“Have you called the police?”

“I reported the theft and vandalism for insurance purposes. There’s a policeman in Brewster who’s come out several times, a sort of local character but very intelligent. He’s talked to the night watchman and some students, but he doesn’t have the time to mount a full investigation and the business is too small for the state troopers. As for the gossip, I don’t know who’s behind it. Maybe they’re friends of Chip, maybe it’s someone else.” Instead of going into the library, they kept walking along a path that circled Hamilton Hall.

“Let me show you where I live,” said Hawthorne. “I’ll give you a cup of coffee.”

Krueger could smell the wet wool of his overcoat. He turned up the collar. They hurried toward the terrace that extended out behind Adams Hall. Beyond the playing fields, only the first trees were visible. Past that, everything was gray.

“The trouble is,” said Hawthorne, “whenever I hear something unpleasant is going on, I think there must be even more to it. I hear Ruth Standish criticizing Alice Beech and I wonder, Who put that in her head? When you first meet a person, he or she’s mostly on their best behavior, kind, smart, well-meaning. But the longer you know the person, the more appearances get stripped away. You see the person get angry or act selfishly. Is someone saying something because that’s what he feels, or because he wants to present you with this particular deception for devious reasons of his own? At times in faculty meetings there’ll be so much double-talk I’ll think that Irony should be given a classification as a legitimate language. I should ask Kate to teach it: Irony 101, Irony 201. It lets a person talk without being held responsible for what’s being said.”

By now they had reached Hawthorne’s quarters. Krueger was the first to see a white plastic bag hanging from the doorknob of the French windows. In the unrelenting grayness, it seemed the focus of all available light. Then Hawthorne saw it and ran forward.

“Damn it to hell!” Hawthorne took the bag from the knob and unlocked the door.

“What is it?” asked Krueger, catching up to him.

“Someone keeps leaving me gifts of food.”

“And?”

“It’s rotten. Look at this.” Hawthorne opened the bag.

Krueger leaned forward. Even before he saw anything he caught the smell of spoiled milk. Then he saw moldy bread and some kind of moldy meat.

“Don’t you get it?” said Hawthorne, pushing open the door. “It’s a food offering but it’s dead. Just like Meg and Lily are dead. This is the third time it’s happened. The first time, there was a note: ‘Dead lunch.’ Funny, isn’t it?” He forced himself to speak more calmly. “I’m sorry. Fritz upset me. Asking everyone about their children. What about me? I think. I had a child too.”

He crossed the living room to the kitchen to put the plastic bag in the garbage.

Krueger followed him, removing his cap and hitting it against his leg. Then he took off his wet overcoat. “Actually, I couldn’t imagine why Skander brought up the subject.” The living room was shabby, with one brand-new oversized brown leather armchair.

Hawthorne busied himself in the kitchen, measuring coffee into a filter. “He’s dense, that’s all. What’s the saying? He’d mention rope in a house where a man had been hung. He’s fascinated with what happened at Wyndham. The fire, the reasons for the fire, why Meg and Lily couldn’t get out. I listen to him and I want to shout, Shut up! But I don’t. He’s a good man, he’s just tactless. After all, he didn’t spend a dozen years studying psychology. He’s a mathematician. Do you know that someone put news clippings from San Diego in all the faculty mailboxes? From the Trib—about four stories in all. They contained practically my entire history—that I played basketball, that I like jazz, that I read John le Carré. Then everybody had this skewed idea of what happened—the fire and the hearings afterward. God, I swear I almost went back to California.”

Krueger stood in the doorway of the kitchen wiping his face with a paper towel. He wished Hawthorne had given up Bishop’s Hill and gone someplace else.

Hawthorne talked about the school as he made the coffee. Everything positive that he had mentioned in the morning was being countered that afternoon by a negative. A few minutes later, they were sitting in the living room. Hawthorne insisted that Krueger take the leather chair, which he had bought several weeks before.

“I’m sure people believe I bought it with the money saved from my meatless Thursdays.”

“Why don’t you call the police about these pranks?”

“And say what, that someone’s leaving me bags of rotten food?” Hawthorne stood up and walked to the rain-streaked window. “I’m the prime example of someone ready to embrace every foolish conspiracy theory under the sun. I’ve even skulked around trying to catch whoever’s leaving the food, but the actual running of the school takes every moment. I can’t spend half the day hiding behind a tree and watching my back door.”

“It’s bound to get worse.”

“How much worse can it get?”

“I hate to think.”

They sat in silence for a while. Neither man drank his coffee.

“Come on,” said Hawthorne, “I want to show you where Kate and I coach swimming. Balboni Natatorium. I don’t know who Balboni was. Some gloomy fellow.”

They put their coats back on and went outside. Crossing the Common, they walked around to the gymnasium. There was no sign of the forest, just a foggy wall reaching past the playing fields. Hawthorne unlocked a set of green doors leading into a short, dark hall that smelled of chlorine and dampness. There was a door on either side, one labeled “Boys” and the other “Girls.”

“I won’t show you the locker rooms. They’re too depressing unless you like mildew.”

They continued down the hall to a door marked “Pool.”

“Let me get the lights,” said Hawthorne, unlocking the door and going inside. Krueger stood in the doorway. The air was warm and humid and reeked of chlorine. There was a sharp clank as twenty fluorescent panels began to flicker. A few came on directly; most blinked on and off.

Krueger took in the light green cinder-block walls, the sagging bleachers, the cracked tiles. There were no windows. Half the acoustic tiles were missing from the ceiling. The water in the five-lane twenty-five-yard pool was the color and opacity of pea soup, the painted lines at the bottom nearly invisible. Clumsily written in black letters on the far wall were the words “Bishop’s Hill, we aim to kill!”

“Nice,” said Krueger.

“I’m told there’s something wrong with the filtering system or perhaps the chlorine. The phys ed teacher keeps talking about the ‘pH.’ Don’t get me started on the pH.”

The fluorescent lights had turned their skin greenish yellow. At the deep end of the pool, two diving boards had been tilted up and leaned vertically against the far wall.

“This is my humble place of work,” said Hawthorne, “where Kate and I strive to make the Bishop’s Hill swim team a league competitor. Strauss’s school brochures claim that we have an Olympic-size pool, though prospective students never actually get to see it. I’ve often thought we could grow things in here, like mushrooms.”

Curlicues of mist rose from the water.

“When I get depressed, I start seeing the pool as a metaphor for Bishop’s Hill,” Hawthorne continued. “You ask yourself, How could one make it better? The only answer is to tear it down and start over.”

Krueger attempted to laugh. “That’s rather drastic.”

“Well, we won one of our meets this fall and that’s a positive sign. Kate’s a good coach and I swam in college, so I know what you’re supposed to do. But if the school doesn’t close, I hope to hire someone to do this so I can go back to simple administration.”

“Simple administration,” said Krueger.