. Almost seventy of them, heads dipped, hands folded. Every single one of them looked drained, and most had their eyes closed, in prayer, Madeline guessed, that this year would finally end.