The Secret History

'- when we'd been sick all over the place,' said Francis, 'and fallen in mud, and didn't get home till dawn. There was the blood – he might have wondered exactly how we'd killed that deer-but still.'

Uncomfortably, I thought of the Bacchae: hooves and bloody ribs, scraps dangling from the fir trees. There was a word for it in Greek: omophagia. Suddenly it came back to me: walking into Henry's apartment, all those tired faces, Bu

They'd been quiet that evening, quiet and pale, though not more than seemed remarkable for people suffering particularly bad hangovers. Only Camilla's laryngitis seemed unusual. They'd been drunk the night before, they told me, drunk as bandicoots; Camilla had left her sweater at home and caught cold on the walk back to North Hampden. Outside, it was dark and raining hard. Henry gave me the car keys and asked me to drive.

It was a Friday night, but the weather was so bad the Brasserie was nearly deserted. We ate Welsh rarebits and listened to the rain beating down in gusts on the roof. Bu

'Feeling queasy, bakchoi T said Bu

Camilla made a face at him.

When we went out to the car after di

'Yes.'

He brushed the damp hair from his eyes and bent to examine the fender. 'German cars,' he said. 'Hate to say it but I think the Krauts have got Detroit metal beat. I don't see a scratch.'

I asked him what he meant.

'Aw, they were driving around drunk. Making a nuisance of themselves on the public road. Hit a deer. Did you kill it?' he asked Henry.

Walking around to the passenger's side, Henry looked up.

'What's that?'

'The deer. Didja kill it?'

Henry opened the door. 'It looked pretty dead to me,' he had said.

There was a long silence. My eyes were smarting from all the smoke. A thick gray haze of it hung near the ceiling.

'So what's the problem?' I said.

'What do you mean?'

'What happened? Did you tell him about it or not?'

Henry took a deep breath. 'No,' he said. 'We might have, but obviously the fewer people who knew the better. When I first saw him alone, I broached it carefully, but he seemed satisfied with the deer story and I let it go at that. If he hadn't figured it out on his own there was certainly no reason to tell him.

The fellow's body was found, an article ran in the Hampden Examiner, no problem at all. But then – by some rotten stroke of luck – I suppose in Hampden they don't get many stories like this – they published a follow-up story two weeks later.

"Mysterious Death in Battenkill County." And that was the one Bu

'It was the stupidest thing,' Francis said. 'He never reads the newspaper. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for that blasted Marion.'

'She has a subscription, something to do with the Early Childhood Center,' said Henry, rubbing his eyes. 'Bu

Then he read a bit of the article out loud. Fractured skull, no murder weapon, no motive, no leads. I was trying to think of some way to change the subject when he said: "Hey. November tenth? That's the night you guys were out at Francis's. The night you ran over that deer."

' "I don't see," I said, "how that could be right."

' "It was the tenth. I remember because it was the day before my mom's birthday. That's really something, isn't it?"

' "Why yes," we said, "it certainly is."

' "If I had a suspicious mind," he said, "I'd guess you'd done it, Henry, coming back from Battenkill County that night with blood from head to toe."'

He lit another cigarette. 'You have to remember that it was lunch time, Commons was packed, Marion and her friend were listening to every word, and besides, you know how his voice carries… We laughed, naturally, and Charles said something fu

"An honest-to-God murder, out in the woods too, not three miles from where you were. You know, if the cops had pulled you over that night, you'd probably be in jail right now. There's a phone number to call if anybody's got any information. If I I wanted to, 1 bet I could get you guys in a heck of a lot of trouble…" et cetera, et cetera.

'Of course, I didn't know what to think. Was he joking, did he really suspect? Eventually I got him to drop it but still I had an awful feeling that he'd felt how uneasy he'd made me. He knows me so well – he has a sixth sense about that kind of thing.

And I was uneasy. Goodness. It was right before lunch, all these security guards were standing around, half of them are co

I did know. Bu

'Of course, he didn't know a thing,' Francis said. 'Really, he didn't. It was all a big joke to him. He liked to throw out references to that farmer we'd gone and murdered, just to see me jump. One day he told me he'd seen a policeman out in front of my house, asking my landlady questions.'