Passion Play

by W. Edward Blain

  “What time was this?” asked Carol Scott.

  “A few minutes before 7:00.”

  “And where is Mr. Farnham now?” asked Carol Scott.

  No one had any idea.

  SCENE 13

  They found Farnham in Patrick McPhee’s apartment. He was drinking coffee and eating a sandwich, and it was clear that he had been weeping. Carol Scott was with three uniformed police officers and another investigator, and the first thing she asked was for permission to search his apartment in the gym.

  “For what?” said Farnham. He sounded astonished. He had removed his tie and had slipped on a navy blue crewnecked sweater.

  “I have probable cause,” said Carol Scott. She had said the same thing to Warden and Carella before she had searched their homes. “Will you allow us to search it now?”

  Farnham said yes.

  “May I have a key?”

  “It’s always unlocked,” he said.

  She sent three of the four men to his apartment and remained to question him herself.

  “Should I leave?” asked Patrick McPhee. He, too, had changed from coaching attire to a sweater and slacks. His sweater was red with green horizontal stripes.

  “No,” she said. “I want you to be here.”

  The light was warm and comfortable in McPhee’s apartment. One uniformed policeman stood by the door. Farnham sat in the easy chair near the floor lamp; McPhee sat on the couch; Carol Scott pulled in a wooden chair from the dining room and sat facing both men. She asked Farnham where he had gone after the rehearsal.

  “To get some dinner,” he said.

  “No one reported seeing you in the dining hall,” she said.

  “I didn’t go to the dining hall. I came back here.”

  “Here? To Mr. McPhee’s apartment?”

  “No, here to the gym. To my own apartment.”

  He said he arrived at his home around 6:30 and decided to make himself a bowl of soup for dinner. McPhee interrupted.

  “It was a few minutes before 6:30, actually,” said McPhee. “Don’t you remember, Dan? We walked as far as the dining hall together. We commented on how they were having a buffet supper tonight.”

  “Okay, sure,” said Farnham. “A few minutes before, then.” Carol Scott asked why he did not eat in the dining hall, where the meals were free.

  “My stomach was bothering me a little,” he said. “I wanted a blander diet.”

  “So you were alone from 6:30 until when?”

  He said he walked back over to the theater around 6:50. “I wanted to be on time,” he said. “So that we could be ready to go when the boys arrived. And I also wanted to check with Cynthia Warden about why she seemed so distressed during rehearsal. She was uncharacteristically upset.”

  Carol Scott asked him to go on.

  “I got to the theater and was annoyed to find all the lights out—the houselights, the stage lights, everything.”

  “The lights were off in the entire building?”

  “No, not in the lobby area. But the theater itself was completely dark. I called out loud for Cynthia and got no answer, so I climbed up to the light booth to turn the stage lights back on, and when I got there, I discovered that they were already on. That is, they were turned on, but they weren’t casting any light.”

  Carol Scott asked how that could be.

  “It took me a second to figure it out,” said Farnham. “Then I realized that somebody must have thrown the blackout switch from backstage. Our theater is built so that the stage manager, in an emergency, can turn out all the lights on the stage from backstage if he needs to. He can also turn on and off the houselights. All the master controls are of course up in the light booth at the back of the auditorium.”

  “So how did you relight the stage?”

  “It was simple,” he said. “I just pushed the reset button on the master control panel. It overrides the backstage controls. The stage lights surged on, and that’s when I saw Cynthia.” He started to tremble. “Even from the back of the house, I could sense she was dead. But to make sure, I came down to the stage and took her pulse. Then I don’t know what happened. I just freaked out. I had to get out of the building right away, you know? I should have called the police or the switchboard from the phone backstage, but I didn’t think of that. I just thought that whoever had done it might still be in the building, and I wanted to get away.”

  “And where did you go?”

  “I ran all the way back here and saw Pat’s lights on. I pounded on his door. I told him what had happened, he told me to calm down, and then he offered to call the police for me.”

  “But when I called,” said McPhee, “I heard that you were already on the way.”

  “That’s when I remembered the boys who were on their way over for rehearsal,” said Farnham. “To my everlasting shame, I confess that I forgot all about the students. I behaved very selfishly.”

  “And you had no curiosity about returning to the theater?”

  “I did,” said McPhee. “In fact, I mentioned a couple of times that we should perhaps go over there.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Farnham. “I couldn’t see Cynthia like that again. I touched her, and she was dead.” He held his fists to his temples as though his head might explode.

  “I thought it was best to wait here with him,” said McPhee.

  “I understand,” she said.

  The other investigator and the two policemen knocked and entered through the door to the hallway of the gym. The investigator was carrying a tan cardboard shoe box. He conferred for a moment with Carol Scott, opened the box, showed her the contents. She took the box from him.

  “Mr. Farnham, is this yours?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I keep my bank statements in it. What do you want with those?”

  “These are not bank statements,” said Carol Scott.

  She walked over to the chair where Farnham sat and held the box under the light of the floor lamp. Inside were several random items: a ticket stub from a theater in New York, a pair of athletic socks, the button from a shirt, a signet ring. And an embroidered handkerchief—two Cs on either side of a large W.

  She did not touch the handkerchief but pointed to its monogram with a pencil.

  “Whose handkerchief is this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Farnham.

  “Cynthia Cunningham Warden,” said Carol Scott. “Isn’t this her monogram?”

  “What is all this?” said Farnham.

  “They found this on the back of the top shelf in your bedroom,” said Carol Scott.

  “That’s not mine,” said Farnham. He looked around the room for confirmation. McPhee spoke quietly.

  “Dan,” said McPhee, “I got an idea about the blocking and left the dining hall without eating. I knocked on your door at 6:30. You weren’t home. I called you at 6:40. You still weren’t home. You were never home when you said you were. I tried calling the theater and couldn’t get you there, either. Where were you?”

  Farnham shook his head and swallowed and held his hands out in front of him as if he were trying to settle down an unruly class of students.

  “Now wait a minute,” he said. “I was at home when I said I was. Something is wrong here.”

  Carol Scott asked the policeman who had brought the shoebox whether he had seen any sign of dirty dishes in Famham’s apartment. He had not.

  “I always do my dishes immediately after I use them,” said Farnham.

  “You went back to the theater, you made a pass, you were rebuffed, you lost your temper, you killed her. Isn’t that what happened, Mr. Farnham?”

  Farnham said no.

  “Mr. Farnham, I should advise you at this point that you have the right to remain silent,” said Carol Scott. She recited the standard list.

  “Hold on,” said Farnham. “This is all going too fast.”

  “Mr. Farnham,” said Carol Scott, “I would like for you to come with me to police headquarters.”


  “No,” said Farnham. “This is a mistake.”

  Carol Scott held out the shoe box they had found in Farnham’s apartment. “The Staines boy’s shirt was missing a button,” she said. “The Phillips boy’s body was missing the socks. These are souvenirs.”

  Farnham had an immediate reply. “Angus must have planted them there,” he said. “He could have. I never lock my apartment.”

  “You were in New York over Thanksgiving,” said Carol Scott.

  “Yes, I was,” said Farnham. “Anyone at the hotel could vouch for me.”

  “The police in New York found a receipt from the Montpelier School Store on the floor of a pornographic movie theater last week. It was lying near the body of a boy whose neck had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Farnham.

  “Your school chaplain told me last week that he was concerned over your violent outbursts,” said Carol Scott. “Psychosexual, he called them.”

  Daniel Farnham’s teeth ground against one another so hard that the others in the room could hear them. Then he opened his mouth as wide as a baby bird’s and screamed one loud continuous inarticulate noise.

  Carol Scott produced a set of handcuffs, and two of the uniformed policemen took hold of Farnham’s arms.

  All at once he collapsed into limpness and began to sob. “Heilman,” he said. “That son of a bitch betrayed me.”

  Carol Scott held the shoebox out for McPhee to see. “Don’t touch,” she said. “Just look. Do you recognize that ring?”

  “Yes,” said McPhee. “It was Angus’s.”

  “Then we’re still looking for Angus Farrier,” she said, “only now we’re looking for a corpse.”

  SCENE 14

  Richard waved the edge of his Reuben sandwich as if it were a weapon.

  “I’m telling you, I was onto the guy from the beginning,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you he was crazy?”

  “I’m the one who told you,” said Thomas. “Remember, I’m the one who saw him pounding the floor in the tech room last week.”

  “Pass the salt,” said Greg. They were sitting at lunch on Tuesday, the day after Cynthia Warden’s death. It had been a busy morning. Right after breakfast the whole school had met in the chapel once again; special assemblies were becoming part of the daily routine. Heilman had read some stuff from the Bible, and then Dr. Lane had talked to them about how sad all these events were and how it was important not to let their grief for Mrs. Warden and Robert Staines get the best of them. He had also stressed how it was better not to talk to any reporters who might visit the campus. Richard had asked Thomas whether that meant he couldn’t talk to his own father.

  “I already have,” Thomas had said. “I talked to him last night.” It had been great to talk to his parents. They had offered to come and get him on the spot, and while it was tempting, he didn’t want to miss any of the excitement here. Now that they had caught Farnham, the campus was in an uproar. Montpelier was much more lively than Cathedral Academy ever would have been. His parents were coming down this weekend to see his basketball game and to take him home Saturday for an overnight.

  “Won’t Lane get mad that you spoke to your dad, since he works for a newspaper?”

  “He’s not writing a review of this stuff, Richard.”

  Mr. Warden was gone from the campus, and Mr. Farnham was of course also gone, but they couldn’t cancel classes, not at the fabulous Montpelier School for Boys, not even just for one day. The teachers, however, were being cool about it. Mr. Carella had held biology class, but he hadn’t made his students take any notes. He’d let them discuss the events of the day before.

  “It’s better to talk now and get it out of your systems right away,” he had said. “It’s not healthy to store things up.”

  Richard was still on the subject at lunch.

  “I was lucky not to get killed when he caught me downstairs making those telephone calls during your rehearsal Sunday,” said Richard. “He would have wasted me if he could have.”

  “You’re just trying to get your name in the paper,” said Thomas.

  Dr. Lane, exempting himself from his own injunction, had been talking to reporters all day. Television stations from Washington and Richmond had sent film crews, and a few more parents had withdrawn their sons from the school. For most, however, it was considered the end of a string of bad luck. The only missing piece was Angus, and the police were now saying that he was probably dead.

  “I’d like to think he’s still alive,” said Greg. “He might be, you know.”

  “Farnham probably cooked him and ate him,” said Richard. “It’s a good thing he’s not in charge of the dining hall.”

  “I wish we could get him back,” said Thomas, “Since he’s been gone, our locker room has started to stink.”

  “That’s what happens to you athletic types,” said Greg. “All those stinky clothes get ripe.”

  Richard started to laugh.

  “Maybe there’s more to it than just clothes,” said Richard. “But don’t blame me. I don’t know anything about a dead squirrel getting thrown down the ventilator shaft outside McPhee’s apartment.”

  Thomas said Richard was the most vindictive person he’d ever seen.

  Richard looked at Thomas impatiently. “You’ve turned awfully outspoken lately,” he said.

  “I have a new policy since Staines died,” said Thomas. “I always tell the truth.”

  “That’ll last until your next date,” said Richard.

  Thomas had tried to call Hesta last night and again this morning, and each time they told him that she wasn’t on dorm. He was beginning to fear that he would never talk with her again. He had killed all the affection she had once had for him.

  “I’m not anticipating any more dates,” he said.

  “How touching,” said Richard. “You and Robert Staines had your last dates on the same night.”

  They talked about how Farnham had been taken to the jail in Charlottesville, how he was denying any wrongdoing, how they didn’t blame him for trying to lie his way out of it.

  “I heard they found all these souvenirs,” said Richard. “There’s probably a scrapbook with pieces of hair and pictures of all the victims.”

  The other two said that was disgusting.

  “I feel right rotten inside for not wanting to kiss her that time,” said Greg. “Do you think it hurt her feelings? I’d do it if I had the chance again.”

  “It didn’t hurt her feelings,” said Richard. “She just thought you were crazy. Boatwright’s the man in the hurt feelings department.”

  “Shut up, Richard.”

  Richard said Farnham had been madly in love with Mrs. Warden. “I heard him try to put the moves on her before rehearsal one day. Back before I got fired from the play. It was a crime of passion.”

  “How come we never heard that story before?” asked Thomas.

  “Okay, so I didn’t exactly hear it myself. But Landon Hopkins was telling everybody about it today.”

  Thomas felt pity for Farnham unexpectedly overwhelm him. It was so easy to talk macho, to say that you never let a woman get to you, that it was a sign of weakness. He figured people like that had never been in love.

  “He’s just like Othello,” said Greg. “He killed the thing he loved.”

  “Jealous because she was married to somebody else,” said Richard.

  Thomas said he seemed more like Roderigo than Othello.

  “That’s because you play Roderigo, dork,” said Richard.

  “No,” said Thomas. “He just seems more like the dumb guy with the crush than the man with the great love. If it’s going to be like Othello, then Mr. Warden would be the one to kill her.”

  “It’s not like Othello, then,” said Richard.

  Horace Somerville, who sat with his back to them at the adjacent table, was fascinated by every word.

  SCENE 15

  Although it had only been a
couple of hours since lunch, it seemed to Thomas Boatwright like two decades. Today’s English class had been unbearably boring, even with McPhee teaching, but in just a few more seconds the class would end. It would be 3:00, and Thomas could get the hell out of there.

  Three . . . two . . . one . . . the bell rang. Thomas already had his books packed and was up and out of his seat when Mr. McPhee stopped him.

  “Hold it, Boatwright,” he said. “Get the homework first.”

  The rest of the English class laughed. Mr. McPhee had been their substitute only one day, but they were already comfortable with him. He was so much more relaxed than Mr. Farnham had been, and he was still a good teacher. By this last period of the day, everybody was talked out about Mr. Farnham and Angus Farrier and Mrs. Warden, so Mr. McPhee had gone over the way Aristotle defined a tragic hero: a noble character who was brought down by one fatal flaw.

  “Adam was the first tragic hero,” McPhee had said. “He was a good man who let his passion to please Eve get the best of his reason.”

  Talk about tedium. Aristotle and the Bible in one day.

  “A tragic hero is a good man,” McPhee had said over and over. That was all Thomas could remember of the whole class period. Nobody had mentioned Farnham’s coverage of all that tragic hero stuff during their unit on Oedipus Rex.

  Now they were free as soon as they got the homework assignment.

  “Read Act V,” said Mr. McPhee.

  “The whole thing?” asked Richard.

  “The whole thing,” said Mr. McPhee. “That’s the final act. Then you’ll be all finished. Goodbye.”

  Thomas practically screeched out of the room. He was headed to the dorm and to the telephone; he was going to get all his problems straightened out. After lunch he had checked his mail. There had been a letter from Hesta. At first, when he’d seen the envelope, his heart had beat like a fire bell. Then he had read the letter.

  Please stop calling me on the dormitory. Didn’t you hear what I told you on Saturday night? You hurt me. You are not the person I thought I knew. I don’t want to see you any more. We are all sad that so many people at your school have died. I am particularly sad that, as far as I am concerned, you are one of them.