The Headmaster's Wife

by Jane Haddam

  “They do,” Alice said quickly. “We’re committed to student evaluations of teaching effectiveness.”

  “But their positions still aren’t equal,” Gregor said, “unless the grading has equal weight on both sides. Unless student grades can affect a teacher’s future as much as a teacher’s grades can affect a student’s. Is that what you do here, Mrs. Makepeace?”

  Alice threw back her shoulders. “I will have to inform you that your continued use of the patriarchal form of my name will be construed by most people here as a collaboration with the white male hegemonic oppression of women and people of color.”

  There were no people of color in the library that Gregor could see. He said, “That’s quite all right, Mrs. Makepeace. I’d much rather be convicted of committing white male hegemonic oppression than of dishonesty.”

  Around the edge of the magic circle, somebody burst into laughter. It was tension released, but Gregor hoped it was also insight gained. It was extraordinary to listen to this flamboyant creature throw around words like “hegemony” and “oppression.” She used them as if they were incantations. When her beauty failed, this was her ritual of control.

  The sounds of sirens were suddenly very close. Gregor realized that he’d been hearing them for a long time. The ambulance would have to come from the hospital, which was on the very edge of town, but he didn’t understand why it had taken the police so long to arrive. Then he remembered that there were no roads on the campus itself, only walkways much too narrow to allow vehicles, even small cars, to pass. The police had to know that. Both the policeand the ambulance would have been called in when Michael Feyre died. The ambulance had been called again, for Mark, only last night. Then, though, they’d only had to go to Hayes House, which fronted Main Street. They hadn’t had to maneuver the campus proper.

  There was a commotion in the foyer and then the ambulance men came in, carrying a stretcher, in a hurry. They pushed the groups of students out of the way, and one of them knelt down next to the body. A moment later he stood up and motioned to one of the men behind him. The second man came forward with what Gregor knew was a defibrillator.

  A moment later Brian Sheehy came through the crowd himself, along with a younger man in a suit as badly fitting as his own. He saw Gregor and then the body. He came over to watch.

  “Think it’s going to work?” he asked.

  “No,” Gregor said. “I saw her fall. We were up there.” He pointed to the catwalk. Its railing sagged and twisted where Edith had crashed through it. “I saw her before she fell. I’d bet my life we’re looking at cyanide. You could smell it.”

  “Crap,” Brian said. He turned to the man next to him. “This is Danny Kelly. He’s the detective in charge of Mark’s case. I thought it would make sense to put him on this one.”

  “I think so too,” Gregor said.

  The ambulance men were running electricity through Edith Braxner’s body. Every time they did, the body jumped into the air, hovered, shuddered, and fell again. It was a small body. Edith Braxner had been a small woman, but not as small as Marta Coelho. Now that Gregor thought of it, Cherie at Hayes House had been a small woman, too. The only tall woman he had seen so far at Windsor Academy was Alice Makepeace. Maybe that had been arranged deliberately. It surprised him to realize that he didn’t think that speculation was entirely ridiculous.

  “I’ve got a partner,” Danny Kelly said. “His name’s Fitzhugh. He’s getting names in the foyer.”

  Edith Braxner’s body jumped again. Gregor felt as if the process had been going on for hours. Surely they must realize the woman was dead, and that nothing could be done for her. He looked away and just caught the arrival of Peter Makepeace, without a coat or hat, hurrying. He looked no more confident on his own turf than he had the night before at the hospital.

  Peter Makepeace came up to the magic circle and looked down at Edith Braxner’s body. He did not look at his wife. “Somebody said she was dead,” he said.

  “She probably is,” Gregor told him. “I would say definitely, but they’re still trying. You can’t bring back a victim of cyanide poisoning with a defibrillator.”

  “He keeps saying somebody gave Edith cyanide,” Alice Makepeace said. “He’s said it a couple of times. But he can’t know. He’s just guessing.”

  “But he does know these things.” It was Marta Coelho, her voice high and thin, stretched tight with strain. “He’s an expert on these things. That’s why he’s here. He’s here because Mark DeAvecca knows something, and Michael Feyre didn’t commit suicide.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Alice Makepeace said, furious. “For God’s sake, Marta, we’ve been over the death of Michael Feyre a dozen times. There’s no question but that it was suicide.”

  “If there’s no question, then why did Mark bring him here?” Marta pointed at Gregor. Her voice was beyond stretched now. She was coming very close to hysteria. “Why did somebody poison Mark? Why did somebody poison Edith? Edith is dead, Alice, can’t you get anything sensible into your head? And Michael’s dead, too, and from what I’ve heard today, Mark nearly died. He was stuffed full of arsenic. You can’t just walk around pretending it’s all an exercise in deconstruction and that you don’t know what’s going on in this place.”

  “Education is going on in this place,” Alice Makepeace said, furious.

  Marta pushed her way through the students toward the circle until she was right in front of Alice, close enough to touch the cape. “Edith was in the catwalk nook,” Marta said.

  “She was in the same place Mark was on the night Michael died. There’s something up there. There’s something Mark saw and then Edith saw it and somebody tried to poison them both and now Edith is dead. And you know that because you were there.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Alice said.

  “You were there,” Marta shrieked. “I saw you. You passed my office the night Michael died and then you went out the wrong door. You said you were going to go back to President’s House, but you went out the wrong door, the door to Maverick Pond. I saw you. And you were sleeping with Michael Feyre. I know that. Everybody knows that. You think you’re being so damned cute, but everybody knows what you’re up to. Everybody always knows. And everybody knows James bought drugs from that boy and that there’s something wrong with Philip that he’s trying to hide and all the rest of it. You’re all trying to hide something here. You hide it behind a lot of academic jargon instead of in closets, that’s all.”

  “That’s enough,” Peter Makepeace said, walking up to Marta and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? There are police here.”

  “So what?” Marta sounded like a banshee. “Why can’t anybody in this place just tell the truth for once?”

  “It’s not telling the truth to engage in irresponsible speculation about matters whose facts you don’t know,” Peter said.

  “I know the facts just fine,” Marta said, “and I’m not going to go on pretending any longer for the sake of the school. I don’t give a damn what happens to the school. I hate it here. I’ve always hated it here. And any policeman who wants to ask me what I know, I’ll tell him.”

  “Police officer,” Alice said, automatically. “You’d think they’d have trained you out of all those sexist constructions at Yale.”

  Gregor thought Marta was going to haul back her arm and slap Alice Makepeace across the face. It didn’t happen. Marta shrugged Peter Makepeace’s hand off her shoulderand said, “Get away from me.” Then she pushed past Alice and out toward the foyer, through the milling students and the small crowd of crime-scene personnel waiting to get a chance at Edith Braxner’s body. Danny Kelly gave both Gregor and Brian Sheehy a look and took off after her.

  The ambulance men were giving up. The one with the defibrillator had gotten to his feet. The other one was still kneeling by the body, but not in order to do anything to revive it. Edith Braxner looked broken, her back bent at a
n unnatural angle, her face not calm as much as frozen. Gregor had never understood the things people said about corpses, or the need so many people had not to accept that a corpse was indeed a corpse. It didn’t matter if they were religious believers or not, people wanted to see nobility in the human body, even when that body was devoid of life. They wanted to see beauty, and meaning, and purpose.

  When Gregor looked at a corpse, he thought only that death made the human condition all too clear. Whatever it was we were, electrical impulses or eternal spirit, our bodies were victorious in the end; and our bodies did not really want to live. Descartes had had it wrong. It wasn’t, “I think, therefore I am.” It was, “I breathe, therefore I am,” and our bodies didn’t want to breathe. It was too much work and too much trouble. Our bodies were always headed for the decay that was their only rest.

  2

  Peter Makepeace didn’t want them to treat Edith Braxner’s death as a homicide, at least not right away, but his protests were halfhearted. Gregor had thought he looked like a defeated man last night at the hospital. Now he admitted that he hadn’t realized what real defeat would look like. Peter Makepeace seemed to be walking through ether. He was beyond dazed and beyond resigned. His face was white. His hands were still. He was so without emotion that it was a shock to remember that he was a very large man.

  Alice Makepeace was not without emotion, and she was still not afraid or intimidated. If there had been any truth to the things Marta Coelho had said—and Gregor knew that there had been, with some of those things—Alice did not expect to be affected by them.

  Alice moved first after Marta rushed out. “That little ass,” she said. “I can’t stand people with no sense of self-control.”

  Brian Sheehy moved away from the body just a bit. The crime-scene personnel were coming through to do their jobs, and from now on what would happen to Edith Braxner would be technical, mechanical, and cold.

  “Mr. Makepeace, Mrs. Makepeace, we really do need to have a word if we could.”

  “I don’t want him there.” Alice pointed to Gregor. “He’s not a police officer. I don’t have to talk to him, and I don’t intend to.”

  “You don’t have to talk to the police officers if you don’t want to,” Brian said mildly. “I’m sure you’ve got enough lawyers to secure your constitutional rights. Mr. Demarkian, however, although he is not a police officer, is a consultant who has been hired by the town of Windsor to serve in an official capacity in the investigation into the poisoning of Mark DeAvecca, and since this case is being treated as part of that one—”

  “Why should it be?” Alice demanded.

  “Because it isn’t common to find two poisoners operating totally independently and from unconnected motives in the same place at the same time,” Brian said. “In fact if that’s what we have here, it will be the first case I’ve ever heard of. The detectives assigned to Mark’s case are here. We don’t need to talk to all of you this evening. It’s enough that we get names and contact information for most of you. But we will talk to all of you eventually.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Alice said. “As soon as this gets out, there’s going to be a stampede. Families will be coming in from all over the country to get their little darlings out of here. There’s a mad poisoner on the loose—or so you say.”

  Danny Kelly came back in from the foyer. “Okay,” hesaid, “I’ve got a statement. I’m going to treat it as preliminary; she’s a little upset.”

  “She was hysterical,” Gregor said.

  “Maybe we could find some place reasonably private and have a talk with Mr. Makepeace here,” Brian said. “There are a few things we need to know immediately.”

  Alice Makepeace looked as if she wanted to protest yet again, but she didn’t. She turned away from all of them and marched out the way she had marched in, with that inner sense of her own importance that could not have been shaken by the appearance on the scene of God Himself. Danny Kelly started to go after her, but Brian Sheehy stopped him.

  “Don’t bother,” he said, “we know where to find Alice Makepeace if we want her.”

  Peter Makepeace looked relieved to have something to do. “There’s a seminar room in the faculty wing,” he said. “It’s just through the foyer and then through the side door. We can go there.”

  “Fine,” Brian said.

  Peter gave a last look at Edith Braxner’s body—they were taking fingerprints now; somebody was using a sterile vacuum to suck up fibers from the carpet where she had fallen—and then led the way out of the main reading room, into the foyer, and around the side to the wing. Back in the main reading room, the police had begun to take the names and contact information of all the witnesses and then clear them out of the immediate area. They’d take short statements from each of them before allowing them to go home. Gregor thought that the statements wouldn’t amount to much.

  The seminar room wasn’t very far along the corridor. Peter opened the third door on the left after they came through from the foyer, and then he ushered Gregor, Danny, and Brian inside. It was an elegant room, high-ceilinged and studiously Gothic, the very image of what education was supposed to be. Gregor wondered where so many Americans, who lived in a country that had been virtually uninhabitedwhen Gothic was the reigning style of architecture in Europe, came by that impression.

  Peter motioned them all to chairs and, closing the door behind them, sat down in one himself. “This should do,” he said. “This should be comfortable.”

  “It will be very comfortable,” Danny Kelly said.

  Gregor made himself sit down next to Peter Makepeace. They all seemed to be having one of those moments when nobody was sure what the etiquette was; and although Gregor did not underestimate the importance of etiquette, it had to be secondary here.

  “So,” Peter said, “what do you want to know? About all the things Marta said? I don’t know where to start.”

  “At the moment,” Danny Kelly said, “I think we’d like to know the more basic things. Who the victim was, for instance.”

  “Oh.” Peter Makepeace looked as if he were radically adjusting expectations he hadn’t realized he had. “Her name was Edith Braxner, Edith Delshort Braxner. She was married once, I think, when she was very young. She didn’t talk about it. She taught languages, French and German. She was head of the Language Department.”

  “Had she been here long?” Danny asked.

  “Longer than I have,” Peter said. “She’s one of our stalwarts, and one of the few to have lasted long after the school’s mission changed. This used to be a girls’ school, and a very traditional one in many ways. When the school decided to admit boys, they also decided to make some changes to the educational philosophy. Many of the teachers who had been here under the original ethos had a hard time adjusting. The headmistress at the time lasted less than a year.”

  “And you replaced her?” Gregor asked.

  “No,” Peter Makepeace said. “I’ve only been here eight years. This was back in the early 1980s. Edith must have been close to retirement age. I should know that, but for some reason I don’t.”

  “But you know she’d adjusted to the new, ah, mission,” Danny said.

  “Not exactly,” Peter said. “Edith was an odd woman out, in many ways, but she was an excellent teacher, and she made it possible for us to offer German in a very small school. Students didn’t call her Edith though. They called her Dr. Braxner.”

  “Doctor?” Gregor said.

  “Yes. Yes, she had a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard. She got it in the days when women found it very difficult to get faculty places at colleges and universities, except at the women’s colleges. I don’t know why she didn’t try for one of those. Or perhaps she did and still met with prejudice. There was quite a bit. For whatever reason she came here. I can’t believe I’m talking about her in the past tense.”

  Gregor thought that there came a time when you had to talk about everybody in the past tense, except when you could
no longer talk at all, and other people referred to you that way. He asked, “Was there any family? I take it she lived alone.”

  “She lived alone and on campus,” Peter said. “As for family, I think there’s a married sister somewhere. Edith used to visit her in the summers for a week before taking a group of students to Germany to study. A number of our teachers run these little summer sessions. It provides the students with enrichment they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise, and it provides the teachers with a means of traveling, which they otherwise couldn’t afford.”

  “Do you know if she was having a dispute of any kind with anyone?” Danny Kelly asked. “Was she involved in litigation, or were there bad feelings between herself and any other faculty member?”

  “Do you mean, did she have any enemies?” Peter smiled faintly. “That always sounds so unrealistic to me. Do people have enemies in that sense in this day and age?”

  “Some of them do,” Danny said. “What we need to know is if Edith Braxner did.”

  “Not that I know of,” Peter said. “I won’t say there were never any frictions between members of the faculty, or between members of the faculty and students, because therewere. It’s a matter of degree. I don’t think a teacher would kill another teacher over a dispute about which textbook to adopt in a freshman course or whether to offer Art History as a lecture course or a seminar.”

  “And were there disputes like that?” Danny asked. “Was Edith Braxner involved in them?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter Makepeace said.

  Gregor tried another tack. “When I saw her for the first time,” he said, “she was standing in a little nook at the end of a catwalk that ran along one side above the main reading room of the library. There are apparently two catwalks and two nooks.”

  “That’s right,” Peter said. “They’re not really completely safe. I knew that. They’re narrow, for one thing, and the railings are too low. We’ve been warned by the insurance company more than once, and we did intend to do something about them. I hope she didn’t die from that. I hope she didn’t die from the fall.”