"There are cameras in the classrooms," he said. "The school installed them two years ago. Admin oversight — they said it was for security."
She had not known about the cameras. The information landed with the specific quality of something that reorganised what you already knew into a different pattern. If the cameras had recorded Kavitha's conversation with Dev — the one where she had mentioned ten-forty-seven PM — then whoever managed the cameras had access to that information. And whoever managed the cameras was, almost certainly, Mr. Iyer or someone in the administrative office.
"So they know," she said. "They know what she told you. They know about the spreadsheet, the mark sheets. They know she had documentation."
"They know what she said in the classroom," Dev said. "They don't know what's in the drawer. They couldn't open it without the key. Unless—"
"Unless they used the master key," Naina said. She thought about the master key on the staffroom board. Had it been used before? But she thought about the letter: If you are reading this. Written with the assumption that it might not be found. The drawer had not been opened before now. The master key had not been used.
"I think they assumed the drawer was just a locked drawer," she said. "Teachers lock drawers. They didn't know specifically what was in it because the camera wouldn't have recorded the contents of a desk drawer."
"They know there's something, though," Dev said. "From the conversation."
"Yes. But 'she mentioned a spreadsheet' and 'I have found and photographed a spreadsheet and a letter and original mark sheets' are very different problems for them." She looked at him. "The students on the list — the six families. Are any of those students part of the agreement? The silence agreement?"
Dev looked at her. "Two of them," he said. "Two of the six are in our class."
"And Ananya knows this."
"Yes."
"So the silence agreement isn't just about protecting Ms. Rao," Naina said slowly. "It also has the effect of protecting those two students' families. Of keeping the fraud undiscovered." She paused. "Did Ananya intend that when she set up the agreement?"
Dev looked at the floor. A very long pause. "I don't know," he said. "I've been thinking about that for two weeks. Ananya's family is not one of the six. She's not personally protecting her own marks. But her parents are friends with two of the families who are." He looked at Naina with the specific discomfort of someone naming something they have been avoiding naming. "Ananya is very good at school. She doesn't need adjusted marks. But her parents care a lot about the school's reputation. If the school is exposed as a place that falsified board exam records — the reputation, the value of a certificate from here —
