Thomas’s shoulder throbbed. He was getting angry. “Don’t hit me,” he said.
“Don’t accuse me,” said Staines.
For a second it was a standoff. Thomas wanted to be sensible. “Let’s just go talk to Mr. Carella,” he said. Staines exploded all over again.
“You want us both kicked out of school?” said Staines.
Of course he didn’t want them kicked out of school. He reminded Staines that if you turned yourself in, you were often acquitted. The very worst you could get was probation. They liked for you to be honest.
“Probation, hell. I’m already on probation,” said Staines.
Thomas was shocked. He had lived either with Staines or next door to him since they had enrolled at Montpelier, and he had never known about an honor trial. “What for?” he asked.
Staines said never mind. He was blocking the door so that Thomas couldn’t leave.
“You be damn careful about what you say,” said Staines. “If I’m guilty, you’re guilty too. Remember that. You’re guilty of an honor violation. I go down, you go down, too.”
“I haven’t deceived anybody,” said Thomas. But he was not sure whether that was altogether accurate.
“No?” said Staines. “Mr. Carella left this room with the impression that nothing illegal had been going on. Did you contribute to that impression?”
“I just wanted somebody to walk with me over to Bradley,” said Thomas. “You can’t get me involved in this.”
Staines said it was too late, that the only way to handle it was to keep quiet. “You say nothing, I say nothing, nobody suffers.”
Thomas knew this was the time to blast him, to turn him in, to let the school authorities handle it. But what would people say? He didn’t want people like Mr. Warden and Mr. McPhee and his parents hearing about his having to go before the honor council. And what would his teammates say if Staines got dismissed? The honor system was a funny mechanism. You were supposed to be honest, but there was also an unwritten code that said you gave a fellow student the benefit of the doubt.
But he shouldn’t have any doubt. Staines was already on probation.
But if he went to the honor council, he would have to testify in front of all those seniors. And what if he turned Staines in and they acquitted him? What would it be like to live next door to the guy then?
Thomas said he would think it over.
But what he really wanted to do was to die.
SCENE 5
Dean Samuel Kaufman was in a snit.
All this whispering, all these surreptitious meetings all day, and nobody included him in a thing. Why was he academic dean, if he was to be constantly excluded? He had just about had enough of this high-handed Eldridge Lane and his breach of protocol. Maybe it was time to resign.
Well, no, actually it was time for cocktails before dinner. Not time to resign; time for a drink. He admired himself for being able to make a play on words despite such a humiliating day.
It was 6:00 P.M. Kaufman was at his home on campus waiting for his wife, Virginia, to get home from that outrageously long play rehearsal Dan Farnham had begged her to attend. Had anyone asked Dean Samuel Kaufman to take a part in the play? Of course not. But they’d asked his wife. She was going to be Iago’s wife, Emilia, the lady-in-waiting to Desdemona. Ginny was far too old to be making a spectacle of herself in some high school play, but since it was Shakespeare, Kaufman supposed it was all right.
It was getting on toward dinnertime. Surely Ginny would be home in a minute. Kaufman poured himself a nice tall bourbon and ginger ale and turned on the television news. If they had anything adverse about the school on television, it wouldn’t be Kaufman’s fault. He’d had nothing to do with any of this mess from the moment Pat McPhee had discovered the body. Eldridge Lane had handled the entire matter himself from the beginning, just exactly like some . . . Kaufman wasn’t sure what he was like, but it was tacky.
Lane’s handling of the situation irked Kaufman to no end. The police coming out here last night and again this morning, the assembly today before lunch, the telephone calls to and from the parents of Russell Phillips: had Kaufman been invited to any of it? Not at all.
“Just mind the office, Sam,” Eldridge Lane had said. Mind the office! As if he were the secretary!
Kaufman was forty-five years old and had taught intermediate Latin and third-form English grammar before his promotion to the deanship. He held advanced degrees in educational theory, and he was a very respected member of the academic community—at least in some circles. Just last year he had published an article in a regional educational journal on how to teach Latin vocabulary with a rotary dial telephone, but did anyone at Montpelier School even mention it? No matter. Someday all his labors would be recognized. He had shaped up the Montpelier curriculum very nicely in the three years since he’d taken over as dean. They now offered an elective course in philology (why, oh, why wouldn’t any students at least try it?), and the individual classroom teachers never ever ran out of chalk or grade report forms now that Kaufman had moved in. Did anyone utter a word of thanks? His predecessor, Horace Somerville, had not cared a whit about chalk and grade report forms. Horace Somerville was a crusty old charmer of a character to have on the faculty, but that office had been in absolute shambles until Kaufman had come along.
That first drink went down too quickly. He’d have to nurse the second or he might cause a scandal in the dining hall by showing up tipsy. He checked for his travel-size spray of Binaca mouth freshener in the pocket of his sports coat. It was there. He carried it with him everywhere.
Kaufman’s back was bothering him. It always did when
