“I need to talk to you about what’s going on at the school.”

Mrs. Hayes unlatched the door, pulling it open. “I don’t like you coming here.”

“I’m sorry to bother you but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.” Hawthorne wiped his feet on the mat and entered the hall.

“I guess you’d better come in and sit down. Please excuse the mess.”

The living room was as neat as a pin—an old woman’s room with antimacassars and photographs of people who had probably died long ago. On the coffee table were several copies of Reader’s Digest and Yankee magazine. Mrs. Hayes motioned to a worn armchair. “That was my husband’s chair. You can sit in that.”

Hawthorne sat down. He knew nothing of Mrs. Hayes’s husband, whether he had died or had simply gone away. On a side table was a photograph of a beefy middle-aged man standing in a stream and holding a fishing pole above his head. He was grinning.

“I’d like to have you tell me again about the reasons for your resignation.”

Mrs. Hayes sat down on the couch, perching at the very edge of the cushion. “That’s all over and done with.”

“Did someone say you would be fired?”

She didn’t speak and looked down at the coffee table. Her gray hair had a bluish tint, as if she had recently been to the beauty parlor.

“I’d no intention of letting you go. Therefore you must have heard it from other people.”

Mrs. Hayes straightened up as if she had come to a decision. “Roger Bennett told me you meant to fire me. He said he heard it directly from you and that he’d argued on my behalf. He said you were rude, that you called me ‘old baggage.’”

“Anyone else?”

“Chip Campbell said you’d told him the same, that I was too dumb to learn about computers and the sooner I was out of there the better. People talked. They said they were sorry, they offered their sympathy—Herb Frankfurter, Tom Hastings, Ruth Standish. Ruth offered to help but I felt confused. Of course I was angry, but part of me couldn’t help thinking you were right. I couldn’t make any sense of those manuals.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Skander?”

“He tried to help as well. I asked if you meant to fire me and he said that he didn’t know. He told me we were going through difficult times and some changes were necessary. But Mr. Bennett warned me several times and Mr. Campbell, after he’d been dismissed, called me at home to say he’d talked to the board about my pension, that it was secure. I didn’t feel I had any choice, and Mr. Bennett said that if I made a fuss it could jeopardize whatever I received. Really, my pension was small enough as it was. I was quite frightened.” Mrs. Hayes still held the dishcloth, which she twisted in her hands.

“What about the Reverend Bennett?”

“She never spoke to me at all. Cold, I found her. She never even said hello when I passed her in the hall.”

“And were there others?”

“I can’t remember. Many people were sympathetic. Really, I’d no idea who to believe. I can’t think Mr. Bennett meant me harm. He was always friendly, nothing at all like his wife. And Chip Campbell gave me little gifts at Christmas and would always stick his head into the office to say hello.”

“Did you ever have anything to do with the finances of the school?”

“No, never. Mr. Skander handled all that as bursar—him and the bookkeeper. I ordered supplies but I never knew anything about the billing.”

“Tell me about Mr. Pendergast.”

Mrs. Hayes sat a little straighter and pursed her lips. After a moment she said, “He wasn’t a nice man, especially after his wife died.”

“You mean he had a temper?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then what was it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Were you surprised when he resigned?”

“He’d said nothing about it to me. He made the announcement in early December that he’d leave at the end of the semester. Yes, I suppose I was surprised. He was only in his midfifties or so, and I suppose I thought he was going to stay until he retired.”

“Can you give me any more sense of how he was?”

Mrs. Hayes gave a slight smile, half mocking. “He was very vain. Once he asked me if I thought he was losing his hair. Then he began to tint it. And he worried about his figure. When it was somebody’s birthday and there was cake, he never ate any.”

“Was he good-humored?”

“He had a big, booming laugh and I’d hear it when he was talking on the telephone.”

“Did he have any close friends at the school?”

“He was friendly with everyone, but he was headmaster. He felt he should keep a certain distance. He was friends with Mr. Skander and perhaps one or two others. He also had friends here in Plymouth and Laconia.”

“When did his wife die?”

“About two years before he resigned. In the spring. He was quite distraught, although she’d been sick for some time. It was cancer. After she died, he was barely able to finish the semester.”

“And when he came back in the fall he was different?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I said I’d rather not talk about it.”

“But he wasn’t nice?”

Mrs. Hayes pursed her lips and said nothing.

“Tell me,” said Hawthorne after a moment, “has he ever been back to visit the school?”

“Never. He’s never been back.”

When he left Mrs. Hayes, Hawthorne drove directly to Brewster. He’d forgotten that he hadn’t had lunch and that there was shopping he meant to do. He thought of the basketball game when Roger Bennett knocked him to the ground. He thought of the Reverend Bennett’s insistence that Mrs. Hayes had been fired. And he thought about Pendergast, old Pendergast, as Skander had called him. The sleet was now mixed with snow. Cars were traveling slowly with their lights on.

Hawthorne found Chief Moulton in his office in a small building next to Steve’s Diner. Yellowing Wanted flyers were stuck to a bulletin board with colored tacks. Against a wall were three wooden file cabinets. Moulton was unwrapping two bologna sandwiches from wax paper on the green blotter of his oak desk. He was in his shirt sleeves, and a can of Diet Coke stood between his left elbow and the telephone. A chunky, balding man, he had an oblong face as smooth as a toddler’s knee. He looked up at Hawthorne and raised his eyebrows.

“You caught me eating my lunch,” he said. Yellow mustard had soaked through the white bread of the sandwiches. Moulton folded the wax paper and slipped it into a small brown paper bag.

“I can wait outside.”

“That’s okay. I guess you’ve seen somebody have lunch before.” He bit into a sandwich and chewed slowly as he looked at Hawthorne without speaking. After a moment, he took a drink of Coke and swallowed. “You can sit down if you want.”

Hawthorne took the chair on the other side of Moulton’s desk. The smell of the bologna and mustard made him recall that he had missed lunch.

“If you tell me what’s on your mind,” said Moulton, “that’ll give me time to chew.”

“I wondered if you knew any more about who had vandalized Mr. Evings’s office.”

“You came all the way from Bishop’s Hill to ask that or were you just driving by?” Moulton’s tone indicated that he was making a joke. As he chewed, he continued to watch Hawthorne.

“It was a contributing factor in Evings’s suicide. I wanted to know if you thought the person who did it was someone at the school or from outside.”

“It was someone at the school.”

“How do you know?”

“Firstly, because Evings hardly knew anyone outside of Bishop’s Hill. He didn’t seem to have friends or enemies. Secondly, because whoever did it knew the layout of the buildings and had a key. The lock wasn’t picked or forced. And why’d the fellow steal that picture from the frame?”

“Do you think it could have been a student?”

“There was too much cunning in it. It was too worked out.”

“Did you ever know Pendergast,” asked Hawthorne, “the previous headmaster?”