“I don’t think that’s what this is about,” Nate said. “It sounds like they’re trying to find out what happened.”

“And you’re drunk,” David said. “Coffee before cops.”

She laughed and pushed him in the chest, catching him off guard and knocking him backward to the ground.

“Could a drunk person do that?” she asked.

“Pretty sure that’s a yes,” he said, getting up and brushing himself off.

Ellie staggered ahead a few steps. She was drunker than Stevie first realized. It was so hard to tell with Ellie.

“Come on,” Janelle said to Stevie. “Get her other arm.”

Janelle stepped ahead and expertly scooped Ellie by the crook of one arm and waited for Stevie to get the other.

“Let’s go together,” Janelle said. “Can we go together?”

“We can go together,” Ellie said. “Why not? Together. Together!”

Holding Ellie upright was becoming a 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 half are probably all right. If I’m being fair, there were one or two others that showed a bit of a spark. A boy and a girl, I forget their names. The two of them seemed to be a pair. The girl had hair like a raven and the boy looked a bit like Byron. They were interested in poetry. They had a little light behind the eyes. The girl asked me about Dorothy Parker, which I took as a hopeful sign. I’m a friend of Dorothy’s.

[A silver lighter is placed on the table.]

SA:Do you recognize this, Mr. Nair?

LHN: Oh! I’ve been looking for that!

[Mr. Nair attempts to take the lighter. He is prevented.]

SA:It’s evidence, Mr. Nair. It has to stay with us.

LHN: It’s Cartier, Agent Arnold. Where did you find it? I’ve been looking for that for ages.

SA:We found it in the observatory, along with Dolores’s library book and a pencil.

LHN: I suppose I left it in there.

SA:We found Dolores’s fingerprints on this lighter. Why would Dolores have your lighter?

LHN: She must have found it.

SA:You didn’t give it to her?

LHN: Why would I give a child my Cartier lighter?

SA:I don’t know, Mr. Nair.

LHN: I lose things. I assume the girl found it and kept it because it’s a lovely thing. She must have good taste. Do I get it back?

SA:When it’s no longer needed, Mr. Nair. Let me ask you something else. Why might Miss Robinson go into Mrs. Ellingham’s private, locked dressing room?

LHN: Any number of reasons, I suppose. Those two are thick as thieves.