Desperate Measures

"I'm terribly sorry," he said. "The alumni association at Yale told me

  that Derrick Meecham lived here. I assumed that their records were up

  to date."

  "They are." The woman's voice became more tremulous.

  "I don't understand."

  "Derrick Meecham does live here."

  "Forgive us, ma'am," Jill said. "We still don't understand.

  My son."

  "Mother," a man's refined voice said from inside the house. "I thought

  we agreed that you had to save your energy. There's no need for you to

  answer the door. That is Frederick's responsibility. Where is he, by

  the way?"

  The door came all the way open, and Pittman faced a

  distinguished-looking man in his early fifties. The man had a broad

  forehead, graying hair, steady eyes, and the, solid expression of

  someone used to giving orders and expecting them to be obeyed. His

  three-piece gray pinstriped suit was the most Perfectly tailored that

  Pittman had ever seen.

  "Yes, may I help you?" the man asked without enthusiasm.

  "This man is a professor," the elderly woman said.

  "Peter Logan," Pittman added. "I teach history at Harvard . I've made

  a mistake, I'm afraid. I wanted to speak with your father, but as I've

  just learned, he passed on. I didn't mean to intrude."

  "Speak to my father? What about?"

  "I'm doing research on the history of Grollier Academy. The man didn't

  react for a moment, didn't blink, didn't seem to breathe. "Grollier?"

  "It's had such a major influence on American government, I thought it

  was time to investigate what makes it unique."

  "it's unique all right. " Cars drove by on the street. The sun dipped

  lower, casting shadows. The man continued to stare at Pittman

  Then his chest moved. "Come in, Professor... . I'm sorry, could You

  repeat your name?"

  "Logan. Peter Logan. This is my wife, Rebecca. She's a historian,

  also.

  "Derrick Meecham. " The man offered his hand, once more saying, without

  enthusiasm, "Come in."

  The man locked the door and led the way, escorting his mother along a

  wide wood-paneled corridor that had landscape paintings, forests and

  farmhouses, on the walls. The frames looked old, enough to be from the

  nineteenth century.

  They passed a brightly polished maple staircase, its banister

  beautifully carved. At the end of the corridor, lights glowed in

  several rooms, from one of which a tall man wearing a white jacket

  appeared.

  "Where have you been, Frederick?" Meecham asked. "I found my mother

  answering the door."

  "I thought she was upstairs," the man in the white jacket said. "I

  apologize, Sir. I didn't hear the door. I was down in the wine cellar,

  looking for the Rothschild you requested.

  "Did you find it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "The '71?"

  "Yes, sir.

  "Good. Mother, why don't you rest until dinner? Frederick will take

  you up to your room. Perhaps you can watch one of your television

  shows." Meecham's tone implied that he himself did not watch

  television.

  Victory Garden is about to begin, Mrs. Meecham, " Frederick said.

  "Yes," the elderly woman said with enthusiasm, allowing herself to be

  escorted into a small elevator.

  As the cage rumbled and rose, Meerham turned to Pittman and Jill. "In

  here, please."

  They entered one of the many rooms that flanked the wide corridor. There

  were bookcases with leather-bound volumes on them, mostly law books. The

  furniture was subdued, correct, and, Pittman assumed, more expensive

  than he would have dreamed. An Oriental rug stopped three feet short of

  the walls on each side, revealing a rich oak floor.

  Meecham gestured. "Sit down. May I have Frederick get you anything?"

  Pittman and Jill each took a chair across from where Meecham stood by

  the fireplace.

  "Thank you, no," Pittman said.

  "I was just about to have a cocktail," Meecham said, his hospitality

  surprising Pittman.

  I don't get it, Pittman thought. He was ready to give us the bum's rush

  until I mentioned Grollier. Now he invites us in and wants us to have

  cocktails. Either he needs the drink, which it doesn't look like, or

  else he hopes a little booze might get us to talk more candidly than we

  normally would have.

  "A cocktail would be nice," Jill said. "Whatever you're having. "

  "Vodka martinis."

  "That would be fine."

  Meecham walked to the door, opened it, spoke to someone, then shut the

  door again and sat on a Chippendale chair next to the fireplace.

  He looked steadily at Jill and then Pittman. "Grollier Academy.

  "That's right. Your father went there, I believe," Pittman

  "Oh, indeed he did. But I don't quite understand. Of all the students

  who went to Grollier, why would you have chosen my father for an

  interview?"

  "Because he was a classmate of the so-called grand counselors. Jonathan

  Millgate, Eustace Gable, Anthony Lloyd .

  Meecham's features hardened. "I know who the grand counselors are. My

  father had no relationship with them after he left Grollier. "

  "But evidently he was close to them at the time." Meecham spoke

  quickly. "What makes you think that?"

  "In his junior year, your father enrolled 'in a course in political

  science. The number of students was quite small. Only six. The five

  grand counselors-"

  "And my father."

  It was the first time that Meecham had volunteered any information.

  Pittman tried not to look surprised.

  "Yes," Jill said. "Naturally in so close an environment, especially on

  the subject of political science, your father would have heard ideas

  exchanged that might have explained the direction the grand counselors

  took in their political careers.

  Meecham studied them. "My father never discussed that with me."

  The room became silent. Meecham was through volunteering information.

  "then perhaps he said something about the grand counselors themselves,"

  Pittman said, "some kind of reminiscence when he read about them in the

  newspapers, something that would give insight into their formative

  ideas."

  "He never discussed that with me, either," Meecham said flatly.

  "No comment at all when he read about something controversial that they

  did?"

  "Only that he'd gone to school with them."

  Yes, Meecham had definitely stopped volunteering information.

  The room became silent again

  Someone knocked on the door. Frederick came in carrying a tray that

  held glasses and a martini pitcher.

  "Frederick, we won't have time for cocktails after all. I just

  remembered that the San Francisco office is going to be phoning me in

  five minutes," Meecham said.

  Frederick paused where he was about to set the tray on a sideboard.

  Meecham stood, approaching Pittman and Jill. "I don't like conducting

  business in the evening. That's probably why I forgot about the

  telephone call. Let me escort you to the door. I regret I couldn't be

  of more help, but my father was a private man. He seldom talked to
me

  about personal matters. Grollier was a long time ago." Pittman stood,

  as well. "One last question. I wonder if you have any idea why your

  father didn't graduate from Grollier. Meecham, whose gaze had been

  steady, blinked twice.

  "He dropped out of the political science course that he was taking with

  the grand counselors," Pittman said. "And then he stopped attending

  Grollier altogether. "

  "I've changed my mind, Frederick," Meecham said. "The San Francisco

  office can talk to me tomorrow. When the phone rings, tell them I'm

  unavailable."

  "Very good, sir."

  "Please, serve the martinis."

  "Certainly, sir.

  Meecham sat again, looking uncomfortable. Pittman and Jill lowered

  themselves back into their chairs. Frederick poured the martinis and

  brought a tray to each of them, offering a choice of olives or pearl

  onions. Pittman sipped, enjoying the cold, smooth taste, suddenly

  realizing how little alcohol he had had to drink since he'd followed

  Millgate to the Scarsdale estate five nights earlier. Prior to then,

  he'd been really putting it away, guzzling it. He hadn't been able to

  face the day-and especially the nights-without it. He had needed to

  distance himself from reality. Now he couldn't allow anything to keep

  him from facing reality.

  The situation became awkward. No one said anything, waiting for

  Frederick to leave.

  As the door was finally closed, Meecham said, an edge in his voice,

  "What do you really want?"

  "Just what we told you-to know your father's attitude toward Grollier

  and the grand counselors," Pittman said. "If you're aware that my

  father never graduated from Grollier, that he dropped out in his junior

  year and went to another school, it must be obvious to you that he had

  ambivalent feelings.

  "Did he ever say anything about one of his teachers? Duncan Kline?"

  Meecham's gaze became piercingly direct. "This has nothing to do with a

  book about education."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You're not here because you're doing a history of Grollier. " Meecham

  stood abruptly. "You know about Grollier. You keep talking around the

  subject, hinting about it, but you know. "

  "I don't understand," Pittman said.

  "Otherwise, you wouldn't have mentioned Duncan Kline.

  "He taught the political science class that your father dropped out of."

  "The man was perverted."

  Pittman had taken a sip from his martini. Surprised by Meecham's

  comment, he swallowed hard. "Perverted?"

  "You mean you actually don't know?" Meecham looked threatened, as if

  he'd let down his defenses.

  "We know something happened there," Pittman said. "Something traumatic

  enough to make Jonathan Millgate obsessed about it, even all these years

  later, on his deathbed. "

  "I can't speak for Jonathan Millgate. All I know is what MY father told

  me when I suggested that I send my own boys to Grollier. It was one of

  the few times he ever showed open emotion. He told me that under no

  circumstances was I to send his grandsons there. I was to send them to

  a decent school, a place like Groton, from where my father had

  eventually graduated and then gone to Yale. "

  "But why did he dislike Grollier so much?" Jill asked.

  Meecham scowled at the floor, debating with himself. "Maybe it's time."

  He looked up. "Maybe Grollier hasn't changed. Someone should have done

  something long ago to make sure it stopped."

  "To make sure what stopped?" Meecham nervously tapped his fingers

  against his martini glass. "This is all off the record."

  "If that's the way you want it."

  "It's the way it has to be." Meecham seemed to struggle with himself in

  order to say the words. "Duncan Kline was a pedophile. "

  Pittman stared.

  After further painful hesitation, Meecham continued. "A boy's prep

  school was a perfect environment for him. From what my father told me,

  I gather that Duncan Kline was a brilliant instructor, quick, amusing,

  encouraging, the sort of charismatic figure who attracts the brightest

  of students. Apparently he was also an athlete, particularly when it

  came to rowing. His policy was to assess each incoming class, to select

  the most promising boys, a very small group, a half dozen or so, and

  then to encourage them throughout their four years at Grollier. I

  suspect that he also chose them on the basis of how emotionally distant

  they were from their parents, how keenly they needed a substitute

  father. Certainly my father was never close to his father. Duncan Kline

  encouraged them to take small Private seminars from him. He trained

  them to be oarsmen and to outdistance the best official Grollier Mm. He

  gradually became more and more intimate with them, until by their junior

  year ... As I said, one group from each incoming class. That way, as

  one group graduated and went on to college, another was there to take

  that groups place.

  Pittman felt sick.

  His face tight with emotion, Meecham took a long sip from his martini.

  "My father rejected Kline's advances. Kline backed off. But soon he

  came back and persisted in making advances. This time, when my father

  rejected him, Kline was either so indignant or else frightened of being

  exposed that he made academic life intolerable for my father, giving him

  impossible assignments, ridiculing him at every opportunity. My

  father's grades declined. So did his morale. And his health.

  Apparently he had some kind of collapse at home during the Easter break

  of his junior year. He never went back to Grollier."

  Pittman couldn't keep dismay from his voice. "But didn't Your father's

  parents do anything about Duncan Kline?"

  "Do what?" Meecham shook his head, puzzled. "What would you have had

  them do?"

  if they should have reported Kline to the authorities - They should have

  reported the whole mess to the headmaster of the school." Meecham

  looked at Pittman as if he'd gone insane.

  "Reported ... ? You obviously don't grasp the situation. This

  happened in the early 1930s. The time was repressive. I assure you

  that topics such as child molestation were definitely not considered fit

  for conversation. Not in polite society. That type of sordidness

  existed. Everyone tacitly knew that. But surely it didn't occur often,

  and when it did, it happened to other people, lesser people, unrefined,

  crass people who were economic and moral inferiors."

  "Dear Lord," Pittman said.

  Meecham looked more disturbed as he took another long sip from his

  martini. "That was the prevailing opinion of the time. Grollier boasts

  governors, senators, congressmen, even a President of the United States

  among its distinguished alumni. For a student to claim that sexual

  abuse occurred on a regular basis at that school would have been

  unthinkable . So many reputations would have been at stake that the

  authorities would never have treated the charge seriously. They would

  have been forced to conclude that the student was grievously mistaken,

  that he w
as making such an outrageous accusation because he needed to

  blame someone for his poor grades. As when my father told his father

  what was a matter of fact, happening at Grollier, his father slapped

  him, called him a liar, and told him never to repeat such filth again."

  Pittman was astonished.

  "So my father kept it a secret and never told another person until I

  suggested to him that Grollier might be a good Prep school for my sons "

  "But surely the other students would have supported your father's

  claim," Pittman said.

  "Would they have? Or would their parents ever have allowed them to be

  subjected to questions of such a gross nature? I wonder. In any case,

  it's a moot issue. The matter never got that far. "

  Her blue eyes intense, Jill leaned forward. "Are we to assume that

  Duncan Kline made advances to the grand counselors, also? That those

  advances were accepted?"

  Meecham stared at his martini glass. "They were Duncan Kline's chosen

  few, and they did continue to take his seminars. By the time my father

  told me this-my sons went to prep school in the mid-seventies-it was too