Instruments of Night (31 page)

She picked up another picture. Faye gathered with the family and staff of Riverwood, all of them arrayed on the front lawn, clustered together, staring at the camera. Portman had drawn a circle around Faye’s head, then a line that connected it to Grossman. “Look at this,” Eleanor murmured. “Why would he have drawn that line?”

Graves took the photograph. He looked first at one
face, then at the other. “Because Grossman is watching Faye.” He handed the picture back to Eleanor. “All the others are looking at the camera. But Grossman is looking at Faye.”

“And Faye knows he’s looking at her. See how stiff she looks. A fake smile. Not a natural one. She knows Grossman is looking at her, and she’s trying to avoid his gaze. Why?”

If Portman had ever discovered the answer to that question, there was no indication of it in any of the materials he’d gathered on Faye Harrison. Instead, as Graves and Eleanor went through the rest of the papers he’d assembled over the years, they found only a baffling collection of school records, teacher comments, report cards. Portman had even managed to get hold of Faye’s medical records, the accumulated history of her physical existence, charts of height and weight from the time she was eight until her sixteenth birthday. Nearly two hours had passed before they’d gone over the last of the documents, studied the final photograph, read the last list or chart.

Graves stated the unavoidable conclusion. “I think Charlie Portman was wrong. I think his father died in the dark. And even if he did find the truth at the very end, he didn’t leave a clue as to what it was.”

“Yes, he did,” Eleanor said. She thought a moment, then began going through the material that still lay spread across the bed. When she found the picture in which Portman had drawn a line connecting Faye and Grossman, she turned it toward Graves. “This is his clue. The one he left behind. There had to have been a reason for him to have drawn that line. Something he found. Something he saw but that we haven’t seen.” She plucked the envelope marked Devane & Assoc. from the pile and held it up, displaying its empty interior. “Because it was taken.”

They found Charlie Portman exactly where he said he’d be, stretched out in a dusty hammock behind the house, snoring softly as they approached, rousing himself immediately when Eleanor said his name.

“Oh, boy, out like a light,” he said drowsily as he pulled himself up, blinking.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Eleanor said.

“No, no, that’s all right. Did you find anything?”

“Not exactly,” Eleanor replied. “But we noticed that something was missing.”

“Missing? From Dad’s files?”

“Every other envelope had something in it. This one didn’t.” Eleanor handed him the empty envelope.

“Yes, it did,” Portman said. He was now upright in the hammock, his shoulders slumped, his belly hanging loosely over his belt. “There was some kind of inventory in it. It didn’t have anything to do with the murder.” What he said next did not appear to bother him. “That’s why I let Miss Davies take it.”

M
iss Davies sat on the side porch, reading a book. She seemed pleased to see them. “I was hoping you’d come by,” she said, removing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. “I was quite curious about your visit with my brother.”

“We couldn’t find a reason for him to have hurt Faye,” Graves told her.

“That doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think he had one. Nor his girlfriend either.” Miss Davies placed her glasses in a velvet case and closed the lid. “So, where does that leave you?”

Eleanor handed her the envelope they’d found in Dennis Portman’s files. “Have you ever seen this?”

Miss Davies took the envelope, glanced at it, offered it back to Eleanor. Her expression did not change. “I see that you’ve gone to Charles Portman’s house.”

“It was the only empty envelope in Dennis Portman’s files,” Eleanor told her. “And you were the only one who’d been through his papers since he died.”

Miss Davies looked at Graves warily. “Am I a suspect now?” Before he could answer, her eyes shot back to Eleanor. “Did Mr. Portman tell you why I went through his father’s papers? Or have you simply assumed the worst? That I have something to hide. Well, I’m not surprised. It’s our national disease, after all. Always looking for conspiracies, cover-ups.” She seemed disappointed in Eleanor, resentful of her suspicion, perhaps even a little wounded by it. “It’s quite contagious, evidently. Although I’m always surprised when intelligent, even gifted people prove susceptible to such delusions.”

Eleanor faced Miss Davies evenly, not in the least intimidated by her manner. “Charlie Portman said you came to his office a month ago. You told him you were gathering material on the murder. You wanted to look through any papers his father might have on the case.”

“Precisely,” Miss Davies said. “Unfortunately, I found nothing of importance in the senior Portman’s files. As to what I found in that envelope, it had nothing to do with Faye’s murder.” She rose. “Come. I’ll show you what it was.”

Graves and Eleanor followed her upstairs into what had once been Warren Davies’ private office. It was a spacious room, flooded with light, its bookshelves cluttered with a large assortment of objects collected over the years. To the right of his desk, a glass cabinet held an array of antique medical instruments and medicine jars. To the left, another cabinet contained an assortment of objects that appeared to have nothing in common.

“My father had a foundation,” Miss Davies told them. “He ran it from this office.” She was clearly proud of the man the room portrayed, accomplished, learned, a man of broad interests. “The things he put in these cabinets were of no particular value. Except as memories. President Roosevelt gave him this pen, for example. And that little
wooden ring you see there came from Borneo. The gift of a native chief.” She opened the top drawer of the desk, riffled through a stack of papers, and took out a single white sheet. “This is what you’re looking for, I believe.”

The letterhead read “Devane & Assoc.” The letter was dated July 17, 1946, and had been written to Andre Grossman. There was a photograph clipped to the top right-hand corner. It showed a small enameled box, a number written just beneath it:
Item 6401.

“When I was going through Mr. Portman’s papers, I found that,” Miss Davies explained. “Of course, I recognized the box.” She looked at Graves. “I’m sure you must have recognized it too. My mother later used that box to store the letters she received from Mr. Grossman after he left Riverwood. I couldn’t imagine why Mr. Portman had the letter in his files. As you’ll see after you’ve read it, the contents have absolutely nothing to do with Faye.”

“A provenance is, as I’m sure you know, the history of ownership for a work of art,” Miss Davies told them. “I didn’t recognize any of the names on the list Devane and Associates provided. Other than my father’s, of course. But who they are would hardly matter. The names are listed only to establish the authenticity of the box. And, of course, proof of authenticity establishes value. Andre Grossman had worked as a curator for a museum in Vienna. He must have known how valuable the box was. That’s what he wanted to find out from Devane and Associates. Whether the box my father had in his office was, in fact, authentic.” She gazed at them pointedly. “I can only conclude that Mr. Grossman, my mother’s dear, dear friend, was a thief.”

Their final lead had led nowhere. Save back to Grossman. During the previous few minutes, Miss Davies had made what appeared to be perfectly sensible assumptions as to the painter’s situation. Grossman was poor, she said, with few prospects. Her father would certainly have refused to recommend him to anyone in his circle. The artist had, in fact, been more or less thrown out of Riverwood. With the portrait of Mrs. Davies finished, he had no future
income upon which he could depend. In such a state of desperation, he might well have hit upon the idea of stealing the Kaminsky box. Even selling it on the underground market, Grossman would have made a substantial amount of money. Enough to sustain him for months.

And yet, for all that, one question remained. They had reached the bottom of the stairs when Eleanor voiced it. “If Grossman intended to steal the box, Paul, why didn’t he do it? Why did he leave Riverwood without it?”

“But if he didn’t intend to steal it,” Graves said, “then why did he bother to find out whether it was authentic and how much it was worth?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the value of the box that interested him.”

“Then what
was
he interested in?”

“The provenance.” Eleanor’s tone struck Graves as curiously assured. “The letter said that in every case the box was transferred from one person to another ‘without encumbrance.’ That means that no money changed hands, that it wasn’t bought.”

“So Mr. Davies got it as a gift?”

“Yes. A gift from someone named Karl Clauberg.”

“Who’s probably been dead for years,” Graves said.

“Dead or alive doesn’t matter,” Eleanor said. “It’s never too late to find someone.”

Seconds later they were at her computer. Graves watched as the screen illuminated, a green background with several distinct figures, all of them indecipherable to him, part of a language and process he knew nothing of.

Eleanor’s fingers tapped the keys. In response, the screen threw up another pattern, this one with a white rectangle in the far left corner. As Eleanor began to type, the letters appeared instantly inside the white rectangle: CLAUBERG.

Two seconds passed. Three. Four. The screen did not change. Five. Six.

Then it came up, a completely different page. Graves leaned forward to see it.

“Nothing,” Eleanor said. She hit a key marked Next, and a second page appeared.