Passion Play

by W. Edward Blain

  “This blueprint?” Somerville unrolled the tube in his hand. It was the diagram that Greg Lipscomb had come across on the night of the mixer.

  “Yeah,” said Delaney. “How did you sneak that past Janie Shepherd?”

  “She trusted me to return it.”

  Delaney dried his hands on several paper towels at the sink. He held the blueprint down on a tabletop with his huge round fingers.

  “See,” said Delaney. “Here’s the supposed tunnel coming out of this lower floor. It’s labeled GYMNASIUM on the reverse side, so I’m assuming it’s the old library. You match up this fireplace to any of the three fireplaces on the gym, and the only one that works is the one in Farnham’s old apartment. The other two point across the Quad or into the playing fields. Every couple of years a boy will find it and get excited about it, but there are no tunnels in Stringfellow Hall. There’s just nothing to find.”

  “I’d always believed the same thing,” said Horace Somerville, “until the Lipscomb boy got me thinking about it. I believe we have been jumping to conclusions, Kevin. Why should we assume that any one of those chimneys at the gym is the chimney in this diagram?”

  “Only because of the label on the back. It says it’s the gym,” said Delaney.

  “Aren’t we making one false assumption? Isn’t it possible that there could have been a fourth chimney, attached to a fourth fireplace, one that would be big enough to serve a provincial kitchen? A fireplace that no longer exists?”

  Delaney said that was possible.

  “I’ve seen photos from the time when that gym was being built,” said Somerville, “and I can still remember my brother Virgil talking about a huge pile of old bricks. What would stop them from taking down the chimney from the old fireplace and rebuilding it here, on the east end, where McPhee’s fireplace now is? All you have to assume is that the original fireplace for the kitchen was on the south side, on what’s now an inside wall. And if you do, you can take this diagram and see—”

  “—that the pencil marks lead straight to the Homestead,” said Delaney. “So you think your basement is directly connected to McPhee’s apartment by this tunnel.”

  “Actually, it would have to be the boiler room,” said Somerville.

  “Angus’s lair,” said Delaney.

  Exactly.

  “It’s the coincidence of the smell that persuades me I’m right,” said Somerville. “I’m sure there’s a dead animal in there.”

  “How does a dead animal get into this sealed tunnel, Horace?” asked Delaney.

  “It burrows up through the ground. Or it slips in through a crack in the wall. Or some prankster drops it down a ventilator shaft.”

  “That’s quite an assumption.”

  “Of course it is,” said Somerville. He rerolled the diagram. “It’s only in the theory stage right now. We need facts.”

  “And when are you going to get the facts?” said Delaney.

  “Right now,” said Somerville, and he put on his coat and left.

  SCENE 3

  Toes on the line, two dribbles, face the basket, bend the knees, shoot.

  “Follow through,” said Coach McPhee. “You aren’t following through.”

  It was 5:30 P.M. McPhee and Thomas were the only ones left in the gym. The coach flipped the ball back to the shooter, who bounced it hard with both hands off the shiny floor in disgust. He was never going to master this skill.

  “Come on,” said Coach McPhee. He had gone all the way through practice wearing his school clothes, a white button down with a loosened tie. His face was misty with perspiration. “You’ve lost your concentration. What’s the matter? We won, remember?”

  After the death of Robert Staines, they had lost their next two games. But yesterday they had won by two points. It had been despite Thomas, however; he had missed two free throws in the last quarter.

  Coach McPhee tried a different topic. “Not still woman trouble, is it?”

  Thomas smiled briefly. His talk with Mr. Warden had helped with the woman trouble. “Not really,” he said. “I’ve accepted my doom. I’m always going to like girls, but they’re never going to like me.”

  Coach McPhee said that plenty of them would like him. “You’ll have to keep them away,” he said. He held the ball for a second before he threw it. “How intimate were you and this lady friend of yours, anyway?”

  “We didn’t do it,” said Thomas. “But almost.” It wasn’t so hard to talk about it since he’d confessed to Mr. Warden.

  Mr. McPhee, however, did not want to hear any details. “Now you can concentrate on basketball,” he said.

  But that was the problem. Basketball wasn’t Thomas’s game, and he figured he would try something else next year. Maybe wrestling on Mr. Carella’s team. Or maybe theater full-time. Basketball was too frustrating. But Thomas didn’t want to get into all that with Coach McPhee. He should change the subject.

  “Hang on,” said Thomas. It was time to produce the Christmas present. He dropped the ball and ran over to the sidelines where his warm-ups were. He pulled out the small paper bag that he had hidden inside his sweatshirt and ran back to the coach. He’d bought the gift in the school store just this afternoon.

  “I didn’t have any paper to wrap it or anything, and I didn’t want to give it to you in front of all the guys,” he said.

  “I understand,” said Coach McPhee. He was touched.

  He looked inside the bag, grinned, and pulled out a new coach’s whistle on a strong black cord. He blew one shrill blast and then put it around his neck. “And I was just getting used to yelling at you guys,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Practice just hasn’t been the same without your whistle,” said Thomas.

  “Nothing’s been the same, has it?” said Coach McPhee. He folded the paper bag and put it into his pocket.

  Thomas agreed that it had been a weird month.

  “You know, one of the nicest parts of my life has been these times we’ve been able to spend together after practice,” said Coach McPhee. “My stepson, Michael, is gone, you know. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a son like you.”

  This was getting embarrassing.

  “Let me try ten in a row,” said Thomas.

  Coach McPhee watched while he started his shooting routine. “You’re not exactly a natural, but you’re a fighter, I’ll give you that. Go for your ten, put the balls away, and then hit the locker room. I’ve got something to give you, too.” He blew one more quick jolt with the whistle and then departed.

  Thomas remained to take the last free throws he would ever shoot in his life.

  SCENE 4

  The killing of Cynthia had supposedly been the last one. He had needed to kill her, she was on to him, he had had to protect himself. It had been easy to plant the evidence on Farnham and to let the police come to their natural conclusions. He was safe, safe from everyone but himself.

  It had been over a week since the high tide of passion had last drowned his self-control. He had been hoping that the flood had peaked, that the urge had been flushed out to sea, that he could return to being a normal citizen of this model community. But life kept intervening. This Boatwright boy, for example. He found himself thinking again and again about the Boatwright boy. This boy was different from the others. The kid liked him. Why? There was no valid reason. It was an irrational affection, but welcome just the same.

  And yet the kid also liked girls. It was only a matter of time before Boatwright found himself another girlfriend.

  With dread and yet with grim recognition and acceptance, he felt the old urge pump into his veins again. So, this was the way it would be. This thing was a part of him; he had to admit his ties to the passion. It was here, it was ready, and it was going to goad him into action again.

  Only after this time, it was going to disappear for good. He could promise himself that.

  He had to kill once more before it could be finally over.

  SCENE 5

  Kath
leen Somerville had been amused at first, but when Horace started to remove all the crystal and china from her storage closet in the basement, she decided that it was time to arrest this latest passion of his.

  “You aren’t serious about this tunnel thing,” she said. “Horace, we have lived in this house for thirty years. We know everything about it.”

  “Listen,” he said. He tapped on the back wall of the closet. “Doesn’t that sound hollow?”

  The basement of the Homestead comprised a substantial portion of the living area of the house: kitchen, dining room, guest bedroom, den with a television set. Horace and Kathleen were in their dining room, which sat in the southwest corner of the house. Its walls were painted pale Williamsburg blue with white trim, and it was lighted by electric candles in sconces and in the chandelier. In the center of the room was a finely polished oval mahogany table on a brightly patterned Indian rug. Kathleen stored some of her china in the sideboard along the east wall, and the rest in the closet on the west wall. Now, however, Horace was un-storing it.

  Horace tapped again on the back wall of the closet. Then he lifted the last stack of dishes off the bottom shelf of that closet and placed them on the table.

  “Of course it’s hollow,” said Kathleen. “There’s probably half a foot of space between the lumber and the brick foundation.”

  “Let’s find out,” said Horace Somerville. He lifted the top shelf from its metal brackets and set it gently outside the closet.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Taking down the shelves before I pry loose the boards,” he said. “I don’t want to start right in with the crowbar.”

  “Horace, this building is a national historic landmark,” said Kathleen.

  Horace pulled down the second shelf. “I know,” he said. “If I’m wrong, I hope they don’t charge me damages by the year.”

  Kathleen was glad that her children were not here to see this.

  “If you’re right about a dead animal, then you’re going to need some gloves,” she said. “The smell is just awful.”

  “Getting rid of it is worth a little vandalism.” He picked up the eighteen-inch crowbar and carefully inserted it into a seam between two boards at the back of the closet.

  They both smelled the putrescence more intensely as soon as Horace pried the first board loose from its supporting studs.

  “There’s a dead horse back there,” said Kathleen. “Horace, if you let one living creature into my house, I’ll leave you.”

  “Bring me a flashlight,” said Horace. “One more of these, and I can get through.” The boards were eight inches wide and were nailed vertically across the back of the closet. He gently worked at the second board. Already there was a space wide enough for a child to slip through. Behind it was darkness, nothing as far in as he could reach.

  Kathleen went to the kitchen and returned with a flashlight. The smell was worse. Horace had his handkerchief to his face.

  “It’s awful,” she said. “You can’t go in there.”

  He turned on the light, stuck his right leg into the hole and entered sideways. The inside was lined with dry brick. It was a narrow passage, perhaps four feet wide, and seemed perfectly secure. Its ceiling was arched and also lined with brick, and it reached almost eight feet high. It stretched away from him into the earth.

  “It’s a tunnel,” he said from inside.

  Kathleen said she would wait to hear him fall into an old well or whatever was in there.

  With the light from the hole in the closet and the beam of the flashlight, Horace could see virtually the length of the tunnel. He had intended to walk through to see where it led, but he changed his mind once inside. Fifteen feet from where he stood, he found the source of the stench. He walked only as close as necessary to confirm what he suspected, and then he quickly retreated. He knew that he had to leave immediately, that he had to exit that close, stifling tube before he became ill.

  It was not a dead squirrel. It was larger. A hideous form recognizable as human despite eleven days of decay. A white tee shirt. A head with short-cropped hair.

  Angus Farrier.

  SCENE 6

  Eldridge Lane arrived before the police, but barely. It was 5:25 in the afternoon when he rushed into the vestibule of the Homestead.

  “Good Lord, I can smell it up here,” he said. “You’re going to have to sleep somewhere else tonight.”

  “An hour ago my life was perfectly normal,” said Kathleen. “Now—”

  “Please tell me later,” said Lane. “I was just ahead of a large group of students. How did they find out already?”

  “Good heavens,” she said. “Our Wednesday afternoon tea.” They could hear the footsteps on the porch, the prompt ring of the doorbell. Before Kathleen could move, Benjamin Warden let himself and a dozen boys into the foyer. Eldridge Lane blocked their path.

  “Not tonight, boys,” said Lane. “Ben, if you’d like, you may stay.”

  The students resentfully turned back toward the dormitories. As the pack of boys departed, Horace Somerville emerged from his bedroom, where he had taken a shower and changed his clothes. At that moment Carol Scott arrived with four men. None were in uniform. They had sounded no sirens on their way to the campus, but the boys had seen and recognized them. Lane suspected the rumors would be circulating again.

  It took a moment to sort it all out as the four policemen, one female police investigator, two Somervilles, the headmaster, and Benjamin Warden stood in the foyer.

  “We’ve had a little discovery here,” said Horace Somerville.

  Eldridge Lane told Carol Scott he hoped this was an end to the matter.

  “It’s disgraceful that a member of my faculty should have had to do your job for you,” he said. “Close it up quietly.”

  Carol Scott was not in a frame of mind to tolerate Eldridge Lane. “Your people called me,” she said. “Do you want me here or not?”

  Lane told her that he wanted her here for as brief a period as possible. Then he left.

  “What’s going on?” Warden asked.

  “Sit in the living room while the police go downstairs,” said Horace Somerville. “I’m going to fetch us some whiskey.”

  Somerville had been glad to see the boys leave a few minutes ago. Until this moment he had never realized how tired he had become of spending every Wednesday afternoon performing the same rituals over teacups. It was a shame about Angus, but Somerville had to admit the truth: uncovering that tunnel had been downright fun. He had not felt this lively in years.

  SCENE 7

  Thomas made eight of his ten shots and headed downstairs. As usual, everyone else had left the locker room before he arrived. It had been a regular routine for the past week or so, Thomas staying to shoot baskets and talk with the coach, and then the two of them locking up the gym. He didn’t see Coach McPhee or anyone else as he pulled off his damp practice clothes and stepped into the shower.

  It was nice to be the last one out of the gym. You hardly got any privacy at Montpelier, hardly any time to yourself. There was always some pressing appointment. Like special assemblies. Or tea at the Homestead.

  “Hell,” Thomas said out loud in the echoing shower room. He had forgotten about his invitation for tea this afternoon. It was past 6:00, too late now to show up without looking stupid. He would have to write the Somervilles a note of apology.

  When he emerged from the shower into the locker room, Coach McPhee was sitting on the bench in front of Thomas’s cubicle. Thomas’s school clothes, which had been hung on the hooks inside the cubicle, were piled untidily on the bench beside Mr. McPhee. Thomas held up his towel self-consciously and wrapped it around his waist. Mr. McPhee straddled the bench. He held the edges as though he were on a steel girder twelve stories high.

  “I’ve just locked all the outside doors to this building,” he said. “Do you know that we’re the only two people in it?”

  “We stayed late,” said Thomas. He waited for McPhee to
get up from his seat in front of the locker, but the coach remained in his spot. Thomas started to dry himself tentatively, about five feet away from his clothes.

  “Did you have a nice bath?”

  That was a weird question. “A good shower,” said Thomas. “Yes sir.”

  “Shower,” said Coach McPhee. He shook his head with friendly impatience the way Greg did when Thomas had corrected his lines for him. “I’ve decided to give you something very special, Thomas. Do you know what that is? It’s my confidence. I want to talk to you about something I’ve never discussed with anyone before, about my wife and my stepson. Do you feel like listening?”

  “Sure,” said Thomas. He wished the coach had left his stuff hanging the way he’d had it. “Why did you take out my clothes?”

  “The clothes don’t matter,” said Coach McPhee. “What matters is that you hear me out.”

  “I’m listening,” said Thomas. But Coach McPhee simply stared at him with those intensely green eyes.

  “Maybe it would be better if we didn’t talk,” said Coach McPhee. “Let’s just get out of here and go to dinner.” He stood up quickly and moved to the glass door of the locker room. He pushed, but the door did not open. He turned to look at Thomas again. “I locked it,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t locked it.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket, then replaced them. “I don’t know which way to go here.” He coughed gently and rubbed his hands on his trousers. “Do you think it’s hot?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s because you don’t have any clothes on.” This was not the way Coach normally behaved. He returned and sat down on the bench beside Thomas’s clothes again. He lifted Thomas’s blue boxer shorts. “Here’s a nice pair of underwear,” he said. “What can you give me for these?”

  Thomas decided it was all a joke. “I’ll give you a hundred free throws tomorrow after practice,” he said. He reached for his underwear. Coach McPhee jerked the boxers out of his reach.