Instruments of Night (33 page)

“Who did Clauberg say he gave the box to?” Eleanor asked.

“He never said a name,” Greta answered. “But after Mrs. Davies showed the box to Grossman, he believed it might be Mr. Davies who was the ‘friend of German science’ Clauberg spoke of.” The words that followed seemed to draw her into a world of ever-deepening pain.
“And he was right. Grossman was right. He showed me papers to prove that it was Clauberg who’d given the box to Mr. Davies.” She looked like a woman who’d reached the edge of a precipice, had no choice now but to make the fatal leap. “That is when the question came to him. To Grossman. ‘Why? Why would Clauberg make such a gift to Mr. Davies?’ Grossman believed I knew, but he was wrong. I knew nothing. So he looked everywhere. For the answer. Always looking. I warned him to stop. That he would be discovered. But he would not stop. He looked in drawers. Everywhere. Always snooping. In Mr. Davies’ office. In the basement. That is where he found them. The records.”

“Records of what?” Eleanor asked.

“Of Faye,” Greta replied. “Everything about Faye. Charts. Measurements. From the time she was a little girl. Her whole life. That’s when Grossman thought he knew why Clauberg had given the box to Mr. Davies. Because Mr. Davies was testing Clauberg’s formula. Giving small doses. Over many years. Putting it in food so that it could be eaten
‘als Zucker.’
That’s what Grossman told me. In German. Eaten ‘like sugar.’”

Graves saw Warren Davies as he made his way back toward the main house, a blond child at his side, her hand trustingly in his, being led by the great man to his upstairs room.

“It was Faye,” Greta blurted out in a sudden, fierce whisper. “It was Faye who’d been given Clauberg’s formula.”

The pair stood in Warren Davies’ office now, Faye in the chair before his desk, staring at the bowl that rested near her, chocolates wrapped in brightly colored foil. Graves heard Mr. Davies’ voice,
Look, Faye, would you like a piece of …

“Candy,” Graves said.

“Grossman was certain that it was all true,” Greta said. “But he wanted proof. Always more proof. Who could have this proof he needed? Only Faye? No one else.”

“So he told her,” Eleanor said quietly.

“Yes,” Greta answered. “Everything. What Clauberg had said. The box he’d given Mr. Davies. Grossman told Faye all of this. But Faye did not believe him.”

Graves saw Faye’s eyes as she studied Grossman, listening, still trying not to believe that any of it could be true, his impassioned words circling in her mind as she lay on her bed in the evening or walked along the edge of the pond,
It is being done to you the same as to the girls in the camp. It is slower. But it is the same.

“Faye would not believe that Mr. Davies could do such a thing,” Greta told them. “So Grossman said to her, ‘I know what the formula is. The basic formula. What Mr. Davies gave you. From Clauberg.’ He meant the chemical. It was Formalin, he told her. Like formaldehyde, he said. Both had the same smell. This he told to Faye. That the girls in the camp smelled of this chemical when they … in their blood … each month. That is when Grossman saw it in Faye’s eyes. That she knew what he spoke of. Something he could not have known. So intimate. They were by the pond when he said this. She turned away from him, he said. So that he could not see her weeping.”

Greta’s voice grew tense as she reached the darkest part of her story. “That is when Grossman told her the rest. About the girls. How they died. All of them. He had seen it. He knew how they screamed. How it burned inside them. ‘You must go to a doctor,’ he told Faye. ‘You must speak of what was done to you.’ But Faye would not do it. ‘In the end, you will have no choice,’ he told her. ‘Even if you do not speak, your body will speak of what was done
to you.’ But Faye would do nothing. She was afraid, as I was afraid. Of the truth. But Grossman would not stop. So much pain, he said, the girls burning up inside. How they screamed and tore at themselves. ‘It may be the same with you,’ he said to her. ‘Go to a doctor. Go now. Perhaps something can be done about the pain.’ But she would not go. He told her, ‘It does no good to say nothing. If you live, it will be revealed.’” She stopped, glanced toward the window, as if trying to steel herself against the final chapter of the tale, then turned back to them. “Then she was dead. Faye. Suddenly. In the woods. Murdered. So there could never be proof. Nothing Grossman could do.”

“But there
was
proof,” Eleanor insisted. “Faye’s medical records. And the Kaminsky box, proof of Warren Davies’ connection to Clauberg. Grossman sent all of it to Portman.”

“It was not Grossman who sent those things to the old detective.” Greta’s voice filled with a distant shame. She pointed to the small desk on the opposite side of the room. “He had left them
there. In
my desk. For me to read. Everything he had found. Faye’s records. The proof of Clauberg’s gift. All of it. I had all of it. After Faye’s death, Grossman came to get these things, these papers. I told him they were gone. That I had destroyed them. Because I was afraid. Of what might happen to me. Where would I go? Without Riverwood, what would I do?” Her voice broke slightly, then grew firm again. “Grossman knew my fear. He had felt such fear himself. In the camp. He did not accuse me. He left. That is all. He left Riverwood. Without the proof he wanted, the papers. Thinking I had destroyed them. But I had not destroyed them. I had no way to destroy them. I was afraid someone would see if I tried to burn them. Someone would see if I
threw them in the river. And how could I take them back to Mr. Davies’ room, back to the place where Grossman had found them? I could not do that. Because of Edward. What if he found me in the room again?” She smiled mirthlessly at the irony of what she’d finally done. “I had heard that the detective worked for Mr. Davies. Portman. The one who had spoken to me. About Faye. Grossman was terrified of Portman. He said Mr. Davies used him to find out bad things about people. Mrs. Davies had told Grossman this. She had warned him to be careful and Grossman had passed this warning on to me. So after Grossman left Riverwood, I thought, ‘I will send all the records to the fat old detective. He will not know what the papers mean. But even if he should discover it, he will never use it against Mr. Davies. I wanted only to be rid of the records. That is all. Rid of them forever. So that I could never be accused of anything.” Her eyes glistened. “I wanted only to survive, you see.” She appeared to return to those grim days, hear the bark of the dogs again, smell the smoke of the ovens, a little girl standing in the snow, before the looming visage of Block Ten. “In the camp I heard of an experiment. There was a room with a table. A mother and daughter faced each other. Strapped in chairs, electric wires attached to them. The daughter with one free hand. Near a switch. When the order is given, the daughter must pull the switch. This sends electricity to her mother. If the daughter refuses, she is given the pain instead. This is the experiment. To see what fear of pain can make a daughter do to her own mother.” Her eyes shot over to Graves. “I can tell you what it did. It made the daughter torture her mother. And, finally, kill her mother. It was the same with sons and fathers. In such a place, with so much fear, even Faye would have done the same.” Her voice grew tender. “Everybody loved Faye. They said that she was good. But it is easy to be good
when there is no terror.” She paused, then added a final, stark conclusion. “At Auschwitz I saw God. I saw that He walked outside the wire. Carried a short black whip. He wore high boots and waved in the trains, this God I saw. It was He who ran the camp.”

A
s Graves and Eleanor left the main house, the darkness seemed to thicken around them, as dense and impenetrable as the still-unsolved mystery of Faye Harrison’s murder.

“Do you believe Greta?” Eleanor asked at last.

“Yes, I do,” Graves said without hesitation. “All of it. About Davies. About Grossman and herself. Her mother. Everything.”

“Why are you so sure?”

Graves knew precisely why. For it was a truth his own experience had taught him. “Because confession is harder than anything.” He saw Sheriff Sloane’s car pull away for the last time, the old man at last convinced the boy would never speak. “Silence is so much easier.”

“So who killed Faye?” Eleanor asked.

In his mind Graves saw Gwen step out of the woods, onto the dusty little road that led to their home, saw the dark car approaching from behind, freckled hands on its
black wheel. “A stranger,” he said. “I’ll have to tell Miss Davies that that’s all I’ve come up with.”

“Except that her father was a criminal,” Eleanor said. “That Riverwood was never innocent. That it was more like Malverna. Are you going to tell Miss Davies any of that?”

“What good would it do? Warren Davies is dead.”

“So is Faye,” Eleanor said pointedly. “Someone killed her before she could tell anyone anything.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t Warren Davies who killed her. When Faye died, he was exactly where he said he was. In Britanny Falls. First with Brinker. Then with Portman.”

“But he might have hired someone to do it,” Eleanor insisted. “An outsider.”

“Except that he had no reason to kill Faye,” Graves said. “Because Davies never knew that Grossman had told her anything. And even if Faye had confronted him when they sat together in the gazebo that morning, Davies wouldn’t have had time to arrange for her murder only a few hours later.”

Eleanor walked on a few paces, then stopped. “So you are going to let him get away with it?”

Graves suddenly saw the black car pull away, Kessler’s freckled arm waving back to him. For an instant he feared that Eleanor might chase him all the way to the chamber where he kept such visions locked away, strike a match, then stagger back in horror at what her light revealed.

“Warren Davies, I mean,” Eleanor continued. “You could tell Miss Davies what her father did to her best friend.” Before he could answer, she said, “But what would be the point? He’s dead. So is Faye. What good would it do to tell Miss Davies anything? So, we’ve reached the end of our investigation. What will you do now?”

Graves’ constricted life had room for only one answer.
“I’ll tell Miss Davies that I have no story for her. Then I’ll go back to New York.”

“When do you plan to tell her?”

“Tonight, I suppose. And leave tomorrow morning.” He’d said it without thinking, and now the fact that he would be leaving Eleanor within hours struck him as an irretrievable loss.

Eleanor seemed to sense his descending mood. “Then we should have a farewell dinner, Paul,” she said with a quick smile. “But not here at Riverwood. I suddenly can’t abide the place. I noticed a little restaurant outside of town. We could go there tonight.” She didn’t give him time to refuse her. “Just come by my cottage at seven.” With that she turned away.

Graves stayed in place, watching her go. He could feel himself releasing her, although reluctantly, as if she were a rope strung over the abyss, something to which he’d briefly clung, his fingers loosening now, readying the fall.

There seemed no point in postponing it. So after Eleanor had returned to her cottage, Graves walked back to his office in the main house. Once there, he arranged all the files in their proper order. To the materials Miss Davies had previously collected, he added only the few notes he’d compiled during his own investigation. He took nothing having to do with Faye Harrison’s death from the room, except the letter Mrs. Harrison had written to Miss Davies, and which he thought should be returned to her personally.

He found her in the gazebo, lost in thought, the darkness gathered around her like a scented cloak. “Good evening, Mr. Graves,” she said as he joined her. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“Miss Davies, I’ve come to tell you that I haven’t been
able to find a story for you. At least not one that would satisfy the terms of our agreement. I’ve read all the notes regarding the investigation and interviewed everyone I could find who was living at Riverwood at the time, but I haven’t found anyone with both the motive and the opportunity to have murdered Faye.”

Miss Davies smiled quietly. “You will, in time,” she said confidently.

“No,” Graves replied evenly. “I won’t.”

She looked puzzled. “So where does that leave us, Mr. Graves?”

“With a conclusion you’re not going to like very much, I’m afraid.”

“What conclusion is that?”

“I think a stranger killed Faye,” Graves answered. “Someone who just came upon her in the woods. More or less by accident.” He saw Kessler’s car as it closed in behind a girl, one he’d never seen before, a lovely teenage girl with long chestnut hair. “This man, whoever he was, had never met Faye. He simply saw a girl. Alone. With no one to protect her.” The look in Kessler’s eyes was raw and savage, the delight of one animal as it prepares to pounce upon another. “This man had no motive but the pleasure he took in cruelty. That’s why he murdered Faye. For the pleasure of it.” He saw the blade slice the rope, saw Gwen’s bloodied body drop to the floor. He felt his soul tighten, almost physically, as if determined to close off his breath. “And when he was finished with her, he took the rope”—Kessler’s freckled arm swung in the morning air, the rope that had been used to hang his sister waving from his hand—“as a souvenir.”