The Headmaster's Wife by Jane Haddam Page A

degree. He even had his publications. David, on the other hand, had tenure, and he had lost the sense of insecurity that was the inevitable accompaniment to being new and unknown in a strange school.
    â€œIsn’t it funny?” David said. “Are you sure she’s having an affair with a student?”
    â€œOf course I’m sure. It’s not the first one she’s had either. I think she looks on it like a tradition.”
    â€œDo other people know about this? Is it—common talk around the campus?”
    James considered that. “Not exactly,” he said slowly. “She’s not blatant about it really. And I don’t think her husband knows.”
    â€œPrep school headmasters are like college presidents; they never know anything.”
    â€œPossibly. In this case, though, I think she’s made a certain amount of effort to keep him from finding out. But peopledo know. It’s hard not to know in a place as small as this.”
    â€œAnd they don’t do anything about it?”
    â€œWhat are they going to do?”
    David picked up his coffee cup again. “Think about it. What do you think would have happened if it had been one of us with a student?”
    â€œAh,” James said.
    â€œI know you don’t like to be political,” David said. “Even so, you do have to face reality some of the time. If it had been one of us with a student, we’d have been out with our luggage before we’d had time to pack. There wouldn’t even have been an inquiry. You know that as well as I do.”
    â€œI supposè,” James said.
    â€œDon’t just suppose,” David said. “It’s ever since the church scandals, and you know it. Especially here, this close to Boston, everybody’s walking on eggs. That’s a cliché. I know you don’t like them, but there it is.”
    â€œYes,” James said.
    â€œThe rumors don’t even have to be true,” David went on. “Nobody even bothers to investigate anymore, half the time. All you need is a student with an axe to grind, somebody you’re going to give a less-than-stellar grade to, and there it is. I’ve heard of three cases in the last two weeks. Oh, they didn’t happen all at once, or all in the same place, but it amounts to the same thing. You can’t be too careful. And you can never be sure.”
    â€œI don’t have affairs with students,” James said stiffly. “What do you take me for?”
    â€œIt’s not what I take you for,” David said. “It’s what
they
take you for. All of
them.
Sometimes I understand the black separatists, I really do. Sometimes I wish we could go somewhere without
them.”
    â€œWho’s
them?
The entire straight world?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” James said. “Besides, I don’t know what you’re upset about. Aren’t you always telling me that it’s so much better at the university level, where they don’t haveto worry about hysterical parents and homosexual men can be honest about who and what they are? I thought the university was a paradise for diversity, or however it is you phrase that on a day when you’re trying to get me to quit my job.”
    â€œNothing is a paradise when it comes to this,” David said. “It’s a witch hunt, literally. It’s the same sort of hysteria there was a few years back with satanic ritual abuse. It doesn’t matter what’s true. Doesn’t it bother you that that woman, what’s her name—”
    â€œAlice Makepeace.”
    â€œAlice Makepeace can have an open affair with a student, whom I presume is under eighteen—”
    â€œI think he may be under sixteen.”
    â€œUnder
sixteen!”
David shook his head. “Think of that. Under sixteen. When it’s one of us with somebody under sixteen, it’s child rape, as if we’d set upon a