The news of her death had caught up with him half an hour ago. He had been out walking on the campus composing a poem when he had been interrupted by the noise of sirens and the flash of blue lights.
Dr. Lane had been angry about the sirens and the lights. Across the room Lane talked with Kathleen Somerville, and he voiced the same complaint he had expressed to anyone who would listen for the past hour.
“I told them specifically not to advertise their presence,” he said. “I told them we did not need lots of noise and excitement on this campus.” Kathleen sympathetically shook her head and issued little hums now and then to indicate she was listening.
The noise from the police cars had attracted to Bradley Hall what appeared to be everyone on the campus, a couple of hundred boys anyway, some of them silly enough to come out in the cold without coats and hats. Warden had walked down among them, and they had known somehow to let him through. They had greeted him in sympathy, some of them even reaching out to touch his arm or to pat him on the shoulder, as he walked to the door of the building where the police stood. How had they known? The phenomenon of rumor had always amazed him on this campus. Something would happen, and then instantly every student would simply know, would have the facts and the details, and would gladly explain them to an ignorant adult. Someone was always being a teacher.
They had taken him inside and had shown him her body. That was the worst part, the part that he did not want to remember. But had he not seen her lying dead earlier? Of course, that was just the play, the rehearsal of the part she had been playing. This other was true, outrageous, premature, horrible . . . death.
He trembled. Cynthia was dead. And what of the man who had killed her? When were they going to find him? And why did it already smell like a funeral in here?
Kathleen had lighted an incense stick.
“I hope the smell doesn’t irritate anyone,” she said. “We’re just having a little odor problem in the basement.”
The incense reminded Warden of church. He had not been to church for years.
“More coffee? Ben?” It was Horace Somerville. He was reaching out for Warden’s cup. Warden handed it to him obediently, thanked him, smiled.
The investigator, Carol Scott, was an attractive woman who was kind and businesslike simultaneously. They had met each other last Saturday night, and Warden astonished himself by remembering that she wore exactly the same clothes—a gray woolen suit, black nylons, and low-heeled shoes.
“Mr. Warden?” she said. She approached his chair and demurely squatted so that she could look him in the eye. “Are you ready for a few more questions?”
He responded with one of his own. “Have you found Angus yet?”
“No,” she said. “We are searching every building on this campus. It will take some time.”
“May I speak to him when you find him? I want to ask him why.”
She stood and asked for a chair, which Horace provided. “No one has seen Angus Farrier since your wife saw him last Saturday night,” she said after she was seated in the ladder-backed chair. “I’m having a hard time believing that a man could live on a campus as busy as this one without being spotted by somebody.”
Warden asked her what she was suggesting.
“I’m suggesting that we may want to test a few other options,” said Carol Scott. “It’s perfectly possible that Angus Farrier was hiding in the building during the rehearsal and killed your wife. People like this have their own crazy reasons for doing what they do. He could have thought of her as a witness who needed to be eliminated. Or maybe he had an obsession. We’ll ask him when we find him. But right now, we’d like to compare your story with Mr. Carella’s.” She waved Kemper Carella over. Horace Somerville pulled up another chair. This was like a cocktail party, Warden thought. We’re all going to discuss Updike’s latest novel.
Carella was nervous, trembling, and fidgeting as he joined the group. He wore one of those pullover sweatshirts with a hood, and to Warden he looked as young as Thomas Boatwright, who was still sitting across the room on the couch. The boy had been the one to find her. That had been bad. Warden felt pity for Boatwright, who was rubbing away each tear as it appeared on his cheek and was trying to breathe evenly. The boy had found her, but he had not been the last one to see her alive. That had been Angus, of course, hadn’t it?
“Mr. Carella,” said Carol Scott. “You were in Bradley Hall shortly before Cynthia Warden died.”
“That’s right,” said Carella. “About 6:30, like I told you.”
“Why?”
“To deliver a message from her husband.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Warden. “I got an idea for a poem while I was watching the rehearsal, so I left. I had to work it out then, while it was hitting me. I don’t know where I walked, but I do recall now running into you—we were there on the sidewalk down from the library, weren’t we?—and asking you please to deliver a message to Cynthia, to tell her that I would be writing and wouldn’t be going to dinner.”
Carol Scott wanted to know why he hadn’t told his wife himself.
“I wasn’t exactly aware of leaving,” he said. “And after I had, I didn’t want to interrupt my train of thought.” It was a poem about a dying child. He could see a little girl step on a poisonous
