Both Alice Beech and Bobby were wearing bathrobes. Bobby’s eyes were red from weeping. He kept rubbing them. Alice and Bobby stood at the foot of the bed and watched Hawthorne.

“Who found him?” asked Hawthorne.

“His door was open and the light was on,” said Bobby. Mixed with his grief, Hawthorne also heard anger. “A student who was going to the john saw him. He tried to wake him to see if he was all right. That was a little after six.”

“I’m sure he’s been dead four or five hours,” said Alice.

As Hawthorne looked at the dead man, he grew aware of several students in the hall behind him. He turned and shut the door. But he felt sorry for them. Even if they hadn’t liked Evings, they had spent a substantial amount of time in his company. Evings had become a three-dimensional presence and surely they felt guilt, as if by acting differently they could have kept him alive.

Hawthorne was increasingly aware of Bobby’s anger. Alice took his arm, trying to calm him.

“I don’t care,” said Bobby, shrugging her off. “I don’t care what he thinks.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Hawthorne. It was hot in the room and he unbuttoned his overcoat.

“I’m talking about what you promised,” said Bobby. “You said everything would be all right, that he’d be safe. Is this what you meant, damn you? He’s dead. Is that what you call safe?”

“Bobby, stop it,” said the nurse. There were tears in her eyes as well.

Hawthorne put a hand out toward Bobby but the other man brushed it aside. “The leave had been approved,” said Hawthorne. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

Bobby pulled his blue terry cloth robe around himself tighter. “He called me last night, did you know that? He said everything was over. And I misunderstood. He sounded happy. Or relieved, he sounded relieved. I thought he was glad he’d be going. Instead he was glad he was going to die. I even asked if he wanted me to come over and he said no, no, he wanted some time by himself. He meant to kill himself even then. Damn it, what did you do to him?”

There was a rapping at the door, and Chief Moulton entered, breathing heavily from his climb up the stairs. The Brewster policeman was wearing khaki pants, with a dark green jacket and hunting boots. In one hand he held a cap and in the other a blue bandanna with which he wiped his forehead then shoved in his back pocket. His cracked leather holster flopped against his hip as he walked.

“What a shame,” he said, looking at Evings. “I passed the doctor on the road. He should be here any minute.” Moulton glanced around the room, then his eyes settled again on Evings. “Not much he can do, of course. Everything as you found it?” Moulton had a low, raspy voice and his northern accent turned his as into diphthongs.

“That’s right,” said Bobby. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Moulton walked to the bed and clumsily knelt down by Evings’s head. Hawthorne could hear the older man’s knees creak. He thought the policeman was going to touch the dead man but Moulton only stared at him. “Rescue squad will take him into Plymouth. An unhappy man,” said the policeman. “I’ll give them a call.”

There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs and the doctor entered. He was a young man in a dark ski jacket. He paused at the threshold to take in the assembled group, walked to the bed, and put the backs of two fingers against the dead man’s neck. He straightened up and pushed a hand through his dark hair, then he pursed his lips.

“Sorry,” he said.

Hawthorne was aware that Bobby was still staring at him angrily. He looked back, not knowing what else to do.

“If you knew how much I hate you,” said Bobby. “I hope they destroy you here.”

“Bobby, stop it,” said Alice. “He didn’t do anything.”

“If it weren’t for him, Clifford wouldn’t be dead.”

“You’re wrong,” said Hawthorne.

Bobby took several steps toward Hawthorne, until he was almost touching him. His wispy goatee seemed to quiver with rage. “You promised him a leave of absence but you never meant it. You found something easier than firing him. You made him kill himself.”

The doctor looked embarrassed. Chief Moulton shut the door, which had been left open. Then he hitched his pants up over his belly. “I’d watch your tongue, young fellow. That kind of talk makes no sense, specially with kids listening on the stairs.”

—

Late that morning Hawthorne was hurrying down the corridor of Emerson Hall when Frank LeBrun called to him from the door of the dining hall. Hawthorne stopped, even though he had seen Hamilton Burke’s red Saab coming up the driveway, splashing through the puddles. LeBrun wore his white jacket and there was a smudge of flour across the bridge of his nose. He kept shrugging his shoulders and stretching his back, as if it were an exercise. He had a grin on his face, but his eyes were pinched so that it seemed more of a grimace. Perhaps that was why Hawthorne stopped, because of the agitation in his eyes.

“Those kids were pretty upset this morning.”

Hawthorne stood still as Frank came up to him. “I’m sure they were.”

“Why d’you think he did it?”

Oddly, it didn’t occur to Hawthorne to think that Evings’s death was no business of LeBrun’s. Again, it was the uncertainty in the man’s eyes.

“He was unhappy and he was frightened.”

“Shit, I been both of those.” LeBrun noticed the flour on his hands and he wiped them on his jeans. “He should of just taken off, that’s what I would have done. Unhappy here, happy someplace else. That’s how it works.”

“You’re stronger than he is.”

“Was,” said LeBrun. “He’s now a was. Nobody shot him or stuck a knife in him or pushed him in the drink. You hear what I’m saying? It was his own choice. These things that frightened him, why didn’t he just say, Fuck it?”

Hawthorne wanted to tell LeBrun to lower his voice but he thought it better to let him talk.

“Poor old fag,” LeBrun continued. “It’s not good to do it to yourself—you got to stick it to the other guy right to the end.”

“I guess he couldn’t do that. He didn’t want to do anything anymore.”

LeBrun rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “You ever had something you couldn’t do?”

Hawthorne wasn’t sure if they were still talking about Evings. “You mean something I couldn’t face?”

“No, something you couldn’t do. Like you knew that you had to do it but you kept dragging your feet.”

“We all have to do things we don’t like.”

“So if you can’t do it, then what happens?”

“I try to figure out what’s holding me back. Or perhaps it’s something I shouldn’t do in the first place. You have something that’s bothering you?” Not for the first time, Hawthorne wondered what bad stories existed in the other man’s life.

“Nah, I’m fine. Maybe I’m just pissed about Evings. You think it was having his office busted up that made him do it? That’s a real shame. It’s too bad he couldn’t find one fucking reason to keep going.” LeBrun shrugged his shoulders twice and snapped his fingers, then he pointed up the hall. “There’s a guy waiting for you.”

Hawthorne saw Hamilton Burke standing in the rotunda, unbuttoning his dark overcoat. When Hawthorne glanced back, LeBrun was already walking toward the kitchen. He had a jerky stride, as if he weren’t comfortable in his skin. And he was still shrugging his shoulders. Hawthorne felt there had been something childlike about LeBrun’s concern, as if his main worry was his own survival and Evings’s decision to commit suicide had somehow put that survival in jeopardy. As Hawthorne approached Burke, he was struck by the deep crease between Burke’s eyebrows; the lawyer looked like a man who had heard bad news that made him think even less of the human race than before. Burke was stout rather than simply overweight, as though the excess were due to wealth and good living, the result of real estate investments and commercial takeovers, not overeating. He wore a three-piece blue suit under his overcoat. On his feet were rubber galoshes. He pulled off his leather gloves and put them in his overcoat pockets as Hawthorne came up to him.