Fourth Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

“You better believe it. Abner Boone has it and I’m betting Jason has it, too.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I suppose,” he said shortly. He turned to stare at her. “You’re a beautiful woman. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Well, I’m telling you now.”

  “And what, pray, is the reason for this sudden romantic frenzy?”

  “I thought you might be properly appreciative,” he said, winking at her.

  “I am,” she said, crooking a finger at him.

  20

  DETECTIVES HELEN VENABLE AND Brian Estrella had never worked together before, but they found to their pleased surprise that they made a good team. He thought her a bright, vigorous woman willing to take on her share of the donkeywork. She thought him a bit stodgy, but smart and understanding. Best of all, he didn’t pull any of that macho bullshit she was used to from other cops.

  She told him everything she had learned about Joan Yesell, and especially the business of Mrs. Blanche Yesell and her Friday night bridge club.

  “The old bitch was lying to us,” she said bitterly.

  “Maybe and maybe not,” Estrella said. “There was a bad storm that night; the bridge game could have been called off. In that case she was probably home like she says. What’s your take on Joan?”

  “I can’t believe she’s the perp. I swear to God, Brian, she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “But she’ll hurt herself. She’s suicidal, isn’t she?”

  “Suicidal, yes; homicidal, no.”

  He went through the slow routine of packing his pipe, tamping down the tobacco, lighting up, puffing. “Helen, sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind about this woman. You like her?”

  “Very much. We’re even talking about sharing an apartment.”

  “Take it easy,” he advised. “Wait’ll we clear her first.”

  “Brian, she’s such a little mouse. She hasn’t got a mean bone in her body. I tell you she’s just incapable of snuffing Ellerbee—or anyone else. She cries when she sees a stray dog.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “The meanest killer I ever scragged raised gerbils.”

  “You want to talk to Joan and see for yourself?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “You keep up the buddy-buddy routine with her, but don’t tell her I’m working with you.”

  Without making it obvious, he spent all week double-checking Venable’s investigation—and couldn’t fault it. He talked to doctors at St. Vincent’s, with fellow employees at Yesell’s law office, with neighbors, storekeepers, even the postman who delivered mail to the Yesells’ brownstone.

  Everything he heard substantiated what Helen had told him: Joan Yesell was a timid, withdrawn woman. The only gossip Estrella picked up was that Blanche Yesell was a real battle-ax who treated her daughter like a cretin without the brains or will to make her own decisions.

  On Friday night the two detectives were slouched in Venable’s Honda parked a few doors down from the Yesells’ home.

  “With my luck,” Helen said gloomily, “Mama Blanche will have the bridge club meeting at her apartment tonight.”

  “Doesn’t make any difference,” Estrella said. “If she does, you and I will tail two of the women after the game breaks up. Brace them, get their names and addresses, and we’ll take it from there. But if Mrs. Yesell comes out—”

  And, while he was talking, she did come out. She turned eastward and crossed the street.

  “That’s her,” Venable said tensely.

  “Okay,” Estrella said, “you go after her and get the number of the building she goes into. I’m going to make a phone call. Meet you back here.”

  Helen took off after the scurrying Mrs. Yesell. Brian headed for Eighth Avenue and used a wall phone in an all-night deli. He called the Yesells’ apartment.

  A faint voice, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Blanche Yesell, please,” Estrella said.

  “She’s not here right now. Who’s calling?”

  “This is Detective Brian Estrella of the New York Police Department. To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Joan Yesell, Mrs. Blanche Yesell’s daughter.”

  “Miss Yesell, it is important that I contact your mother tonight. There’s a document we’d like her to sign. It’s just routine, but we do have to go by the rules and regulations, you know.”

  “A document? About Doctor Ellerbee’s death?”

  “Yes. Just her statement that she was home with you on that night. Could you tell me where I might reach her?”

  “She’s at her bridge club.”

  “Could you give me the phone number so I can contact her?”

  “Well, she’s at Mrs. Ferguson’s tonight.”

  “Do you have the phone number?” he persisted.

  She hesitated a moment, then gave him the number. Using a ballpoint pen, he jotted it down on the back of his hand.

  “Thank you very much, Miss Yesell.”

  A few minutes later he was back at the Honda. Helen was waiting for him.

  “I got the address,” Venable said.

  “And I got the name and phone number. We’re in business.”

  The next morning Delaney felt equally optimistic as he and Monica set out with the Boones for Diane Ellerbee’s country home. “Looks like a splendid day,” Delaney gloated.

  And so it was. A blue sky shimmered like a butterfly’s wing. The sun was a hot plate and there, to the east, one could see a faint smudge of white moon. The sharp air bit like ether, and the whole world seemed scrubbed and polished.

  Traffic was heavy, but they made surprisingly good time, stopping only once at a Brewster gas station to ask directions, use the rest rooms, and buy five gallons of gas in gratitude.

  They drove slowly along a country road, commenting on the mailboxes: a windmill, a miniature house, a model plane.

  “Very cutesy,” Delaney said. “What’s the Ellerbees’ going to be—a little black leather couch with a red flag?”

  But the mailbox marked ELLERBEE was the plain aluminum variety. It was at the entrance to a narrow side road that curved through a stand of skeleton trees up to the house and outbuildings. The gentle rise was not high enough to be called a hill, but sufficiently elevated to provide a pleasant view of the rolling countryside.

  Boone drove onto the graveled apron outside the three-car garage. Parked outside was a dusty Volkswagen and the Ellerbees’ Jeep station wagon. The garage door was up, and they could see Dr. Simon’s bottle-green XJ6 Jaguar sedan and Dr. Diane’s silver and black 1971 Mercedes-Benz.

  “I’ve got to get a look at that Mercedes,” Delaney said. “It’s a beauty.”

  He and Boone went into the garage while their wives slowly strolled up to the main house along a curving pathway of slate flagstones.

  Delaney and Boone spent a few minutes admiring the handsome cars in the garage.

  “I’ll take the Jag,” Boone said, then laughed. “Can you imagine me driving up to Midtown North in that buggy? They’d know I was in the bag for sure.”

  “Mmm,” Delaney said. “I wonder why she hasn’t sold it. Who needs a Jaguar and a Mercedes?”

  “Maybe she can’t find a buyer,” the Sergeant said. “About all I can afford is that old Beetle parked outside. Who do you suppose owns it?”

  They walked up to the main house. The door was open, and on the small stoop, awaiting them, was Dr. Julius Samuelson.

  “Now you know who owns the Beetle,” Delaney said, sotto voce.

  Inside, there was warmth, fragrance from scented pressed logs blazing in a fireplace, and redolent cooking odors.

  “Ahh,” Delaney said, sniffing appreciatively, “garlic. I love it.”

  “You better,” Dr. Diane said, laughing. “That’s Beef Bourguignon bubbling away, and my cook has a heavy hand with the garlic. But there’s fresh parsley in the salad, and that should help. Now let’s all have a drink before I give you the grand tour.” She gestured toward a marbl
e-topped sideboard laden with bottles and decanters.

  The spacious living room had exposed oak ceiling beams and a fieldstone fireplace. Floors were random-width pine planking. French doors at the rear opened onto a tiled patio and the swimming pool, now emptied and covered.

  The master bedroom on the ground floor and the guest bedrooms on the second had individual fireplaces and private baths. The modern kitchen was fitted with butcherblock counters and track lighting. There was a small attached greenhouse.

  The dining room was dominated by an impressive ten-foot table topped with a single plank of teak that looked thick enough to stop a cannonball.

  There was no disguising the loving care (and money) that had gone into that home. Later, Delaney remarked to Monica that there wasn’t a single piece of furniture, painting, rug, or bibelot that he didn’t covet for his own.

  But finally, what impressed the guests the most was the informal comfort: warm colors, glowing wood, gleaming brass and copper. It was easy to understand how such a place could serve as sanctuary from the steel and concrete city.

  Looking around, Delaney could appreciate Dr. Diane’s fury at her husband’s murder and her desire for vengeance. For he knew that possessions charm most when shared with others, and thought it possible that since Dr. Simon’s death, all those lovely things had begun to pall. Now they were just things to Diane Ellerbee.

  The women bundled up to stroll across the patio and inspect the design of the formal English garden. Dr. Samuelson stayed close to the living room fire, but Delaney and Boone took a turn around the grounds, admiring the view and imagining what a gem this place would be in spring and summer.

  They wandered down behind the main house, beyond the swimming pool and garden. Hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched, they tramped to a copse of bony trees. And there they saw the stream, looking black and cold, with a lacework of ice building out from both banks.

  “Fish?” Abner Boone said. “D’you suppose?”

  “Could be,” Delaney said. “Depends on where it comes from. And where it ends up. I wonder if they swim in it in the summer.”

  He pried a small stone loose from the hard earth and tossed it into the water. But they could not judge its depth.

  Back in the house, everyone had another drink and clustered around the fireplace. It was early afternoon, but already the day had grayed, the sun had lost its brilliance.

  “I’m going to put out some hors d’oeuvres,” Diane said. “Marta and Jan worked all morning on the food, but I let them go home. We can serve ourselves, can’t we?”

  “Of course,” Delaney said with heavy good humor. “We’re all housebroken. What can I do to help?”

  “Not a thing,” she said. “Just eat. Julie, give me a hand in the kitchen.”

  He followed her obediently.

  There was a feast of appetizers: boiled shrimp, chunks of kielbasa, olives stuffed with peppers, sweet gherkins, smoked salmon and sturgeon, thick slices of sharp cheddar and Stilton, four different kinds of crackers and biscuits, chicken livers in a wine sauce, paper-thin slices of prosciutto, and brisling sardines in olive oil.

  “Here goes my diet,” Rebecca Boone said, sighing.

  “Just remember to leave room for dinner,” Diane said, laughing.

  “Edward will do his share,” Monica Delaney said. “He could live on food like this.”

  “Live and thrive,” her husband agreed happily, sampling everything. “This salmon makes me believe in God.”

  Finally they were surfeited and sat back with glazed eyes, holding up hands in surrender.

  “Julie,” Diane Ellerbee said crisply, “let’s clean up.”

  But Delaney was on his feet before Samuelson could struggle out of his armchair.

  “It’s my turn,” he said to Samuelson. “You just sit there and relax. I’m good at this; Monica trained me.”

  So he and Diane cleaned up the living room, Delaney demonstrating his proficiency as a waiter with four or five plates laid along a steady, outthrust arm.

  In the kitchen, he admired her efficiency. All the leftovers went into separate airtight containers. Plates and cutlery were rinsed in a trice and stacked in the dishwasher. She worked with quick grace, not a wasted movement.

  She was wearing black cashmere—sweater and skirt—and her flaxen hair was coiled high and held in place with an exotic tortoiseshell comb. He saw her in profile and once again marveled at the classic perfection of her beauty: something chiseled—the stone cut away to reveal the image.

  “Well!” she said brightly, looking at her aseptic, organized kitchen. “I think that does it. Thank you for your help. Shall we join the others?”

  “A moment,” he said, holding out a hand to stop her. “I think you deserve a report on what we’ve been doing.”

  She stared, the hostess’s mask dropping, features hardening: the vengeful widow once again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I was hoping you’d volunteer.”

  They sat close together on high stools at the butcherblock counter. They could hear soft conversation and laughter from the living room. But the kitchen provided a sense of secret intimacy as he told her what they’d learned.

  “In my judgment,” he concluded, “Kane and Otherton are clean. That leaves four of the patients you gave us. Their alibis are still being checked. It’s a long, laborious process, and we are still left with the mysterious second set of footprints.”

  “What do you mean?” Diane said.

  “There were apparently two visitors to your husband’s office that night. At the same or different times? We don’t know. Yet. Now I have a question for you: Were you surprised that your husband canceled all his patients’ outstanding bills?”

  She peered at him in the gloom, wide-eyed, her mouth open. “Oh,” she said. “How did you find out about that?”

  “Doctor Ellerbee,” he said patiently, “this is a criminal investigation. Everything is important until proved otherwise. Naturally we were interested in the probate of your husband’s will, hoping it might give us a lead. Were you surprised that he forgave his patients’ debts?”

  “No, I wasn’t surprised. He was a very generous man. It was entirely in character for him to do something like that.”

  “Then you were aware of what was in his will before he died?”

  “Of course. Just as he was aware of what was in my will. We had no secrets from each other.”

  “You and your late husband had the same attorney, did you?”

  “No,” she said, “as a matter of fact we didn’t. Simon used an old college friend of his—a man I couldn’t stand. I have my own attorney.”

  “Well, it isn’t important,” Delaney said, waving it away. “About those four patients we haven’t yet cleared—did you ever meet them personally?”

  “I met several of my husband’s patients,” she said. “Usually briefly, and by accident. Is there one in particular you want to know about?”

  “Joan Yesell.”

  “The suicidal woman? Yes, I met her once. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s possible that she’s given us a fake alibi. What was your take on her?”

  “I only met her for a moment—hardly long enough to form an opinion. But I thought her a rather plain, unattractive woman. Not much spark to her. But as I say, it was just a brief meeting. My husband introduced her and that was that. And now I think we should join the others.”

  But before they went into the living room, she put a hand lightly on his arm.

  “Thank you for keeping me informed, Mr. Delaney,” she said huskily. “I know you’re working very hard on this, and I appreciate it.”

  He nodded and held open the swinging kitchen door for her. She passed close to him and he caught her scent: something strong and musky that stirred him.

  They came into the living room, where the other four sat logy with food and drink.

  “Doctor Ellerbee,” Delaney said, hoping to stir his friends. “Doctor Samuelson … di
d it ever occur to you that the roles of the detective and the psychiatrist are very similar? We both use the same investigative techniques: endless interrogation, the slow amassing of what may or may not be consequential clues, the piecing together of a puzzle until it forms a recognizable pattern. Psychiatrists are really detectives—are they not?”

  Dr. Julius K. Samuelson straightened up, suddenly alert and interested.

  “The techniques may be similar,” he said in his high-pitched voice, “but the basic motives are antipodal. The detective is conducting a criminal investigation. He seeks to assign blame. But blame is not in the psychiatrist’s lexicon. The patient cannot be punished for what he has become. He is usually a victim, not a criminal.”

  “You mean,” Delaney said, deliberately provoking, “he is without guilt? What about a psychopath who kills? Is he totally guiltless?”

  “I think,” Diane said in assertive tones, “that what Julie is suggesting is that the act of murder is in itself prima facie evidence of mental or emotional instability.”

  “Oh-ho,” Delaney said. “The poor lads and lasses who kill—all sick are they? To be treated rather than punished. And what of the man who molests children? Just a little ill, but blameless?”

  “And what about the guy who kills for profit?” Sergeant Boone said hotly. “We see it all the time: some innocent slugged down for a few bucks. Is the killer to go free because society hasn’t provided him with a guaranteed income? You think a total welfare state will eliminate murder for profit? No way! People will continue to kill for money. Not because they’re sick, but because they’re greedy. Capital punishment is the best treatment.”

  “I don’t believe in the death penalty,” Rebecca Boone said stoutly.

  “I agree,” Diane said. “Execution is not the answer. Statistics prove it doesn’t act as a deterrent.”

  “It sure as hell deters the guy who gets chopped,” Delaney said. “He’s not going to get paroled, go out, and kill again. The trouble with you psychiatrists is that you’re as bad as priests: You think everyone can be redeemed. Tell them, Sergeant.”

  “Some people are born rotten and stay rotten the rest of their lives,” Boone said. “Ask any cop. The cruds of this world are beyond redemption.”