Miss Davies did know where her brother lived, as she was quick to admit. Even so, she remained reluctant to reveal his location.
“I don’t think he’d want to be disturbed,” she explained. “Edward is in a state of seclusion.”
They stood in the flower garden, behind the house, the gazebo rising empty only a few yards away. Graves imagined the morning when Faye Harrison had lifted her eyes toward the second floor, nodded slowly, risen, then walked into the basement. In search of what? he wondered now, while Eleanor continued pressing Miss Davies for her brother’s address.
“But if you called him and told him we were coming,” Eleanor said. “Surely he’d-”
“I’m not in contact with my brother,” Miss Davies interrupted. She was busily pruning the irises, cutting back the long brown stems of those that had begun to wither. The blades of the pruning shears snapped loudly as she continued. “We have not spoken to one another since my mother’s death. That was over ten years ago.” She shot a curiously scolding glance toward Graves. “Frankly, Miss Stern, I’m puzzled by your interest in this matter.” She pulled the shears back, the sharp twin blades still open, and faced Eleanor abruptly. “I should remind you that you weren’t invited to Riverwood for this purpose. I can’t help but wonder why you’ve become so involved in something that was supposed to be handled by Mr. Graves alone. Of course, I’ve noticed that the two of you spend a lot of time in each other’s company.”
“Eleanor has a great mind for detail,” Graves explained. “She came up with an idea about Faye’s death. How someone from Riverwood might have had the opportunity to murder her.”
The blades closed slowly. “Someone from Riverwood? Opportunity? Is that why you want to see my brother?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Are you telling me that you think that there was an opportunity for Edward to have murdered Faye?”
“Edward and Mona,” Eleanor replied. “Together.”
Such a possibility seemed never to have occurred to Miss Davies, but at the same time, she did not appear inclined to dismiss it. She touched one of the drooping irises, toyed with its limp petals. “So now you’re looking for a reason for them to have done it? That’s why you want to talk with Edward?”
“Yes.”
“But do you seriously believe he’s just going to blurt it out? ‘I murdered Faye Harrison. And here’s the reason why.’” She stared at Graves.
“No, but I might find out enough to come up with a story.”
Miss Davies suddenly became more accommodating. “A story, yes. I keep forgetting that we’re only talking about a story. You’re right. You should talk to him.” She began pruning the irises again, cupping their dying spines in quick, oddly brutal strokes. “Edward lives in a little town called Winthrop. It’s on Route Twelve. About an hour’s drive from here. His address is 1400 Carson Lane.”
Graves turned to leave, but Eleanor remained in place. “You hate Edward, don’t you?” she asked.
Miss Davies continued to snip at the flowers, reducing them to headless brown sticks, a carpet of severed blooms gathering at her feet. “He killed my father. By what he did.” The shears came to a halt. Her eyes shot over to them. “My brother was a thief.”
“It’s strange how different Riverwood is from the way it appears,” Eleanor said a few minutes later. They were in Eleanor’s car, she at the wheel as they drove through a gentle landscape of farms, the deep green of the rural countryside. “Corrupt, like Malverna in your books, where Kessler was born. The way it looks when Slovak finally visits it.” She seemed to envision Malverna in its eternal ruin. “So rotted. With vines coiling up the central banister and Spanish moss hanging from the chandeliers. All of it so…”
Graves recalled Grossman’s word. “Tainted.”
“Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “But not just by one act. Something one person did. But overall. Generally. A tainted atmosphere. Only alive. The way Malverna seems alive. So that you can feel it. You know, tingling. Fibrous. Like something woven into the scheme of things.”
“You sound like Slovak,” Graves said.
She glanced toward him. “Yes, I suppose I do a little.” She smiled. “His language is a bit… florid, Paul,” she added cautiously, clearly reluctant to offer any more trenchant criticism of his work.
“Yes, I know,” Graves said. “I’d like to pare it down. I don’t know why I can’t.”
Her answer struck him as achingly on target. “Because writing is your only passion. So you can’t help pouring everything into it.”
Watching her, Graves considered how much he’d given up in his isolation, the fuller and more passionate life he’d turned from in his guilt. No wife. No children. Nothing to look forward to. Save the rope and the metal bar. But even now he felt it the only life he deserved, the one way he could continue to live, and yet be dead, buried with the sister he’d knowingly led Kessler to, all that had been done to her after that.
“Is he based on anyone?” Eleanor asked, her eyes now fixed on the road. “Slovak, I mean.”
“No,” Graves lied, remembering how Sheriff Sloane had made the long, dusty drive to Mrs. Flexner’s house, trudging wearily up the creaky wooden stairs, always bent upon talking to “the boy” just one more time.
“What about Kessler?” Eleanor asked. “Is he based on anybody you ever knew or heard of?”
“No.”
“And Sykes?”
Graves shook his head. “Imagined” was all he said.
The house on Carson Lane was decidedly a far cry from the grandeur of Riverwood. Here there was no broad circular drive, no great columns or towering windows. Instead, a cement driveway led to a single-car garage. The house was modest and without charm, covered in beige aluminum siding, the roof of asbestos shingles. A rusting wheelbarrow rested beside the narrow walkway; the remains of a vegetable garden withered behind a sagging wire fence.
Eleanor grasped the small brass knocker on the front door and tapped twice. When there was no answer, she tapped again.
The door opened slowly to reveal a short, stocky woman in a nurse’s uniform.
“We’re looking for Edward Davies,” Graves said. He introduced himself and Eleanor, then added, “We’re working on a story. About Riverwood.”
The woman seemed not to recognize the name. “Well, come in,” she said in a thin, dry voice, indicating they should go into the adjoining room. “I’ll get Mr. Davies.”
They stepped into a tiny room whose drawn curtains cast everything in a murky light. The walls were bare except for a scattering of photographs. All were of Edward Davies, but only in his later years, none of his youth or early adulthood. It was a time in his life, it seemed to Graves, that Edward had either failed to record or wished to forget.
“No pictures of Riverwood,” he murmured as he moved along the wall, glancing at the photographs. “None of Allison or his parents.”
“Or of Mona Flagg,” Eleanor said.
“Mona was nothing to him,” Graves said assuredly. “A summer fling. Someone he used, then threw away.”
Eleanor looked at him oddly. “Why do you say that? You don’t know what he felt for Mona Flagg. So why do you assume she was just someone he ‘used and threw away’? Why is the woman always the victim in your mind, Paul?” She raised her hand to stop him from replying. “What if Edward were the victim? Led on by Mona. Forced to do things he wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t made him do them.”
Her version of the story was no less likely than his own, but still, he could hardly imagine it that way. Mona as the diabolical one, Edward her simpering tool. He knew where this distortion came from, the fact that it had been seared into his brain during the longest night of his life. Kessler and Sykes at their horrid work. Gwen the thing they worked upon.
“You always think of women as abused,” Eleanor said. “Mistreated. Led to their destruction by a man. It’s the same in your books. Kessler’s victims are always women. Like Maura in The Lost Child. The little boy’s sister.”
Graves saw Gwen’s hands drop from the rope, raw and bleeding, heard her final, desperate breath. Dead now. Dead at last. The man Graves had knowingly led to her standing beside the dangling body, bored now with the long night’s savagery, but searching still for one last outrage for Sykes to carry out, seizing it in a fiendish instant, barking his command, Gut her!
He felt it surge up, the vast, bloody gorge of his hidden past rise so powerfully, he felt sure he would release it. “Eleanor… I…”
She lifted her hand, again silencing him. “He’s coming.”
He glanced toward the corridor and saw a man emerge from its shadows, tall but bowed, his lustrous black hair now white and unruly. Edward Davies was large and unkempt, dressed in baggy brown pants and a white shirt that bore a faint yellow stain beneath the pocket. He eyed them suspiciously as he neared them.
“You wanted to see me,” he said gruffly, walking to a chair and easing himself into it. “Something about Riverwood. I don’t have anything to do with Riverwood.”
“It’s about Faye Harrison,” Graves began cautiously.
“The girl who was murdered? Allison’s friend?” Davies’ eyes shifted over to Eleanor. “What about her?”
“We’re trying to find out what happened to Faye,” Eleanor answered.
“You mean, who killed her?” Davies asked. “My God, that must be over fifty years ago.”
“We’ve been asked to look into it again,” Graves told him. “By your sister.”
“Allison.” Davies spit the name like something putrid from his mouth. “My God, she gets more like Miss Havisham every year.” He glanced about the room as if to point out the shabbiness of his surroundings. “I’d rather be here than live like she does. Locked up in the past. Her whole life. Lived in a prison. She’s been living that way for years now. The guardian of the gate. Mistress of Riverwood. What a joke.” He shifted in his chair, wincing as he did so. “So you’re here about Faye’s murder. Well, I can’t help you. I didn’t even know she was missing until her mother showed up. My father spoke to her. Evidently Faye had left her house that morning and not come home since. Mrs. Harrison had been combing the woods, my father said, but hadn’t located her. None of us knew where she was, of course.”
“Did you know that Faye came into the house the morning she disappeared?” Eleanor asked. “One of the servants saw her there. Greta Klein. She said that Faye was standing at the entrance to the corridor that led to the boathouse.” She slowed her pace slightly, like someone carefully laying a trap. “Faye was looking toward the boat-house, Greta said. Toward you… and Mona Flagg.”
If Davies heard the accusing tone, he did not visibly react.
“Did you see Faye in the basement that morning?” Eleanor asked.
“I saw Greta there,” Davies answered evenly. “No one else.”
Eleanor started to ask another question, but Davies shook his head. “I have a question for you,” he said. “Is Allison after me? Is that what this is all about? Trying to pin a murder on me? She’s never forgiven me, and she never will.”
“Forgive you for what?” Eleanor asked immediately.
Davies looked at her closely, as if trying to determine how much she already knew. “I took a little money. A little money out of one of my father’s accounts. For Mona. She was my girlfriend at the time. I needed the money because she was-You’re too young to know what it was like back then. It was different. A hell of a lot different. You couldn’t just go to the local clinic and get rid of it.”
“It?” Eleanor asked. “Mona was pregnant?”
“I went to my father,” Davies said. “I wanted to marry Mona. I told him so. But he said no. He said I was an idiot for getting involved with someone like Mona. A girl from the ‘lower orders,’ as he called them.” He smiled coldly. “I’m sure my sister has probably given you a very different idea of what my father was like. Kind. Generous. Good to the help. Always funding his pet charities. The amateur scientist, teaching pretty little Faye about… breeding, or whatever it was they were doing with those flowers in his damn garden. That’s how my father seemed to Allison. She adored him. Why shouldn’t she? All her life he’d given her anything she wanted. Faye too. Buying her clothes. Toys. Trinkets. Always a piece of candy waiting for her when she came to his office. She loved him as much as Allison did. They both thought he was a peach of a guy. But when I came to him… when I needed his help, he told me to take my little tramp and go to hell.” A glacial bitterness guttered in his eyes. “He could spend all kinds of time with the daughter of a servant. But when it came to the girl I loved, she wasn’t good enough for Riverwood.” He took a quick, hard breath, then let it out raggedly, struggling to calm himself. “So, I went back to Mona. We talked. Decided to… Well, that cost money. I didn’t have any. So-” He stopped a moment, stared at the slight tremor in his hands, then continued, his tone less angry now, though his manner seemed no less troubled. “Anyway, I went to New York. To see Mr. Freeman, my father’s bookkeeper. He controlled one of my father’s accounts. I’d gone there before, so Mr. Freeman was used to giving me a little cash. I’d never seen him make a record of what he gave me. So I figured the account was my father’s version of petty cash, something he hardly noticed. Of course, this time I needed a little more than usual, but it didn’t seem to bother Mr. Freeman. Two thousand dollars was pocket change to my father. Freeman took it out of a safe in the office. Anyway, when I got back to Riverwood I hid the money behind some of the boxes my father kept in a storage room in the basement. A few days later I found Greta snooping around in the room. I threw her out and checked to see if the money was still there. It was. But I was afraid to keep it there any longer. So I gave it to Mona when we went sailing that same afternoon. She tucked it inside an umbrella. Two weeks later she used it to… solve the problem. But things didn’t go the way the doctor said they would. She-” His lower hp trembled. His voice hardened. “Mona died. I never went back to Riverwood. A few weeks later a guy showed up at my door at college. My father had sent him. He’d come to tell me that my father had found out about the money. It seems that he kept a closer eye on that account than he did on any other. Used it to fund special projects. Freeman hadn’t made a record of my withdrawal because he’d been instructed never to make a written record of anything that had to do with the account. Every transaction was to be reported to my father in person. Which is exactly what Freeman did when my father came by his office in New York. So this man had come to tell me that I’d been caught red-handed. And to give me what he termed ‘official notification’ that I had been disowned.” He smiled almost wistfully, as if Riverwood were only a memory now, not the legacy he’d been denied. “I never saw my father again. It was like the Old Testament pronouncement: ‘I cast you out.’ It wasn’t until years later that Allison and I met again. At our mother’s funeral. I was having a few health problems by then. She agreed to put me on the Riverwood dole. The check comes every month.” He took in a long, weary breath. “But I don’t miss Riverwood. What I miss-every day, almost every hour-is…” He rose heavily, trudged to the window and looked for a time out on the barren lawn of his cramped, plain home. Then he turned, his hands clasped behind his back. “Mona might have been able to tell you a few things about Faye, you know. When I wasn’t at Riverwood, they’d go rowing together. Out on the pond. Faye had stopped going out on the river. She told Mona it made her feel queasy. She was sick a lot, Mona said. Couldn’t keep her food down. Particularly in the morning. That’s what made Mona think that the two of them had the same… problem.”
“Mona thought Faye might be pregnant?” Graves asked.
“That’s right,” Davies replied. “Mona told me that she asked Faye flat out. She said, ‘Faye, could it be you’re in a family way?’ Faye said, ‘No, I’m not pregnant. I couldn’t be pregnant.’ She was real firm about it. That it was impossible. So Mona figured Faye was a virgin. I mean, how else could she have been so sure that she wasn’t pregnant?”
“What about Faye’s sickness?” Eleanor asked. “Did Mona ever find out what had caused it?”
“No,” Davies answered. “I don’t think she talked much to Faye after that. She did see her, though. A few days before the… disappearance. She told me about it after we’d left Riverwood. She said she’d seen Faye. Washing clothes in a tub. Washing that same blue dress she wore the day she went into the woods, Mona said.” The peculiar nature of what he was about to describe swam into Davies’ eyes. “She was washing everything very… hard. That’s what Mona said. Scrubbing very hard. Then squeezing out the water and scrubbing again. Like she was trying to get out a stain or an odor.” The next words came from him slowly, sadly, like the last words of a mournful song. “And she was crying.”
“Crying?”
“Yes. Mona started to go over to her, but when Faye saw her, she turned away, like she was embarrassed to be seen like that. Broken up. So Mona left her alone. That’s the way Mona was. She always knew the right thing to do.” The love he’d felt for Mona Flagg sprang into his eyes. Enriched by loss, as it seemed to Graves, but also edged in anger. “Mona was the best person I ever knew. That’s why it so enraged me. What my father did.” An old trouble rose in him, flooding the banks of his long reserve. He needed no further coaxing in order to reveal it. “The morning Faye disappeared, my father came up to me. He had some papers in his hand. He shoved them at me. ‘Read this,’ he told me. It was a report. On Mona. Her whole family. A general rundown of what they’d done. It wasn’t pretty, I can tell you that.”
In his mind Graves saw Edward Davies as he must have appeared at that moment, young and very rich and hopelessly in love with Mona Flagg, but now convinced that his father would never permit him to marry a girl from the “lower orders.”
“‘They’re nothing but criminals,’ my father told me. ‘Every one of them. The whole family. Low-life. Do you think I’d ever let such people get near Riverwood?’ He jerked the papers out of my hand. ‘You have a week, Edward.’ That’s what he told me. A week to decide between Mona and Riverwood.” The burden of his dilemma seemed to fall upon him once again. “I told Mona all about it. She said she wasn’t like her family. She told me she’d broken off with them several years before. We were both pretty upset. I nearly tipped the boat a couple of times. When we got back, I couldn’t find the rope to tie the boat. Mona had trouble getting out. It was a terrible day.” He waited for a question, continued when none came. “But I’d made my decision. I was going to stay with Mona. If she hadn’t… Mona would have lived her whole life and never hurt a soul. That’s why it was so unfair. What my father did. Hiring that cop to check up on Mona and her family. Put what he found out in those papers my father shoved at me.” Again, his anger flared. “But even worse, the way that same cop showed up at Riverwood after Faye’s death. Asking Mona questions like he’d never heard of her before. Had never sneaked around gathering filth on her family.” His mouth jerked into a sneer. “That fat bastard.”
“Are you talking about Dennis Portman?” Graves asked.
“That fat cop, yes.” Davies’ eyes flashed with rage. “He was nothing but a flunky who did my father’s dirty work. I’d seen his name on the report he’d done about Mona and her family. So when he came to Riverwood after Faye died, I knew why he was there. It made me sick, the way he acted. Pretending to be so dedicated. Like he was just trying to find out what happened to Faye. Looking for the truth.” He gave a dry, derisive laugh. “Whatever Dennis Portman was doing he was doing for my father. So he could protect Riverwood. Bury anything that needed burying. Portman was no more than a servant. He was big and fat. But he was little. A little man. One of my father’s little men.”
“What if he’s right?” Eleanor asked as they headed back to Riverwood. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “What if Portman’s whole investigation were a sham? What if he never intended to find out who killed Faye? What if his real job was to make sure no one ever did?” She glanced toward Graves, then returned her eyes to the road. “Is that what we’ve left out, Paul? The fact that Portman was Warren Davies’ private henchman?”
“We don’t have any reason to believe that. All we know is that he did some work for Mr. Davies.”
“We know more than that.”
“What?”
“Remember all the follow-up interviews Portman did? The way he checked out everyone’s story? Always trying to find out exactly where everyone was at the time of Faye’s murder. Everyone except Warren Davies, remember? As far as we can tell from his notes, Portman never even bothered to find out if Davies actually went to Britanny Falls that morning, actually met with that man, Brinker, the new mayor.”
Graves remembered the single reference Portman had made to Warren Davies’ having left Riverwood at noon on the day of Faye’s disappearance. Eleanor was right: there had been no follow-up.
“We’ve always assumed that Portman was trying to find the truth,” she continued. “But suppose he wasn’t doing that at all? Suppose he was afraid of Riverwood? Of its power to destroy him?”
Portman rose into Graves’ imagination, fat and stinking in the summer heat, venal, corrupt, the putrid and repellent creature his cowardice had made him.
“We’ve imagined him as Slovak,” Eleanor added, softly now, in a tone of dark concentration. “Suppose he was like Sykes instead?”