Instruments of Night

  She lay on her left side, her legs drawn beneath her, but with her right shoulder pitched backward, so that her body appeared violently twisted, as if, near death, she’d assumed the fetal position, then, at the last moment, tried to pull herself out of it. Her right arm hung limply across her chest, the hand dangling, palm out, fingers nearly touching the dirt of the cave floor. Her left arm was positioned directly under her, entirely concealed save for the hand, which lay flat but oddly twisted, palm up, fingers curled inward, as if closed around an invisible ball. Her legs rested one upon the other, feet and ankles together. Her long blond hair fell over her face, obscuring it, all but the one place the strands had parted to reveal a single half-open eye.

  Graves gazed at the photograph for a long time. Then he closed his eyes, breathing deeply before he opened them again.

  The next picture had been taken from a few feet beyond the mouth of the cave and showed its entrance, a rugged black recess surrounded by a thick, nearly impenetrable cloak of underbrush. Faye’s body rose like a mound of soiled clothes near the back of the cave. It was obvious that little effort had been made to hide it. Instead, it had merely been dragged to the rear of the cave and hastily covered with a litter of sticks and bramble, a kind of imitation burial that left the dead girl more or less exposed, a mound even the most casual forest rambler could easily have spotted.

  The first two photographs had been the sort routinely taken by crime scene photographers. The last picture, however, was nothing of the kind. In fact, it was not a picture of the crime scene at all, but of Faye fully alive, standing on a riverbank, the Hudson flowing to her right, dense forest to her left. In every way it seemed like an ordinary picture, one of many that had no doubt been taken of Faye Harrison before her murder. It was not until Graves turned the photograph over and read the brief note scribbled on its back that he understood why Portman had included it.

  Subject: Faye Harrison

  Date taken: June 1, 1946

  Location: Base of Mohonk Ridge—eastern quadrant—approx. 30 yds. from Manitou Cave

  Photographer: Andre Grossman

  Graves sat back in his chair and let his mind put it all together.

  The resident artist at Riverwood that summer had taken a photograph of Faye Harrison almost three months before her death, and at a location only thirty yards from where he’d later come upon her body.

  In his mind Graves saw Faye and Grossman at their first encounter, Grossman standing on the bank of the pond as Faye strolled out of the water in a black bathing suit, shaking her head as she walked, flinging sparkling drops in all directions. From beneath the shadow of his floppy brown hat, Grossman stared at her emptily, feeling his weight, his ugliness, loathing the cruel joke nature had played by putting such a passionately yearning heart in so unattractive a body, laboring to overcome the agonizing debilitation his looks had inflicted upon him, and his accent heightened, combined afflictions so severe and paralyzing that he barely managed to speak.

  Hello.

  Hi.

  You are Faye, yes? Allison’s friend. I have been seeing you with her. Playing tennis, I think. And on the lake. In the boat. How you say? Rowing?

  Yes.

  Allison told me about you. I am Grossman. Andre Grossman. Painter. I am painting portrait of Mrs. Davies. You are—I hope you don’t mind me to say it—but you are most pretty girl.

  Thank you.

  Most pretty, yes. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you perhaps something?

  What?

  You are so … when I saw you come out of water just now it was … I thought you might—how you say it?—sit for me?

  Sit?

  For painting. There are no models, you see. It is hard. With no models. But I hope you’re not … that you don’t think. My English. I am sorry for my asking. I do not want you to think that … I only. Please, if I gave the wrong … I am sorry.

  It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize.

  Graves saw Andre Grossman’s eyes soften, heard his voice grow less strained.

  So. Do you think perhaps … perhaps that I could … that you would sit for me?

  As Graves now imagined it, Faye’s answer could not have been sweeter … or more naive.

  I’ve never done anything like that before. But I guess I could. I guess it would be okay.

  She posed for him the very next day, as Graves conjured it, Faye lying in the grass beside the water, Grossman a few feet away, peeping out from behind the canvas, studying her long, bare legs, gleaming white in the summer sun, her shimmering blond hair, his body tensing each time he felt her eyes drift toward him.

  At first they talked little, but as the days passed they began to exchange bits of information. Grossman spoke of his boyhood in Europe, Faye of the life she’d lived at Riverwood, growing fond of the painter as the days passed, coming to think of him almost as a father. So much so, that it seemed strange when he said:

  Please. Call me Andre. Do not think me so old that I can’t … that I …

  He had said nothing more, but had gone on to some other subject.

  And so the days had passed, one falling upon another, Faye and Grossman increasingly drawn to each other. Faye toward the father who had died and abandoned her. Grossman toward a girl whose beauty made him want to do more than paint her, made him want to touch her.

  Graves felt the story rush ahead, leaping over weeks and months, until the season neared its end. The artist’s time at Riverwood was almost over, the prospect of leaving it, of leaving Faye, became increasingly painful to him, his situation unbearable, his unexpressed desire desperate.

  What do you think of it, the portrait?

  Do I really look like that?

  Yes, you do, Faye. You do not know this?

  But I look so … beautiful.

  But you are beautiful. Believe this. I have seen many girls. In Europe. In the great cities. I have seen many, many girls, but they are not so beautiful as you.

  No, I’m just a—

  No, please. Stop. Don’t say things against yourself.

  Graves saw Andre Grossman’s eyes grow wild with longing, knowing that the moment had come, finally summoning the courage to seize it, his words bursting from him like small flames:

  Go with me, Faye. When I leave, go with me. We could … be together … forever.

  Graves now watched as Grossman lay his dreams before her, watched him tell Faye exactly what he felt, what he wanted, then stand in an agonized silence as the girl stared at him, shocked by the absurdity of his proposal, stammering her excuses as she swiftly gathered up her things, desperate to get away from him, this poor, pathetic little man.

  With the story near its end, Graves looked at the photograph again, concentrating on Grossman now rather than on Faye. Shame and anguish and self-loathing must have swept over him at the moment of his supreme humiliation. Graves saw him in the days that followed her rejection, a stubby figure storming along the edge of the pond, bitter, fuming, his eyes fixed straight ahead, forcing himself not to look toward the radiant teenage girl who, on the morning of August 27th, moved across the lawn of Riverwood, her very beauty an incitement, reminding him that he was vile and disgusting, something to be yanked from a brackish water and hurled against a stone, a slimy, bloated toad.

  Graves imagined the final scene as two figures grappling in a swirl of leaves, one pressed down like a heavy stone upon the other, the cord relentlessly tightening around a slender white throat. For a moment he heard the fury of that struggle, Faye’s muted cries, her fingers clawing the tightening cord, a final gasp, and after that only Grossman’s oddly sensual moan.

  CHAPTER 14

  An evening shade had begun to fall over Riverwood by the time Graves headed back to his cottage. Eleanor Stern was sitting on the porch of her cottage. When she saw Graves, she stood and walked to the wooden railing of the porch. She lifted a glass toward him. “Care to join me?”

  Graves never allowed himself a drink, nor even companionship ver
y often, but the slowly falling night seemed to penetrate the wall he lived behind, to inexplicably urge him toward her.

  “All right,” he said quietly.

  He mounted the stairs, sat down in one of the chairs opposite her, took the glass of wine she offered, but did not sip it.

  “You didn’t come to lunch,” Eleanor said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  When Graves added nothing else, Eleanor let the matter drop. “Last night I thought I noticed a southern accent. What part of the South are you from?”

  “North Carolina.”

  “Did your whole family move north?”

  “No. They stayed in the South.” His mind spontaneously envisioned the trio of gray stones that marked the place where they had stayed.

  Eleanor watched him distantly, like someone studying a liquid in a test tube, something squirming in a vial. “Well, how’s your work going?” she asked, forcing a certain lightness into her voice. “Found anything interesting?”

  Graves revealed the only thing of interest he’d found. “Faye Harrison was going down Mohonk Trail when she was seen for the last time. Away from Riverwood instead of back toward it.”

  Eleanor immediately grasped the point. “So she wasn’t planning to meet Allison Davies at Indian Rock?” She leaned forward slightly. “All day I couldn’t write,” she said. “I kept getting distracted. Thinking about Faye Harrison. Riverwood too. The mood it must have had that summer. I kept thinking about how Faye’s death destroyed all that. And I suddenly remembered a painting I’d seen in Germany. It was of a lovely little German village, and it reminded me of the way Cezanne painted French villages. Very peaceful. Idyllic. I didn’t think anything of it particularly until I noticed the title. It was called Dachau. And I thought: No one will ever be able to look at that painting in the same way, or think of Dachau as anything but a death camp. That’s how it must have been with Riverwood.” She took a sip from her glass. “Innocence is a fragile thing. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

  Hurled back in time, Graves saw the old car pull away, a black stain against a bloodred dawn, a freckled hand waving good-bye in the early morning air. That same malicious hand had taken his innocence from him during the preceding night, snatched it prematurely and abruptly, like his sister’s life.

  “In every life there’s a period of moral virginity, don’t you think?” Eleanor mused. “A time before you’ve done anything truly evil. And when it’s gone, you realize that you’re exactly like everyone else. A place can experience the same thing. Lose its innocence. I’d never thought of that before.” She took a deep breath. “You know, Paul, the way I see it, you’re going to have to do what I do, make a play out of it. Out of what happened to Faye Harrison. With Riverwood as the stage and all the people who were here that summer as the characters. You’re going to have to mix them all together, shake the mixture, and see what boils up. Dramatically, I mean.”

  It struck Graves that she had already thought this out, predetermined the course he should take. Her next question did not surprise him.

  “How many characters are we talking about anyway?”

  Graves ticked them off. “Well, besides the Davies family, there were the two men who were at work on the second cottage and the usual members of the household staff. Mona Flagg too. She was the girlfriend of Allison’s brother Edward. And there was one other guest. The man who actually found Faye’s body. An artist. Andre Grossman.

  Eleanor appeared to be logging the names into her mind, storing them for later reference. “That’s the cast of characters, then. Somewhere in that list is the person who strangled Faye Harrison.”

  Graves knew all too well that that was not necessarily so. “Unless it was a stranger,” he said. He heard the voice behind him, What you doing out here, boy? He said, “Someone who just came out of the woods, then vanished back into them.” You lost in the dark? You a lost child? He could hear the old horror enter his voice and knew that Eleanor had heard it too.

  “You actually believe in evil, don’t you, Paul? You believe that it exists.”

  “No. At least not as something separate from what people do.”

  He felt himself move silently toward the darkened house, heard the sound of his footsteps as he mounted its creaky wooden stairs, Kessler’s breath like a stinking wind across his bare shoulders.

  “But there are people who …”

  He saw the door swing open, the light flash on, Gwen bent over the kitchen table, hands and feet tied to its wooden legs, her white skirt thrown up over her back, panties yanked down to her ankles, a trickle of blood snaking down her thigh. Kessler’s voice sounded behind him, You didn’t know I’d already been here, did you, boy? Next came laughter and the dreadful truth, but you brought me to her anyway, didn’t you?

  “People who …”

  He felt Kessler’s hand shove him toward a chair, lash him to its wooden back, heard him ask his appalling question. Want to hear her squeal?

  “People who … ”

  “Who savor pain,” Eleanor said, completing the thought. “That’s what you say about Kessler, the villain in your book, that he savors pain.” She smiled softly. “I read one of your books this afternoon,” she explained, anticipating his question. “My play wasn’t going anywhere, so I went up to the library in the main house. I started looking through the collection, and there they were. Your books all in a row. From your first novel to the latest one. I took the whole series, but I’ve had time to read only the first one. About the kidnapped little boy. The Lost Child.”

  Graves said nothing, partly pleased that she’d read one of his books, but also apprehensive that she’d done so, fearing both her judgment and that she might have learned too much.

  “I have to say it was much better than I’d expected,” Eleanor continued. “Rather haunting, in a way. That opening scene, with Slovak standing in the rain, at night, looking up at the ‘yellow-eyed windows’ of a child’s brothel.”

  Graves could easily recall the scene, even the opening line he’d put in Slovak’s mind: Innocence is not a shield.

  “The child,” Eleanor added now. “The little boy of the title. The one Kessler kidnaps. He’s still lost at the end of the book.” She looked at him pointedly. “Is he ever found?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’d be a man now, wouldn’t he?” Eleanor gazed at him intently. “With those terrible memories—the ones from his childhood—with them still in his mind.” Her eyes took on a sudden comprehension, and Graves saw it, the pure white wave of her intuition, how in a single instant she’d read a cryptic sign, glimpsed some portion of his secret history.

  “The lost child,” she said quietly, as if merely repeating the title of his book. She said nothing else, but he knew what she was thinking, It’s you.

  CHAPTER 15

  Make a play of it.

  Graves awakened the next morning and realized that even as he’d slept. Eleanor’s suggestion had continually circled in his mind. All through the night the people of Riverwood had risen from the depths of his sleep. Because of the photographs he’d already seen, most of them had appeared as they’d actually looked in the summer of 1946, Mr. Davies with his close-cropped gray hair, Allison in her boyish cut. But others had been fashioned by his imagination: Mona Flagg as a bright-faced young woman with fiery red hair, Greta Klein dark and pencil-thin, Andre Grossman short, stocky, a repulsive little gnome. In the images that came to him, all of them were alive, their features warmed by a summer sun that had departed over fifty years before. Faye alone had emerged already dead, a figure rising toward him out of a dark, brackish water, her face ghostly, her eyes open but unlighted, her lips moving slowly, whispering the same words again and again, Oh, please, please, please …

  It was to that voice Graves had awakened just before dawn. The ache in his shoulders told him he’d slept in a hard, protective crouch, his hands drawn beneath his chin, his legs curled toward his chest, a semi-fetal position that adult bodies
were unsuited for but in which he’d awakened often over the years, especially when the past suddenly swept toward him out of the darkness like a white, skeletal hand.

  But this time the dream had emerged not from his own past, but Riverwood’s, engendered, he thought now, by Eleanor’s suggestion that he fashion a play of it. For the people of Riverwood had come out of his sleep not as fully realized individuals, but like actors from behind a black curtain, their roles not yet determined despite their presence on the stage.

  He made a cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch. To the left he could see Eleanor’s cottage, obscured by the early morning fog, the lights still out. He remembered their talk of the night before, how she’d watched him knowingly, as if she’d seen his dreadful secret nakedly exposed. What amazed him now was that he hadn’t instantly gotten to his feet, fled to the safety of his own solitary cabin. Instead, he’d remained on the porch for a time, chatting quietly about his books, enjoying the interest she showed in them, the piercing intelligence she brought to everything. Even now he found that he had no wish to avoid her. In fact, he was already looking forward to their next meeting, the small, trembling pleasure he took in her company.

  The fact that it would be a brief pleasure, that it would end with summer, when both of them left this place, was not one Graves wanted to dwell upon. He quickly finished the coffee, showered, dressed, and made his way up to his office in the main house.

  Saunders had just come out of the boathouse when he neared the bottom of the stairs, showing up without warning, just as he had the morning before, so that Graves had the uncomfortable sense that he was always being watched, perhaps even followed, Saunders the secret agent, directed by some as yet invisible hand.

  “Good morning, Mr. Graves.” Saunders was wearing a light blue short-sleeved shirt, his arms smooth, tanned, unusually muscular for a man in his late sixties. Graves imagined him as he must have looked in the summer of 1946, a handsome, athletic boy who’d watched Faye Harrison and Allison Davies with the longing common to his age. Earlier, Graves had injected a murderous quality into that longing. But now he imagined it differently, as something quiet, almost melancholy. The youthful Saunders as a boy who’d learned his place early and always kept it, Allison and Faye so utterly beyond his grasp he’d had no thought of striving for them.