The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Locally?” she said. “That would have to be the First Farmers & Merchants. The only bank in town. Around the corner on River Street. Next to the post office. The man to see is Arthur Merchant. He’s president. That really is his name—Merchant. But the ‘Merchants’ in the bank’s name has nothing to do with his. That means the bank was—”

  “I get it, I get it,” I assured her. “Just a fiendish coincidence. Life is full of them. Church? Is Thorndecker a church-goer?”

  “He and his wife are registered Episcopalians, but they don’t work at it.”

  “You’re a walking encyclopedia of Coburn lore,” I said admiringly. “You said, ‘He and his wife.’ What about the daughter? And the son?”

  “I don’t know what the hell Eddie is. A Boy Scout, I suspect.”

  “And the daughter? Mary?”

  “Well …” she said cautiously. “Uh …”

  “Uh?” I said. “What does ‘Uh’ mean?”

  She punched gently at the tip of her nose with a knuckle.

  “What the hell has that got to do with whether or not Dr. Thorndecker gets a grant from the Bingham Foundation?”

  “Probably not a thing,” I admitted. “But I’m a nosy bastard.”

  “You sure as hell are,” she grumbled. “Well, if you must know, I heard Mary Thorndecker goes to a little church about five miles south of here. It’s fundamentalist. Evangelical. You know—being born again, and all that crap. They wave their arms and shout, ‘Yes, Lord!’”

  “And speak in tongues,” I said.

  She looked at me curiously.

  “You’re not so dumb, are you?” she said.

  “Dumb,” I said, “but not so.” I paused a moment, pondering. “Well, I can’t think of anything else to ask. I want to thank you for your kind cooperation. You’ve been a big help.”

  “I have?” she said, surprised. “That’s nice. I hope I’ve helped Thorndecker get his bread. He deserves it, and it would be a great help to this town.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “Listen, if I come up with any more questions, can I come around again?”

  “Often as you like,” she said, rising. I stood up too, and saw she was almost as tall as I am. A big woman. “Go see Art Merchant at the bank. He’ll tell you anything you want to know. By the way, he’s also mayor of Coburn.”

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  We were standing there, shaking hands and smiling idiotically at each other, when there was a timid knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Agatha Binder roared, dropping my hand.

  The door opened hesitantly. There was my very own Miss Dimples. She looked even better standing up. Miniskirt. Yummy knees. Black plastic boots. A buttery angora sweater. I remembered an old army expression: “All you need with a dame like that is a spoon and a straw.” She was holding a sheaf of yellow copy paper.

  “Yes, Sue Ann?” the Sentinel editor said.

  “I’ve finished the Kenner funeral story, Miss Binder,” the girl faltered.

  “Very good, Sue Ann. Just leave it. I’ll get to it this afternoon.”

  The cheerleader dropped the copy on the desk and exited hastily, closing the door behind her. She hadn’t glanced at me, but Agatha Binder was staring at me shrewdly.

  “Like that?” she asked softly.

  “It’s okay,” I said, flipping a palm back and forth. “Not sensational, but okay.”

  “Hands off, kiddo,” she said in a harder voice, eyes glittering. “It’s mine.”

  I was glad to hear it. I felt better immediately. The sensation of Coburn being in a time warp disappeared. I was back in the 1970s, and I walked out of there with my spirit leaping like a demented hart.

  When I strolled into the lobby of the Coburn Inn, the baldy behind the desk signaled frantically.

  “Where have you been?” he said in an aggrieved tone.

  “Sorry I didn’t check in,” I said. “Next time I’ll bring a note from home.”

  But he wasn’t listening.

  “Dr. Thorndecker has called you three times,” he said. “He wants you to call him back as soon as possible. Here’s the number.”

  Upstairs in my room, I peeled off the trenchcoat, kicked off the boots. I lay back on the hard bed. The telephone was on the rickety bedside table. Calls went through the hotel switchboard. I gave the number and waited.

  “Crittenden Hall.”

  “Dr. Thorndecker, please. Samuel Todd calling.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Click, click, click.

  “Crittenden Research Laboratory.”

  “Dr. Thorndecker, please. Samuel Todd calling.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Click, click, click.

  “Lab.”

  “Dr. Thorndecker, please. Samuel Todd calling.”

  No clicks this time; just, “Hang on.”

  “Mr. Todd?”

  “Yes, Dr. Thorndecker?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Mr. Todd, but Dr. Thorndecker can’t come to the phone at the moment. I’m Dr. Kenneth Draper, Dr. Thorndecker’s assistant. How are you, sir?”

  It was a postnasal-drip kind of voice: stuffed, whiny, without resonance.

  “If I felt any better I’d be unconscious, thank you. I have a message to call Dr. Thorndecker.”

  “I know, sir. He’s been trying to reach you all afternoon, but at the moment he’s involved in a critical experiment.”

  I was trying to take my socks off with my toes.

  “So am I,” I said.

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Childish humor. Forget it.”

  “Dr. Thorndecker asks if you can join the family for dinner tonight. Here at Crittenden Hall. Cocktails at six, dinner at seven.”

  “Be delighted,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Do you know how to get here, Mr. Todd? You drive east on Main Street, then—”

  “I’ll find it,” I said hastily. “See you tonight. Thank you, Dr. Draper.”

  I hung up, and took off my socks the conventional way. I lay back on the bed, figuring to grab a nap for an hour or so, then get up and shower, shave, dress. But sleep wouldn’t come. My mind was churning.

  You’ve probably heard the following exchange on a TV detective drama, or read it in a detective novel:

  Police Sergeant: “That guy is guilty as hell.”

  Police Officer: “Why do you say that?”

  Police Sergeant: “Gut instinct.”

  Sometimes the sergeant says, “Gut feeling” or “A hunch.” But the implication is that he’s had an intuitive feeling, almost a subconscious inspiration, that has revealed the truth.

  I asked an old precinct dick about this, and he said: “Bullshit.”

  Then he said: “Look, I don’t deny that you get a gut feeling or a hunch about some cases, but it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. You get a hunch, and if you sit down and analyze it, you discover that what it is, is a logical deduction based on things you know, things you’ve heard, things you’ve seen. I mean that ‘gut feeling’ they’re always talking about is really based on hard evidence. Instinct has got nothing to do with it.”

  I didn’t have a gut feeling or a hunch about this Thorndecker investigation. What I had was more like a vague unease. So I started to analyze it, trying to discover what hard evidence had triggered it, and why it was spoiling my nap. My list went like this:

  1. When a poor wife is killed accidentally, people cluck twice and say, “What a shame.” When a rich wife is killed accidentally, people cluck once, say, “What a shame,” and raise an eyebrow. Thorndecker’s first wife left him a mil and turned his life around.

  2. Thorndecker had released the story of his application for a Bingham Foundation grant to the local press. It wasn’t unethical, but it was certainly unusual. I didn’t buy Constable Goodfellow’s story that it was impossible to keep a secret like that in a small town. Thorndecker could have prepared the application himself, or with the help of a single discreet aide,
and no one in Coburn would have known a thing about it. So he had a motive for giving the story to the Coburn Sentinel. To rally the town on his side, knowing there’d be a field investigation?

  3. Someone dispatched an armed cop to welcome me to Coburn. That was a dumb thing to do. Why not greet me in person or send an assistant? I didn’t understand Goodfellow’s role at all.

  4. Al Coburn might have been an “old fart” to Agatha Binder, but I thought he was a crusty old geezer with all his marbles. So why had he said, “You watch your step, Sam Todd?” Watch my step for what? And what the hell was that “devil’s work” he claimed they were doing in the research lab?

  5. Agatha Binder had called Thorndecker a “pompous ass” and put on a great show of being a tough, cynical newspaper editor. But she had been careful not to say a thing that might endanger the Bingham grant. Her answers to my questions were a beautiful example of manipulation, except when she blew her cool at my mention of the Julie Thorndecker-Ronnie Goodfellow connection. What the hell was going on there?

  6. And while I was what-the-helling, just what the hell were Crittenden Hall (a nursing home) and the research laboratory doing with an armed guard and an attack dog patrolling the grounds? To make sure no one escaped from the cemetery?

  7. That anonymous note: “Thorndecker kills.”

  Those were most of the reasons I could list for my “gut instinct” that all was not kosher with Dr. Thorndecker’s application. There were a few other little odds and ends. Like Mrs. Cynthia’s comment in the corridor of the Bingham Foundation: “I knew his father … it was all so sad … A sweet man.” And the fact that the Crittenden Research Laboratory was supported, in part, by bequests from deceased patients of Crittenden Hall.

  I agree that any or all of these questions might have had a completely innocent explanation. But they nagged, and kept me from sleeping. Finally, I got up, dug my case notebook from my suitcase, and jotted them all down, more or less in the form you just read.

  They were even more disturbing when I saw them in writing. Something about this whole business reeketh in the nostrils of a righteous man (me), and I didn’t have a clue to what it was. So I solved the whole problem in my usual decisive, determined manner.

  I shaved, showered, dressed, went down to the bar, and had two vodka gimlets.

  I started out for Crittenden Hall about five-thirty. At that time of year it was already dark, and once I got beyond the misty, haloed street lights of Coburn, the blackness closed in. I was falling down a pit, and my low beams couldn’t show the end of it. Naked tree trunks whipped by, a stone embankment, culvert, a plank bridge. But I kept falling, leaning forward over the steering wheel and bracing for the moment when I hit bottom.

  I never did, of course. Instead of the bottom of the pit, I found Crittenden Hall, and pulled up to those ornate gates. The guard came ambling out of his hut and put a flashlight on me. I shouted my name, he swung the gates open, I drove in. The iron clanged shut behind me.

  I followed the graveled roadway. It curved slowly through lawn that was black on this moonless night. The road ended in a generous parking area in front of Crittenden Hall. As I was getting out of the car, I saw portico lights come on. The door opened, someone stepped out.

  I paused a moment. I was in front of the center portion of the main building, the old building. The two wings stretched away in the darkness. At close range, the Hall was larger than I expected: a high three stories, mullioned windows, cornices of carved stone. The style was vaguely Georgian, with faint touches—like narrow embrasures—of a castle built to withstand Saracen archers.

  A lady came forward as I trudged up to the porch. She was holding out a white hand, almost covered by the ruffled lace cuff of her gown.

  “Welcome to Crittenden, Mr. Todd,” she said, smiling stiffly. “I’m Mary Thorndecker.”

  While I was shaking the daughter’s cold hand and murmuring something I forget, I was taking her in. She was Alice in Wonderland’s maiden aunt in a daisied gown designed by Tenniel. I mean it billowed to her ankles, all ribbons and bows. The high, ruffled collar matched the lace cuffs. The waist was loosely crumpled with a wide velvet ribbon belt. If Mary Thorndecker had breasts, hips, ass, they were effectively concealed.

  Inside the Hall, an attendant came forward to take my hat and coat. He was wearing a short, white medical jacket and black trousers. He might have been a butler, but he was built like a linebacker. When he turned away from me, I caught the bulge in his hip pocket. This bucko was carrying a sap. All right, I’ll go along with that in an establishment where some of the guests were not too tightly wrapped.

  “Now this is the main floor,” Mary Thorndecker was babbling away, “and in the rear are the dining room, kitchen, social rooms, and so forth. The library, card room, and indoor recreational area. All used by our guests. Their private suites, the medical rooms, the doctors’ offices and nurses’ lounges, and so forth, are in the wings. We’re going up to the second floor. That’s where we live. Our private home. Living room, dining room, our own kitchen, daddy’s study, sitting room … all that.”

  “And the third floor?” I inquired politely.

  “Bedrooms,” she said, frowning, as if someone had uttered a dirty word.

  It was a handsome staircase, curving gracefully, with a gleaming carved oak balustrade. The walls were covered with ivory linen. I expected portraits of ancestors in heavy gilt frames. At least a likeness of the original Mr. Crittenden. But instead, the wall alongside the stairway was hung with paintings of flowers in thin black frames. All kinds of flowers: peonies, roses, poppies, geraniums, lilies … everything.

  The paintings blazed with fervor. I paused to examine an oil of lilac branches in a clear vase.

  “The paintings are beautiful,” I said, and I meant it.

  Mary Thorndecker was a few steps ahead of me, higher than me. She stopped suddenly, whirled to look down.

  “Do you think so?” she said breathlessly. “Do you really think so? They’re mine. I mean I painted them. You do like them?”

  “Magnificent,” I assured her. “Bursting with life.”

  Her long, saturnine face came alive. Cheeks flushed. Thin lips curved in a warm smile. The dark eyes caught fire behind steel-rimmed granny glasses.

  “Thank you,” she said tremulously. “Oh, thank you. Some people …”

  She left that unfinished, and we continued our climb in silence. On the second floor landing, a man stumbled forward, hand outstretched. His expression was wary and hunted.

  “Yes, Mary,” he said automatically. Then: “Samuel Todd? I’m Kenneth Draper, Dr. Thorndecker’s assistant. This is a …”

  He left that sentence unfinished, too. I wondered if that was the conversational style in Crittenden Hall: half-sentences, unfinished thoughts, implied opinions.

  Agatha Binder had said Draper was a “studious, scientific type … supposed to be a whiz.” He might have been. He was also a nervous, jerky type … supposed to be a nut. He shook hands and wouldn’t let go; he giggled inanely when I said, “Happy to meet you,” and he succeeded in walking up my heels when he ushered me into the living room of the Thorndeckers’ private suite.

  I got a quick impression of a high vaulted room richly furnished, lots of brocades and porcelains, a huge marble-framed fireplace with a blaze crackling. And I was ankle-deep in a buttery rug. That’s all I had a chance to catch before Draper was nudging me forward to the two people seated on a tobacco-brown suede couch facing the fireplace.

  Edward Thorndecker lunged to his feet to be introduced. He was 17, and looked 12, a young Botticelli prince. He was all blue eyes and crisp black curls, with a complexion so enameled I could not believe he had ever shaved. The hand he proffered was soft as a girl’s, and about as strong. There was something in his voice that was not quite a lisp. He did not say, “Pleathed to meet you, Mithter Todd,” it was not that obvious, but he did have trouble with his sibilants. It made no difference. He could have been a mute, and still s
tagger you with his physical beauty.

  His stepmother was beautiful, too, but in a different way. Edward had the beauty of youth; nothing in his smooth, flawless face marked experience or the passage of years. Julie Thorndecker had stronger features, and part of her attraction was due to artifice. If Mary Thorndecker found inspiration for her art in flowers, Julie found it in herself.

  I remember well that first meeting. Initially, all I could see were the satin evening pajamas, the color of fresh mushrooms. Full trousers and a tunic cinched with a mocha sash. The neckline plunged, and there was something in that glittery, slithery costume that convinced me she was naked beneath, and if I listened intently I might hear the whispery slide of soft satin on softer flesh. She was wearing high-heeled evening sandals, thin ribbons of silver leather. Her bare toes were long, the nails painted a crimson as dark as old blood. There was a slave bracelet of fine gold links around one slender ankle.

  I was ushered to an armchair so deep I felt swallowed. Mary Thorndecker and Dr. Draper found chairs—close to each other, I noted—and there was a spate of fast, almost feverish small talk. Most of it consisted of questions directed at me. Yes, I had driven up from New York. Yes, Coburn seemed a quiet, attractive village. No, I had no idea how long I’d stay—a few days perhaps. My accommodations at the Inn were certainly not luxurious, but they were adequate. Yes, the food was exceptionally good. No, I had not yet met Art Merchant. Yes, it had certainly been a terrible storm, with all the lights off and power lost. I said:

  “But I suppose you have emergency generators, don’t you, Dr. Draper?”

  “What?” he said, startled at being addressed. “Oh, yes, of course we do.”

  “Naturally,” I nodded. “I imagine you have valuable cultures in the lab under very precise temperature control.”

  “We certainly do;” he said enthusiastically. “Why, if we lost refrigeration even for—”

  “Oh, Kenneth, please,” Julie Thorndecker said lazily. “No shop talk tonight. Just a social evening. Wouldn’t you prefer that, Mr. Todd?”

  I remember bobbing my head violently in assent, but I was too stunned by her voice to make any sensible reply.