Anonymous Sources (8 page)

The first time I set foot in a newsroom, I was twenty-one. It had dawned on me, belatedly, that college graduation was looming and I had no inkling what to do next. Inertia led me to contemplate just sticking around. Doing my PhD at Columbia. And then, I don't know—teach or write books or whatever people with PhDs in English did with their lives. Thankfully, my father intervened. Perhaps it was horror at the prospect of footing the bill for yet more years of Ivy League tuition. He ordered me to at least go through the motions of applying for a job.

So one afternoon I found myself interviewing in the newsroom of the
Wall Street Journal
. A story was breaking—it had been an exceptionally bad day for the markets—and you could feel the place hum. Editors were shouting for copy, damn it, not in an hour, not in a few minutes, but
right now
. I barely understood what they were talking about—the FTSE and Hang Seng elude me still—but I got the urgency of it. That the editors weren't looking for poetry, just your best effort at that moment. God, what a relief.

Some journalists will tell you they're drawn to the profession because it allows them to give voice to the voiceless. The Nick Kristof types who want to save the world. I'm afraid I'm not that noble. I just need deadlines. I find them liberating. What a gift, to have a job that requires you to file nearly every day, no matter how dreadful a day it's been. You are forced to just get on with it.

The
Journal
did not offer me a position that day. I hardly left them a choice: my ignorance of all things financial must have been glaring, and I didn't have a single sample of published work to my name. But I was hooked. Two months later I talked myself into an internship at the
Chronicle
. And here I still am, grateful every day to have escaped the
luxury of reflection afforded by academia. For me, it would have proved paralyzing.

Still. I looked around now at my surroundings. This particular corner of academia was beautiful. The high windows and polished floors of the dining room of Emmanuel College—Emma, as it's known here—were serene in the morning quiet.

I leaned back against a long wooden bench and sipped my tea. The request for tea had not been a ploy, or at least not entirely. Whenever I cross the Atlantic, an internal switch seems to trigger. Back in Boston, I crave coffee. Preferably of the strong, black variety. But in Britain, I drink endless cups of milky tea. I find the ritual calming. That's my Scottish blood. It is a fiercely held belief in Scotland that a cup of tea can sort out most problems. The really tough ones might require a stiff gin and tonic. Or three.

But that would come later. First I had to get my story. I stood up, straightened my dress, and prepared to meet Petronella Black.

I PAUSED OUTSIDE THE DOOR.
From behind it came shrieks, then a giggle, then a crash.

I checked the wall again.
P. P. BLACK
, it read. This did seem to be the correct room.

From inside came another shriek, more laughter. I pressed my ear against the door. Two voices. One deeper.

Then the door swung open and a tall boy in jeans backed right into me. Nearly knocked me off my feet.

“Christ!” he shouted. “What the hell?”

“God. Excuse me.” I do not blush easily, but I could feel my face turning as red as my hair. There was no way to deny I'd been eavesdropping. “I was about to knock—I wasn't sure I had the right room.”

He stepped back and looked me up and down. He lingered a bit
longer on my legs than seemed strictly necessary. Then he raised his eyebrows. “So you thought you'd lurk outside for a while to make sure?” His accent was English, upper-class. “I do hope we were entertaining. I mean, crikey, if you've been out there for the last twenty minutes—”

“Oh, shush, you.” A female voice from inside the room cut him off. “You were looking for me, I presume? May I help you?”

“I hope so. Are you Petronella Black?”

“Yes. And you are?”

I stepped halfway into the room. “Alexandra James. I'm from Boston. I wondered if I might ask you about Thomas Carlyle.”

“Oh.” Petronella went very still.

The boy—actually more of a man, now that I looked at him—shifted his weight. “Righty-o. Just on my way out. Later?” He shot a glance at Petronella.

She nodded. Frowned. Once the door clicked shut, she looked up. “Did you know Thom?”

“No.” I studied her. Petronella Black appeared to be in her early twenties. She possessed that peculiar English beauty that would fade, and soon. But today she was stunning. White-blond hair like silk brushed her shoulders. Her eyes were very blue. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, slim legs folded beneath her. The sheets were crumpled, and she radiated a glow that in my experience comes only from either a very recent workout or very recent sex.

“No, I didn't know him.” No point beating around the bush. “I'm a journalist. I work for the
New England Chronicle
. I've written a few stories about Thom. But I can't figure out what happened to him—why he died. So I wanted to talk to you.”

I watched for a spark of recognition. If my boyfriend had just died in a different city, I'd be reading the local paper to see what people were saying.

But Petronella gave no indication she'd ever heard of the
Chronicle
.
Instead she narrowed her eyes. “I've spoken to Thom's parents. And to the police. I don't believe I have anything more to say.”

“Sure.” I nodded. “But there are things you can't say to a guy's mother, I imagine. Was anything wrong when Thom left here to go home? Was there anything—I don't know—anything that might have been bothering him? Or anyone who might have been bothering him?”

“I don't see how that's any of your business.”

“The thing is, I've got to write a story, whether or not you talk to me. You and Thom were—very close, as I understand. This must all have been horrible for you.”

Petronella reached for a cigarette. She lit it and glared at me. “That is most certainly not any of your business.” Her voice was surprisingly deep for such a small person. You could hear the breeding in it. Petronella Black came from money.

“Okay. Fair enough. Let me start over. Do you know what happened his last day or two here? Who he might have been with?”

She shrugged. “He had a party. He was always having parties. He loved a crowd, the drink, the chat. That's what I liked about him. But it was never . . . He thought . . . Well. It hardly matters now.”

“He thought what?”

“Nothing. You'd best leave now.”

This had not gone well. Then again, it was amazing she was speaking to me at all. “Just one more thing. Any friends I should speak to? People who were at the party, or rowing buddies, maybe? Anyone Thom might have confided in?”

“You've talked to Joe, I assume.”

“Joe?”

“Thom's best friend.”

“Joe. What's his last name?”

“I don't know,” she snapped. “He's American. They were roommates at Harvard. Why don't you do your job and find out his name yourself?”

“I'll do that.” I stood up. “Thank you. I'm sorry for your loss.”

On the landing outside, I stood for a moment to collect my thoughts. I was trying not to leap to conclusions, but was there any explanation aside from the obvious one for what I'd just witnessed? The giggling. The tousled sheets. The bedder's comments. What kind of a girl jumped into bed with another man three days after her boyfriend had died?

“PETRONELLA ALWAYS SOUNDED LIKE KIND
of a bitch to me,” Joe Chang was saying down the phone line from Los Angeles. “I mean, I never met her, but just the way Thom talked about her. He sounded both totally hot for her and totally miserable, you know? Anyway, what kind of a name is Petronella?”

I smiled. “I think it's a London society thing. All the girls from Sloane Square seem to be named things like Jemima or Nigella or Petronella.”

“Bizarre.”

“Yeah.” Joe was the first person I'd found who actually seemed to want to talk about Thom. It was refreshing not to have to drag information out of a source. On the contrary, I couldn't shut him up.

“I figured he'd be a prick, you know? I mean”—Joe lowered his voice and attempted an aristocratic accent—“ ‘
Thomas Abbott Carlyle.'
I couldn't believe it when I saw the roommate assignments our freshman year. I'm this full-scholarship kid from LA. My Chinese was better than my English back then. My Spanish too, I'm not kidding, from all the guys at school. And I get stuck sharing bunk beds with Mr. Boston Brahmin. They do that on purpose, to mix it up in the freshman dorms. But Thom was cool. He really was. We had different crowds, but we always roomed together. He was my best friend. I think I was probably his.” Now Joe sounded as if he might cry.

“You still talked, when he was over here in England?”

“Sure. Every week or so.”

“I need to figure out what happened on Tuesday. Why Thom was up in that bell tower, and why he fell.”

“Well, the first one's easy.”

I sat up. “I'm listening.”

“We went up there all the time. Senior year especially. I used to do dorm crew. You know, clean the showers and vacuum the floors so you can satisfy the work requirement for financial aid? So I had the master key for all the doors in Eliot House. I found that bell-tower room one day cleaning over in H-Entry. I was supposed to be dusting. Didn't seem like anyone ever used it. So I made Thom and me copies of the key. Please don't print that in the paper. I mean, I don't know what they'd do to me now, but still.”

“You two—what'd you do up there?”

“Hang out. Drink a few beers. Talk about stuff. You know.”

“You don't find it weird that Thom went up there by himself?”

“No. I guess he hung on to his key. It was a cool place to go sit, just to think about things.”

“Joe”—I paused—“do you think, then, that Thom went up there, had a beer or two, and just—slipped?”

“No way. I thought about that, after . . . after what happened. No way.”

“Why not?”

“We used to do that—crawl out across the roof, to get a better view. We'd get, like, twenty feet out from the big window. Wedge our feet up against the top of the tiles. But I nearly fell once. All the way down, I mean. Lost my grip and skidded. Scared the shit out of Thom. After that, we never crawled down. Just sat in the window, on the ledge. He wouldn't even lean forward much.”

“So you're saying, you don't buy that he slipped, that this was an accident?”

“I do not buy that he slipped.”

We were both silent for a moment.

“You said it was a cool place to go, to think about things. Do you know if Thom had anything in particular on his mind?”

Joe sighed. “I don't guess that this matters anymore. But, yeah, he was really worked up about the LSAT. The test for law school. You know Thom's dad is the president's lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“He wants—wanted—Thom to be a lawyer too. That was the expectation. Lowell Carlyle can be very persuasive in conveying his expectations. I don't think Thom ever questioned him. He wanted to please his dad. And it was a good fit for Thom, anyway. So he took the LSAT this spring, studied for it and everything. And then he just got his score a couple weeks ago. It was a 151.”

“What's that mean?” I had no idea how the LSAT worked.

“That's, like, terrible. For a guy from Harvard. I don't know what happened, because Thom is smart. But I guess he had a bad day. Thom thought with a 151 he might not get into law school anywhere. And forget Ivy League.”

“Couldn't he just retake it?”

“Yeah, that's what I asked him, but I guess they average the scores. So even if Thom rocked it the next time, he'd still score pretty low. Thom said—I mean, he realized there are worse problems in the world. But law school was . . .” Joe struggled to find the right words. “The whole time I've known him, Thom never talked about doing anything else. It was a very big deal to his family. A very big deal to Thom. When he told me about his LSAT score, he sounded just lost. He hadn't figured out yet how to tell his dad.”

“What about Petronella Black? He must have talked about it with her.”

“No idea. I guess so. He was crazy about her. He was talking about marrying her, did you know that? But then every time I talked to him, they were fighting or not speaking to each other or something.”

“And you never met her yourself, you said.”

“No. Maybe I will on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?”

“The funeral. Memorial Church, at Harvard. They just announced it.”

THAT NIGHT, IN THE ENORMOUS,
claw-footed tub of my hotel bathroom, I leaned back and scowled at my drink. Didn't the bloody English invent gin and tonics? Why, then, when you ordered one from room service—at a hotel in the heart of sodding England—why did they deliver it without a trace of a lime or lemon? And God forbid they include an ice cube or two. I sipped. The drink was tepid. The tonic was flat.

Then again: at least it was large. At least it was gin.

I sank lower into the scalding water. I was exhausted. The overnight flight, the time change, the not particularly productive day of reporting. I didn't have much of a story yet. But I was beginning to see the outlines of a feature I could cobble together for the Sunday paper. A ticktock account of Thomas Carlyle's last days. It would not exactly be Pulitzer material, but it would advance the story a little. I could make it a pretty piece of writing to help set up the funeral on Tuesday. I still needed to track down a professor and ideally a rowing friend or coach. Then there was Petronella Black. I wasn't sure how to convince her to talk. But I would need to go back and interview her on the record.