The Finishing School

“I think it’s definitely a possibility,” he says pragmatically. And then, upon further reflection, he says, “Yes. Happiness is most certainly on the horizon for us.”


The phone rings on Kersti’s bedside table and they look at each other. Who would be calling their hotel? She reaches for it with a slight palpitation of dread.

“Mrs. Wax? There’s something here for you at the front desk.”

Jay is looking at her mouthing, Who is it?

“There’s something for me downstairs,” she whispers.

Kersti slides her legs out and hoists herself up off the bed, something that’s becoming increasingly difficult. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

“I’ll go down for you,” Jay offers.

“It’s fine, I’m also going to grab breakfast. The boys need a croissant immediately.”

She bends over and kisses him, throws on one of her maternity sundresses, and heads down to the lobby. The man at the front desk hands her a blank envelope. “Who left this for me?” Kersti asks him.

“I don’t know, Madame. It was left here late last night.” He looks down at a logbook and then back at Kersti. “It was just after midnight.”

Kersti thanks him and takes the envelope. On her way back to the elevator, she looks inside. There are two Polaroid pictures and a note. She removes one of the pictures and stops short.

With shaking hands, she shoves it back into the envelope and rushes over to the front desk. “Who was working last night when this was delivered?” she asks. “Can you look that up?”

“It was Afzal. He starts at five p.m. today.”

“Can you have him call my cell phone as soon as he’s in?”

“Bien sur, Madame.”

Kersti stands in the middle of the lobby for a few moments, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down. Wondering who’s left this for her. And why?

She goes back up to her room with the envelope in hand, having completely forgotten about breakfast.

“What is it?” Jay asks her. “Did you bring me a croissant?”

She wordlessly hands him the envelope.

“I don’t have my glasses—”

“You don’t need them,” she says. “Look inside.”

He opens the envelope and dumps out the contents. “Shit,” he mutters, looking at the pictures. “Who left this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know who this is?”

“No idea,” she says, looking at a young naked girl, staring into the camera with a vacant expression. Haunted eyes. Hair spread out on the pillow beneath her. Breasts bare and one hand attempting to cover the patch of black pubic hair between her legs. The Polaroid looks old, possibly from the late seventies or early eighties. Kersti can tell the room is in Huber House but not much else.

“And this one?” Jay holds up the second Polaroid.

“It’s Cressida,” she murmurs, tears springing to her eyes.

Cressida naked. Her legs spread open, her face defiant, seductive. Posing like she wasn’t the victim, which is exactly how she would have acted.

Thinking about you is written on the Polaroid in black marker. Across her body.

“That’s not her room,” Kersti says. “It’s a room in Huber House, but not hers. That wasn’t her bed—”

“Whose was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the hell was going on at that school?” Jay asks, putting on his reading glasses. “Nothing like this ever happened to you, did it?”

“No. No. Absolutely not. This is . . . I’m shocked.”

“Did any of the male teachers have access to your dorm?”

“Bueche, I guess. Maybe all of them. I don’t know.”

She wonders now if Mahler used to sneak in and visit certain girls, the ones he’d had access to since they were little, who’d been boarding since elementary school.

“Maybe Hamidou knew,” Kersti says, with a wave of despair. “Maybe she was part of covering it up.”

“This is one of those sexually explicit notes,” Jay says, handing it to her.

“I can’t read it,” Kersti says, getting up and going over to her laptop.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking something up.”

She types “Mahler Bobsled ’52 Olympics.” His name pops up immediately. Friedrich Mahler. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t remember his name. It’s Friedrich.”

“Who?”

“The coach. He’s German. I thought it might be him but his name doesn’t start with C—”

“What if C was just a code name?”

“What if it was Mr. Fithern?” she says, pacing around the room. “His name is Charles. It makes the most sense. Maybe he’s just a damn good actor and he fooled me—”

“Kersti, please sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

She sits reluctantly, still trying to fit the pieces together.

“What does this all mean?” he asks her, reaching for her hand.

“Cressida was obsessed with those girls who were expelled in ’74,” Kersti says. “I never understood why, but she must have suspected they’d been sexually abused, just like she was being abused.”

“She probably figured out that whatever they spray-painted on the statue of Helvetia incriminated their abuser.”

“And got them expelled,” she adds. “Cressida was determined to get to the bottom of it . . . right up until she fell.”

“Who do you think left this for you?”

“Another of the victims.”

“Someone who’s here for the Lycée’s hundredth birthday.”

“Why give it to me, though?”

“They couldn’t tell you at the front desk who left it?”

“I’m waiting to hear.”

Kersti tosses the Polaroids and the note on the bed, feeling as sad for Cressida as she is confused. “I’m guessing there’s a lot more incriminating evidence in that ledger,” she says.

“Maybe Cressida was going to give it to someone.”

“And someone stopped her.”

“Are you going to tell Deirdre?”

Kersti lies back and stares miserably up at the ceiling. “How can I not?”

“You don’t even know who it was.”

“Someone who was there since the seventies,” Kersti says. “Whose name starts with C. Or doesn’t. You think I remember any of the teachers’ names?”

“And German.”

“Maybe.”

“We’ll start researching after your speech. All that information must be at the school—”

“My speech?” she cries. “Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t stand up there and talk about the Lycée’s hundredth birthday.”

“You’re not. You’re talking about you. This is an honor.”

“No, not anymore. I don’t want anything to do with this school.”

She reaches for the Polaroid of Cressida, drawn to it as though to a car accident. She stares into Cressida’s frozen eyes and sees there, beneath the mask of defiance, a brokenness as plain and straightforward as her beauty. Maybe she was the suicide type after all, Kersti reflects.

And then she notices something. On the very edge of the bedside table, of which only the corner is visible, there’s a pack of cigarettes. Kersti recognizes the navy blue box without having to see the brand. Gauloises.

Joanna Goodman's books