FOR KEN CROCKETT, THE problem with Dr. Katherine Branch was not that she was a woman, or a feminist, but that she made so much out of being a witch. He knew nobody believed that, but it was true. Even her name was a signal, the name of a woman who had been hanged for witchcraft in Puritan New England—not at Salem, but somewhere else. Ken didn’t remember the particulars. Like everyone else at Independence College, he had been treated to Katherine’s standard lecture on witchcraft in colonial America. Also like everyone else at Independence College, he hadn’t retained the details. Salem was just the tip of the iceberg. Five hundred people were hung as witches in New England between the founding of Plymouth Colony and the American Revolution. Whatever. Alice Elkinson, who knew more about American history than anyone Ken had ever met, said that Katherine’s research was not only lousy, but positively creative—but Ken didn’t care about that. He did care about his suspicion that Katherine Branch was not Katherine Branch’s real name. Unfortunately, he had never been able to prove it.
For Ken Crockett, the problem with Dr. Donegal Steele was entirely different. Ken would have had a hard time putting it into words he was willing to allow anyone else to hear. He had a hard time putting it into words he was willing to allow himself to hear. That was why he kept Steele’s book, The Literacy Enigma, out on the coffee table in his living room. Seeing it there that way focused him.
At the moment, The Literacy Enigma was covered with strips of black and orange crepe paper. The antique breakfront on the other side of the room, which had belonged to Ken’s mother, was covered with cardboard masks. The blue-and-green Persian rug Ken had bought in New York was covered with mud. The mess was making the small woman sitting in Ken’s mother’s blue-patterned wing chair look terribly uncomfortable, and Ken felt very guilty about that. The little woman was named Mrs. Winston Barradyne, and she had been of great help to Ken over the past fifteen years. Mrs. Winston Barradyne was the President—for life, Ken sometimes thought—of the Belleville, Pennsylvania, Historical Society.
“The problem,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne was saying, sipping at the cup of tea Ken had brought her while Ken paced around the room, wondering what he dared pick up, with Halloween only two days away and students rushing in and out to get what they needed to go on with their decorating, “is that I don’t know what the man wants. It’s the way I told you on the phone yesterday morning. We’re not exactly the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—”
“Meaning you don’t have any secrets,” Ken said.
“Exactly. Everything we do have is right out there in the files for anyone to see, in the original or on microfiche, depending on the state of the documents. We’ve always encouraged professors from the college to do their research with us. We’ve always encouraged scholarly interest in the history of the valley.”
“You certainly encouraged mine.”
Mrs. Winston Barradyne waved this away. “You’re local. I remember how dedicated your mother was to the Historical Society. It’s in your genes. But this man—”
“Dr. Donegal Steele,” Ken said.
Mrs. Winston Barradyne nodded vaguely, turning her head from left to right to take in the room behind Ken’s back. She always did this, and it always made Ken uncomfortable. What was back there, on the breakfront, was the collection of photographs Ken had brought from home after his mother had died. Most of the photographs were of her, stuck into silver frames, showing a progression from her days at Oldfields to the beginning of her last illness. Some of them were of the house where not only Ken, but his mother, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother had all grown up. The house was now on the National Historical Register and in limbo. No decision could be made about what to do with it until the intricacies of Ken’s mother’s will were cleared up. Ken always felt that Mrs. Winston Barradyne lusted after those pictures, the way he always thought she lusted after his house. President of the Historical Society or not, she lived in a brand-new ranch house in Belleville’s only subdivision. Her husband insisted on it.
Ken picked up his hiking boots from the patch of indoor-outdoor carpet he kept for them near the door and held them in his hands, blocking the woman’s view of the breakfront. Now she had nothing to look at but the picture of the college hiking club he kept on the coffee table next to Donegal Steele’s book.
“This man,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne said, “made me very uncomfortable. He seemed to be insinuating something.”
“He always does.”
“He treated our entire interview as a kind of—clandestine tryst, I suppose you’d have to say. As if we were a pair of counterspies.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Ken said. “He’s a very strange man.”
“I am perfectly aware of the fact that he’s a very strange man.” Mrs. Winston Barradyne picked up the picture of the hiking club. There were a dozen people in it. Ken was probably the only one she recognized. She put it down again. “Have you read Bernard Oldenston’s books on the American Revolution?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a lot of that sort of thing going on now,” she said. “Debunking. Digging up nasty personal scandals of national heroes. Making careers and reputations by blackening the names of the people who founded this country. It’s not just the Revolution, either. Have you read Oldenston’s book on Abraham Lincoln?”
“No.”
“All about how Lincoln was supposed to have hated black people and thought they were stupid,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne said. “I wrote Oldenston a letter after I read it, asking what possible difference it could make, even if it were true. It wasn’t what Lincoln thought that matters. It was what he did. That’s how I feel about Dr. Bernard Oldenston, too. I don’t care a fig for what his motives are. What his actions are is reprehensible.”
“Donegal Steele is no Bernard Oldenston,” Ken said.
“I know. But—” Mrs. Winston Barradyne rubbed at the tweed skirt of her suit. “I was thinking, after the talk I had with him yesterday, that he might be trying to turn himself into a Bernard Oldenston. You see what I mean. Dr. Steele has written this book.” She looked down at the book and frowned. “The book has sold a great many copies. Now what?”
“Now,” Ken said, “he does his damnedest to make sure that he gets installed as Head of the Program.”
“You ought to be installed as Head of the Program.”
“Actually, Dr. Elkinson ought to be installed as Head of the Program, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve been through all the files you’ve got, Mrs. Barradyne. Even if Donegal Steele is looking for someone’s reputation to destroy, he won’t find the ammunition to do it with over at the Historical Society. I know for a fact there’s nothing like that there.”
“You’re not worried about what he might be up to?”
“No, of course not.”
“You’re much too easygoing,” Mrs. Winston Barradyne said. “You were like that even as a child. I remember how Lucy used to fret over you, always letting other children take your lunches and never hitting back.”
“Funny,” Ken said, “in the army, they used to tell me I was a regular savage.”
“Oh, the army.” Mrs. Winston Barradyne stood up. “You are much too easygoing, Kenneth, no matter what you like to think. I know you’re comfortable the way you are, but you ought to have higher ambitions for yourself. You’re a very accomplished young man. You shouldn’t let this—this fake take away your chance of promotion.”
“I don’t need a promotion, Mrs. Barradyne. I’ve got tenure. And it’s like I said. If I had to vote for a new Head of the Program, I’d—”
“Choose Dr. Elkinson,” Mrs. Barradyne finished for him. “Yes, I know. I happen to think Dr. Elkinson has more sense than that, though. I don’t think she wants to be Head of an academic department her husband is working in.”
“I’m not her husband yet.”
“But you’re going to be,” Mrs. Barradyne said. She had moved all the way to the door, walking carefully over the mud and between the scraps of crepe paper. She still looked worried. “I think you ought to sit down and give it some serious thought,” she said. “He really was very strange when he came to see me, and he got stranger after he looked through the files. I didn’t like the man, Kenneth, and I don’t think you should like him either.”
“I don’t.”
“I think you should do something about it for once.”
Mrs. Winston Barradyne twisted the knob, and opened the door, and stepped out into the hall. Like Ken’s apartment, it was full of crepe paper and cardboard masks.
“Really, Kenneth,” she said, “the man is up to no good. I’ve had two fine, upstanding husbands, and I know shenanigans when I see them.”
Then she pulled the door shut and made herself disappear.
On the other side of the room, the window began to bounce and jangle and sing. Ken turned around and found Lenore, pecking at the glass, asking to be let in.
He didn’t think he had ever been so frightened in his life.