“Things were so relaxed that summer,” Miss Davies said. “My brother Edward was home from college. He often went sailing. I remember my father sitting quietly, at the end of the pier. So peaceful. My mother had nothing to do but sit for her portrait.” Something caught in her mind. “Actually, it was the portrait artist who found Faye’s body. Andre Grossman. He found it about two miles from here. A place called Manitou Cave.”
Graves instantly envisioned it as a dank and murky place, with dripping walls and a soggy earthen floor. Bats hung from the ceiling in ceaselessly agitated clusters, their leathery wings flapping in the dark air. In one of its cold, unlighted hollows he saw a slender girl lying facedown, naked. Leaves and dirt were flung over her, crusted in her mouth and open eyes. The dried-out bones of long-devoured animals lay scattered in the soil around her, all that was left of some much earlier prey.
Miss Davies’ pale face tightened. “It was terrible, what Mr. Grossman saw. I don’t think he ever quite got over it.” She shuddered, as if touched by a sudden chill. “There are pictures, of course. You can get the … details. I’d rather not go into them.”
Graves recognized that the moment of truth had arrived. “I suppose it’s time for me to ask what you actually do want me to go into, Miss Davies.”
“The past,” she answered without hesitation. “That summer fifty years ago.” She drew a piece of paper from the pocket of her trousers, white with blue lines, clearly torn from a spiral notebook. “A few weeks ago I received a letter from Faye’s mother. It was quite nostalgic. She recalled how Faye and I had been so close, how wonderful that last summer had been. The way we used to sneak off to Indian Rock. That was our secret place. Faye’s and mine. We went there to be alone. Anyway, Mrs. Harrison’s letter brought back memories. It was good to hear from her again. Nothing really disturbed me until I got to the end of the letter, the last few lines.” She lifted the paper toward Graves. “You can read them for yourself.”
Graves took it, went directly to its last paragraph, and read it silently:
I’ve never understood it, Allison. What happened to Faye? I think and think, but I can’t find an answer. I see her face the way she was. I ask the same question over and over. Why, Faye? I’ve prayed for an answer, but no answer has come. That’s my punishment. I know it is. To be tormented by the mystery of my daughter’s death.
Graves offered the letter to Miss Davies; she didn’t take it.
“I’d like you to hold on to it awhile, Mr. Graves. As a reminder of how tormented Mrs. Harrison is. As you’ve no doubt guessed, Faye’s murder was never solved. At least not formally.”
Graves folded the letter and put it in his pocket. “What do you mean, not formally?”
“Well, a man was accused of the murder. A local man. His name was Jake Mosley. It’s always been quite obvious that Mosley killed Faye. But clearly, Mrs. Harrison doesn’t believe Jake did it. Because of that—what she wrote, particularly in that last line—about not knowing who killed Faye, I decided to contact you.”
Graves said nothing.
“Mrs. Harrison is quite old now, as you might imagine, Mr. Graves. And I don’t want her to die still wondering what happened to her daughter. It’s all I can do for her now. To give her the peace she needs. And only an answer can do that. A solution to Faye’s murder.” She looked at him piercingly. “It would be cruel for her to die without that, don’t you think?”
In his mind, Graves heard Sheriff Sloane’s soft, imploring voice: Please, son, don’t make me die without knowing who killed your sister.
“That’s why I’ve asked you here to Riverwood,” Miss Davies continued when he did not speak. “To find an answer to Faye’s death.” Before Graves could respond, she added, “I know you’re not a detective, Mr. Graves. At least, not a real one. But it’s not a real detective I need. Just the opposite, in fact. I need someone who can go beyond the facts of the case. I need someone who can imagine what happened to Faye, and why.”
The flaw in such reasoning was instantly obvious, and Graves dutifully exposed it. “To imagine things, that’s not the same as finding the truth,” he told her.
“No, of course not,” Miss Davies admitted. “But I already know the truth. Jake Mosley murdered Faye. As you’ll learn quite quickly once you’ve looked into the facts of the case. Unfortunately, Mrs. Harrison isn’t satisfied with that solution.” Her eyes softened. “She needs a different story, Mr. Graves. That’s why I’ve asked you here to Riverwood. To write a story that will give Mrs. Harrison the peace she deserves.”
“A story?” Graves asked.
“Yes, a story,” Miss Davies answered firmly. “It doesn’t have to be true. As a matter of fact, it can’t be true. But it does have to meet two conditions. The first is that the ‘killer’ has to be someone from Riverwood, someone Mrs. Harrison knew. Not a stranger, someone who just happened to come upon Faye in the woods, killed her, and then disappeared forever.”
Graves saw the old car rumble away in the bright morning light, a single arm waving good-bye from an open window, leaving a farmhouse that had been stumbled upon by accident, then left in unspeakable ruin. “But that sometimes happens,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” Miss Davies replied. “But it can’t have happened in this case. Not in your story, I mean. Because if you were to write that a stranger murdered Faye, there would be no resolution in Mrs. Harrison’s mind. So it must be someone from Riverwood who did it. Someone who had what the police call ‘opportunity.’”
Graves waited for the second condition.
“Motive,” Miss Davies said. “Your story has to provide a motive for Faye’s murder that Mrs. Harrison will believe. That’s the job I’m offering you, Mr. Graves.” Before Graves could either accept or refuse it, she added, “Please don’t give me your answer right away. There are some photographs I’d like you to look at first. They might help you in your decision. I’ve had them sent to your apartment in New York. They’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
“Pictures of what?” Graves asked.
“Of innocence,” Miss Davies answered baldly. “Of an ideal summer in an ideal place.” A wave of long-submerged pain and anger suddenly swept into her face. “It wasn’t just Faye who was killed, you see. Riverwood was murdered too. Its beauty and its innocence. That’s what died with Faye that summer. Her murder darkened everything at Riverwood. Particularly my father. He’d worked hard to make life perfect here. He believed in that, you see. Perfection. That life could be made perfect. Even mankind. But Faye’s murder destroyed all that. It broke my father’s zeal for perfection. He died only a year later. All I ask is that you look at the pictures I’ve sent you. If you want the job, you can come back here and work. I’ve already gathered the relevant police reports. You’ll have complete access to everything.” She rose. “Of course, if you decide against it, I’d like the photographs returned.” She glanced about the placid landscape that surrounded them, the deep green forest, the dark green pond. Her eyes finally settled on a narrow trail that coiled like a dark vein up the far slope. “That’s where Faye was seen for the last time at Riverwood,” she told Graves. “She was standing just at the mouth of that trail.” A smile briefly shadowed her lips, then vanished. “She was wearing a light blue summer dress. One of her favorites. ‘My piece of sky,’ she always called that dress.”
Graves looked toward where Allison Davies had indicated and saw, without in the least willing it, a young girl Standing at the edge of the forest. The girl stared at him mutely, her face blank and unsmiling. Then she turned away gracefully, her eyes quiet, mournful, as if she’d already glimpsed a fate she had no choice but to accept, a slender figure disappearing into the deep, enfolding woods like a piece of sky into an open grave.
CHAPTER 4
Lunch arrived at Graves’ cottage promptly at noon, this time brought by Frank Saunders.
“Miss Davies told me that you’ll be returning to New York tomorrow morning,” he said as he deposited the tra
y on the kitchen table. “When is your bus?”
“It leaves at ten.”
Saunders nodded. “Good enough, then. I’ll have the car here at nine-thirty.”
He turned to leave, and Graves had every intention of letting him go. Because of that, his question surprised him, like something leaping from his mouth of its own accord. “How long have you worked here at Riverwood, Mr. Saunders?”
Saunders shifted around to face him again, and Graves caught a sudden edginess. “I was just a young boy when I came here. More or less an orphan. Mr. Davies took me in. Gave me a home. I’ve been here ever since.”
“So you were here the summer after the war?”
Saunders looked at Graves as if a question had just been answered. “The summer after the war,” he repeated. “So that’s why you’re here. To look into what happened that summer. To Faye Harrison, I mean.” He appeared vaguely irritated. “I knew something was going on. All those papers Miss Davies has gathered together in the office behind the library. The way she’s been going through them. All about Faye. If you ask me, she should just let it go.”
During all the years that had passed since Gwen’s death, Graves had never considered such a letting-go, had never told himself that he should forget what had happened, the horrors that had crowded into the cramped space of his boyhood home, the long, silent year. Those horrors hung in him like hooks. He could not imagine himself free of them. Now he wondered if it was the same with Miss Davies. He recalled her words—Riverwood was murdered too—and wondered if the crime committed against Faye Harrison worked in her the way Gwen’s murder worked in him, formed the grim foundation of her life, her origins.
“Sometimes it’s the thing that won’t let you go,” Graves said. A voice sounded in his mind. What’s your name, boy? “Some things change the way you see life.”
Saunders glanced toward the main house. “Anyway, there’s a whole room up at the house, packed full of papers and reports.” He turned back toward Graves. “But the fact is, everybody knows who killed Faye Harrison.”
“Jake Mosley.”
Saunders looked surprised by Graves’ mention of the name. “I see Miss Davies already told you about him.”
“Only that he was accused of the murder.”
“Accused, but that’s all,” Saunders said. “Never even arrested. Just questioned, then let go.” He looked down anxiously at his watch. “I have to be going now, Mr. Graves. Other chores, you know.”
Graves followed him out onto the porch, watched as he eased himself down the stairs and headed toward the car. He’d just opened the door and was about to pull himself in, when Graves called: “How old were you that summer? When Faye Harrison was murdered.”
“Seventeen. Just a year older than Faye.” Saunders smiled thinly. “Until tomorrow morning, then,” he said.
Graves remained on the porch, staring down at Saunders, the dark, tale-making engine of his mind already turning, so that he saw Saunders not as he now was, an aging man with clipped hair, but framed in a series of vivid flashes: first as a boy swimming across a wide green pond, happy and carefree; then walking idly in the forest, thinking of the girl he’d fallen in love with; still later slumped over a chill stone, broken and dejected, his face buried in his hands, a rage steadily building in him; and finally as a figure lurking in the shadows of a bat-infested cave.
It was just a story, of course, the type his mind instantly concocted on such occasions, and for the rest of the day Graves worked to keep himself from imagining any others. But there were few distractions at Riverwood, and without his typewriter—his time machine—he could not escape into the past. And so he had no recourse but to stroll the grounds again, walking idly around the pond and along the slowly flowing canal that stretched from the pond to the river, peering into the boathouse, pausing to rest beside the empty tennis court that lay just behind it.
He imagined all the glittering evenings Allison Davies had spent here as a girl, smelled the sumptuous food and drink, heard the string quartet. How different her childhood had been from his own; how different the Davies mansion from the cramped farmhouse in which he’d lived throughout most of his boyhood. It was the smell of fertilizer and cotton poison he most remembered from that time. As for sounds, he had learned to shut most of them out, though from time to time his mind played an eerie tape of things he’d never heard: a car grinding down the red dirt road, Ruby barking as it came to a halt in the dusty drive, feet moving swiftly up the old front steps, things Gwen must have heard that night, then glanced fearfully at the unlocked door.
Toward evening Graves returned to his cottage. He found dinner waiting for him on the table and ate it alone, reading the newspaper that had been folded and placed on the same tray with his supper.
When he’d finished, it was still light enough for him to go outside again, but he remained indoors by the window, watching the evening’s darkness descend upon the pond. For a time he thought of going to bed, but he’d slept so fitfully the night before, hearing footsteps outside his window though none were there, feeling the breeze from the nearby pond like a cold breath. There were even moments when he’d felt sure he’d heard distant voices, low, muffled, steeped in maliciousness and conspiracy. He’d long ago recognized such things as auditory hallucinations. They were sounds that he imagined, or, if real, to which he gave a dark, nearly paranoid intent. In the past few months, he’d begun to wonder if his mind might soon add visual hallucinations as well, plague him with the same false visions Slovak had already begun to see in his own room at night: shadows slipping silently across the bare wall, a bloody ooze flowing slowly from beneath his closet door, a tiny arm dangling from a half-closed bureau drawer, its decaying fingers dripping a greenish slime.
He stood abruptly, bent on getting away from Slovak’s disordered visions, walked out onto the porch and stood behind its gray metal screen.
For a time, everything remained silent and motionless. Then Graves noticed a subtle movement at the water’s edge.
She was standing by the canal, staring down at the gently flowing water, tall, slim, her white hair loose, falling over her shoulders, a figure he at once recognized as Allison Davies. She was dressed in a long nightgown, its hem sweeping over the ground as she drifted slowly along the edge of the channel. For a moment she stopped and lifted her head abruptly, as if something had occurred to her. Then she lowered it again, turned, and made her way toward the boathouse. She’d almost reached it, when a man suddenly came out from behind it, his hair as white as Miss Davies’, his body wrapped in a checkered housecoat.
It was Saunders. Graves continued to watch as he walked directly to his employer and stopped in front of her, as if to block her way. They seemed to speak a few words, then Miss Davies nodded and headed back up the walkway to the house while Saunders remained near the boathouse, watching her until she reached the door, paused briefly, then went inside her home.
Saunders lingered a moment longer by the water, still staring toward the great house, his back both to Graves and to the dark grounds that separated them. Then, as if his duty had been done, he returned to the boathouse and disappeared inside.
After that the grounds remained motionless and deserted. But Graves lingered on the porch, peering out over the lake, oddly disturbed by the scene he’d just witnessed, peaceful though it was, quiet, tender, and yet, as the grim engine of his brain forever insisted, perhaps not entirely innocent.
Saunders arrived promptly at nine-thirty the next morning. Graves was already packed and waiting.
“Did you sleep well, sir?”
“I suppose,” Graves answered.
On the way back to Britanny Falls, Saunders talked of nothing but the coming summer. “It’s really nice here in the summer. Riverwood has everything anybody could want.” He glanced toward Graves. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy your stay.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m coming back for the summer,” Graves told him.
Saunders nodded, but said
nothing.
“Miss Davies went for a late walk last night,” Graves added as casually as he could.
Saunders’ eyes lifted toward the rear view mirror. “Miss Davies has trouble sleeping sometimes. Takes walks to relax.” A beat passed before he added, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Graves, I keep a lookout for her. It’s easy for me to do it from my own place. From the boathouse, I mean.”
“You live in the boathouse?”
“In what used to be the boathouse. It was converted into a regular house quite a few years ago. Anyway, from my bedroom window I can keep an eye on the house and grounds.” Saunders appeared to consider his next words. “That’s where she’s taken to walking lately. Along the edge of the canal. I mean, since she started thinking about what happened to Faye Harrison.”
“Did you see Faye the day she disappeared?” Graves asked.
“Yes, I did. She came around the side of the house, then headed across the lawn toward the woods. That was the last anybody saw of her. Except for that kid.”
“What kid?”
“A local kid,” Saunders answered. “He saw Faye walking in the woods near Indian Rock. It’s all in the old newspaper clippings Miss Davies has back at the main house. The ones you’ll be reading through if you decide to come back.”
They’d reached the main street of Britanny Falls. Saunders guided the Volvo over to the curb, but did not get out. Instead, he turned to face Graves in the backseat. “Well, good-bye, Mr. Graves,” he said with his quick smile. “Hope you come back for the summer.”