The Secret History

He stood up, dusted his hands on his trousers. 'I have to go in the house now,' he said.

I watched him hang the shears on a peg, then walk away. At the last, I thought he was going to turn and say something, goodbye, anything. But he didn't. He went inside. The door shut behind him.

I found Francis's apartment darkened, razor slits of light showing through the closed Venetian blinds. He was asleep. The place smelled sour, and ashy. Cigarette butts floated in a gin glass.

There was a black, bubbled scorch in the varnish of the night table beside his bed.

I pulled the blinds to let some sun in. He rubbed his eyes, J| called me a strange name. Then he recognized me. 'Oh,' he said, his face screwed up, albino-pale. 'You. What are you doing here?'

I reminded him that we had agreed to visit Charles.

'What day is it?'

'Friday,' 'Friday.' He slumped back down in the bed. 'I hate Fridays.

Wednesdays, too. Bad luck. Sorrowful Mystery on the Rosary.'

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Then he said: 'Do you get the sense something really awful is about to happen?'

I was alarmed. 'No,' I said, defensively, though this was far from true. 'What do you think's going to happen?'

'I don't know,' he said without moving. 'Maybe I'm wrong.'

'You should open a window,' I said. 'It smells in here,' 'I don't care. I can't smell. I've got a sinus infection.' Listlessly, with one hand, he groped for his cigarettes on the night table. 'Jesus, I'm depressed,' he said. 'I can't handle seeing Charles right now,' 'We've got to,' 'What time is it?'

'About eleven,' He was silent for a moment, then said: 'Look here. I've got an idea. Let's have some lunch. Then we'll do it.'

'We'll worry about it the whole time.'

'Let's ask Julian, then. I'll bet he'll come.'

'Why do you want to ask Julian?'

'I'm depressed. Always nice to see him, anyway.' He rolled over on his stomach. 'Or maybe not. I don't know.'

Julian answered the door – just a crack, as he had the very first time I'd knocked – and opened it wide when he saw who it was.

Immediately Francis asked him if he wanted to come to lunch.

'Of course. I'd be delighted.' He laughed. 'This has been an odd morning indeed. Most peculiar. I'll tell you about it on the way.'

Things which were odd, by Julian's definition, often turned out to be amusingly mundane. By his own choice, he had so little contact with the outside world that he frequently considered the commonplace to be bizarre: an automatic-teller machine, for instance, or some new peculiarity in the supermarket – cereal shaped like vampires, or unrefrigerated yogurt sold in pop-top cans. All of us enjoyed hearing about these little forays of his into the twentieth century, so Francis and I pressed him to tell us what now had happened.

'Well, the secretary from the Literature and Languages Division was just here,' he said. 'She had a letter for me. They have in and out boxes, you know, in the literature office – one can leave things to be typed or pick up messages there, though I never do. Anyone with whom I have the slightest wish to talk knows to reach me here. This letter' – he indicated it, lying open on the table beside his reading glasses – 'which was meant for me, somehow wound up in the box of a Mr Morse, who apparently is on sabbatical. His son came round to pick up his mail this morning and found it had been put by mistake into his father's slot.'

'What kind of letter?' said Francis, leaning closer. 'Who's it from?'

'Bu

A bright knife of terror plunged through my heart. We stared at him, dumbstruck. Julian smiled at us, allowing a dramatic pause for our astonishment to blossom to the full.

'Well, of course, it's not really from Edmund,' he said. 'It's a forgery, and not a very clever one. The thing is typewritten, and there's no signature or date. That doesn't seem quite legitimate, does it?'

Francis had found his voice. Typewritten?' he said.

'Yes.'

'Bu

'Well, he was my student for nearly four years, and he never handed in anything typewritten to me. As far as I'm aware, he didn't know how to type-write at all. Or did he?' he said, looking up shrewdly.

'No,' said Francis, after an earnest, thoughtful pause, 'no, I think you're right'; and I echoed this, though I knew – and Francis knew, too – that as a matter of fact Bu

'It's terribly sad that someone would want to play a trick like this,' Julian said. 'I can't imagine who would do such a thing.'

'How long had it been in the mailbox?' Francis said. 'Do you know?'

'Well, that's another thing,' Julian said. 'It might have been put in at any time. The secretary said that Mr Morse's son hadn't been to check his father's box since March. Which means, of course, that it might have been slipped in yesterday.' He indicated the envelope, on the table. 'You see. There's only my name, typewritten, on the front, no return address, no date, of course no postmark. Obviously it's the work of a crank. The thing is, though, I can't imagine why anyone would play such a cruel joke. I'd almost like to tell the Dean, though goodness knows I don't want to stir things up again after all that fuss.'

Now that the first, horrible shock was over, I was starting to breathe a bit easier. 'What sort of a letter is it?' I asked him.

Julian shrugged. 'You can have a look at it, if you like.'

I picked it up. Francis looked at it over my shoulder. It was single-spaced, on five or six small sheets of paper, some of which looked not unlike some writing paper which Bu

But though the sheets were roughly the same size, they didn't all match. I could tell, by the way the ribbon had struck a letter sometimes half-red and half-black, that it had been written on the typewriter in the all-night study room.

The letter itself was disjointed, incoherent, and – to my astonished eyes – unquestionably genuine. I skimmed it only briefly, and remember so little about it that I am unable to reproduce it here, but I do remember thinking that if Bu

He has killed a man and he wants to kill Me, too. Everybody is in on it. The man they killed in October, in Battenkill county.

His name was Mc Ree. I think they beat him to death I am not sure.' There were other accusations – some of them true (the twins' sexual practices), some not; all of which were so wild that they only served to discredit the whole. There was no mention of my name. The whole thing had a desperate, drunken tone that was not unfamiliar. Though this didn't occur to me until later, I now believe he must have gone to the all-night study room and written it on the same night that he came drunk to my room – either directly before or after, probably after – in which case it was a pure stroke of luck we didn't run into each other when I was on my way to the Science Building to telephone Henry. I remember only one other thing, which was its closing line, and the only thing I saw which struck a pang at me: 'Please Help me, this is why I wrote you, you are the only person that can.'