The headmaster’s assistant was an impeccably tailored and well-groomed young man of approximately Monica’s age, who spoke confidently to Monica, yet with some little embarrassment, about the unidentified man who had been asking about her. “He was a private investigator, Miss Jensen—I knew that immediately,” he said. “But please be assured, no one cooperated with him. We never do, with people like that.”

A private investigator?—a private detective? Monica stared, unable to speak for what seemed a very long time.

“He said—or, rather, hinted—just barely hinted—that he was a government agent of some kind, Internal Revenue, maybe—but he had no credentials to show, no badge, it was all a sham,” the headmaster’s assistant said. Clearly, he felt sorry for Monica, but the sordidness of the situation did not escape him. “In any case, Miss Jensen, we didn’t cooperate. When these things happen—occasionally a boy’s father will try to investigate him, if there has been a divorce, if there’s a child custody suit—when these things happen, no one cooperates; it’s Mr. Greene’s customary procedure.”

But Monica was still staring, speechless.

She began to apologize. She couldn’t understand, she said, why anyone would be interested in her—that interested!—but she was sorry, very sorry, and rather ashamed, and she hoped he would explain to Mr. Greene—if he thought Mr. Greene might be upset—

“Not at all,” the young man said, a trifle stiffly, bringing the interview to an end, “—it isn’t necessary for you to apologize. As I said, when these things happen no one at the school or in the community cooperates; it’s Glenkill policy.”

“. . . policy?” Monica said faintly.

Monica would have telephoned Sheila with the news, the amazing incredible sickening news, but Sheila was away in Washington on what she called “Flaxman business” (selling art? making arrangements for a museum or gallery exhibit of her late husband’s work?—Sheila was always rather oblique) and by the time she returned Monica had decided against telling her. It was sickening, it was sordid. And there was something unhealthy too about the thrill of self-importance the episode gave Monica.

After all, as everyone insisted, the “investigator” had been told nothing.

On the very day of Sheila’s return from Washington Monica happened to receive a letter, at school, from her husband.

There it was, in her mailbox—a quite ordinary and innocent-appearing letter in a plain white envelope, Harold Bell typed out neatly above the return address; all very explicit; no subterfuge about it. Surely a letter sent in such a way contained no madness, no accusations or threats . . . ? But, seeing it, Monica felt frightened; and thrust it into her handbag at once, as if fearful that someone was watching. Receiving a letter from such a man seemed almost a kind of complicity.

She would open it later, she told herself, when she felt a little stronger.