A Butterfly in Flame Read Free Page A

inside look at Stillton Academy.”
    “You didn’t relish standing in front of English One yourself?” Fred asked.
    Clayton gave the remark the peremptory wave it merited, sipped sherry, and continued, “Therefore when Parker telephoned last evening and laid out the situation as you have now heard it, I was intrigued by the coincidence of his need and my desire, and I began to think.”
    He leaned forward and fixed a beady eye on Fred. “I want your eyes. I want your candid and independent evaluation of the present state of Stillton Academy of Art. Its persons and practices, its vulnerabilities. You, Fred, are blessedly unconfined and uncontaminated by academic prejudice. Do what you can, by all means, to resolve Mr. Baum’s quandary. But above all, keep your eyes open and report to me.”
    “I’m looking for what, exactly?” Fred asked.
    “I will not tip the balance,” Clay said. “You know me and you know I have my reasons. Find some way to see everything. Keep your eyes open and report.”

Chapter Four
    Fifty miles north of Boston, the turnoff that would lead to Stillton beckoned Fred to the right, and east. He was driving his generic old brown car, though Molly had offered the use of her Honda during her absence. Fortunately, he had stuck to his own vehicle. Almost immediately it became apparent that his choice was a good one. The road degenerated into a track that resembled what would result if the Taliban and the local Historical Commission conspired to supervise public works.
    ***
    For weeks there’d been nothing of interest. Not two hours ago, before Clay’s summons, Fred had tossed the Bonhams catalogue for a coming London sale onto the floor, complaining, “Tedious, tired, tepid, timid, trendy—but mostly, Holy Mackerel!—who cares? Even that Sargent portrait of the Duchess of Twaddle—she’s like all his other women. Butter wouldn’t melt if she sat on it.”
    So there was not much stirring in the Boston office.
    Since it was spring break, Molly and her kids had gone to visit her mother in Florida. Molly knew better than to extend the invitation to her live-in lover. So her house in Arlington was empty, and there was nothing stirring there either.
    Whatever motive Clay had at work in that Chinese box of a mind, at least it had gotten Fred out into the world, and moving. Though it was irritating in a familiar way not to perceive what was really on Clay’s mind. Closely as they might be obliged to work together, Clayton Reed’s native paranoia normally kept him at the edge of catatonia. He called this condition caution. “Suppose we were playing bridge,” Fred tried once, hoping for an elucidating metaphor. “Wouldn’t you want to send your partner—me, for example—a signal of what was in your hand?”
    “I do not wish them to know what I am thinking,” Clay replied, making it clear that even after some years of operating cheek by jowl, as far as Clay was concerned Fred would always be included in the concept
them.
    For all Fred knew, when he raced up the spiral staircase in response to Clay’s summons, the pair of stuffed suits had come with the intention to knock Clay on the head with something harder. But no. Perhaps second best, they had at least brought with them an excuse for Fred to busy himself with something active.
    ***
    A chill, wet evening was descending fast. It was not raining, exactly, but the air was saturated with moisture. In less than ten minutes of slow going the promontory narrowed to the extent that the darkening ocean was visible on both sides. Wind-stunted pines hung on at the roadside; and small, bare trunks of trees that might, when they developed leaves, turn out to be oaks or maples.
    Ten minutes further on—the driving was slowed by the condition of the road—the ground rose and widened into a simple, rounded, graceful hill, “evocative of femality,” Fred said as he jounced along. The promontory, and the hill also, were presumably glacial moraines,