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 tray 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.”
Perhaps because of his natural suspiciousness, the veil of malicious motive and secret conclave that colored everything, Graves was not at all certain that Saunders hoped for any such return.