Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

“We never know what people are capable of,” he said.

Eleanor peered at him apprehensively, as if she’d seen a face beneath Graves’ face, the ghostly boy he’d once been. He could feel dark questions brimming in her mind, about to pour out. To stop the flood, he said, “I need your help, Eleanor.” Before she could give a deeper meaning to what he’d said, he added, “With the investigation.” He nodded toward the papers on his desk. “It wouldn’t take you long to look over what I’ve already read. You can stop when you get to the end of Portman’s talk with Grossman. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. We can read the rest of it together.”

She took her seat behind the desk and began reading, flipping the pages at amazing speed, her eyes intent, searching.

Within an hour she was done. Then they read together.

They came first to Jake Mosley’s autopsy report. Eleanor was the one to voice the inescapable conclusion to which it led. “Jake Mosley didn’t kill Faye.” She pointed to the final line of the autopsy: Cause of death: Congestive heart failure.

Graves recalled the description Saunders had given of Mosley that summer, the slack work habits he’d observed. “Mosley was always complaining about being tired.”

“He would have been tired.” Eleanor’s eyes were still fixed on the report. “Almost all the time, I imagine. His heart was failing. He’d never have been able to walk to Manitou Cave, then back to Riverwood.” She turned the page, now moving on to the second series of interviews Portman had conducted at Riverwood. He’d begun with Allison Davies.

Graves imagined the slanted light that must have filtered in through the porch screens as the old detective had questioned Allison Davies that afternoon. He saw Portman slumped in the chair opposite her, his thick fingers wrapped around the stubby yellow pencil Slovak used, Slovak’s tattered notebook laid fiat across Portman’s wide lap. Portman would have watched Allison with the same penetrating gaze that came into Slovak’s eyes when he suspected something hidden but did not know precisely what it was.

But there were other sensations that went beyond those Graves now imagined, things added without his willing them-the pleasure he took in working with Eleanor, the desire he felt to extend his time with her, the way he seemed increasingly drawn toward an intimacy he had all his life denied himself.

“He wants to trust her,” Eleanor said suddenly.

For an instant Graves thought that Eleanor had read his mind.

“Portman wants to trust Allison.” She turned to face him. “But he can’t.”

Graves nodded, both relieved that she had been speaking of Portman and Allison and surprised that she’d been able to intuit so much from the notes, pick up the vague nuances that only a highly charged imagination could draw from the abbreviated formality of Portman’s report.

“You can tell he doesn’t trust her. It’s right here, listen.” Eleanor turned back to the notes. “ ‘Asked AD about her friendship with FH. AD stated that they had known each other since childhood. Also stated that recently she had not had much “commerce” with FH.’ Portman puts ‘commerce’ in quotation marks.” She pointed to the word on the page. “Because he finds the word odd, don’t you think? Too formal. Inappropriate for describing a meeting between close friends.” She turned back to the notes and began to read again.

“He senses something, Paul,” Eleanor said after a moment. “Something wrong or out of place. That’s why he’s so detailed in his questioning. That’s why he made Allison go through all the details-where she was and what she was doing that morning.”

Graves could see Portman and Allison as they faced each other, the sweep of Riverwood, wide and grand, but closing in somehow, tightening life a noose.

PORTMAN: You said after seeing Faye at the front door you went back to the dining room?

ALLISON: Yes, I did. I’d left my book there. I went back to it.

PORTMAN: And how long were you there?

ALLISON: The rest of the morning, I guess. The afternoon too.

PORTMAN: Just reading?

ALLISON: Yes.

PORTMAN: It must have been a long book.

ALLISON: Yes, it was.

From there Portman had gone on to more detailed questions, concentrating on exactly how Allison had spent the rest of the day. She had never left the grounds of Riverwood, she told him. She had spent some time on the side porch and lounged on the front steps. At around four she’d gone out to the gazebo, where she’d finally finished her book.

“He seems to believe her,” Graves said as he neared the end of the notes.

Eleanor turned to the last page. “But look at this. He’s constructed a complete timetable from the moment Allison saw Faye at the door until her death.”

The outcome of Portman’s investigation, a complete chronology of Allison Davies’ whereabouts on August 27, 1946, had been neatly recorded in Portman’s characteristic shorthand:

8:00-A sees F at front door

8:05-12:30: Dining room (c/FT/GK/WD)

12:30-4:30: Various locations in main house

(12:35-3:00: side porch/FT/GK/PO/JW), (3:00: front steps/HG/FS), (4:00/gazebo/JW) (4:30: library/AG/MD)

Eleanor’s eyes drifted down the list. “Allison was seen all over the place.” She turned to the next interview. Edward Davies and Mona Flagg. Portman’s notes failed to add to what he’d previously been told as to where the pair had been at the time of Faye’s death. However, Portman had subsequently conducted a wide-ranging investigation into Edward’s and Mona’s activities on August 27. Marcus Crowe of Britanny Falls told Portman that he’d seen “the Riverwood boat” on the Hudson at approximately 8:30 on the morning of Faye’s disappearance. The boat had cruised along the northern bank of the Hudson, two people inside, one a young man whom Crowe assumed to be Edward Davies, the other a woman he described only as “a girl with an umbrella.” They had been seated close together, Crowe told Portman, the man at the keel, the woman “nestled up” beside him.

An hour later Doug Masterman had sailed past Granger Point and seen “a man and a woman picnicking onshore.” The man had waved casually to Masterman as he drifted by, then said something to the woman, who faced him from the opposite end of a plaid picnic blanket, her back pressed up against a tree at the edge of the riverbank. Masterman identified the man who’d waved to him as Edward Davies, but had been unable to identify the woman, since she’d been facing away from him. She’d worn a red polka-dot dress, however, the same clothing Mona Flagg had been wearing when she and Edward Davies had sailed from Riverwood that same morning.

To these two witnesses Portman added a third, a woman named Marge Kelly who lived on the northern bank of the Hudson. At approximately two in the afternoon she’d gone out to feed the few chickens she kept in a coop near the river. From there she’d seen a sailboat drift by, a young man standing up in back, a woman seated at his feet. The woman had turned and waved to her. She’d been dressed in a red polka-dot dress, Kelly told Portman. Later, when shown a photograph, she had identified the woman in the boat as Mona Flagg.

Later Edward and Mona had helped a fisherman untangle his lines. The fisherman had positively identified both of them, and put the time of the encounter at 4:30 in the afternoon.

“So Portman found confirmation for Edward and Mona’s story,” Eleanor said. “Which eliminates both of them. They were seen too often and at too many different places for them to have had anything to do with Faye’s murder.”

With that, they turned to the next file, this one dealing with Mrs. Davies and Andre Grossman, and in which various members of the household staff readily corroborated in every detail exactly what they had previously told Portman.