Thomas Cook - Instruments of Night

“Yes, I know,” Miss Davies replied. “But it can’t have happened in this case. Not in your story, I mean. Because if you were to write that a stranger murdered Faye, there would be no resolution in Mrs. Harrison’s mind. So it must be someone from Riverwood who did it. Someone who had what the police call ‘opportunity.’”

Graves waited for the second condition.

“Motive,” Miss Davies said. “Your story has to provide a motive for Faye’s murder that Mrs. Harrison will believe. That’s the job I’m offering you, Mr. Graves.” Before Graves could either accept or refuse it, she added, “Please don’t give me your answer right away. There are some photographs I’d like you to look at first. They might help you in your decision. I’ve had them sent to your apartment in New York. They’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

“Pictures of what?” Graves asked.

“Of innocence,” Miss Davies answered baldly. “Of an ideal summer in an ideal place.” A wave of long-submerged pain and anger suddenly swept into her face. “It wasn’t just Faye who was killed, you see. Riverwood was murdered too. Its beauty and its innocence. That’s what died with Faye that summer. Her murder darkened everything at Riverwood. Particularly my father. He’d worked hard to make life perfect here. He believed in that, you see. Perfection. That life could be made perfect. Even mankind. But Faye’s murder destroyed all that. It broke my father’s zeal for perfection. He died only a year later. All I ask is that you look at the pictures I’ve sent you. If you want the job, you can come back here and work. I’ve already gathered the relevant police reports. You’ll have complete access to everything.” She rose. “Of course, if you decide against it, I’d like the photographs returned.” She glanced about the placid landscape that surrounded them, the deep green forest, the dark green pond. Her eyes finally settled on a narrow trail that coiled like a dark vein up the far slope. “That’s where Faye was seen for the last time at Riverwood,” she told Graves. “She was standing just at the mouth of that trail.” A smile briefly shadowed her lips, then vanished. “She was wearing a light blue summer dress. One of her favorites. ‘My piece of sky,’ she always called that dress.”

Graves looked toward where Allison Davies had indicated and saw, without in the least willing it, a young girl Standing at the edge of the forest. The girl stared at him mutely, her face blank and unsmiling. Then she turned away gracefully, her eyes quiet, mournful, as if she’d already glimpsed a fate she had no choice but to accept, a slender figure disappearing into the deep, enfolding woods like a piece of sky into an open grave.

Lunch arrived at Graves’ cottage promptly at noon, this time brought by Frank Saunders.

“Miss Davies told me that you’ll be returning to New York tomorrow morning,” he said as he deposited the tray on the kitchen table. “When is your bus?”

“It leaves at ten.”

Saunders nodded. “Good enough, then. I’ll have the car here at nine-thirty.”

He turned to leave, and Graves had every intention of letting him go. Because of that, his question surprised him, like something leaping from his mouth of its own accord. “How long have you worked here at Riverwood, Mr. Saunders?”

Saunders shifted around to face him again, and Graves caught a sudden edginess. “I was just a young boy when I came here. More or less an orphan. Mr. Davies took me in. Gave me a home. I’ve been here ever since.”

“So you were here the summer after the war?”

Saunders looked at Graves as if a question had just been answered. “The summer after the war,” he repeated. “So that’s why you’re here. To look into what happened that summer. To Faye Harrison, I mean.” He appeared vaguely irritated. “I knew something was going on. All those papers Miss Davies has gathered together in the office behind the library. The way she’s been going through them. All about Faye. If you ask me, she should just let it go.”

During all the years that had passed since Gwen’s death, Graves had never considered such a letting-go, had never told himself that he should forget what had happened, the horrors that had crowded into the cramped space of his boyhood home, the long, silent year. Those horrors hung in him like hooks. He could not imagine himself free of them. Now he wondered if it was the same with Miss Davies. He recalled her words- Riverwood was murdered too -and wondered if the crime committed against Faye Harrison worked in her the way Gwen’s murder worked in him, formed the grim foundation of her life, her origins.

“Sometimes it’s the thing that won’t let you go,” Graves said. A voice sounded in his mind. What’s your name, boy? “Some things change the way you see life.”

Saunders glanced toward the main house. “Anyway, there’s a whole room up at the house, packed full of papers and reports.” He turned back toward Graves. “But the fact is, everybody knows who killed Faye Harrison.”

“Jake Mosley.”

Saunders looked surprised by Graves’ mention of the name. “I see Miss Davies already told you about him.”

“Only that he was accused of the murder.”

“Accused, but that’s all,” Saunders said. “Never even arrested. Just questioned, then let go.” He looked down anxiously at his watch. “I have to be going now, Mr. Graves. Other chores, you know.”

Graves followed him out onto the porch, watched as he eased himself down the stairs and headed toward the car. He’d just opened the door and was about to pull himself in, when Graves called: “How old were you that summer? When Faye Harrison was murdered.”

“Seventeen. Just a year older than Faye.” Saunders smiled thinly. “Until tomorrow morning, then,” he said.

Graves remained on the porch, staring down at Saunders, the dark, tale-making engine of his mind already turning, so that he saw Saunders not as he now was, an aging man with clipped hair, but framed in a series of vivid flashes: first as a boy swimming across a wide green pond, happy and carefree; then walking idly in the forest, thinking of the girl he’d fallen in love with; still later slumped over a chill stone, broken and dejected, his face buried in his hands, a rage steadily building in him; and finally as a figure lurking in the shadows of a bat-infested cave.

It was just a story, of course, the type his mind instantly concocted on such occasions, and for the rest of the day Graves worked to keep himself from imagining any others. But there were few distractions at Riverwood, and without his typewriter-his time machine-he could not escape into the past. And so he had no recourse but to stroll the grounds again, walking idly around the pond and along the slowly flowing canal that stretched from the pond to the river, peering into the boathouse, pausing to rest beside the empty tennis court that lay just behind it.

He imagined all the glittering evenings Allison Davies had spent here as a girl, smelled the sumptuous food and drink, heard the string quartet. How different her childhood had been from his own; how different the Davies mansion from the cramped farmhouse in which he’d lived throughout most of his boyhood. It was the smell of fertilizer and cotton poison he most remembered from that time. As for sounds, he had learned to shut most of them out, though from time to time his mind played an eerie tape of things he’d never heard: a car grinding down the red dirt road, Ruby barking as it came to a halt in the dusty drive, feet moving swiftly up the old front steps, things Gwen must have heard that night, then glanced fearfully at the unlocked door.

Toward evening Graves returned to his cottage. He found dinner waiting for him on the table and ate it alone, reading the newspaper that had been folded and placed on the same tray with his supper.