The Madness Of Love | The Secret History

XXIV

I skipped a lot of the boring parts, I hope you don't mind it. This may not be very exciting, but I think it's essential for the story x

When I woke up I knew they were going to find him that day. It was one of those mysterious, oppressive days we sometimes had at Hampden.

Drizzle and damp. Commons smelled like wet clothes, everything dark and subdued. I found Henry and Lilith upstairs at a table by the window, a full ashtray between them, Lilith with her chin propped in her hand and a cigarette burning between her fingers.

Henry was distracted. The FBI had paid him (and, I guess, Lilith) another visit the night before. He didn't say what they wanted and he was talking on and on about Schliemann's Ilios.

When I lived with him, he would go on for hours in these didactic monologues, reeling off a pedantic and astonishingly accurate knowledge with a slow, transfixed calm. I didn't mind those monologues, though I also never really paid much attention to them, but Lilith seemed to find them delightful - or maybe she just liked listening to him talk.

I didn't know where Francis was, but there was no need to ask about Charles and Camilla. The night before I'd had to bring him home in a taxi and help him upstairs to bed, where, judging from the condition in which I'd left him, he was still now, and Camilla was probably with him.

It was late. Lunch was over, people were leaving. Lilith was staring out the window. Suddenly, her eyes got wide. Slowly, she raised her head; and then she was scrambling out of her chair, craning to see.

I saw, too, and jumped forward. An ambulance was parked directly beneath us. Two attendants hurried past with their heads bent against the stretcher between them.

Shouts downstairs in the Commons; doors slamming, voices shouting and then one hoarse voice, rising above the others: 'Is he living?'

Henry took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes; and exhaling sharply, he fell back in his chair as if he'd been shot.

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The three of us went rapidly downstairs past the snack bar, security guards, and someone taking pictures and shouting at us: 'Hey! You! Didn't you know the boy?'

Henry passed a hand over his face; I'll never forget the way he looked, white as talc and the light bouncing off his glasses... 'Leave us alone,' he muttered, seizing Lilith by the waist and trying to push through to the door.

The camcorder was thrust in Lilith's face. With a sweep of his arm Henry knocked it away and it fell on the floor with a loud crack. The owner sprang up, as if to grab Henry by the collar, but Henry turned especially quickly.

The man shrank. It was funny, but people never seemed to notice at first glance how big Henry was and how much he was ready to do for Lilith.

The ambulance had gone. Agent Davenport was hurrying up the steps to Commons, but when he saw us he stopped. "I'm sorry." he said.

"He is dead, then," said Henry.
"Afraid so."
"Where was he?" said Lilith, at last. She was extremely pale, paler than usual, and there was a flat sound in her voice.
"In the woods." said Davenport.

"We went down for a look," he continued "right now we're on the way to see the family."
"Don't they know?" said Lilith, after a shocked pause.
"It's not that." said the agent. "We're taking them a release form. We'd like to send him down to the lab in Newark, have some tests run."