Then my grandmother came in and put the bars up so I couldn't get out, and I started to cry. My uncle Hilary – he was my grandmother's brother, he lived with us when we were little – came in the room and saw me crying. "Poor little girl," he said. He rummaged around in his pockets, and finally he found a tape measure and gave it to me to play with.'
'A tape measure?'
'Yes. You know, the ones that snap in when you push a button.
Charles and I used to fight over it all the time. It's still at home somewhere.'
Late the next morning I woke with an unpleasant start to a knock at my door.
I opened it to find Camilla, who looked as if she'd dressed in a hurry. She came in and locked the door behind her while 1 stood blinking sleepily in my bathrobe. 'Have you been outside today?' she said.
A spider of anxiety crawled up the back of my neck. I sat down on the side of my bed. 'No,' I said. 'Why?'
'I don't know what's going on. The police are talking to Charles and Henry, and I don't even know where Francis is.'
'What?'
'A policeman came by and asked for Charles around seven this morning. He didn't say what he wanted. Charles got dressed and they went off together and then, at eight, I got a call from Henry. He asked if I'd mind if he was a little late this morning?
And I asked what he was talking about, because we hadn't planned to meet. "Oh, thanks," he said, "I knew you'd understand, the police are here about Bunny, you see, and they want to ask some questions."'
'I'm sure it'll be all right.'
She ran a hand through her hair, in an exasperated gesture reminiscent of her brother. 'But it's not just that,' she said.
'There are people all over the place. Reporters. Police. It's like a madhouse.'
'Are they looking for him?'
'I don't know what they're doing. They seem to be headed up towards Mount Cataract.'
'Maybe we should leave campus for a while.'
Her pale, silvery glance skittered anxiously around my room.
'Maybe,' she said. 'Get dressed and we'll decide what to do.'
I was in the bathroom scraping a quick razor over my face when Judy Poovey came in and rushed over so fast I cut my cheek.
'Richard,' she said, her hand on my arm. 'Have you heard?'
I touched my face and looked at the blood on my fingertips, then glanced at her, annoyed. 'Heard what?'
'About Bunny,' she said, her voice hushed and her eyes wide.
I stared at her, not knowing what she was going to say.
'Jack Teitelbaum told me. Cloke was talking to him about it last night. I never heard of anybody just, like, vanishing. It's too weird. And Jack was saying, well, if they haven't found him by now… I mean, I'm sure he's all right and everything,' she said when she saw the way I was looking at her.
I couldn't think of anything to say.
'If you want to stop by or anything, I'll be at home.'
'Sure.'
'I mean, if you want to talk or something. I'm always there.
Just stop by.'
'Thanks,' I said, a little too abruptly.
She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief. 'It'll be okay,' she said, giving my arm a squeeze, and then she left, pausing in the door for a sorrowful backwards glance.
Despite what Camilla had said, I was unprepared for the riot of activity outside. The parking lot was full and people from Hampden town were everywhere – factory workers mostly, from the looks of them, some with lunch boxes, others with children – beating the ground with sticks and making their way towards Mount Cataract in broad, straggling lines as students milled about and looked at them curiously. There were policemen, deputies, a state trooper or two; on the lawn, parked beside a couple of official-looking vehicles, was a remote radio station hookup, a concessions truck, and a van from Action News Twelve.
'What are all these people doing here?' I said.
'Look,' she said. 'Is that Francis?'
Far away, in the busy multitude, I saw a flash of red hair, the conspicuous line of muffled throat and black greatcoat. Camilla stuck up her hand and yelled to him.
He shouldered his way through a bunch of cafeteria workers who had come outside to see what was going on. He was smoking a cigarette; there was a newspaper tucked under his arm. 'Hello,' he said. 'Can you believe this?'
'What's going on?'
'A treasure hunt.'
'What?'
'The Corcorans put up a big reward in the night. All the factories in Hampden are closed. Anybody want some coffee? I have a dollar.'
We picked our way to the concessions truck, through a sparse, gloomy gathering of janitors and maintenance men.
'Three coffees, two with milk, please,' said Francis to the fat woman behind the counter.
'No milk, just Cremora.'
'Well, then, just black, I guess.' He turned to us. 'Have you seen the paper this morning?'
It was a late edition of the Hampden Examiner. In a column on the first page was a blurry, recent photograph of Bunny and under it this caption: police, kin, seek youth, 24, missing in HAMPDEN.
'Twenty-four?' I said, startled. The twins and I were twenty years old, and Henry and Francis were twenty-one.
'He failed a grade or two in elementary school,' said Camilla.
'Ahh.'
Sunday afternoon Edmund Corcoran, a Hampden College student known to his family and friends as 'Bunny,' attended a campus party which he apparently left some time in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet his girlfriend Marion Barnbridge of Rye, New York, also a student at Hampden. That was the last that anyone has seen of Bunny Corcoran.
The concerned Barnbridge, along with friends of Cor coran's, yesterday alerted state and local police, who put out a Missing Persons Bulletin. Today the search begins in the Hampden area. The missing youth is described as (See p.5)
'Are you finished?' I asked Camilla.
'Yes. Turn the page.' being six feet, three inches tall, weighing 190 pounds, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. He wears glasses, and when last seen was wearing a gray tweed sports coat, khaki pants, and a yellow rain slicker.
'Here's your coffee, Richard,' said Francis, turning gingerly with a cup in either hand.
At St Jerome's preparatory school in College Falls, Massachusetts, Corcoran was active in varsity sports, lettering in hockey, lacrosse and crew and leading his football team, the Wolverines, to a state championship when he captained during senior year. At Hampden Corcoran served as a volunteer fire marshal!. He studied literature and languages, with a concentration in Classics, and was described by fellow students as 'a scholar.'
'Ha,' said Camilla.
Cloke Rayburn, a school friend of Corcoran's and one of those who first notified police, said that Corcoran 'is a real straight guy – definitely not mixed up in drugs or anything like that.'
Yesterday afternoon, after growing suspicious, he broke into Corcoran's dormitory room, and subsequently notified police.
'That's not right,' Camilla said. 'He didn't call them.'
'There's not a word about Charles.'
'Thank God,' she said, in Greek.
Corcoran's parents, Macdonald and Katherine Corcoran of Shady Brook, Connecticut, arrive in Hampden today to assist in the search for the youngest of their five children.
(See 'A Family Prays,' p.10.) In a telephone interview Mr Corcoran, who is president of the Bingham Bank and Trust Company and a member of the Board of Directors of the First National Bank of Connecticut, said, 'There's not much we can do down here. We want to assist if we can.' He said that he had spoken to his son by telephone a week before the disappearance and had noticed nothing unusual.
Of her son, Katherine Corcoran said: 'Edmund is a very family-oriented type person. If anything was wrong I know he would have told Mack or myself A reward of fifty thousand dollars is being offered for information leading to the whereabouts of Edmund Corcoran, provided through contributions from the Corcoran family, the Bingham Bank and Trust Company, and the Highland Heights Lodge of the Loyal Order of the Moose.
The wind was blowing. With Camilla's help, I folded the newspaper and handed it back to Francis. 'Fifty thousand dollars,'
I said. 'That's a lot of money.'
'And you wonder why you see all these people from Hampden town up here this morning?' said Francis, taking a sip of his coffee. 'Gosh, it's cold out here.'
We turned and started back towards Commons. Camilla said to Francis: 'You know about Charles and Henry, don't you?'
'Well, they told Charles they might want to talk to him, didn't they?'
'But Henry?'
'I wouldn't waste my time worrying about him.'
Commons was overheated and surprisingly empty. The three of us sat on a clammy, black vinyl couch and drank our coffee.
People drifted in and out, bringing blasts of cold air from outdoors; some of them came over to ask if there was any news. Jud 'Party Pig' Mac Kenna, as Vice-president of the Student Council, came over with his empty paint can to ask if we would like to donate to an emergency search fund. Between us, we contributed a dollar in change.
We were talking to Georges Laforgue, who was telling us enthusiastically and at great length about a similar disappearance at Brandeis when suddenly, from nowhere, Henry appeared behind him.
Laforgue turned. 'Oh,' he said coldly when he saw who it was.
Henry inclined his head slightly. 'Bonjour, Monsieur Laforgue,' he said. 'Quel plaisir de vous revoir.'
Laforgue, with a flourish, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose for what seemed about five minutes; then, refolding the handkerchief into fussy little squares, he turned his back on Henry and resumed his story. It happened, in this case, that the student had simply gone off to New York City on the bus without telling anybody.
'And this boy – Birdie, is it?'
'Bunny.'
'Yes. This boy has been away for far less long. He will appear again, of his own accord, and everyone will feel very foolish,' He lowered his voice. 'I believe that the school is afraid of a lawsuit, and that perhaps is why they lost their sense of proportion, no?
Please do not repeat me.'
'Of course not.'
'My position is delicate with the Dean, you understand.'
'I'm a bit tired,' Henry said later, in the car, 'but there's nothing to worry about.'
' What'd they want to know?'
'Nothing much. How long had I known him, was he acting strangely, did I know any reason why he might have decided to leave school. Of course, he has been acting strangely the last few months, and I said so. But I also said I hadn't seen very much of him lately, which is true.' He shook his head. 'Honestly. Two hours. I don't know if I could've made myself go through with this if I'd known what nonsense we were letting ourselves in for.'
We stopped by the twins' apartment and found Charles asleep on the couch, sprawled on his stomach in his shoes and overcoat, one arm dangling over the edge so that three or four inches of wrist and an equal amount of cuff were exposed.
He woke with a start. His face was puffy and the ridged pattern from the sofa cushions was printed deeply on his cheek.
'How did it go?' said Henry.
Charles sat up a bit and rubbed his eyes. 'All right, I guess,' he said. 'They wanted me to sign some thing that said what happened yesterday.'
'They visited me as well.'
'Really? What'd they want?'
'The same questions.'
'Were they nice to you?'
'Not particularly.'
'God, they were so nice to me down at the police station. They even gave me breakfast. Coffee and jelly doughnuts.'
This was a Friday, which meant no classes, and that Julian was not in Hampden but at home. His house was not far from where we were – halfway to Albany, where we'd driven to have pancakes at a truck stop – and after lunch Henry suggested, quite out of the blue, that we drive by and see if he was there.
I had never been in Julian's house, had never even seen it, though I assumed the rest of them had been there a hundred limes. Actually – Henry being of course the notable exception – Julian did not allow many visitors. This was not so surprising as it sounds; he kept a gentle but firm distance between himself and his students; and though he was much more fond of us than teachers generally are of their pupils, it was not, even with Henry, a relationship of equals, and our classes with him ran more along the lines of benevolent dictatorship than democracy. 'I am your teacher,' he once said, 'because I know more than you do.'
Though on a psychological level his manner was almost painfully intimate, superficially it was businesslike and cold. He refused to see anything about any of us except our most engaging qualities, which he cultivated and magnified to the exclusion of all our tedious and less desirable ones. While I felt a delicious pleasure in adjusting myself to fit this attractive if inaccurate image – and, eventually, in finding that I had more or less become the character which for a long time I had so skillfully played – there was never any doubt that he did not wish to see us in our entirety, or see us, in fact, in anything other than the magnificent roles he had invented for us: genis grains, corpore glabelliis, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus – smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, welleducated, and rich.