Instruments of Night (25 page)

“Then Faye made yet another unexpected turn,” Eleanor said. “She went into the basement.”

A cool wave of air swept over them when they stepped inside the basement, dry, but strangely musty, as if some small creature had died and been left to rot, leaving nothing but a peculiar sweetness in the air.

Eleanor surveyed the area, moving slowly from the storage room in the far rear corner to the staircase at the center of the room, and finally to the corridor that led to the boathouse. “Why did Faye make that turn? Why did she come here? What was she looking for?” Her face grew highly concentrated, as if pondering some detail, trying to tease out its meaning or importance. After a moment she said, “I want to go to the cave now. To where Faye died.”

The path narrowed steadily as they headed up the slope, the forest thickening on either side, squeezing them together so that their shoulders sometimes touched.

They reached Indian Rock, then continued down the trail. The slope fell off at a steadily harsher angle until they finally reached the area around Manitou Cave. From there they could see the wide expanse of the river, boats drifting along its surface, white sails bright in the summer air.

It was a brightness that seemed to fade from the air as they neared the cave, the trees and brush thickening, only bits of dappled light on the forest floor. The cave’s mouth gaped before them like a stony, toothless mouth.

“Not a very good place for a young woman to die,” Eleanor murmured.

Graves saw the small living room where Gwen had been led for the final entertainment, the thick beams that stretched across it, a rope hanging from the one at the
center, Gwen standing limply beneath it, her arms dangling at her sides as Kessler, whistling cheerily, handed Sykes the noose, then ordered him to string it around her neck.

Graves turned toward the cave, trained his eyes on its dark interior. He did not turn from it until Eleanor spoke.

“You know, Grossman would have been able to see Faye’s body from here,” she said. “Just as he said he did.”

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.

S
he 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.”

“No, you don’t,” Eleanor told her. She clearly recognized that Greta had reached the end of her defenses, that her brief resistance was little more than a bluff. “But I’ve been to the basement. And it seems to me that you could have seen Faye and the others only from the storeroom on the opposite side of the basement. The room where the detective found Warren Davies’ papers scattered around. You couldn’t have seen them all from any other place.”

“What does it matter what I saw? Who I saw? Where? It is all in the past.” Greta released a weary breath. “What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t,” Eleanor answered. “Except to us.”

Greta studied Eleanor’s face. “You are like him,” she
said. “The old detective. He would come here. Talk to me. Many years after. He was still looking for the truth.”

“Portman,” Graves said.

The name appeared to calm Greta slightly. “I told him I was in the storeroom. I told him that I, too, was looking for the truth.”

“Did you ever find it?” Eleanor asked.

The melancholy that Graves had earlier observed descended upon Greta’s features again. “No,” she whispered.

“What truth were you looking for?” Eleanor asked.

“Myself,” Greta said softly. “Proof of myself. That I was not just a servant.” She seemed exhausted by her own sudden confession. “They made me a servant. All of them. The girl, Faye. They treated her like a princess. But always I was treated like a servant.” She looked at them imploringly. “But I knew what I was. Mr. Davies was there when I was born. He stayed always with us in Berlin. I knew what my mother was to him. But I needed proof. That I was like Allison and Edward. With a right to be at Riverwood. That’s what I went looking for in Mr. Davies’ papers. Proof that Riverwood was partly mine.”

Graves saw a young and desperate Greta Klein make her way down the stairs, glancing left and right as she swiftly descended them, found the basement empty, then moved catlike and unheard toward the storage room where Mr. Davies kept his papers.

“There had to be something,” Greta went on. “Maybe a letter to someone. From someone. My mother. A letter that spoke of me. A picture. Something written on the back. In my mother’s hand. To Mr. Davies:
This is your little daughter, Greta.”
She glanced at Graves then back toward Eleanor. “I went into the room where Mr. Davies kept his papers. I wanted to find this proof of myself. I did not expect to be discovered.”

But she had been discovered, as she said, only moments after entering Mr. Davies’ office.

“I saw Edward come down the stairs. I expected him to go to the boathouse. He was always there. Getting ready for a sail. But instead, he came to the room. I did not have time to hide. There was no place to hide. He found me there.”

As she went on, Graves heard the voices as she described them, Greta’s frightened, cowering, Edward’s stern, authoritative:

What are you doing in here?

I was just … I needed to …

This is a private place. You shouldn’t be in here.

I am sorry, sir … I am …

Leave!

Yes, yes. I will go.

Now!

She’d obeyed instantly, quickly racing up the stairs, Edward watching from below.

“He stood at the door of the room,” Greta told them. “Looking at me. Cold. Then he went into the room and closed the door.”

She hadn’t intended to return to the basement, and certainly not to Mr. Davies’ storage room, but twenty minutes later she’d realized that she’d left her ring of house keys there. She’d had no choice but to return downstairs to retrieve them.

“I was on the second floor, in Mr. Davies’ office. That is when I thought of it. The keys. I had left them in the basement. In the storage room. I went back downstairs. I had to do it. To get my keys.”

Once downstairs, she’d gone directly to the storage room.

“I grabbed the keys and started to leave,” Greta went on. “I was afraid someone would see me. I wanted to get
away. But I noticed how things had changed. Some of the boxes had been moved. Heavy boxes. Edward had moved them. I do not know why. I did not want to look. I was afraid to be found there again.” She was talking rapidly now, the old fear once again rising in her, the dread of being discovered in the basement, cast out of Riverwood because of it. “I started to leave. That is when I heard sounds. Voices. Edward. A girl. Voices coming from the boathouse. I could not hear the words. I did not want to hear. I was afraid. To be caught again in the room. So I closed the door and stayed there. In the room. Waiting. Until the voices were gone. Then I looked out again. I thought they were gone. But now I could see them. Still in the boathouse. Edward untying the boat. The girl inside it, waiting for him. Under the umbrella.” She stopped, almost breathless now. “But that is not all I saw,” she added. “I saw Faye.”