Instruments of Night (27 page)

Graves recalled Grossman’s word. “Tainted.”

“Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “But not just by one act. Something one person did. But overall. Generally. A tainted atmosphere. Only alive. The way Malverna seems alive. So that you can feel it. You know, tingling. Fibrous. Like something woven into the scheme of things.”

“You sound like Slovak,” Graves said.

She glanced toward him. “Yes, I suppose I do a little.” She smiled. “His language is a bit… florid, Paul,” she added cautiously, clearly reluctant to offer any more trenchant criticism of his work.

“Yes, I know,” Graves said. “I’d like to pare it down. I don’t know why I can’t.”

Her answer struck him as achingly on target. “Because writing is your only passion. So you can’t help pouring everything into it.”

Watching her, Graves considered how much he’d given up in his isolation, the fuller and more passionate life he’d turned from in his guilt. No wife. No children. Nothing to look forward to. Save the rope and the metal bar. But even now he felt it the only life he deserved, the one way he could continue to live, and yet be dead, buried with the sister he’d knowingly led Kessler to, all that had been done to her after that.

“Is he based on anyone?” Eleanor asked, her eyes now fixed on the road. “Slovak, I mean.”

“No,” Graves lied, remembering how Sheriff Sloane had made the long, dusty drive to Mrs. Flexner’s house, trudging wearily up the creaky wooden stairs, always bent upon talking to “the boy” just one more time.

“What about Kessler?” Eleanor asked. “Is he based on anybody you ever knew or heard of?”

“No.”

“And Sykes?”

Graves shook his head. “Imagined” was all he said.

The house on Carson Lane was decidedly a far cry from the grandeur of Riverwood. Here there was no broad circular drive, no great columns or towering windows. Instead, a cement driveway led to a single-car garage. The house was modest and without charm, covered in beige aluminum siding, the roof of asbestos shingles. A rusting wheelbarrow rested beside the narrow walkway; the remains of a vegetable garden withered behind a sagging wire fence.

Eleanor grasped the small brass knocker on the front door and tapped twice. When there was no answer, she tapped again.

The door opened slowly to reveal a short, stocky woman in a nurse’s uniform.

“We’re looking for Edward Davies,” Graves said. He introduced himself and Eleanor, then added, “We’re working on a story. About Riverwood.”

The woman seemed not to recognize the name. “Well, come in,” she said in a thin, dry voice, indicating they should go into the adjoining room. “I’ll get Mr. Davies.”

They stepped into a tiny room whose drawn curtains cast everything in a murky light. The walls were bare except for a scattering of photographs. All were of Edward Davies, but only in his later years, none of his youth or early adulthood. It was a time in his life, it seemed to Graves, that Edward had either failed to record or wished to forget.

“No pictures of Riverwood,” he murmured as he moved along the wall, glancing at the photographs. “None of Allison or his parents.”

“Or of Mona Flagg,” Eleanor said.

“Mona was nothing to him,” Graves said assuredly. “A summer fling. Someone he used, then threw away.”

Eleanor looked at him oddly. “Why do you say that? You don’t know what he felt for Mona Flagg. So why do you assume she was just someone he ‘used and threw away’? Why is the woman always the victim in your mind, Paul?” She raised her hand to stop him from replying. “What if Edward were the victim? Led on by Mona. Forced to do things he wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t made him do them.”

Her version of the story was no less likely than his own, but still, he could hardly imagine it that way. Mona as the diabolical one, Edward her simpering tool. He knew
where this distortion came from, the fact that it had been seared into his brain during the longest night of his life. Kessler and Sykes at their horrid work. Gwen the thing they worked upon.

“You always think of women as abused,” Eleanor said. “Mistreated. Led to their destruction by a man. It’s the same in your books. Kessler’s victims are always women. Like Maura in
The Lost Child.
The little boy’s sister.”

Graves saw Gwen’s hands drop from the rope, raw and bleeding, heard her final, desperate breath. Dead now. Dead at last. The man Graves had knowingly led to her standing beside the dangling body, bored now with the long night’s savagery, but searching still for one last outrage for Sykes to carry out, seizing it in a fiendish instant, barking his command,
Gut her!

He felt it surge up, the vast, bloody gorge of his hidden past rise so powerfully, he felt sure he would release it. “Eleanor … I …”

She lifted her hand, again silencing him. “He’s coming.”

He glanced toward the corridor and saw a man emerge from its shadows, tall but bowed, his lustrous black hair now white and unruly. Edward Davies was large and unkempt, dressed in baggy brown pants and a white shirt that bore a faint yellow stain beneath the pocket. He eyed them suspiciously as he neared them.

“You wanted to see me,” he said gruffly, walking to a chair and easing himself into it. “Something about Riverwood. I don’t have anything to do with Riverwood.”

“It’s about Faye Harrison,” Graves began cautiously.

“The girl who was murdered? Allison’s friend?” Davies’ eyes shifted over to Eleanor. “What about her?”

“We’re trying to find out what happened to Faye,” Eleanor answered.

“You mean, who killed her?” Davies asked. “My God, that must be over fifty years ago.”

“We’ve been asked to look into it again,” Graves told him. “By your sister.”

“Allison.” Davies spit the name like something putrid from his mouth. “My God, she gets more like Miss Havisham every year.” He glanced about the room as if to point out the shabbiness of his surroundings. “I’d rather be here than live like she does. Locked up in the past. Her whole life. Lived in a prison. She’s been living that way for years now. The guardian of the gate. Mistress of Riverwood. What a joke.” He shifted in his chair, wincing as he did so. “So you’re here about Faye’s murder. Well, I can’t help you. I didn’t even know she was missing until her mother showed up. My father spoke to her. Evidently Faye had left her house that morning and not come home since. Mrs. Harrison had been combing the woods, my father said, but hadn’t located her. None of us knew where she was, of course.”

“Did you know that Faye came into the house the morning she disappeared?” Eleanor asked. “One of the servants saw her there. Greta Klein. She said that Faye was standing at the entrance to the corridor that led to the boathouse.” She slowed her pace slightly, like someone carefully laying a trap. “Faye was looking toward the boat-house, Greta said. Toward you … and Mona Flagg.”

If Davies heard the accusing tone, he did not visibly react.

“Did you see Faye in the basement that morning?” Eleanor asked.

“I saw Greta there,” Davies answered evenly. “No one else.”

Eleanor started to ask another question, but Davies shook his head. “I have a question for you,” he said. “Is
Allison after me? Is that what this is all about? Trying to pin a murder on me? She’s never forgiven me, and she never will.”

“Forgive you for what?” Eleanor asked immediately.

Davies looked at her closely, as if trying to determine how much she already knew. “I took a little money. A little money out of one of my father’s accounts. For Mona. She was my girlfriend at the time. I needed the money because she was—You’re too young to know what it was like back then. It was different. A hell of a lot different. You couldn’t just go to the local clinic and get rid of it.”

“It?” Eleanor asked. “Mona was pregnant?”

“I went to my father,” Davies said. “I wanted to marry Mona. I told him so. But he said no. He said I was an idiot for getting involved with someone like Mona. A girl from the ‘lower orders,’ as he called them.” He smiled coldly. “I’m sure my sister has probably given you a very different idea of what my father was like. Kind. Generous. Good to the help. Always funding his pet charities. The amateur scientist, teaching pretty little Faye about … breeding, or whatever it was they were doing with those flowers in his damn garden. That’s how my father seemed to Allison. She adored him. Why shouldn’t she? All her life he’d given her anything she wanted. Faye too. Buying her clothes. Toys. Trinkets. Always a piece of candy waiting for her when she came to his office. She loved him as much as Allison did. They both thought he was a peach of a guy. But when I came to him … when I needed his help, he told me to take my little tramp and go to hell.” A glacial bitterness guttered in his eyes. “He could spend all kinds of time with the daughter of a servant. But when it came to the girl I loved, she wasn’t good enough for Riverwood.” He took a quick, hard breath, then let it out raggedly, struggling to calm himself.
“So, I went back to Mona. We talked. Decided to … Well, that cost money. I didn’t have any. So—” He stopped a moment, stared at the slight tremor in his hands, then continued, his tone less angry now, though his manner seemed no less troubled. “Anyway, I went to New York. To see Mr. Freeman, my father’s bookkeeper. He controlled one of my father’s accounts. I’d gone there before, so Mr. Freeman was used to giving me a little cash. I’d never seen him make a record of what he gave me. So I figured the account was my father’s version of petty cash, something he hardly noticed. Of course, this time I needed a little more than usual, but it didn’t seem to bother Mr. Freeman. Two thousand dollars was pocket change to my father. Freeman took it out of a safe in the office. Anyway, when I got back to Riverwood I hid the money behind some of the boxes my father kept in a storage room in the basement. A few days later I found Greta snooping around in the room. I threw her out and checked to see if the money was still there. It was. But I was afraid to keep it there any longer. So I gave it to Mona when we went sailing that same afternoon. She tucked it inside an umbrella. Two weeks later she used it to … solve the problem. But things didn’t go the way the doctor said they would. She—” His lower hp trembled. His voice hardened. “Mona died. I never went back to Riverwood. A few weeks later a guy showed up at my door at college. My father had sent him. He’d come to tell me that my father had found out about the money. It seems that he kept a closer eye on that account than he did on any other. Used it to fund special projects. Freeman hadn’t made a record of my withdrawal because he’d been instructed never to make a written record of anything that had to do with the account. Every transaction was to be reported to my father in person. Which is exactly what Freeman did when my father came by his office in New York. So this
man had come to tell me that I’d been caught red-handed. And to give me what he termed ‘official notification’ that I had been disowned.” He smiled almost wistfully, as if Riverwood were only a memory now, not the legacy he’d been denied. “I never saw my father again. It was like the Old Testament pronouncement: ‘I cast you out.’ It wasn’t until years later that Allison and I met again. At our mother’s funeral. I was having a few health problems by then. She agreed to put me on the Riverwood dole. The check comes every month.” He took in a long, weary breath. “But I don’t miss Riverwood. What I miss—every day, almost every hour—is …” He rose heavily, trudged to the window and looked for a time out on the barren lawn of his cramped, plain home. Then he turned, his hands clasped behind his back. “Mona might have been able to tell you a few things about Faye, you know. When I wasn’t at Riverwood, they’d go rowing together. Out on the pond. Faye had stopped going out on the river. She told Mona it made her feel queasy. She was sick a lot, Mona said. Couldn’t keep her food down. Particularly in the morning. That’s what made Mona think that the two of them had the same … problem.”

“Mona thought Faye might be pregnant?” Graves asked.

“That’s right,” Davies replied. “Mona told me that she asked Faye flat out. She said, ‘Faye, could it be you’re in a family way?’ Faye said, ‘No, I’m not pregnant. I couldn’t be pregnant.’ She was real firm about it. That it was impossible. So Mona figured Faye was a virgin. I mean, how else could she have been so sure that she wasn’t pregnant?”

“What about Faye’s sickness?” Eleanor asked. “Did Mona ever find out what had caused it?”

“No,” Davies answered. “I don’t think she talked
much to Faye after that. She did see her, though. A few days before the … disappearance. She told me about it after we’d left Riverwood. She said she’d seen Faye. Washing clothes in a tub. Washing that same blue dress she wore the day she went into the woods, Mona said.” The peculiar nature of what he was about to describe swam into Davies’ eyes. “She was washing everything very … hard. That’s what Mona said. Scrubbing very hard. Then squeezing out the water and scrubbing again. Like she was trying to get out a stain or an odor.” The next words came from him slowly, sadly, like the last words of a mournful song. “And she was crying.”

“Crying?”

“Yes. Mona started to go over to her, but when Faye saw her, she turned away, like she was embarrassed to be seen like that. Broken up. So Mona left her alone. That’s the way Mona was. She always knew the right thing to do.” The love he’d felt for Mona Flagg sprang into his eyes. Enriched by loss, as it seemed to Graves, but also edged in anger. “Mona was the best person I ever knew. That’s why it so enraged me. What my father did.” An old trouble rose in him, flooding the banks of his long reserve. He needed no further coaxing in order to reveal it. “The morning Faye disappeared, my father came up to me. He had some papers in his hand. He shoved them at me. ‘Read this,’ he told me. It was a report. On Mona. Her whole family. A general rundown of what they’d done. It wasn’t pretty, I can tell you that.”