Page 23 of Coram House

“And through there”—I point to a swinging door set in the far wall—“that’s where you ate?”

“The refectory.”

The door squeals in protest. The long room is filled with scarred wooden tables, benches stacked upside down on top so their legs stick in the air like overturned bugs. A huge fireplace dominates one wall, the brick stained black from years of smoke. On the other wall, tall windows with a view out onto the lake.

“We’re thinking of leaving this mostly as is,” he says. “Maybe turning it into a cafe or coworking space.”

I can see it. A coffee bar on one side. People sitting at the long antique tables, tapping away on their laptops below the pressed tin ceiling, now spruced up with a fresh coat of paint. Worse, I can see myself here. It’s somehow easier to conjure than tables full of children. The beauty of this empty place makes it hard to imagine terrible things happening here. As if sweeping water and mountain views somehow preclude human cruelty.

Bill glances down at his watch again. I decide to gamble. “Could I see the attic?”

“The attic?” He frowns. “There’s nothing up there.”

I shrug.Humor me.

“All right,” Bill says in the tone of someone bestowing a great favor. “But then I should be getting back.”

“Of course,” I say. “I really appreciate you taking the time.”

He leads me back into the kitchen and up a different set of stairs to another narrow hallway. At least I think it’s different. The doors and passages seem to curl back in on themselves like the whorl of a snail’s shell.

Then we’re in another large room, identical to the boys’ dormitory at the other end of the building. But out these windows, I see the new construction that extends toward the lake like a pointing finger. A gust of wind rattles the windows in their frame. It’s freezing despite the huge cast-iron radiator that runs along the wall. The dark green paint is peeling off to reveal flakes of silver beneath.

“This was the girls’ dormitory,” Bill says. He points to a door in the corner with a brass latch. “The attic access is through there.”

So that’s why they were always locking the girls in the attic. How convenient.

Bill tries to open the latch on the door, but it’s stuck.

“Mr. Campbell, you said you didn’t keep in touch with anyone during your time here. But out in the office—what about Fred Rooney?”

“Fred?” Bill turns to me. Then he shrugs. “We’ve worked together for so many years, I didn’t think of it. But yes, you’re right, we did overlap here if that’s what you mean.”

“But you weren’t friends?” I press.

He shakes his head. “Fred’s three years older than me. That’s a world of difference when you’re thirteen and sixteen.”

“What about a boy named Tommy?” I try to sound casual.

Bill goes still. Something in the quality of his attention has changed. “He was the one who ran away?”

Given Bill’s deposition and how pointedly he undermined Sarah Dale’s story, I have a hard time believing I need to jog his memory. I wonder if he’s testing me, to see how much I know.

“That was the official story, but a woman named Sarah Dale suggested that he may have died here under suspicious circumstances.”

He waves a hand in dismissal. “She was an old drunk looking for attention and probably extra cash from the settlement.”

“She had a drinking problem?”

“In the eighties, at least. She was half drunk the whole time she was here—bottle in her purse, the whole thing. Stedsan felt bad for her and, God knows, it would have been hell for the case if it had come out she was lying.”

My insides sink. “So you never heard any rumors when you were a child? That he’d drowned?”

Bill shakes his head. “Pure fabrication, if you ask me.” He glances at the door, open now. “Listen, if you want to go up we should—”

“Yes, that would be great.”

The door swings open to reveal a set of stairs so steep the runners are only a few inches deep. “If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here,” he says. “Not sure my old knees can take that ladder.”

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