There were three. Bunny Corcoran, at a quarter to six. My mother, from California, at eight-forty-five. And a Dr H. Springfield, D. D. S., who suggested I visit at my earliest convenience.
I was famished. When I got to Henry's, I was glad to see that Charles and Francis were still picking at a cold chicken and some salad.
Henry looked as if he hadn't slept since I'd seen him last. He was wearing an old tweed jacket with sprung elbows, and there were grass stains on the knees of his trousers; khaki gaiters were laced over his mud-caked shoes. 'The plates are in the sideboard, if you're hungry,' he said, pulling out his chair and sitting down heavily, like some old farmer just home from the field.
'Where have you been?'
'We'll talk about it after dinner.'
'Where's Camilla?'
Charles began to laugh.
Francis put down his chicken leg. 'She's got a date,' he said.
'You're kidding. With who?'
'Cloke Rayburn.'
They're at the party,' Charles said. 'He took her out for drinks before and everything.'
'Marion and Bunny are with them,' Francis said. 'It was Henry's idea. Tonight she's keeping an eye on you- know-who.'
'You-know-who left a message for me on the telephone this afternoon,' I said.
'You-know-who has been on the warpath all day long,' said Charles, cutting himself a slice of bread.
'Not now, please,' said Henry in a tired voice.
After the dishes were cleared Henry put his elbows on the table and lit a cigarette. He needed a shave and there were dark circles under his eyes.
'So what's the plan?' said Francis.
Henry tossed the match into the ashtray. 'This weekend,' he said. Tomorrow,'
I paused with my coffee cup halfway to my lips.
'Oh my God,' said Charles, disconcerted. 'So soon?'
'It can't wait any longer.'
'How? What can we do on such short notice?'
'I don't like it either, but if we wait we won't have another chance until next weekend. If it comes to that, we may not have another chance at all.'
There was a brief silence.
This is for real?' said Charles uncertainly. This is, like, a definite thing?'
'Nothing is definite,' said Henry. The circumstances won't be entirely under our control. But I want us to be ready should the opportunity present itself.'
'This sounds sort of indeterminate,' said Francis.
It is. It can't be any other way, unfortunately, as Bunny will be doing most of the work.'
'How's that?' said Charles, leaning back in his chair.
'An accident. A hiking accident, to be precise.' Henry paused.
'Tomorrow's Sunday.'
'Yes.'
'So tomorrow, if the weather's nice, Bunny will more likely than not go for a walk.'
'He doesn't always go,' said Charles.
'Say he does. And we have a fairly good idea of his route.'
'It varies,' I said. I had accompanied Bunny on a good many of those walks the term before. He was apt to cross streams, climb fences, make any number of unexpected detours.
'Yes, of course, but by and large we know it,' said Henry. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and spread it on the table.
Leaning over, I saw it was a map. 'He goes out the back door of his house, circles behind the tennis courts, and when he reaches the woods, heads not towards North Hampden but east, towards Mount Cataract. Heavily wooded, not much hiking out that way.
He keeps on till he hits that deer path – you know the one I mean, Richard, the trail marked with the white boulder – and bears hard southeast. That runs for three-quarters of a mile and then forks '
'But you'll miss him if you wait there,' I said. 'I've been with him on that road. He's as apt to turn west here as to keep heading south.'
'Well, we may lose him before then if it comes to that,' said Henry. 'I've known him to ignore the path altogether and keep heading east till he hits the highway. But I'm counting on the likelihood he won't do that. The weather's nice – he won't want such an easy walk.'
'But the second fork? You can't say where he'll go from there.'
'We don't have to. You remember where it comes out, don't you? The ravine.'
'Oh,' said Francis.
There was a long silence.
'Now, listen,' said Henry, taking a pencil from his pocket.
'He'll be coming in from school, from the south. We can avoid his route entirely and come in on Highway 6, from the west.'
'We'll take the car?'
'Partway, yes. Just past that junkyard, before the turnoff to Battenkill, there's a gravel road. I'd thought it might be a private way, in which case we'd have to avoid it, but I went down to the courthouse this afternoon and found that it's just an old logging road. Comes to a dead end in the middle of the woods. But it should take us directly to the ravine, within a quarter mile. We can walk the rest of the way.'
'And when we get there?'
'Well, we wait. I made Bunny's walk to the ravine from school twice this afternoon, there and back, and timed it both ways. It'll take him at least half an hour from the time he leaves his room.
Which gives us plenty of time to go around the back way and surprise him.'
'What if he doesn't come?'
'Well, if he doesn't, we've lost nothing but time.'
'What if one of us goes with him?'
He shook his head. 'I've thought of that,' he said. 'It's not a good idea. If he walks into the trap himself – alone, of his own volition – there's not much way it can be traced to us.'
'If this, if that,' said Francis sourly. 'This sounds pretty haphazard to me.'
'We want something haphazard.'
'I don't see what's wrong with the first plan.'
The first plan is too stylized. Design is inherent in it through and through.'
'But design is preferable to chance.'
Henry smoothed the crumpled map against the table with the flat of his palm. 'There, you're wrong,' he said. 'If we attempt to order events too meticulously, to arrive at point X via a logical trail, it follows that the logical trail can be picked up at point X and followed back to us. Reason is always apparent to a discerning eye. But luck? It's invisible, erratic, angelic. What could possibly be better, from our point of view, than allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death?'
Everything was still. Outside, the crickets shrieked with rhythmic, piercing monotony.
Francis – his face moist and very pale – bit his lower lip. 'Let me get this straight. We wait at the ravine and just hope he happens to stroll by. And if he does, we push him off – right there in broad daylight – and go back home. Am I correct?'
'More or less,' said Henry.
'What if he doesn't come by himself? What if somebody else wanders by?'
'It's no crime to be in the woods on a spring afternoon,' Henry said. 'We can abort at any time, up to the moment he goes over the edge. And that will only take an instant. If we happen across anybody on the way to the car -1 think it improbable, but if we should – we can always say there's been an accident, and we're going for help.'
