Instruments of Night (18 page)

Graves sat back, thinking. Was that really true, he wondered. Had Mrs. Davies never gathered that Allison and Faye had grown very close over the years? It was a tiny misstatement, the sort Slovak seized upon, then traced to its dark core. Graves tried to do the same, but found no route through the maze, and so began to read again, now effortlessly converting Portman’s solidly detailed notes into small dramatic scenes.

The scene grew more detailed in Graves’ mind. Portman’s enormous frame slouched in a brocade chair, Mrs. Davies seated opposite him, staring coolly into the veteran detective’s hard, unblinking eyes. He could almost hear Portman’s voice, impassive, methodical, relentlessly burrowing toward a truth whose dark malignancy he scarcely wished to discover, a voice, Graves realized, like Slovak’s.

Graves recognized that even at this early stage of his investigation, the old detective had already begun to look for the same small discrepancies that Slovak tirelessly sought, an insight that propelled Graves’ imagination to add the first vague hint of suspicion to the voice he’d now fully imagined for Dennis Portman.

Graves studied the last few lines of Portman’s notes. Mrs. Davies’ language struck him as odd, the way she talked simultaneously of “them” and “it,” merging the
personal pronoun (people) with the process of administering Riverwood (it). It was a curious syntax, and although there was no mention of it in Portman’s notes, Graves saw the old detective’s eyes narrow as he peered into Mrs. Davies’ face. A moment of silence would have fallen between them, he thought, an interval during which these two would have faced each other in the gray light that filtered through the windows of the library on such a summer afternoon, and which lasted until Portman brought it to an end with another question.

According to Portman’s notes, no other questions had been asked, nor answers given. And yet, as Graves imagined it, the old detective rose and left the room profoundly unsatisfied, certain that all was not as it seemed at Riverwood, that there were secret gardens, hidden chambers, things that lurked behind locked doors.

A
few of those doors had opened for Portman during the next few interviews. Reading his notes, Graves could see the detective’s piercing green eyes as they peered questioningly into the faces before him, listening to each witness in turn, comparing one response to another, meticulously working to unearth the buried life of Riverwood.

He’d spoken to Warren Davies just after his interview with Mrs. Davies, no doubt nodding his large head from time to time as Mr. Davies described his activities that August morning. Davies had gone into considerably more detail with Portman than he had during his earlier discussion with Sheriff Gerard. Now, reading Portman’s notes, Graves learned that Mr. Davies had risen early—about six-thirty—and gone directly to his office on the second floor. At eight he’d come back downstairs, where he’d met his son, Edward, in the foyer. The two had briefly discussed what Mr. Davies called “family business,” after which Mr. Davies had decided to take a walk by the river.
He’d gone down the basement stairs, then out the rear of the house. It was then he’d seen Faye sitting alone in the gazebo. She’d given him a “strange look,” he told Portman, and in response he’d gone into the gazebo to “see what was on her mind.” They’d talked for a time, but had never gotten beyond “the normal subjects.” During the conversation, Faye had seemed “closed off,” Mr. Davies said, so that he’d gotten the impression that she was “troubled about something.” He estimated the length of his talk with Faye at “no more than five minutes.” By its conclusion, he’d decided not to take a stroll by the river after all, but had returned to the house instead. He’d gone through the dining room, where he’d seen his daughter, Allison, reading at the table, then headed back for his private office. He’d remained there on the second floor until nearly noon, he told Portman. Then he’d driven to Britanny Falls, where he’d met with Matt Brinker, the town’s new mayor. They’d gone to lunch at the Harvest Restaurant on Main Street, where, as Portman wrote, “Mr. Davies remained all afternoon.”

Andre Grossman told Portman that he’d spent the morning in the library with Mrs. Davies, both of them arriving there at “just before” eight o’clock. They’d later had lunch together in the dining room, then returned to the library, where Mrs. Davies had once again taken her place in the dark red chair by the window. He’d worked on the portrait for the rest of the afternoon, then joined the family for dinner at around eight that evening. As to the one time he’d left the library, Grossman told Portman that he’d done so in order to get wiping cloths for his brushes. He had ordered a household servant to get them, thus returning to the library “within seconds” of having left it. He had not left it again until he and Mrs. Davies had taken lunch together. He volunteered the information that he’d taken photographs of Faye at the very spot where
her body had been found. It was the only time he’d ever taken pictures of her, he said, and he’d done it at that particular spot because he was working on a painting that rendered Eve as a “child-wife” in the Garden of Eden.

Allison Davies was the next of the Davies family to be interviewed by Portman. According to his notes, the detective had found her sitting near the boathouse, at the end of its pier, her feet dangling in the water of the canal, her short brown hair giving her what he called “a boyish look.” Other than that brief remark, the trooper added only that during the course of the interview she’d “seemed gloomy.”

Graves now saw Portman; old and weary, baking in the afternoon sun, mopping his neck with a handkerchief, Allison sitting on the wooden pier, her feet dangling in the cool water, glancing up occasionally to see Portman’s fleshy face as it hung like an ash-gray moon above her.

Portman’s voice had become entirely Slovak’s by then, marked by the same distant sorrow and nearly unbearable weariness. But to this Graves now added Slovak’s physical characteristics, the two men blending into one imagined figure, Portman’s huge, rounded shoulders slumped beneath Slovak’s worn greatcoat, his drooping belly held in place by Slovak’s broad black belt, his eyes blinking slowly behind the lenses of the silver reading glasses Slovak had come to depend on in recent years. He could almost see Slovak’s rumpled hat clutched in Portman’s beefy hands.

From there, Portman had begun to intensify the interrogation.

In response to this rather curious news, according to Portman’s notes, Allison had simply nodded without comment, so that he’d found it necessary to point out the oddity of Faye’s having been seen at such a location.

Though he had no means of knowing what Allison’s response might have been, Graves saw her suddenly turn away from Portman, stare out over the pond, the easy back-and-forth movement of her feet in the water coming to an abrupt halt.

Graves saw Portman ease his enormous frame closer to Allison, resting now on his fat haunches, his eyes seeking hers, trying to find some subtle hint within them.

In his re-creation of the scene, Graves saw Portman’s massive frame tilt forward heavily, heard his voice grow taut.

Graves caught it in the note and placed it in Portman’s voice, the experienced detective’s sense that the case against Jake Mosley might be built on something other than actual evidence, the workman’s lowliness and vulgarity, perhaps, the crudeness of his language, the smell of his clothes, the “bad way” he looked at people.