Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

“Unless it wasn’t Kessler those people saw,” Graves said.

“Which it wasn’t. It was Sykes dressed up like Kessler and told by him to go down a certain street at a certain time, waving to familiar people with Kessler’s red handkerchief, but always careful, as Kessler tells him, to greet all eyes with your back.” She seemed astonished by what her own mind had suddenly conjured up. “What if the time frame of the murder is all off? What if Faye wasn’t killed in the woods at all? What if she were killed there, in the basement?”

Graves could see the scene playing in her mind, actors moving in various directions, taking their marks in a new and different version of the play.

“We know absolutely that Allison saw Faye at the front door,” Eleanor continued. “And several people saw her in the gazebo. After that she wait into the basement. When she came out again, she walked back toward the front lawn. Several workmen saw her. They said her hand was raised to her eyes, remember? Like she was trying to shield them from the sun.” Something in her eyes caught fire. “But she wouldn’t have been facing the sun.” She seemed amazed that this small detail had escaped her. “Because she’d come around the eastern corner of the house and faced the pond. The sun would have been to her back, Paul.”

“So maybe she was trying to shield her face from something else.” Graves heard hammers cease their rhythmic beating, saw eyes look up from wood and plaster. “From the workmen.”

“Yes. Because it wasn’t Faye who crossed the lawn and went into the woods that morning.”

“Then who was it?”

Eleanor’s answer came without the slightest hesitation. “Mona Flagg.”

“And where was Faye?”

“In the boat with Edward Davies. Wearing a red polka-dot dress, behind that frilly white umbrella.” A shiver passed through her. “Already dead.”

Graves saw Faye step into the shadows of the basement, her blue eyes working to adjust to its shadows. What had she been looking for?

“Murdered by Edward,” Eleanor said.

Graves saw it. A man stepped out of the darkness. Tall and lean. Dressed in white trousers and a polo shirt. Faye stepped back, mouthed his name, Edward. He came toward her silently, drawing a gray cord from his pocket. Her eyes fixed upon the cord with a desperate urgency, the words dropping from her mouth like small white petals, Oh, please, please, please…

“But why?” Eleanor asked.

They were on the floor of the basement now, Edward pressed down cruelly upon Faye’s struggling body, one hand over her mouth, the other looping the rope around her throat as she kicked and gasped. He could hear the scrape of her shoes against the floor, the gurgle of her final breath.

“Once she was dead, Edward went to get Mona,” Eleanor went on. “By then he’d worked out the plan.”

Graves saw Mona as she stripped off the red polka-dot dress, trembling as she did so, terrified beyond imagining at the look in Edward Davies’ eyes, following her lover’s commands, too frozen by panic to resist him. Playing Sykes to his Kessler.

“Once they’d switched clothes, Edward put Faye in the boat. He hid her face beneath that white umbrella,” Eleanor continued. “Mona helped him do it, the two of them in the boathouse. That’s what they were doing when Greta heard them there.”

He saw Greta Klein crouched fearfully in the dark interior of the storage room, her keys clutched in her hand, listening to distant whispers, words she could not make out.

“At some point Greta assumed that Edward and Mona had sailed out of the boathouse,” Eleanor said. “That’s when she opened the door of the storage room. That’s when she saw a young girl in a blue dress. Greta assumed the girl was Faye. But the girl was looking toward the boathouse. So Greta never actually saw her face.”

Graves nodded silently, his mind now sweeping forward as time swept forward, the small boat now circling the pond and moving down the channel toward the open waters of the Hudson, Edward at the helm, Faye propped up against the starboard side, a lifeless doll in a bright red dress, the umbrella carefully positioned to shield her dead face from view.

“At about this time the workmen saw Faye emerge from around the eastern corner of the mansion,” Eleanor continued. “She shielded her face, then turned and headed for the woods. From that moment on, her back was to the cottage, the house, the pond, every place at Riverwood where anyone would have been able to see and recognize her. She reached the woods and entered them. A hiker spotted her a few minutes later, going down Mohonk Trail. She was in front of him, walking so quickly he thought she might be trying to get away from someone. He was right, Paul. She was trying to get away from him.”

Graves saw a female figure dart around the gray wall of Indian Rock. The girl was no longer Faye. Mona Flagg was rushing down the slope. Toward the cave that rested near the bottom of the ridge, only yards from the river.

“Meanwhile, Edward was on the Hudson.” The urgency was building in Eleanor now. In her voice, he heard her close in upon a prey she had long pursued. “His boat was always seen at a distance. People saw a girl in a red dress, holding an umbrella. They saw Edward onshore with a young woman. But the woman was sitting with her back against a tree, facing away from the river.”

Graves saw what anyone on the river would have seen: a couple on the bank, the young man standing, waving, the girl motionless, propped up against a tree.

“Edward and Mona later met somewhere in the woods,” Eleanor continued. “They carried Faye’s body from the boat to Manitou Cave. Mona changed back into her own clothes. She dressed Faye again in her blue dress. After that she and Edward returned to the boat. They sailed back to Riverwood.”

Graves turned it over in his mind, considering all the details, until, with a terrible certainty, he suddenly felt that it was true, that Edward Davies had, in fact, murdered Faye, used Mona as his frenzied slave.

“Let’s go talk to him,” he said. “Edward.”

Eleanor looked at him questioningly. “Why Edward? Why not Mona?”

“I suppose I just assumed it was more likely for Edward to have had a motive for killing Faye,” Graves said, knowing it was untrue, that the real reason lay at the core of his imagination, its two demons of viciousness and cowardice, Kessler and Sykes.

“Do you know where he is?” Eleanor asked.

“No,” Graves said. “But I’m sure Miss Davies does.”

Miss Davies did know where her brother lived, as she was quick to admit. Even so, she remained reluctant to reveal his location.

“I don’t think he’d want to be disturbed,” she explained. “Edward is in a state of seclusion.”

They stood in the flower garden, behind the house, the gazebo rising empty only a few yards away. Graves imagined the morning when Faye Harrison had lifted her eyes toward the second floor, nodded slowly, risen, then walked into the basement. In search of what? he wondered now, while Eleanor continued pressing Miss Davies for her brother’s address.

“But if you called him and told him we were coming,” Eleanor said. “Surely he’d-”

“I’m not in contact with my brother,” Miss Davies interrupted. She was busily pruning the irises, cutting back the long brown stems of those that had begun to wither. The blades of the pruning shears snapped loudly as she continued. “We have not spoken to one another since my mother’s death. That was over ten years ago.” She shot a curiously scolding glance toward Graves. “Frankly, Miss Stern, I’m puzzled by your interest in this matter.” She pulled the shears back, the sharp twin blades still open, and faced Eleanor abruptly. “I should remind you that you weren’t invited to Riverwood for this purpose. I can’t help but wonder why you’ve become so involved in something that was supposed to be handled by Mr. Graves alone. Of course, I’ve noticed that the two of you spend a lot of time in each other’s company.”