Somerville could remember hearing his older brother Virgil talk about when this gym was built back in the mid-1920s. Virgil had been a third-form newboy and had owned a box camera with which he had taken photographs of the construction to show his family. Virgil had been thirty-one years old when it was Horace’s turn to enroll at Montpelier, but he had pulled out the photo album and had shown Horace all his pictures from his days at school. What had stood out most vividly was the memory of all the rubble associated with the building of the gym. A decade ago they had built the huge, bulbous field house out behind the old gym—new basketball courts, swimming pool, locker rooms—but for Horace the gym was always the old gym, the building that to his young mind had seemed as big as the Waldorf and as grand as Madison Square Garden.
A mob of students and adults milled around in the mist outside the building. It wasn’t a fire, then; they wouldn’t have been so close, and of course he would have smelled the smoke or seen the flames. There was the Boatwright boy talking pleadingly with the girl in wire-rimmed glasses and the yellow rain mac. What was her name? From the way the girl’s lips were set, it looked as though young Boatwright was losing his argument. The young people were always finding some way of breaking each other’s hearts. Somerville turned to look for some adults. He wondered if Kathleen had come out to check on all the commotion. Then he saw a clutch of his colleagues over by the main lobby door to the gym. One policeman stood in front of the door; several more moved around inside. He caught the flash of a camera from inside the building despite the glare of the fluorescent lights. Was it a robbery? He would not allow himself to consider any worse possibilities.
Somerville strolled over to the circle of adults huddling under umbrellas. He recognized Ben Warden and Dan Farnham, and the third was Carella, that young fellow teaching science.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
Warden and Carella greeted him by name.
“You haven’t seen Chuck Heilman or Sam Kaufman, have you?” asked Ben Warden.
“Neither since dinner.”
“Dr. Lane wants to find somebody who can address the students in chapel tomorrow. It might turn out to be you.”
“What’s the trouble here, Ben?” Somerville asked.
“It’s bad, Horace,” said Warden. “We’ve got another boy dead.”
“Who?”
“Robert Staines.”
“The fourth-former,” said Somerville. He tried to assimilate it. Had Staines been one of the boys he had chased away from the teachers’ lounge earlier? “Not another suicide?”
“No,” said Warden. “It’s looking as though the first one wasn’t suicide, either.”
Somerville nodded. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
Warden knew few details. “His girlfriend found him dead inside the gym,” said Warden. “She roused Pat McPhee out of his apartment with her screaming. He’s the one who raised the alarm.”
“Patrick McPhee again,” said Somerville. “He’s having a bad week.”
“What terrible luck,” said Warden.
“Very bad luck,” said Somerville. Warden looked like a man fighting off a collapse—understandable, perhaps, given the pressures he had been resisting recently. What would it take to make a good man go bad? Or to go under? Somerville felt a trickle of dread make its way down his neck, and he was aware of being very tired, as if he had stayed too long at a party and regretted not leaving an hour before. “Where’s Cynthia?” he asked.
“Inside,” said Warden. “They won’t let anyone else enter the building. I’ve tried.”
“He was my student,” said Carella. “This is the second one I’ve lost this week.” He had tears in his eyes.
“Mine, too,” said Warden. “This isn’t the way teaching usually is, Kemper.”
Carella wiped his eyes like a little boy on the sleeves of his blue Montpelier sweatshirt. He had the hood up, but little tufts of hair popped out from beneath the edges. He held an umbrella in one hand and shook.
“You need a proper coat there,” said Somerville.
“This is plenty warm,” said Carella. “It’s a wrestling warm-up. I’m not shivering from the cold.” His voice broke. Somerville observed with distaste Carella’s lack of self-control.
A policeman walked out to the group from the gymnasium. “Has anyone here seen a man named Angus Farrier?” he asked.
No one had. The policeman moved to another group.
“Why do they want Angus?” said Warden.
“Maybe he saw something. His car’s here,” said Carella. Somerville considered Farnham, who stood in an ordinary trench coat with both hands in the pockets and wore a short-billed cap that did little good against the rain. Farnham hadn’t said a word since Horace had arrived, but stared into the gym.
Not shivering from the cold, thought Somerville. Neither am I, my boy. Neither am I. What is happening in this place? What is happening to my school?
Somerville’s heart nearly broke as he accused himself of dereliction of duty. If he had been at the mixer, if he had been more attentive, perhaps this latest catastrophe could have been prevented. At least he could make sure that the rest of the students were safe. Where was
