Anonymous Sources

by Mary Louise Kelly

  Despite myself, I grinned back.

  Petronella seemed to snap. “Get out,” she hissed.

  Remarkably, this seemed intended for Lucien and not me. I turned my back modestly as he pulled on jeans and shoes. The two of them whispered together for a moment and then he crossed the room.

  “Nice to meet you, Alexandra.” Then he lowered his voice. “Oh, and I liked the skirt better. They’re worth looking at, you know.”

  Confused, I followed his gaze. He was staring at my legs. They were hidden today beneath white linen trousers.

  “I’ll bear that in mind, your lordship.”

  “Do.” He winked at me, blew a kiss over to Petronella, and shut the door.

  OVER THE NEXT HOUR PETRONELLA shared quite a lot of useful information.

  That Thom had wanted to get serious, that he’d asked her to come to the States with him, that he’d asked her to marry him.

  He’d gotten down on one knee, she told me, in the same tone of disgust one might use to relate that Thom had decided to let his toenails grow out.

  Petronella’s response to Thom’s gallantry had been to dump him. The night before he flew home. The night before he died.

  She declined to be specific about when she had started up with Lucien Sly. It seemed obvious there had been some overlap with Thom Carlyle. But whether Petronella Black was a slut wasn’t any of my business. The interesting thing was that she and Thom had argued the night of his last party here. Argued so bitterly that they’d broken up. He’d flown home alone.

  I ventured that it was a reasonable conclusion that Thom was depressed when he arrived back in the States. That he might have had something drastic in mind when he climbed the Eliot House bell tower.

  But she shook her head. She was sure Thom hadn’t killed himself. She couldn’t say why, just that he wouldn’t have done that. She swore she had no idea what had happened up in the bell tower. None of the possibilities—that he jumped, that he fell, that he’d been pushed—none of them made sense to her.

  Finally I leaned back. Petronella struck me as shallow and immature. But she also struck me as someone telling the truth.

  “Will you be flying over for the funeral Tuesday?” I asked by way of wrapping things up.

  “I suppose so. They’ll be expecting me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really? I don’t think the Carlyles will be thrilled to see you. I mean, no offense, but you did just dump their son and you’re already with another guy.”

  “They don’t know any of that.”

  “Maybe not yet, but they will once my story comes out.”

  She jerked her shoulders back. “You can’t actually use any of this. Not in the paper. I want this all to be off the record.”

  “What? No. Sorry. We’ve been on the record this whole time. I told you up front that I’m a reporter. I told you who I work for. You’ve been watching me take notes the entire time we’ve been talking. Of course I’m going to use all this.”

  “But I will look ridiculous!”

  “Possibly. Though I’m not sure you can blame my reporting for that.”

  She shot me a withering look. “I’m going to call my father. And my lawyer. You’ll be hearing from them.”

  “Fine. Tell them to call my editors.”

  “I mean it. I don’t want my name in the paper.”

  “Petronella. With all due respect, grow up.”

  Instead, she stood up. Walked right over and gave me a little shove.

  “I am warning you, don’t print a single word of this. Don’t you dare. Or I will make you very sorry.”

  She was trying to intimidate me. I’m afraid she had the opposite effect.

  Try me, sister, I was thinking as I walked out. Try me.

  13

  Later that morning I wandered down to the Emmanuel boathouse and found a few rowers who said they’d known Thom. They all were polite and gave me a few passable quotes about what a great guy he’d been.

  Then I walked back to the café where I’d bought the latte earlier, found a table, and called Marco Galloni.

  He had wisely avoided giving me his cell number, but it was easy enough to get it from the desk manager on the night shift. I told her he was expecting my call.

  Which he clearly was not.

  “Hello?” he answered groggily. “Who? Miss James? Don’t you know it’s Saturday morning?”

  “I know. That’s why I waited till seven your time. And call me Alex,” I said sweetly.

  I could hear mumbled swearing on his end. “Seven my time? Where are you?”

  “Sorry to wake you. But I’m in England and it’s already noon over here. I thought you might want to hear some of what Thom Carlyle’s girlfriend has been telling me.”

  “Hang on.” I could hear him shuffling around. Pots clanging. Water being poured. Galloni must be brewing coffee.

  “Right. Okay. Miss James. Alex. Fill me in on your adventures over there in jolly old England.”

  So I told him about my conversations with Petronella, Joe, the bedder. About the terrible law school exam results and about Thom getting dumped. About all the reasons, in short, why Thom might have been awfully depressed on Tuesday night.

  “Hmm” was all he said.

  “Your turn. What about the autopsy? What did it find?”

  “I think the chief’s going to do some sort of press availability this afternoon. You guys should send somebody.”

  “I’m sure we will. But since I’m on a different continent right now, what about just giving me the headline?”

  “Can’t. I don’t want to get out ahead of the chief.”

  “What about we talk now, and whatever you tell me, I promise to sit on it until after the press conference.”

  I waited.

  Galloni was quiet. Finally he said, “I want to be off the record. We’re just talking. Anything you want to quote, you get it from the chief later.”

  “Deal.” I doubted Galloni would give me much anyway. Junior guys are usually less willing to leak to reporters than their bosses. Not because they know less, but because they’re more likely to get fired if they get caught.

  But Galloni surprised me. “His blood alcohol level was .06. Guy his size, probably means he drank two or three beers. No other drugs in his system.”

  “Two or three beers wouldn’t be enough for him to fall out of a window.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, no.”

  “So this wasn’t an accident.”

  “Can’t rule it out. But I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “Well, what about suicide? I’ve got his best friend and his girlfriend laying out some pretty compelling reasons for why he might have been thinking along that line.”

  “We didn’t know about all that. We’ll have to interview them. But you met her, right? What’s she like? Worth killing yourself over?”

  Hardly, I thought. But Thom had apparently seen a different side of Petronella Black.

  I considered how to put it. “Somebody here described her to me as a piece of work.”

  “And?”

  “I’d say they have a point.”

  We were silent for a moment.

  Then I asked, “Cause of death?”

  “His skull was shattered. As you know. And his neck was broken.”

  “Could the coroner tell if those injuries were necessarily caused by the fall? I mean, could he have already been hurt before he fell?”

  I could feel Galloni weighing how much to say. “The injuries are consistent with a fall from that height.”

  “But you can’t rule out that maybe somebody brained him at the top of the tower and then threw him down?”

  “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, Alex, but, no. We can’t rule that out.”

  “Just one more thing. Would you steer me away from focusing on the fingerprints? It seems like that’s the most interesting piece of evidence you’ve got. That the doorknobs and banisters were wiped down. No prints. Seven floors
. Somebody wiped them clean.”

  “The janitors say they wipe down the stairwells regularly.”

  “Do you buy that?”

  He paused. “No.”

  I took a deep breath. “So you think Thom Carlyle was murdered.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Would you steer me away from it?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I understand I can’t run with this in the paper yet. But here’s what I think. You guys are convinced that Thom was murdered. But you don’t have a suspect. Or a weapon. Or a motive.”

  I could hear Galloni sipping his coffee.

  “Well?”

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  The line went dead.

  PETRONELLA NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED.

  The story I filed for Sunday’s Chronicle was nicely written, full of colorful details, and devoid of any actual news.

  Here’s my lede:

  CAMBRIDGE, England—The name “T. A. Carlyle” is still neatly painted in curling white letters above his door here.

  But the rooms that Thomas Abbott Carlyle called home until this past Monday now sit empty. And throughout this ancient college, friends are mourning the loss of a young man whom they recall as a graceful athlete, an ambitious scholar, and a generous host.

  I threw in the quotes from his crew buddies at the boathouse.

  And I included the details I’d dragged out of Petronella about Thom’s last party:

  One of Carlyle’s key duties as Harvard Scholar was to entertain fellow Harvard alums studying at Cambridge University. His last night here was no different. According to Petronella P. Black, Carlyle’s girlfriend and a candidate for a graduate degree in physics at Cambridge, Carlyle invited about two dozen people to his suite last Monday night.

  “People from his course, people from my lab, some rowers,” Black said. A crowd of friends and acquaintances mingled and danced until around 2:00 a.m. They sipped sherry, sparkling wine and beer and sent out for Middle Eastern food sometime after midnight, Black said.

  “He was always having parties,” Black added. “He loved the crowds, the drink, the chat. That’s what I liked about him.”

  I left out the bit about Thom’s proposing and Petronella’s breaking up with him in the wee hours after the party.

  Hyde and I had gone back and forth about it, with me arguing that it spoke to his state of mind on the day he died, and Hyde ruling it gossipy and gratuitous.

  He also deleted all my wicked references to Petronella. I’d had great fun back in my hotel room, dreaming up ways to make her look rotten and sprinkling them throughout the story:

  Black, who shooed her new boyfriend from her bed in order to continue the interview . . .

  Another version read:

  Ms. Black said she is “devastated” by Carlyle’s death and that her “heart goes out to his mum and dad.” Her current lover, Lord Lucien Sly, declined comment, and Black threatened legal action if we mentioned him in this article.

  Hyde excised these without comment. I knew he would. It’s a kind of game we play.

  He left untouched the section I included near the bottom with the official autopsy results. The press briefing had been pretty dry, at least as far as I could make out from the transcript. And my conversation with Galloni had been off the record, so I couldn’t quote him at all.

  It was frustrating.

  I’d now been reporting this story for close to a week. And I’d reached the same conclusion as the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department.

  Meaning, I was increasingly sure that someone had killed Thom Carlyle on Tuesday night. But I didn’t know who—or how—or why.

  14

  SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  Panic.

  He could feel the sweat crawling down his neck, behind his knees, clammy under his arms. He searched his pockets again. Then his suitcase: every pouch, every pocket. He unzipped the lining. Ran his hand beneath the cheap satin. Lifted his possessions onto the floor, one by one, until the case sat indisputably, accusingly empty.

  Then he swore and kicked it. It was impossible. He had been meticulous. Brilliant, even. He had made no more mistakes.

  And yet. The phone was not here.

  The cell phone. The third one. He searched his memory. It was the one he had used to reconfirm the shipment. Six days ago. And then where had he put it? Had he seen it since then?

  The man leaned back on his heels. Rocked back and forth, thinking. It must have fallen out somewhere. He still had a few hours before his train. He could retrace his steps, search for it. It was an inexpensive phone; no one would look twice at it. He was supposed to go quiet now anyway. No more calls.

  He was flying tomorrow. He had paid for the ticket with a shiny new credit card. He would check the one suitcase, to avert suspicion. This was his last day in England. In his new passport picture he was smiling. Friendly, wholesome looking.

  He must not lose his nerve now. There was only one way to proceed: follow the plan. They had worked so hard. And now they were waiting for him.

  15

  Sunday morning I slept late.

  I decided I’d earned it, after three front-page stories this week. I dozed until midmorning and then I took a long jog.

  Cambridge looked the same as when I’d studied here eight years ago. Not surprising. Eight-hundred-year-old institutions aren’t prone to sudden change. I ran along the river, down the Backs, the prettiest part of the university. Then out across Jesus Green and a few loops around Midsummer Common. I must have done five or six miles, farther than I’d run in months. But it was such perfect weather and it felt so good to be moving that I kept going, past the boathouses, back across Parker’s Piece.

  My adrenaline finally gave out near the front gates of Emmanuel. I slowed from a jog to a walk to a limp. A blister was flowering on my right heel. By the time I turned the corner outside my hotel, my face was tomato red and I was soaked in sweat.

  That’s when I bumped into Lucien Sly.

  He was coming down the sidewalk straight toward me, balancing two coffees on a little cardboard tray, when I almost collided with him.

  “Aha. Hello again. We seem to be making a habit of this, don’t we?”

  “Hi. Hi there.” I backed up a step. Then I ran my hand over my damp ponytail, tried to unstick my running shorts from my thighs, and wondered whether I’d brushed my teeth this morning.

  “Enjoyed your story today. I pulled it up online. Pity you couldn’t work me in.”

  “Yes. That was indeed quite a loss for the readers of America.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. He was big. Maybe six feet two, six feet three. About the same height Thom Carlyle had been. Petronella liked her men tall.

  He was wearing what looked like expensive Italian loafers with old jeans and a frayed white polo shirt. His dark curly hair flopped over his eyes. Lucien had full red lips, olive skin, hooded eyes. For a British aristocrat, he didn’t look particularly British. I wondered if the Sly family tree had some Italian blood. The only giveaway was his crooked teeth. What is it the British have against orthodontists? A Cartier Tank watch gleamed on his wrist. He looked like a total toff. I liked him.

  “How much longer are you staying?” he asked.

  “Flying home tomorrow.”

  “Well, if you get bored tonight, a few of us are heading out to the Eagle.” Cambridge’s most famous pub. “You should come.”

  “Umm. Not really my scene. And I’m sure Petronella would be just delighted to see me.”

  “She’s driving down to London tonight. Then heading over to Boston for a few days, as I’m sure you know. Anyway, tonight will be fun. And I would so hate for you to be lonely on your last night in England.”

  I stared at him. Unbelievable. He was blatantly hitting on me. This from a man whom I’d only ever met because he constantly turned up in bed with Petronella Black.

  I was still staring, trying to think of a suitably chilling respon
se, when he touched my shoulder and started walking away. “Do come. It’ll be good fun. Oh, and, Alex? Great shorts.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Lucien Sly might be an upper-class arse, but he was charming.

  Mind you, there was no way I was going tonight.

  BACK IN MY ROOM I stood under the shower for a while. Then I toweled dry, ordered tea and tomato soup from room service, and called Hyde.

  He was mildly complimentary about my story. Said it was getting some play on the Boston NPR station. Then he asked when I was coming home.

  “Tomorrow, hopefully. If I can get on an afternoon flight. It was too tight to get it organized for today.”

  Hyde said that sounded fine, that the funeral was definitely set for Tuesday, and that he would have the news admin desk work on getting me access to cover it. Security was going to be crazy. The president was flying up. “Just for the morning. He’s got those trade talks in the afternoon. Then he’s going . . . Bastard!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bastard cork. Sodding, stupid, son of a . . . Hang on.” Hyde put the phone down. More cursing. Then a pop.

  “Hyde?” I checked my watch, did the mental calculation. “Isn’t it nine in the morning there?”

  “Yes, Ms. James. Nine in the morning on Sunday. You are familiar, I presume, with the concept of Sunday brunch? At which one might serve such frivolities as a Bloody Mary or a mimosa?”

  “You’re hosting a brunch today?”

  “I never said that. Don’t leap to conclusions, James. Stick to the facts.”

  “You’re making yourself a mimosa.”

  “That is one possibility.”

  “Or you just woke up in the mood for some bubbly?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

  It occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge someone else’s drinking habits. If Hyde wanted to pop a bottle of champagne at 9:00 a.m., that was his business.

  I pictured him sitting there. An elegant man, still wiry in his sixties. Sharp eyes. But his defining physical characteristic is a mane of thick, gleaming silver hair. It is never mussed. Behind his back reporters call him the Silver Fox. I wondered what he would be wearing at home on a Sunday morning. I couldn’t see Hyde lounging around in a sweatshirt and jeans. A smoking jacket? Some elaborate kimono he’d picked up years ago during a stint in the Tokyo bureau? I couldn’t actually imagine him in anything besides the dark suit he wore to the office every day. That may be because I’ve never seen him outside the office. I have no idea what his house looks like, or his wife.