“Be my guest. I expect sparks will fly.”

Krueger reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper, which he held toward Hawthorne. “I’ve tracked down Lloyd Pendergast for you. He’s working for the Chamber of Commerce in Woodstock, Vermont. You want to call him?”

Hawthorne took the paper and began to grin. “I’ll do more than that. I’ll drive over and see him. I expect there’s quite a lot he can tell me.”

“Do you mean gossip?”

“On the contrary, I’m hoping to find information that can be used in court.”

—

Hawthorne drove over to Woodstock Thursday morning with Kate. He wanted her as a witness and he wanted her company. Her only condition was that she had to be back by three-thirty, when Todd got home from school. Ted Wrigley had taken Kate’s classes, combining hers with his French classes, since half of their students had already left; he was showing Breathless, a kind of pre-Christmas tradition of his.

Hawthorne told Kate what he had learned from Krueger, then he described his years of friendship with Krueger in Boston. It was a sunny morning and the snow gleamed from the fields and between the trees, but it was supposed to cloud up that afternoon. The two-lane road from Hanover was slow because of a number of logging trucks. As he drove, Hawthorne felt constantly aware of Kate’s presence beside him, as if she were a heat source. She wore dark glasses that he had never seen her wear before. From the corner of his eye, he noticed her hands resting in her lap and more than once he was almost overwhelmed with a desire to reach out and touch her.

“What would it mean to sell the school to the Galileo Corporation?” she asked.

“It would be the end of Bishop’s Hill. Debts would be paid. The faculty would receive some sort of severance package. A few would find jobs with the new institution. You could probably get a job yourself. Kevin thinks that some people, like Roger Bennett and perhaps others, would qualify for managerial positions that paid quite well. Certainly much more than they earn now.”

“No wonder they were sorry you took the job.”

Hawthorne had nothing to say to that. He thought again how he had come to Bishop’s Hill to hide. He had never imagined that he would have such a strong desire to see the school succeed, that he would come to care deeply about the students, that he would even fall in love.

It had taken an hour before Hawthorne could bring up the subject of Claire Sunderlin. “I have no excuse for what I did,” he said, trying to choose his words precisely. “I loved my wife. I had no wish to jeopardize my family. I’d known Claire for about four years and was attracted to her. Then, when we began to touch each other, I thought, Why not? It seemed like something I could get away with, something without repercussions. I know that my actions with Claire didn’t cause the fire, yet I feel guilty. They kept me from getting there earlier. It’s something I can’t forget. I think of it every day.”

Kate stared straight ahead, listening to Hawthorne without looking at him. Her coat was unzipped and the seat belt cut across her chest. “Have you seen her since?”

“No. She called me after the fire. I was in the hospital. I didn’t want to talk and she didn’t call again.” Hawthorne remembered the nurse telling him that he had a call from a woman. Thinking about it, he could almost feel the pain in his arm once again.

“And what do you want from me?” asked Kate.

Hawthorne was surprised by her frankness. “I’d like our friendship to continue. I hope we’ll grow closer.” Hawthorne hated how cut and dried it sounded. He wanted to say how much he liked her, that he couldn’t stop thinking of her, even that he needed her, but he was afraid of frightening her away.

“You mean sex?”

He looked at her quickly. Kate was still staring straight ahead but she was smiling slightly. “Yes, if that’s what happens.”

“And you could touch me without thinking you were touching another woman, without thinking you were touching your wife?”

“Yes, I think I could do that.”

“If you can’t, then it won’t work.” She had turned and was staring at him. Her eyes were dark and unblinking. “Will you try?”

“With all my heart.”

—

Hawthorne had called the previous day to see if Pendergast would be in his office but not to make an appointment. He had told the secretary that he was a businessman with a chain of cyber cafés and that he was visiting Woodstock with an eye to available real estate. Pendergast’s secretary said that he would be in all morning except for a half-hour meeting at nine. She explained that, as development director for the Chamber of Commerce, Pendergast would be a mine of useful information. Woodstock was just the place for a cyber café. Before hanging up, she asked Hawthorne how to spell “cyber.”

Woodstock was strung with Christmas lights and the shop windows were filled with decorations. Mounds of snow bordered the streets, nearly burying the parking meters. On the sidewalks men and women wore colorful ski jackets. Every doorway seemed to have a Christmas wreath and Christmas music played from speakers tucked among the greenery decorating the old-fashioned street lamps.

Pendergast’s office was in the center of downtown, a two-story brick building near the city hall. In the same way that Woodstock seemed to be a quaint illustration from a greeting card, so did Lloyd Pendergast seem illustrative of bluff, hearty charm. He was a red-faced man of about sixty whose tweed jacket, tattersall shirt, and cavalry twill trousers appeared to have sprung from an Orvis catalog. His brown hair was gray at the temples. Pendergast strode heavily across the floor of his paneled office and took Hawthorne’s hand in a fierce grip. On the walls were six prints of English setters among fallen leaves and corn stalks.

“Awfully glad to meet you, Mr. . . .”

“Hawthorne,” said Hawthorne, trying to give a hearty squeeze in return. “And this is Kate Sandler, a colleague. But I’m afraid that I’ve misrepresented myself.”

Pendergast maintained his robust smile but a touch of suspicion appeared in his eyes. He released Hawthorne’s hand. “Well, what’s it all about?”

Hawthorne wondered if Pendergast recognized his name. “I’m the new headmaster at Bishop’s Hill. I just started in September and I’ve had a bit of trouble with some of the faculty, ranging from general hostility to actual criminal behavior. I’d appreciate hearing what you have to say about them. And I was wondering about your own resignation, whether you felt it was forced upon you in any way.”

Pendergast began to look alarmed, which wasn’t the response that Hawthorne expected.

“Well, there was always a fair amount of grumbling and foot dragging. I’m sure some of them disliked me. One can’t please everyone . . .” Pendergast glanced at his watch.

Hawthorne hoped for information about Bennett, Chip Campbell, Herb Frankfurter, and a few of the others in the years before he came to the school. And there were also certain aspects of Pendergast’s departure from Bishop’s Hill that Hawthorne was still hoping to understand.

“What was your relationship with them?”

“Cordial, businesslike—I felt as headmaster it wouldn’t do to make close friends.”

“You left rather abruptly.”

“I’m not sure that it was all that abrupt.”

“It was in the middle of the school year.”

Pendergast’s anxiety seemed to increase. He half turned toward his desk and seemed unwilling to speak. Then he shrugged. “Sometimes the thought suddenly strikes you that it’s time for a change. I wasn’t happy at Bishop’s Hill after my wife died, all by myself in that apartment. It seemed right that I leave when I did.”

“You gave them hardly a month’s notice.”

“I really don’t have a lot of time this morning, Mr. Hawthorne—or is it Doctor?” The heartiness had gone out of Pendergast’s smile. He looked suspiciously at Kate. “I simply believed I could do better elsewhere.”