She 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.”
She’d been standing at the entrance to the corridor, Greta said, facing the boathouse silently, her hands in the pockets of her dress.
“I do not know where she came from,” Greta said. “I did not hear the door of the basement open or footsteps on the stairs, but there she was, standing, looking toward the boathouse.” She shrugged. “I did not want her to see me in Mr. Davies’ room. So again I waited. In the room. I don’t know for how long. A few minutes. When I looked again, all of them were gone. Edward and the girl. Faye too. I did not ever see Faye again after that.” She drew in a shaky breath, let it out slowly, exhaustedly. “I was sick. Suddenly sick. From the fear. My stomach. Vomiting. Trembling. All over. Mr. Davies came to me. He said I should go away. From Riverwood. To rest. I left early the next morning. Only when I came back did I hear about Faye. Then the old detective came with his questions.”
“And you told him all this?”
“No. Not then. Later.”
“What did you tell him at the time?”
“What you know. That I had seen Faye in the basement. Also Edward and his girlfriend. The truth. All of it. Except that I was in the storage room. With Mr. Davies’ papers.”
“And that Edward Davies had found you there.”
“This also I did not tell him,” Greta said. “Later, when the detective came again. I told him everything.”
“How much later?”
“Many years.”
“What did he say?”
“That it did not matter,” Greta said. “I thought he meant that it did not matter because the one who did that terrible thing to Faye was also now dead. The one accused, I mean.”
“Jake Mosley.”
“Yes. But the detective told me it could not be him. He said it was someone else who killed Faye.”
“Did he ever mention anyone else?” Eleanor asked with a sudden, fierce anticipation. “Someone he suspected?”
Greta hesitated, a door closing briefly, then opening again. “The one who caught me. Edward.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, as if she were betraying a long-held family secret. “His girl too. The old detective had a name for them.” Her mind seemed to drift back in time, to Edward Davies and Mona Flagg as they’d sailed out of the shadowy boathouse and into the blinding light of that August noon. “Partners in crime,” Greta said.