The Secret History

Richard Papen, looking back from adulthood, begins with the fact that Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran is dead. Richard and three friends, following Henry Winter’s plan, left Bunny’s body in a ravine on Mount Cataract so it would appear to be a hiking accident. A sudden snowfall covers the corpse for ten days, turning what they expected to be a quiet discovery into a sprawling manhunt that nevertheless fails to implicate them. Richard admits that escaping suspicion has been easier than escaping the memory.

Richard then rewinds to explain how he reached Hampden College. Raised in Plano, California, he grows up lonely and disenchanted with suburban life, nursing what he calls a morbid longing for beauty and a “picturesque” existence. After drifting into ancient Greek, he fixates on a brochure for Hampden’s old-world campus and fights his way there through financial-aid obstacles, even stealing documents from his father to complete forms. On arrival, he learns that Greek is taught only by Julian Morrow, who runs an elite, nearly closed program with five students.

Richard becomes obsessed with Julian’s clique: Henry Winter, wealthy and intimidating; Bunny Corcoran, loud and affable; Francis Abernathy, stylish and sharp; and the twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay. After a library encounter and a humiliating first brush with Henry’s disdain, Richard lies to secure money from Dr. Roland, buys better clothes, and tries again. Julian, charming and subtly commanding, accepts him on strict terms—Richard must center his entire schedule around Julian’s insulated curriculum. In the first seminar, Julian frames “divine madness” as a kind of desired annihilation of the self, crystallizing the group’s fascination with danger under the banner of beauty.

Richard’s early attempts to belong expose the group’s dynamics. Bunny takes him to an expensive lunch, drinks heavily, and then “forgets” his wallet, forcing Henry to arrive and pay a staggering bill. Richard learns Bunny routinely exploits others and that Henry’s cool control includes private fury. Still, the twins and Francis draw Richard in, inviting him to dinners and, more importantly, to Francis’s aunt’s vast country house, which becomes their refuge. The weekends there are languid and intimate, full of study and alcohol, but Richard notices troubling signs: injuries, disappearances, and private jokes that suggest a secret he cannot yet name.

Over winter break, Richard’s carefully maintained image collapses. Too poor to go home and too ashamed to ask for help, he hides in an unheated warehouse room offered by an ex-student named Leo. The record cold drives him into hypothermia, pneumonia, and hallucinations. In early February, Henry—back early from Italy—finds Richard near collapse, gets him hospitalized, and then insists he stay at Henry’s apartment. Henry’s intervention saves Richard’s life and deepens Richard’s dependence and gratitude, even as Richard senses Henry’s life is under pressure from something unspoken.

When term resumes, the Greek group abruptly disappears, and Richard grows frantic. He finds Bunny drunk and evasive, hinting darkly that Henry “isn’t what you think he is.” Breaking into Henry’s apartment with a key Henry gave him, Richard discovers signs of flight: packed belongings and four one-way tickets to Buenos Aires. When Henry finally reappears, he admits the Argentina plan was a failed attempt to escape. Then he reveals the real crisis: Henry, Francis, and the twins attempted a Bacchic ritual in the woods and, in a frenzy, killed a local man and left the body behind. Bunny has learned the truth and is using it to torment and control them.

Henry and Francis explain how Bunny’s leverage formed. Bunny was accidentally in Henry’s apartment when they returned from the woods with bloodied sheets and later connected their cover story to newspaper reports. Henry tried to contain him with money and a trip to Rome, but Bunny became more demanding, even reading Henry’s Latin diary—where the killing is referenced and Bunny is insulted—and realizing Henry is trapped. Back at Hampden, Bunny’s jokes about “murder” harden into daily threats and humiliations, aimed at everyone: Francis, the twins, and eventually Richard, whose class insecurity Bunny targets cruelly.

Henry begins seeking a permanent “solution.” He experiments with poisonous mushrooms, even testing doses on a neighbor’s dog, and tries to normalize mushroom-eating by giving Julian safe ones. But Bunny’s volatility makes poison impractical; he could talk for hours before dying, risking exposure. Matters escalate when Bunny, drunk and vomiting in Richard’s room, confides the story directly to Richard, making clear he feels entitled to punish the others. Richard alerts the group, and Henry pivots to a faster plan: stage Bunny’s death as a hiking accident by pushing him off a ravine along his usual route. On the first attempt, Bunny fails to show, then suddenly appears and confronts them. Henry improvises a harmless explanation—claiming they are “looking for new ferns”—and the group retreats to try again.

The second attempt succeeds. Bunny is pushed from the ravine, the fall swift and irrevocable. Henry immediately dictates alibis, assigning a movie-theater story and insisting they act normal and avoid contact. Richard, shattered, seeks numbness; Judy Poovey gives him a pill later identified as Demerol, and he drifts through parties and a night with Mona Beale, only to be threatened and beaten afterward by Mona’s jealous boyfriend.

Snow again intervenes, delaying discovery and forcing the conspirators to live inside their performance. Henry manages the “missing person” narrative, pushing Bunny’s girlfriend, Marion Barnbridge, and campus authorities toward involving police. Henry also steers suspicion toward Cloke Rayburn’s drug world: Cloke, anxious and stoned, suggests Bunny may have involved himself with cocaine sources, and Henry lets investigators hear enough to make Cloke a convenient focus. Charles and Cloke break into Bunny’s room, escalating the case; Charles steals, and Henry burns, a newspaper photocopy Bunny had collected about the earlier killing, eliminating a dangerous link.

The disappearance becomes a public spectacle—search parties, reporters, a reward, and FBI involvement. A local mechanic, William Hundy, falsely claims to have seen Bunny with abductors, feeding a kidnapping theory that further misdirects the investigation. When rain finally melts the snow, a freshman, Holly Goldsmith, walking her dog Milo near the ravine, inadvertently leads to the body’s discovery. Agents Harvey Davenport and Sciola confirm Bunny died from the fall, with a broken neck and signs he tried to claw for purchase.

Hampden erupts into performative grief, while the group privately fears an autopsy. The Corcorans order one, but Henry learns it is driven by Bunny’s mother, Kathy Corcoran, trying to disprove rumors that Bunny died drunk. The autopsy finds minimal alcohol and no drugs, though gossip persists. Richard travels with Francis to the Corcorans’ home in Connecticut for the funeral. The house is chaotic with relatives; Henry is visibly ill and heavily medicated, and Cloke helps Richard steal sedatives and stimulants from Mrs. Corcoran’s hidden drug cache to manage Henry’s pain. Charles, already unraveling, drinks heavily and behaves dangerously, stealing car keys and vanishing into the rain before returning soaked and furious. At the burial, Henry, pallbearer and reader of a poem Bunny loved, shocks everyone by smearing grave mud across his own lapel, a gesture that signals how close his composure is to collapse.

After the funeral, the survivors deteriorate. Francis suffers panic attacks and resists treatment. Charles spirals into alcoholism, is arrested for drunk driving in Henry’s car, and grows paranoid about how close the FBI came to arrests. Richard witnesses Charles kiss Camilla sexually, and Francis confirms the twins’ incest, adding another layer of entanglement and shame. Camilla flees Charles’s volatility and, under Henry’s protection, moves to the Albemarle Inn under a false name—fueling Charles’s belief that Henry is having an affair with her and manipulating everyone.

The turning point comes when Julian receives an unsigned, typewritten “letter from Bunny,” including a page on Rome hotel stationery. Richard and Francis recognize it as real evidence connecting Bunny’s accusations to the group’s Italy trip. When Henry confronts Julian, the letterhead makes the implications unavoidable. Julian’s warmth turns cold; soon after, he takes an indefinite leave and vanishes, effectively abandoning his students and collapsing the program that bound them together.

Without Julian, Henry becomes brittle, and Charles becomes openly accusatory. At Francis’s country house, Charles finds Nembutal capsules Richard once stole for Henry and interprets them as proof Henry intends to poison him. Convinced Henry will kill him, Charles steals a truck and reappears at the Albemarle armed with a Beretta, intent on shooting Henry. In Henry’s room, Charles holds him at gunpoint. Francis throws wine in Charles’s face; Henry lunges; shots fire, a window shatters, and Richard is grazed in the abdomen. As the innkeepers pound on the door, Henry pulls Camilla close, tells her he loves her, and then shoots himself in the head twice, dying on the carpet.

Richard survives because the bullet passes cleanly through without destroying vital organs. The public narrative settles into convenience: Henry was suicidal, and Richard was wounded trying to stop him, a story that shields the survivors and absorbs the earlier crimes into rumor. Richard graduates and drifts—through a relationship with Sophie Dearbold, academic work steeped in tragedy, and a life shaped by emotional remoteness. Francis later attempts suicide and reveals he is being coerced into marriage to Priscilla after his grandfather discovers a relationship with a man named Kim. Charles cycles through relapse and instability and ends up estranged from Camilla in Texas. When Richard proposes to Camilla during a reunion, she refuses, admitting she still loves Henry. The story closes with Richard dreaming of Henry, not as a comforting return but as proof that guilt and memory keep the dead unburied.