challenge.
“You know,” she said to Stevie, breathing hot wine breath into her face, “he told me to get Roota. He got it. He got it.”
“Okay,” Stevie said.
“He got art. More than people knew.”
“Okay.”
David strode along, hands deep in his pockets. Having been knocked over, he seemed content now to let Stevie and Janelle handle Ellie.
“Hey, Nate,” Ellie said. “You get it. You write. You get it.”
“Sure?” Nate said.
“You do what you see in your head.”
She tried to tap her head, but Janelle had a firm grip on her arm.
“Water,” Janelle said. “We need some water! And then some coffee. And a bath! How about a bath!”
“A bath!” Ellie said. “You get it. You all get it! Except Stevie. Do you get it, Stevie?”
“I get it,” Stevie said, having no idea what Ellie was talking about.
They managed to get Ellie inside without Pix seeing. Janelle ran a bath. Knowing that Ellie was not averse to bathing fully clothed, they put her in just as she was.
Ellie grew quiet in the tub, sipping her coffee dutifully. She was in reasonable enough shape when the police came by in the next few hours. Janelle, Nate, and Stevie had already been through it.
David was taken first. The questioning happened in his room and lasted about ten minutes.
“What did they ask?” Stevie said.
“Did I know anything about Hayes’s plan? Did he say anything about the tunnel, about the dry ice. He didn’t. I was here when Hayes was doing all of that, smoking a bowl with Ellie. I didn’t say that, and I don’t know if that’s what she is going to say, but I guess we’ll find out.”
Ellie was sober enough not to say that. She said that she and David were at home working together.
The exhaustion of the day seemed to hit everyone at once after that. The Minerva residents slumped in the common room for a while, then, one by one, people peeled off to bed. Ellie went first, then Janelle, then Nate. David was in the hammock chair, rocking slowly back and forth.
“So,” he said, “you really think your parents will make you leave?”
“I think someone will,” she said. “If not them, the school.”
David extended his legs, pulling the stretchy hammock material taut.
“They won’t throw you out,” he said. “They don’t do that here. Believe me. I’ve tested the system.”
“Did anyone die when you tested the system?”
“Nothing you did caused Hayes to die, right?”
“I don’t think so. But . . .”
“You haven’t done anything you regret, right?”
She looked up at him sharply. Was he talking about what they did? What kind of dark conversational game was this?
Not one she wanted to play.
“I’m going to bed,” she said, getting up. “Good night, Westley. They’ll most likely kill me in the morning.”
“You might not want to make death jokes,” he said as she went down the hall.
* * *
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
INTERVIEW BETWEEN AGENT SAMUEL ARNOLD AND LEONARD HOLMES NAIR
APRIL 17, 1936, 3:30 P.M.
LOCATION: ELLINGHAM PROPERTY
SA:Mr. Nair. I need to ask you some more questions.
LHN: That’s all we seem to do around here.
SA:We just need to establish the facts. I understand you once taught an art lesson to the students.
LHN: Please don’t remind me.
SA:Why do you say that?
LHN: That was the longest afternoon of my life, trying to explain Max Ernst to children. But that’s one of the prices you pay for knowing Albert. He believes his children should learn from the best.
SA:Did you meet a student named Dolores Epstein that day?
LHN: I have no idea. All children look the same to me.
[A photograph of Dolores Epstein is presented.]
LHN: Again, all children look the same to me.
SA: Dolores was a very gifted student. She was considered by many of the teachers to be the brightest student here.
[Mr. Nair takes another look at the photograph.]
LHN: Now that you say it, there was one that seemed more aware than the rest. She had a passable knowledge of Greek and Roman art. This could have been the one. She had curly hair like that. Yes, I think this was the one. Is that the one that vanished?
SA:Dolores Epstein was last seen on the afternoon of the thirteenth, when she checked a book out of the library. Did you ever see her outside of your class?
LHN: You see them all, milling around. You know, Albert opened this place and said he was going to fill it with prodigies, but fully half of them are just his friends’ children and not the sharpest ones at that. The other