Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

“But someone was looking through Mr. Davies’ papers,” Graves said. “For what?”

Greta continued to stare out the window. “The truth about Riverwood. That is what the policeman said.”

“What truth?” Graves asked.

“He didn’t say,” Greta answered. “He didn’t know.”

She remained silent for a long time, then her eyes drifted back toward Graves. She seemed to have darkened almost physically, stricken by a terrible melancholy. It didn’t surprise him that her final words had nothing to do with Portman or Faye Harrison or some “truth about Riverwood” the old detective had spoken of but had never found.

“I should have died in the camp with my mother,” she said. “To see certain things, and then survive. This should not be.”

Graves felt the impulse to make a counterargument, sing the triumph of survival. But he saw his sister stagger across the floor, ragged, bloodied, dancing at Kessler’s command, her body jerking to the stomp of his dusty boot. And so a soft “I know” was all he said.

As Graves headed back toward his cottage, the lights of the mansion shining brightly behind him, he thought again of the last thing Greta Klein had said to him. The truth about Riverwood, her tone had been dark and secretive, the same his characters used when they described the outrages that made up Malverna’s grisly history. For a moment Graves imagined Kessler standing on its shrouded gallery, wreathed in swamp gas and Spanish moss, waiting for the black carriage to arrive, for Sykes to haul out their latest victim, trussed and gagged, a young woman, as Graves envisioned her, with tangled chestnut hair.

The lights of Eleanor’s cottage returned Graves to Riverwood. He could see Eleanor through the screen door, her body caught in the soft yellow glow of the floor lamp beside her chair. She was reading, and although he was reluctant to disturb her, the thought of going directly to his cottage disturbed him even more, as if some part of his lifelong solitude had without warning begun to lose its cold appeal.

“Hello, Paul.” Eleanor did not seem surprised to see him coming up the stairs. She rose and swung open the screen to let him in. “I missed you at lunch. Dinner too.” Despite the lightness in tone, the question that followed was not altogether facetious. “Are you trying to starve yourself, Paul?”

Graves shook his head. “Busy. That’s all.”

Eleanor waved him inside the cottage, pointed to an empty chair, then chose one opposite. “Well, my work hasn’t been going very well.” She nodded toward the desk at the far end of the room. “I didn’t even turn it on.”

Graves glanced toward the desk. It was arrayed with what he assumed to be all the latest equipment. Computer. Monitor. Modem. Fax.

“Not exactly parchment and a quill pen anymore, is it?” she asked.

“I’m still pretty much at that stage,” Graves told her. “Just an old typewriter.”

“Did you get much work done today?”

“I learned a few things.” His mind returned to the last answer Greta Klein had given him. “But a lot is hidden. Family secrets.”

“That’s to be expected,” Eleanor said. “Remember that line from Tolstoy. ‘All families are unhappy. But each family is unhappy in its own way.’ In what way were the Davieses unhappy?”

Once again Graves found himself quite willing to reveal the few things he’d learned. “Well, there was trouble over Edward’s relationship with Mona Flagg.” He glanced toward the library, and in his mind saw a figure half hidden behind a bolt of canvas. “And it’s possible that Grossman-the man who found Faye’s body-had some sort of relationship with Mrs. Davies. Or, at least, that was the rumor.”

Eleanor laughed. “Well, in my experience, rumor is the single most reliable source of information on earth.”

Graves smiled suddenly, reflexively, a release that struck him as very nearly wanton. He imagined Gwen seeing it, this smile he had no right to, her eyes locked in fierce rebuke.

“So, Mrs. Davies and Grossman might have been an item,” Eleanor said. “Anything else?”

“Grossman knew Faye slightly. He took a photograph of her. Near Manitou Cave.”

Eleanor’s eyes took on the probing intensity of Sheriff Sloane’s. “There’s more, isn’t there? About Grossman, I mean.” She watched Graves closely, silently, her questions stored where Slovak stored his, in a small chamber just behind his eyes.

“Only a feeling,” Graves answered. “That he was hiding something.”

“That’s one of your themes, isn’t it? The buried life. What Slovak endured as a boy. The way Sykes was snatched from a childhood he never speaks about. Only Kessler seems to have no secret past.”

“Kessler lives in the moment,” Graves said dully, with no wish to discuss it.

“That’s a quote, you know,” Eleanor said. “From your second novel. The one I’m reading now. Half a quote, actually.” She gave the full one. “ ‘Kessler lives in the moment. And in each moment summons hell.’”

Graves recalled the line. It struck him as pretentious. Stilted and melodramatic. The line of a callow young writer. He remembered how it had come to him, the way he’d glanced out the window of his apartment and seen a spiral of red neon flashing in the darkness, beating off the seconds in a hellish glow.

Eleanor studied him intently. “Have you ever wondered why you write about murder?”

Graves saw Kessler untie his sister from the table, pull her backward by the hair, throw her to the floor. He felt his body struggle against the ropes that bound him to the chair, heard his voice cry out, Leave her alone! “No,” he answered now, a lie he’d repeated so often, it came to him as naturally as truth.

Eleanor continued to watch him closely. “‘ Light only darkens things already dark.’ Slovak says that. Why does he feel that way?”

“Because he knows that life doesn’t care about the living.”

Something trembled in Eleanor’s face, and Graves realized that he’d touched a vulnerable aspect of her nature. For a moment she left it open to his gaze. Then she glanced away, returned to the safer subject of Faye Harrison’s death, the possibility that it might have been tied to the affair between Andre Grossman and Mrs. Davies.

“All right, let’s say that it’s true,” she began. “Let’s say that Mrs. Davies and this mysterious Mr. Grossman were having an affair, where would that leave you in terms of Faye?” She did not wait for Graves to answer. “Perhaps Faye found out about it. Threatened to tell Mr. Davies. Perhaps she was killed to shut her up. Of course, there are lots of reasons for a woman to have an affair. Love. Loneliness. Simple lust. But there’s also revenge. In this case, against Mr. Davies. To get even with him.”

Graves looked at her quizzically.

“For his having an affair,” Eleanor explained. “There’s a famous Russian short story. By Turgenev. ‘First Love.’ It deals with a teenage boy who’s desperately in love with a young woman. He later discovers that the woman is having an affair. Still later he discovers that the man she is having the affair with is his own father. Suppose that in this case, it was the older man’s wife who made the discovery that her husband was having an affair with a young woman. That is, Faye Harrison.” She waited for Graves to respond. When he didn’t she went on. “Let’s see where we are, then. From what you’ve told me, I gather that no one saw Faye from approximately eight-thirty in the morning, when she was sitting alone in the gazebo, until a half hour later, when she came walking across the front lawn.”

Graves stopped her. “No. Someone did.” A face swept into his mind-dark, with burning eyes. “Greta Klein. The upstairs maid. I spoke to her just a few minutes ago. She still lives here. She told me that she saw Faye inside the house.”