Instruments of Night

by Thomas H. Cook

  Portman had completed his interviews at 4:35 in the afternoon. By that time he’d spent the entire day at Riverwood. Graves imagined him tired and frustrated, swabbing his neck and forehead as he stared out over the silent grounds. Everyone at Riverwood had no doubt expected him to leave, perhaps return the next morning. But as his final notes made clear, Portman hadn’t done that. He remained at the estate, lumbering slowly across the lush green lawn like an old bull, head down, wet with sweat, yet coming on relentlessly, a force driven by an even greater force, as Graves imagined it, the need to know what really happened.

  It was Edward Davies and Mona whom Portman had stayed to question that afternoon. The pair had driven to Kingston that morning and did not return until past six in the evening. Slouched on the steps of the’ mansion, Portman had no doubt watched as the expensive car came to a halt before him, Edward at the wheel, Mona snuggled up beside him.

  It was not hard for Graves to reconstruct the dialogue that followed.

  PORTMAN: My name’s Dennis Portman. I’m with the New York State Police. I’d like to talk to both of you for a minute.

  EDWARD: Yes. Fine. If you can just wait until—

  PORTMAN: No, I can’t wait.

  EDWARD: Oh. I’m sorry. You’re right. Would you like to come inside?

  Portman had followed Edward and Mona to the library, where Mrs. Davies’ still-unfinished portrait rested on an easel by the window. Had Portman gazed at the portrait as Slovak would have? Leeching character from posture, clothing, the shape of the mouth, the glint of the eye? If he had, he’d left no record of his impressions, but had gone directly to the interrogation.

  PORTMAN: Let’s begin with where each of you were on the day Faye disappeared.

  In reply, Edward told Portman exactly what he’d told Sheriff Gerard in an earlier interview. He’d risen early, had breakfast with Mona, sat for a time on the side porch, then accompanied Mona into the foyer. After she’d gone upstairs, Mr. Davies had approached him. They’d had a discussion about “family matters.” Then Mona had come down a few minutes later and they’d gone downstairs, then through the corridor to the boathouse. They’d sailed the entire day, Edward said, even going so far as to mention other boats they’d met on the river at various points during that long afternoon. The pair had returned at around seven to find everything completely normal, Mrs. Davies clipping roses in the flower garden, Allison just finishing an early evening swim, Mr. Davies watching his daughter from the edge of the pier, helping her from the water when she swam alongside.

  Portman’s questions had been more or less routine as long as he’d talked to Edward. But when he turned to Mona, their nature changed slightly, as Graves noticed, concentrating on Mona herself rather than on anything she might have witnessed at Riverwood or known about Faye.

  PORTMAN: You’re not a member of the Davies family, are you?

  MONA: No, I’m not.

  PORTMAN: You’re a guest?

  MONA: Yes. Of Edward’s. We’re—

  EDWARD: I met Mona in Boston. She’s my fiancée. We plan to be married in the fall.

  PORTMAN: So you’re … unemployed, Miss Flagg?

  EDWARD: Mona is a student. Nursing school.

  From there, Portman had gone on to question Mona Flagg about her activities on August 27. Her answers added little to what Edward had already said. She’d joined Edward for breakfast at 7:30 A.M., she said. After breakfast, she’d later returned briefly to her room, dressed for a sail, and headed for the basement, arriving there at approximately 8:25. From there she’d walked through the connecting corridor to the boathouse, where Edward was preparing the boat. As to the sailing trip that had immediately followed, Mona gave few additional details, save that they’d picnicked on the bank of the river, and that on the return trip they’d helped a fisherman untangle his line.

  PORTMAN: Do you remember this fisherman’s name?

  MONA: No.

  EDWARD: His name is Jamison. Harry Jamison. He lives at—

  PORTMAN: I know where Harry lives.

  Graves heard Portman’s voice as abrupt and almost combative, the kind of response Slovak made when he wanted to make the point that he was not a fool. But would Portman actually have replied in that way? Graves considered it a moment, then decided that he would have. For it had been a long day, and he’d uncovered little useful information. Even more significant, Graves felt sure that Portman had begun to suspect that his way was being blocked, though he did not yet know why.

  PORTMAN: Did you know Faye Harrison very well?

  EDWARD: I knew Faye somewhat. We weren’t exactly friends. But she has lived at Riverwood all her life so—

  PORTMAN: How about you, Miss Flagg?

  MONA: We sailed on the pond a few times. Talked and—

  PORTMAN: What did you talk about?

  MONA: She was interested in what I was learning in school. We talked about that. Medicine.

  PORTMAN: What about personal things?

  MONA: No. We didn’t talk about personal things.

  Having reached another dead end, Portman shifted to a different area of inquiry. Not what either Edward or Mona might or might not have known about Faye’s life, but their physical whereabouts when it had abruptly ended.

  PORTMAN: You said that you went for a picnic during the afternoon?

  MONA: Yes, we did.

  PORTMAN: On the riverbank?

  EDWARD: Yes.

  PORTMAN: Did you sail up the northern or southern bank of the river?

  EDWARD: Mostly along the northern one.

  PORTMAN:Do you know where Manitou Cave is?

  EDWARD: Vaguely.

  PORTMAN: Did you see anyone on the shore around that area?

  EDWARD: Not that I recall.

  PORTMAN: Where did you and Miss Flagg go ashore for your picnic?

  EDWARD: Granger Point.

  PORTMAN: Did anybody see you there?

  EDWARD: Some boats passed by on the river. I suppose they saw us. I remember waving at one of them.

  PORTMAN:How long did your picnic last?

  EDWARD: All afternoon.

  PORTMAN: Then what?

  EDWARD: Then Mona and I sailed back down the river.

  Portman worked to eke out a few more details, once again tracing the route the two had taken upriver, this time almost inch by inch. But he’d finally given up and shifted his focus to the trip back to Riverwood.

  PORTMAN: When did you head home?

  EDWARD: That would have been about six or so.

  PORTMAN: Which side of the river?

  EDWARD: More or less the middle. As we got closer, we sailed toward the northern shore.

  PORTMAN: Did you see anything that looked suspicious?

  EDWARD: No.

  PORTMAN: How about you, Miss Flagg? Anything at all. Someone standing on the riverbank or walking in the woods? Anything.

  MONA: I saw other boats. But nothing onshore.

  Once back at Riverwood, Edward and Mona had each returned to their respective rooms, where they’d remained until dinner. At the end of the meal, the whole family, along with Andre Grossman, had gathered on the side porch, as Edward said, “to take in the night air.”

  Had Portman ever taken the time to imagine that particular evening at Riverwood, Graves wondered. Imagine it, as Graves himself now did. Edward’s small boat drifting up the channel. Mona seated at its starboard end, the frilly umbrella she’d earlier used to block the morning sun now folded in and tucked beneath her seat. The whole family later gathered around a long dining table, then assembled on the porch to enjoy the scented warmth of a summer night. In his mind Graves saw Warren Davies light a cigar. Its tip glowed brightly in the darkness. As for the others, he imagined Edward and Mona in the swing, Mrs. Davies on the wicker settee, Andre Grossman in the rocker beside her, Allison curled up in a chair a few feet away, still lost in her book. From the evidence he’d so far reviewed, Graves could only assume that none of them had yet learned that Faye had not retur
ned home that night, nor had any idea that at that very moment her body lay sprawled across the ever-darkening floor of Manitou Cave. Instead, they’d felt only the peace of the night, heard only the lulling waters of the nearby channel. Perhaps Mr. Davies had commented upon his earlier meeting with the local mayor. Or perhaps the conversation had moved toward art, Grossman speaking learnedly of the great portraitists he admired.

  Regardless of the nature of their conversation, it had been abruptly broken off, as Portman’s final questions made clear.

  PORTMAN: When did you hear that Faye Harrison was missing?

  EDWARD: That same evening. Around nine. We were all on the side porch when Mrs. Harrison came to the door. She spoke to one of the servants.

  PORTMAN: Which one?

  EDWARD: Greta Klein. She is a—

  PORTMAN: Refugee.

  EDWARD: Well … yes, I suppose you could say that.

  PORTMAN: When the sheriff came here the day after Faye disappeared, he didn’t talk to her.

  EDWARD: That’s because she wasn’t here. She has a nervous condition of some sort. She left Riverwood the morning after we heard about Faye. She’s back now. Poor thing. She’s suffered so much.

  Suffered so much. Portman had written those very words in his notebook, then underlined them, as if he were drawn to suffering the way Slovak was, saw it etched in every face, its ravages unavoidable and inherent, “the Unmoved Mover in the life of man.”

  If that were so, Graves thought, then Portman would have sought out Greta Klein immediately.

  He turned the page in the detective’s notebook, and saw that he had done precisely that.

  In the end, however, the meeting had come to very little. Portman had found Greta in her tiny upstairs room, questioned her extensively. But the interview had proven no more useful than any of the others Portman had conducted that day. In general, Greta had confirmed what Portman had already been told by others on the estate. Certainly she had not moved Portman’s investigation further in any significant way.

  Greta had added a single, curious detail, however, one that must have edged Portman’s inquiry toward a new direction, sent new questions whirling through the old detective’s mind: Why, on the day of her death, had Faye Harrison secretly entered the basement of the Davies house? What, in that gray light, had she been looking for?

  As Portman’s notes made clear, Greta Klein had not been able to answer any of these questions fifty years before. Graves wondered if she might be able to do so now.

  CHAPTER 18

  It was the same middle-aged woman he’d so often encountered before who directed Graves to Greta Klein’s room.

  “It’s time you learned my name,” the woman said as Graves approached her. “Mrs. Alice Powers.” She smiled. “I hear you’re working on a history of Riverwood.”

  “Well, not exactly a history,” Graves said. “A murder.”

  Her features stiffened. “You mean of that girl? Back in the forties?”

  Graves nodded. “Greta Klein was here then.”

  Mrs. Powers’ features remained taut. “And Mr. Saunders. They sometimes sit together and talk about the old days.”

  Graves saw them together, two old servants, sharing memories. Perhaps harboring secrets he had yet to unearth. “Would I be disturbing Miss Klein if I looked in on her now?”

  Mrs. Powers shrugged. “I couldn’t say. She’s not real social.” A small crack seemed to open in the wall of her guardedness. “She just talks to Mr. Saunders. About the old days, like I said. When Riverwood was—” She stopped, clearly looking for the right word to describe what Riverwood had once been. “Happy.”

  “Before the murder, you mean?”

  Mrs. Powers hesitated. “No. I mean before Mr. and Mrs. Davies stopped getting along.” She glanced about, then lowered her voice. “I heard it was something to do with a man.” She stiffened suddenly. “You’d be better off talking to Miss Klein about things that went back that far, though,” she added hastily, now concerned that she’d overstepped her bounds. “Upstairs. Last door on the right. That’s where you’ll find her.”

  Greta Klein sat upright in her bed, dressed in a checkered robe, her long white hair hanging over her shoulders. Her eyes peered at Graves intently. She’d said only “Come in” when he knocked at the door, but once he entered the room, she leaned forward slightly, reaching for her glasses.

  “Frank?” she asked as she struggled to put them on. Her eyes drew together suspiciously, dark behind the thick lenses. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Paul Graves. I’m spending the summer here at Riverwood.”

  She watched him silently, offering no response. In the shadowy light her skin appeared unnaturally pale, like a creature who’d long been holed up in the darkness.

  “It’s about Faye Harrison,” Graves added. “Do you remember her?”

  Her head jerked to the left. “What do you want from me?” she asked sharply, dryly, warning him away, her voice like the rattle of a snake.

  “I’m trying to find out as much as I can about Faye,” Graves told her. “And about Riverwood at the time of her death.”

  The old woman’s fingers tightened around the knot of her robe. “I was just a servant,” she said. Her German accent became suddenly more pronounced, so that she seemed to be using it to emphasize that she’d come to Riverwood a foreigner and had remained one ever since. “I told this to the other policeman.”

  “Yes, I know,” Graves said. “I have his notes.”

  “Notes?”

  “Detective Portman made extensive notes on his investigation. But he made notes only on his first talk with you. The one in your room, on”—he took out his notebook, flipped to the appropriate page—“September second.” He looked up from the notebook. “Was that the first time you’d talked to the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why weren’t you interviewed by Sheriff Gerard?”

  “Because I left Riverwood the next morning. The day after Faye disappeared, I mean.” She anticipated Graves’ next question so quickly, he sensed that she’d long expected such a visit, the nature of its inquiry. “I had a … nervous condition. Mr. Davies said I should take a few days off.” She looked about the room, as if trying to determine in which direction she should go now, how much to tell him, how much to hold back. “He sent me to a clinic. A place upstate. When I got back, everybody was upset. The policeman came to ask me questions.”

  Graves glanced at his notes. “In that first interview you told Detective Portman that you went to the basement at around eight twenty-five and that you saw Faye Harrison standing at the entrance to the corridor that leads from the basement to the boathouse. You said that you could see Edward Davies and Mona Flagg at the end of the corridor. Mona was already sitting in the boat. Edward was on the landing.”

  Greta nodded slightly, grudgingly, clearly reluctant to give him even so slight a confirmation.

  “Portman kept asking you if you had any idea why Faye Harrison was in the Davies house that day,” Graves continued. “You told him you didn’t, but he didn’t seem to accept that.”

  “He kept asking about why she was there, all alone in the basement.” She remained silent for a moment, then blurted out, “He was suspicious of Faye. Because of her being in the basement. Because of the way it looked.” Something seemed to give inside her, so that she appeared suddenly unmoored and helplessly drifting back to that distant morning. “The way the door was open. The door to the little room in the basement where Mr. Davies kept his papers. Things were scattered around. Papers and things. Pictures. He thought Faye had done that. That she had gone through Mr. Davies’ things.”

  “Why would she have done that?”

  “Looking for money, maybe. That’s what I told the detective. That Faye was a poor girl. Maybe she thought she could find money in Mr. Davies’ room.”

  “Detective Portman didn’t include that statement in his notes,” Graves pointed out.

  Greta appeared
indifferent to what Portman had or had not recorded in his notes. “He maybe didn’t think it was possible. He maybe thought Faye was a good girl.”

  “What did you think of Faye?”

  “I thought she was pretending to be something she wasn’t.

  “What was she pretending to be?”

  “One of the Davieses,” Greta answered promptly. “Like she was a daughter. A sister. She worked for Mr. Davies just like I did, but he treated her like a daughter. It made her act like she was one of the family.”

  “Did you ever see Faye in Mr. Davies’ room?”

  She stared at him. “No,” she admitted. “Even that last time, when the papers were scattered around, even then I did not see her in the room.”

  “Where was she when you saw her that morning?”

  “Standing in the corridor. Looking toward the boat-house. I could see Edward there. Leaning over the boat. The girl was already sitting down in the boat.”

  “Did you speak to Faye at all that morning?”

  “No. The painter was calling me. Grossman. He needed cloth.”

  “Grossman found Faye’s body,” Graves said. “Did he know her?”

  “He was sometimes with her,” Greta answered. “In the woods with her. But mostly, he was with Mrs. Davies.” There was a clear insinuation in her voice. “Mr. Davies finally made him leave. He suspected something between Grossman and Mrs. Davies.”

  The grotesque figure Graves had previously imagined for Andre Grossman suddenly transformed itself into a tall, robust man, wild, passionate, a curl of dark hair dangling raffishly over his forehead. A story instantly materialized in his mind, Faye Harrison at the dreadful center of it, a young girl who’d accidentally stumbled upon an indiscreet moment between Mrs. Davies and her foreign lover, and who, for that reason, had to be eliminated. It was followed by a second story, this time with Faye less the innocent victim than a clever though foolhardy schemer, bent on blackmail, unaware of the terrible peril in which such a demand might place her.