Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

She was standing only ten yards from the mouth of the cave. The bare remnants of an old stump rose a few feet from the ground, stained with decades of rain, a cushion of deep green moss rising along its sodden, crumbling sides, but otherwise just as Grossman had long ago described it, with one side splintered and a thick canopy of limbs hanging above.

“Which means Grossman told the truth,” Eleanor said. “In that one detail, at least. I mean, he would, in fact, have been able to see Faye’s body from where he said he was.”

Graves knew that Eleanor had reached some sort of conclusion. He expected her to state it, but instead she offered a question.

“Remember what Slovak does in The Unheard Melody? He examines all that he’s been told by various people during the investigation. It’s a huge conspiracy and he knows that Kessler’s at the heart of it. But the major elements of each conspirator’s story hold together. Slovak can’t find a crack anywhere. So he begins to look at the smaller aspects of each story, the tiniest, the most incidental details. That’s where he finds his answer. Someone who should have heard a melody, but didn’t. Paul, when we were in the basement, I kept thinking about Faye. Her unexpected turns. But I was focused on the wrong person. That’s why I didn’t catch it at once.”

“Didn’t catch what?”

She didn’t answer him directly. “It’s a question of positioning. In a play it’s called blocking. Characters have to be at certain places at certain times. If they’re off their marks, it throws everything off. Think about this, Paul. Allison claimed that when she walked to the dining room door that morning, she saw Faye at the entrance. We’ve both stood exactly where Allison stood. And so we know that she could, in fact, have seen Faye from that position. It would have been physically possible for her to do it. It’s just a little thing, a small part of her story, but it checks out.”

“So what doesn’t check out?”

“Nothing in what Allison told Portman. All the physical details, where she was, what she heard or saw that morning. All of it was physically possible. As far as I can tell, the same is true of everyone else Portman talked to. All their stories check out. You might say, following Slovak, that they all heard the melodies they should have heard. All but one.”

Her expression was solemn yet highly charged, her eyes motionless yet deeply searching, a face Graves could easily imagine for a great detective.

“Greta Klein,” she said. “That’s who I should have been thinking about when we were in the basement. Greta told Portman that she’d come halfway down the stairs, then stopped. She said that from that position she’d seen Faye standing at the entrance to the corridor that leads to the boathouse. That’s possible. She could have done that. But she also said that she saw Edward and Mona in the boathouse. That’s where the problem is. In the blocking, I mean. Because from halfway down the stairs, Greta couldn’t have looked down that corridor. She couldn’t have seen anyone in the boathouse.”

“Maybe she got it wrong,” Graves said. “Maybe Greta got farther down the stairs than she thought she did.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered how far down them she got,” Eleanor said. “There’s only one place in the basement from which she could have seen Edward and Mona in the boathouse.” She stopped, as in a dramatic pause.

Graves knew what was expected of him dramatically. A question.

“Where?” he asked.

“The room where Warren Davies kept his papers,” Eleanor answered. “Papers that were scattered around when Portman saw them there. Papers Portman thought Faye might have been going through, looking for something. Greta Klein told Portman that it was Faye who’d been in the room. She even suggested that Faye was a thief. But it was Greta who was in the room. Greta who was going through Warren Davies’ papers. Looking for something. But what?”

Graves’ answer came as intuitively as he knew Slovak’s would have.

“The truth about Riverwood,” he said.

She was sitting in a blue chair just across from the bed when they entered the room. Magazines lay scattered on the table beside the chair. The television nickered in the far corner, daubing her with its drab light. At Graves’ knock she’d replied simply, “Come in,” leaned forward, and snapped off the television. It was only then, when she’d seen Eleanor standing beside him, that her manner had stiffened.

“Who is this woman?”

“A friend of mine,” Graves answered. He glanced toward Eleanor. He could see that she was taking in the odd mirthlessness that characterized Greta’s face. It was a sorrow Graves had noticed himself, the sense that something had gone to rot inside the woman, that her spirit could lift only so high, then descend again.

“We’re working together on the project I talked to you about a few days ago,” he told her.

Greta’s eyes drifted to Eleanor then back to Graves. “My room is too small for so many.”

“We won’t be here long,” Graves assured her. “I have only a few questions.”

Greta sat back, slowly. “What do you want then?”

“We’ve been going over the statement you made to Detective Portman after Faye’s murder,” Graves began.

“I already talked to you about that,” Greta said. She grabbed a single button of her dress and began to jerk it with quick, nervous motions, like someone awaiting a dreadful verdict.

But a verdict for what crime, Graves wondered. Greta had provided a perfectly acceptable alibi in the case of Faye’s murder. Why was that alibi insufficient to protect her from a yet more threatening inquisition?

“I don’t want to go over it all again,” Greta told him.

“Yes, I know,” Graves said. “But we have a few more questions.” He chose his next words carefully. “About things you might have gotten wrong.”

“Wrong?” Greta asked softly.

“You mentioned that you saw Faye in the basement on the day she disappeared.” Eleanor said. “You said you’d come down the stairs, seen Faye, and stopped.” Eleanor edged forward, closing the space between herself and Greta Klein, but slowly, unthreateningly, in the manner, it seemed to Graves, of a daughter. “You said Faye was standing at the entrance to the corridor that leads from the basement to the boathouse.”

“That is where I saw her,” Greta replied. “Looking down the corridor. Toward the boathouse. I told all of this to the detective.” She looked at Graves. “So, what is it that is ‘wrong’?”

Eleanor reached the bed and lowered herself upon it without invitation. “You also told Portman that you saw Edward and Mona. That they were in the boathouse.”

“Yes, I said this. It is true. Edward and the girl were already in the boathouse. Faye was at the other end of the corridor. Watching them. Her back was to me. I remember this.”

Eleanor smiled slightly. “So you must have come all the way down the stairs.”

Greta watched Eleanor suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“I was just trying to get an idea of where you were in the basement. I assume you came all the way down the stairs.”

“No, I did not.” Greta’s hand released the button, settled motionless onto her lap. “I stopped halfway, like I told the detective.”

“But from that position you wouldn’t have been able to see down the corridor to the boathouse.” Eleanor spoke gently, as if merely correcting an unintentional error. “You might have seen Faye at the entrance to the corridor from there, but you wouldn’t have been able to see Edward Davies and Mona Flagg in the boathouse.”

Greta suddenly looked like a small animal captured in a trap, the hunter closing in, drawing back the rifle bolt. As if to conceal her fear, she lifted her chin and stared at Eleanor belligerently. “I do not have to say more.”