The Chatham School Affair

Reed, I mean.Witness: Yes, I did.Mr. Parsons: And what activity was that?Witness: I helped him build his boat.

Even as I’d said it, I recalled how often I’d gone down to the boathouse Mr. Reed had rented near the harbor, the two of us drifting down the coastal road in his old car, Mr. Reed talking quietly, I listening silently, my fingers drumming incessantly on the sketchbook in my lap, increasingly extravagant visions playing in my mind, the vagabond life I so desperately wanted, trains hurling through mountain tunnels, night boats to Tangier.

But it hadn’t been my boyish fantasies, nor even my relationship with Mr. Reed, that Mr. Parsons had been intent upon exploring the day he’d questioned me in court, and I remember how my body had tensed as he began to close in upon what I knew to be his sole intended prey:Mr. Parsons: So during this last year you spent at Chatham School, you came to know Miss Channing well?Witness: Yes, I did.Mr. Parsons: And sometimes you visited her at her cottage on Black Pond, isn’t that so?Witness: On Black Pond, yes, sir.Mr. Parsons: In the company of Sarah Doyle, is that right?Witness: Yes.

I saw all those many occasions pass through my mind as the questions continued, my answers following, Mr. Parsons now beginning to lead the silent courtroom spectators into a steadily more sinister tale, my own mind working to avoid that part of it Mr. Parsons had not yet discovered, trying not to see again what I’d seen that fateful day, a woman seated on a porch, snapping beans from the large blue bowl that rested on her lap, dropping their severed ends into a bucket at her feet, then rising slowly as I came toward her from the distance, peering at me intently, a single freckled hand lifting to shield her eyes from the bright summer sun.

Concealing all of that, my answers had continued to take the form of Mr. Parsons’ questions, adding nothing, going along with him, responding to questions that sounded innocent enough but which I knew to be lethally aimed at the only villain in the room.Mr. Parsons: Did you have occasion to meet with Miss Channing in her classroom at Chatham School on Friday afternoon, December 21, 1926?Witness: Yes.Mr. Parsons: Could you tell the court the substance of that meeting?

It had happened during the last week of school before the Christmas break, I told the court, nearly a month after the time I’d come up the coastal road and noticed Miss Channing and Mr. Reed talking together at the edge of the bluff. I had left her class later that same afternoon, feeling rather low because she’d not seemed terribly enthusiastic about some of the drawings I’d shown her, wide seas and dense forests, suggesting that I try my hand at what she called “a smaller canvas,” a vase of flowers or a bowl of fruit.

During most of the next day I’d brooded over her suggestion. Then an idea had occurred to me, a way of regaining some measure of the esteem I so craved at that time. With that goal in mind, I’d returned to Miss Channing’s classroom at the end of the following day.Mr. Parsons: Miss Channing was alone when you came to her classroom?Witness: Yes, she was.

Up until that moment in my testimony I’d answered Mr. Parsons’ questions directly and with little elaboration. Then, rather suddenly, I began to supply unnecessary details. I’d gone to Miss Channing’s room with a particular purpose in mind, I told him, my eyes fixed directly on Mr. Parsons, my voice low, almost a whisper, as if I’d convinced myself that whatever I said from then on would be kept strictly secret between Mr. Parsons and me, that there was no jury present, no benches filled with spectators, no reporters to record the things I said and send them out into the larger world.

Miss Channing had been preparing for the next day’s classes, I told the court. I’d come through the door silently, so that she’d been slightly startled when she saw me.Mr. Parsons: Startled? Why was she startled?Witness: Probably because she’d been expecting someone else.Mr. Parsons: Who?Witness: Mr. Reed, I suppose.Mr. Parsons: What happened after that?Witness: She spoke to me.Mr. Parsons: What did she say?

“Henry?” she said.

I stood at the door, facing her. From the way she looked at me, I could tell that she hadn’t expected to see me there.

“What is it, Henry?” she asked.

I wanted to answer her directly, tell her frankly why I’d come to see her at that hour, but the look in her face silenced me.Mr. Parsons: What look was that, Henry?Witness: Well Miss Channing had a way of looking at you that made you … made you.Mr. Parsons: Made you what?Witness: I don’t know. She was different, that’s all. Different from the other teachers.Mr. Parsons: In what way was she different?Witness: Well, she taught her classes in a different way than the other teachers did. I mean, she told us stories about the places she’d been to, about things that had happened in these places.Mr. Parsons: These “things that had happened,” were they pleasant things?Witness: Not always.Mr. Parsons: In fact, many of them were often very cruel things, weren’t they? Stories about violence? About death?Witness: Sometimes.Mr. Parsons: She told the class about a certain Saint Lucia, isn’t that right? A woman who’d gouged out her own eyes? Witness: Yes. She told us about the church in Venice, where her body is.Mr. Parsons: Another one of her stories involved the murder of children, didn’t it? Witness: Yes. The little princes. That’s what she called them.

Mr. Parsons had continued with similar questions, unearthing other of Miss Channing’s stories, tales of children who’d been buried alive, women who’d been drowned, before returning at last to the afternoon I’d gone to her room.Mr. Parsons: All right. Now, tell me, Henry, did you finally tell Miss Channing why you’d come to her classroom?Witness: Yes, I did.Mr. Parsons: What did you tell her?

“I want to draw you,” I told her.

“Draw me?” she asked. “Why?”

“I tried to do it once before,” I said, concealing my true purpose in wanting a portrait of her. “But it didn’t come out very well.” I lifted the sketch pad I’d tucked beneath my arm. “I thought I’d try again if you wouldn’t mind.”

“You want me to pose for you, Henry?”

I nodded. “Just until you … go to Mr. Reed.”

I could see that the expression I’d used, the way I’d said “go to Mr. Reed,” had sounded suggestive to her, but I added nothing else.Mr. Parsons: And so you could tell, even at that early time, that Miss Channing was already aware that you were suspicious of her relationship with Mr. Reed?Witness: I think so, yes.Mr. Parsons: And how did she react to the fact that she might be coming