Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

He glanced at the bottom of the painting. The signature that rested in its lower right corner was so small, it seemed as if the artist had been reluctant to reveal himself: Andre Grossman.

Graves stepped closer, studying the painting’s details-the skeletal frame of the still-unfinished cottage, building materials scattered all around it, the sailboat that lolled in the water beside the boathouse, the vacant tennis court. It was clear that from Grossman’s vantage point on the other side of the pond, the artist would have been able to see anyone who came and went from the main house, strolled its grounds or lingered, however briefly, at the edge of the water.

For a moment Graves imagined himself in Grossman’s place on the sunny morning of August 27, 1946. Glancing from behind his easel on the far side of the lake, the painter would have seen a young girl in a light blue dress as she made her way from the mansion to the woods. She would have passed the eastern edge of the house, then moved across the open lawn, her back to the mansion, a wall of green rising before her. She would have been able to see the single break in the wood, the trail’s narrow entrance, just as Graves could see it in Grossman’s painting, but all the rest of Riverwood, the house and grounds, the pond and the boathouse, even the uncompleted second cottage, would have been behind her.

It was that second cottage that drew Graves’ attention now. As he continued to imagine the few short seconds during which Faye Harrison had walked toward the woods, he could hear the sounds of the hammers ringing across the water, hear the voices of the workmen as they called to each other. Grossman would have heard them too, perhaps even noticed how the men suddenly paused in their work, as men do when a beautiful young woman drifts by.

One of those men would have been Jake Mosley.

Graves had not yet seen a picture of Mosley, but he imagined him tall and very skinny, with deep-sunk eyes and a severe, hawkish face, the same form he’d given to Kessler many years before. He saw him in khaki trousers and sleeveless T-shirt, a battered carpenter’s belt drooping from his hips, hammers and screwdrivers hanging from its worn loops. To this bare physical outline Graves now added small, malicious eyes, dull and clouded, one of them cocked to the right, so that Jake Mosley forever looked as if he were glancing over his bony shoulder. When he smiled, it was mirthlessly, almost cruelly, a jagged line of yellow teeth behind thin, moist lips.

In the scene Graves continued to imagine, Faye Harrison had now closed in upon the encroaching woods, a mountain trail opening before her like a small, dark mouth, Mosley still watching from a distance, swelling with desire, wanting her but unable to have her, so that she remained distant and untouchable, receding from his grasp tormentingly, as if his were the hands of Tantalus.

In his mind, Graves saw Faye disappear into the green. At that moment he knew the sounds of the hammers would have begun to ring across the pond again, the workmen now returning to their work. Andre Grossman would have seen those hammers begin their steady rise and fall, and Graves envisioned them with a chilling vividness that surprised and disturbed him, all save the one gripped violently in Jake Mosley’s freckled hand.

Once he’d finally pulled himself away from Grossman’s painting, Graves turned his attention to the file cabinet behind the desk. He knew that his initial imaginary recreation, its vision of a sinister Jake Mosley watching in silent maliciousness as Faye Harrison disappeared into the woods, was precisely that-something he’d imagined.

The facts, as he came to discover them during the next few hours, were somewhat different.

He began by reading through the contemporary newspaper accounts. He found them in the top drawer of the filing cabinet, the dippings gathered into a single black binder, neatly pressed beneath clear plastic covers and arranged chronologically.

The first report had been published in the local paper on the morning of August 28. It was headed LOCAL GIRL MISSING and stated that “Miss Mary Faye Harrison, age sixteen, has been reported missing by her mother, Mrs. John Harrison, currently in residence on the Warren Davies estate, known locally as Riverwood.”

The next day the paper reported Faye had last been seen on one of the many trails that wound through the surrounding hills. A hiker named Jim Preston reported having seen a girl whom he later identified as Faye Harrison at around ten-fifteen in the morning. She’d been walking down Mohonk Trail, Preston said, and she’d been alone.

The article made no mention of any possibility of foul play. “It’s easy to get turned around in the woods here,” Malcolm Gerard, the local sheriff, was quoted as saying. “Even local people get lost sometimes. But they always turn up.”

But Faye Harrison did not turn up. And so on the morning of August 30, search parties were organized at Riverwood and sent out to look for her. By then the sheriff’s tone had begun to change. With regard to Faye, he told one reporter, “We have to think about other possibilities than her just being lost.”

It was not difficult for Graves to conceive of exactly what those other possibilities had been. In any such case, the police first suspected that the missing person had run away, either on her own or with someone else, in the case of Faye Harrison, most likely a boyfriend of whom the parents disapproved. Sheriff Gerard had been in office for nearly twenty years. He had no doubt encountered quite a few such “missing” persons, people who’d not actually been missing at all, at least to themselves.

But in the case of this girl, ominous considerations must have presented themselves quite soon. Runaways were usually last seen in bus and train stations, or hitchhiking on the open road. Faye Harrison, on the other hand, had last been seen walking down Mohonk Trail. And, in a fact not revealed until the following day, Jim Preston, the lone hiker who’d spotted the girl in the woods that day, had also seen a man in the same area, one he described as “standing beside a tree near the bottom of the hill.”

Who was that man?

For a time, Graves considered the question. He saw Faye as she moved along the mountain trail, dappled light falling over her blond hair, the hem of her favorite dress snagging from time to time on forest undergrowth. He tried to imagine the look in her eyes. At some point, had she heard a rustling in the trees behind her, glanced back? Had she expected to see Allison Davies trailing after her in the distance, but glimpsed someone else instead?

The following day another report appeared in the local paper:

SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING GIRL.

According to the report, groups of police and local residents had combed the woods west of Mohonk Ridge, the direction in which Faye appeared to have been going when last seen on Mohonk Trail. They’d fanned out along the ridge, then moved down the western slope and into the rills and hollows that spread out in all directions from the base of the mountain. Progress had been slow “due to the dense undergrowth” and the “many small caves and granite outcroppings” that dotted the area. Still, Sheriff Gerard remained hopeful that Faye would soon be found safe. “We can’t dismiss the idea that something might have happened to this girl,” the paper quoted him as saying, “but it’s too early to speculate.”

Only two hours after the sheriff’s interview, all need for speculation abruptly ended. The newspaper headline that appeared the following morning announced the sudden conclusion of the search.

BODY OF MISSING GIRL FOUND IN MANITOU CAVE

The body of Mary Faye Harrison, 16, was found yesterday evening in Manitou Cave. She was discovered by Andre Grossman, a portrait artist in summer residence at Riverwood. Mr. Grossman said that he found the girl’s body while walking near the base of Gaylord Ridge, an area just to the east of where search parties had been concentrated for most of the day. According to Mr. Grossman, Miss Harrison’s body was fully clothed. “She was curled up, with her legs drawn up, and I thought she was sleeping,” he told reporters gathered at the Davies Mansion after the discovery. Sheriff Gerard stated that an autopsy would be performed in order to determine the cause of Miss Harrison’s death. In response to reporters’ questions, the Sheriff stated that there were “indications” of foul play, but he would not speculate further, pending the results of an autopsy.