The Tenth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “That sounds good,” she said. “I’ll have a little brandy, too.”

  So we each had a little brandy. I thought about her father, a shy man who flew kites before he vanished. It seemed to go with the quiet and winking embers of the fire.

  “I’ve never flown a kite,” I confessed. “Not even as a kid.”

  “I think you’d like it.”

  “I think I would, too. Listen, Cleo, if I bought a kite, could we go up to Central Park some day, a Sunday, and fly it? Would you show me how?”

  “Of course—I’d love to. But we don’t have to go up to Central Park. We can go over to those old wharves on the river and fly it from there.”

  “What kind of a kite should I buy?”

  “The cheapest one you can get. Just a plain diamond shape. And you’ll need a ball of string. I’ll tear up some rags for a tail.”

  “What color would you like?” I said, laughing.

  “Red,” she said at once “It’s easier to see against the sky, and it’s prettier.”

  A green sweater for Yetta and a red kite for Cleo.

  We sat in silence, sipping our brandies. After a while her free hand floated up and grasped my free hand. Hers was warm and soft. We remained like that, holding hands. It was perfect.

  4

  I AWOKE TO A smutty day, a thick sky filled with whirling gusts of sleet and rain. A taut wind from the west whipped the pedestrians hunched as they scurried, heads down. The TORT building didn’t exhibit its usual morning hustle-bustle. Many of the employees lived in the suburbs, and roads were flooded or blocked by toppled trees, and commuter trains were running late.

  I had brought in a container of black coffee and an apple strudel. I made phone calls over my second breakfast. The Reverend Godfrey Knurr agreed to show me his club that day, and Glynis Stonehouse said she would see me. She said her mother was indisposed, in bed with a virus. (A sherry virus, I thought—but didn’t say it.)

  Despite the wretched weather I got up to the West 70s in half an hour. Glynis Stonehouse answered the door. We went down that long corridor again, into the living room. I noticed that several of the framed maps and naval battle scenes had disappeared from the walls, to be replaced by bright posters and cheery graphics. Someone did not expect Professor Stonehouse to return.

  We sat at opposite ends of the lengthy couch, half-turned so we could look at each other. Glynis said Mrs. Stonehouse was resting comfortably. I declined a cup of coffee. I took out my notebook.

  “Miss Stonehouse,” I started, “I spoke to your brother at some length.”

  “I hope he was—cooperative?”

  “Oh yes. Completely. I gather there had been a great deal of, uh, enmity between Powell and his father?”

  “He made my brother’s life miserable,” she said. “Powell is such a good boy. Father destroyed him!”

  I was surprised by the virulence in her husky voice, and looked at her sharply.

  The triangular face with cat’s eyes of denim blue was expressionless, the sculpted lips firmly pressed. Her tawny hair was drawn sleekly back. A remarkably beautiful woman, with her own secrets. She made me feel like a blundering amateur; I despaired of ever penetrating that self-possession and discovering—what?

  “Miss Stonehouse, can you tell me anything about Powell’s ah, companion? Wanda Chard?”

  “I don’t know her very well. I met her only once.”

  “What is your impression?”

  “A very quiet woman. Deep. Withdrawn. Powell says she is very religious. Zen.”

  “Your father met her two weeks before he disappeared.”

  That moved her. She was astonished.

  “Father did?” she said. “Met Wanda Chard?”

  “So she says. He went down to your brother’s apartment. Powell wasn’t at home. He stayed about ten minutes talking to Miss Chard. Your father never mentioned the visit?”

  “No. Never.”

  “You have no idea why he might have visited your brother—or tried to?”

  “None whatsoever. It’s so out of character for my father.”

  “It couldn’t have been an attempted reconciliation with your brother, could it?”

  She pondered a moment.

  “I’d like to think so,” she said slowly.

  “Miss Stonehouse,” I said, “I’d like to ask a question that I hope won’t offend you. Do you believe your brother is capable of physical violence against your father?”

  Those blue eyes turned to mine. It was more than a half-beat before she answered. But she never blinked.

  “He might have been,” she said, no timbre in her voice. “Before he left home. But since he’s had his own place, my brother has made a marvelous adjustment. Would he have been capable of physical violence the night my father disappeared? No. Besides, he was here when my father walked out.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you think Wanda Chard could have been capable of physical violence?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. Perfectly normal, average people are capable of the most incredible acts.”

  “Under pressure,” I agreed. “Or passion. Or hate. Or any strong emotion that results in loss of self-control. Love, for instance.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  Noncommittal.

  “Miss Stonehouse,” I said, sighing, “is Mrs. Dark at home?”

  “Why, yes. She’s in the kitchen.”

  A definite answer. What a relief.

  “May I speak to her for a moment?”

  “Of course. You know the way, don’t you?”

  When I entered the kitchen, Effie was seated at the center table, smoking a cigarette and leafing through the morning Daily News. She looked up as I came in, and her bright little eyes crinkled up with pleasure.

  “Why, Mr. Bigg,” she said, her loose dentures clacking away. “This is nice.”

  “Good to see you again, Effie. How have you been?”

  “Oh, I’ve got no complaints,” she said cheerily. “What are you doing out on such a nasty morning? Here…sit down.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Well, Effie, I wanted to ask you a few more questions. Silly things that probably have nothing to do with the Professor’s disappearance. But I’ve got to ask them just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  “Sure,” she said, shrugging her fat shoulders, “I can understand that. I’m as curious as the next one. Curiouser.”

  “Effie, what time of night do you usually go to bed?”

  “Well, I usually go to my room about nine-thirty, ten. Around then. After I’ve cleaned up here. Then I read a little, maybe watch a little television. Write a letter or two. I’m usually in bed by eleven.”

  I laughed. “Lucky woman. Do you leave anything here in the kitchen for the family? In case they want a late snack?”

  “Oh, they can help themselves,” she said casually. “They know where everything is.” Then, when I was wondering how to lead into it, she added: “Of course, when the Professor was here, I always left him a saucepan of cocoa.”

  “Cocoa?” I said. “I didn’t think people drank cocoa anymore.”

  “Of course they do. It’s delicious.”

  “And you served the Professor a cup of cocoa before you went to bed?”

  “Oh no. I just made it. Then I left it to cool. Around midnight, Miss Glynis would come in and just heat it up. Even if she was out at the theatre or wherever, she’d come home, heat up the cocoa, and bring a cup to her father in his study.”

  “So I understand. Glynis brought the Professor his cup of cocoa every night?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And no one else in the house drank it?”

  “No one,” she said, and my heart leaped—until she said, “except me. I finished it in the morning.”

  “Finished it?”

  “What was left in the pan. I like a cup of hot cocoa before I start breakfast.”

  That seemed to demolish the Great
Cocoa Plot. But did it?

  “Effie, who washed out the Professor’s cocoa cup in the morning?”

  “I did. He always left it on the kitchen sink.”

  “Why on earth did he drink cocoa so late at night?”

  “He claimed it helped him sleep better.” She snickered. “Just between you, me, and the lamppost, I suspect it was the brandy he had along with it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, Effie, I think that covers it. There’s just one other favor I’d like to ask. I want to take another look in the Professor’s study.”

  “Help yourself,” she said. “The door’s unlocked.”

  “I don’t want to go in alone.”

  “Oh?” She looked at me shrewdly. “So you’ll have a witness that you didn’t take anything?”

  “Right,” I said gratefully.

  The study looked exactly as it had before. I stood near the center of the room, my eyes half-closed. I turned slowly, inspecting.

  The drum table. Brandy bottle and two small balloon glasses on an Edwardian silver tray. The Rémy Martin bottle was new, sealed.

  Where did he hide the will? Not up the chimney. Not in the littered desk. Not behind a secret panel. Ula and Glynis would have probed up the chimney, searched the desk, tapped the walls, combed every book and map.

  But I thought I knew where the will was hidden.

  Glynis seemed not to have moved since I left. Still reclined easily in a corner of the couch. She was not fussing with her scarf, stroking her sleeked-back hair, inspecting her nails. She had the gift of complete repose.

  “Miss Stonehouse,” I said, “could you spare me a few more minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have some very distressing information,” I told her. “Something I think you should be aware of. I hoped to inform your mother, but since she is indisposed—temporarily, I trust—I must tell you.”

  She cocked her head to one side, looking puzzled.

  “When your father was ill last year, for a period of months, he was suffering from arsenic poisoning.”

  Something happened to her face. It shrank. The flesh seemed to become less and the skin tightened onto bone, whitened and taut. Genuine surprise or the shock of being discovered?

  “What?” she said.

  “Your father. He was being poisoned. By arsenic. Finally, in time, he consulted a physician. He recovered. That means he must have discovered how he was being fed the arsenic. And by whom.”

  “Impossible,” she said. Her voice was so husky it was almost a rasp.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” I said. “No doubt about it. And since your father rarely dined out, he must have been ingesting arsenic here, in his own home, in some food or drink that no one else in the house ate or drank, because no one else suffered the same effects. I have an apology to make to you, Miss Stonehouse. For a brief period, I thought the arsenic might have been given to him in that nightly cup of cocoa which you served him. Something I thought no one else in the household drank. But Mrs. Dark has just told me that she finished the cocoa every morning and was none the worse for it. So I apologize to you for my suspicions. And now I must try to find some other way that your father was being poisoned.”

  That jolted her. The repose was gone; she began to unbutton and button her black gabardine jacket. She was wearing a brassiere, but I caught quick glimpses of the smooth, tender skin of her midriff.

  “You thought that I…” she faltered.

  “Please,” I said, “I do apologize. I know now it wasn’t the cocoa. I’m telling you this because I want you to think very carefully and try to remember if your father ate or drank anything that no one else in the household ate or drank.”

  “You’re quite sure he was being poisoned?” she said faintly.

  “Oh yes. No doubt about it.”

  “And you think that had something to do with his disappearance?”

  “It seems logical, doesn’t it?”

  Her face began to fill out again. Her color returned to normal. She looked at me squarely. She stopped fussing with her buttons and settled back into her original position. She took a deep breath.

  “Yes,” she said softly, “I think you’re right. If someone was trying to kill him…”

  “Someone obviously was.”

  “But why?”

  “Miss Stonehouse,” I said, “I just don’t know. My investigation hasn’t progressed that far. As yet.”

  “But you are making progress?”

  It was my turn to be noncommittal.

  “I have discovered several things,” I said, “that may or may not be significant. But to get back to my original question, can you think of any way your father may have been poisoned? Other than the cocoa?”

  She stared at me a long moment, but she wasn’t seeing me.

  “No,” she said, “I can’t. We all ate the same things, drank the same things. Father bought bottled water, but everyone drank that.”

  “He wasn’t on a special diet of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “Well…” I said, “if you recall anything, please let me know.”

  “Mr. Bigg,” she said slowly, “you said you suspected me of poisoning my father’s cocoa.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “For a time I did think the cocoa you served him might have been poisoned. But anyone in the household could have done that. But I realized I was mistaken after Mrs. Dark told me she finished the leftover cocoa every morning.”

  “She told you,” Glynis Stonehouse said steadily. “I’ve never seen Mrs. Dark have a cup of cocoa in the morning, and I don’t believe anyone else has either.”

  Again our eyes locked, but this time she was really looking at me, her gaze challenging, unblinking.

  The sleet had lessened, but the sky was still drooling. I ducked into a curbside phone kiosk on Columbus Avenue and called the office, and chatted with Yetta Apatoff. I reminded her of our lunch date on Friday. She hadn’t forgotten. Yetta said the office manager had left me a message. He had hired a temporary assistant for me. She would appear at my office at three o’clock, which still gave me time to run downtown to visit the good Reverend Knurr.

  I took the Seventh Avenue IRT local down to Houston Street and walked up to Carmine Street. I stopped at a bodega along the way and brought a six-pack. I had the address, but was a few minutes early, so I walked by across the street, inspecting the premises. It was no smaller or larger than any of the other storefronts on the street. But the glass window and door had been painted a dark green. An amateur sign across the front read: TENTMAKERS CLUB. I crossed the street and went in. The door rang a bell as it opened.

  “Halloo?” Knurr’s voice shouted from the rear.

  “Joshua Bigg,” I yelled back.

  “Be with you in a minute, Joshua. Make yourself at home.”

  There was a small open space as one entered. Apparently it was used as an office, for there was a battered wooden desk, an old, dented file cabinet, three chairs (none of which matched), a coat tree, and several cartons stacked on the floor. They all seemed to be filled with used and tattered paperback novels.

  Beyond the makeshift office was a doorway curtained with a few yards of sleazy calico nailed to the top of the frame. I pushed my way through and found myself in a large bare chamber with fluorescent lights overhead. On the discolored walls were charts showing positions and blows in judo, jiu-jitsu, and karate. There were also a few posters advertising unarmed combat tournaments.

  In one corner was a tangle of martial arts jackets, kendo staves and masks, dumbbells. There was a rolled-up wrestling mat against one wall.

  I was inspecting an illustrated directory of kung fu positions and moves taped to the wall when the Reverend Godfrey Knurr entered from a curtained rear doorway.

  “Joshua,” he said, “good to see you. Thanks for coming.”

  “Here,” I said, thrusting the damp brown bag at him. “I brought along a cold six-pack. For lunch.”

  He peeked
into the bag.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Come on back. I’ll put the beer in the fridge and you can hang your things away.”

  There was a short corridor that debouched into kitchen and bedroom.

  The kitchen was just large enough to contain a wooden table and four chairs, refrigerator, sink, cabinets, and a tiny stove. The walls were pebbled with umpteen coats of paint. There was a small rear window looking out onto a sad little courtyard, squalid in the rain. The same view was available from the window in the bedroom. This was a monk’s cell: bed, closet, chest of drawers, straight-back chair, bedside table with lamp and telephone, a bookcase.

  “Not quite the Kipper townhouse, is it?” Knurr said. He was putting the beer in the refrigerator when we heard the jangle of the front door bell.

  “They’ll be coming in now,” he said. “Let’s go up front.”

  I followed him to the gym. He was wearing a gray sweatsuit, out at elbow and knee. His sneakers were stained and torn; the laces broken and knotted.

  Three boys were taking off wet things in the office. They tossed their outer apparel onto the desk, then came back to the larger room where they divested themselves of shoes, sweaters, shirts, and trousers, kicking these into a corner.

  Knurr introduced me casually: “Joshua, these brutes are Rafe, Tony, Walt. This is Josh.”

  We all nodded. They appeared to me to be about 13 to 15, bodies skinny and white, all joints. Their faces and necks were pitted with acne.

  The bell jangled again; more boys entered. Finally Knurr had a dozen boys milling around the gym in their drawers and socks.

  “Cut the shit!” the Reverend yelled. “Line up and let’s get started.”

  They arranged themselves in two files, facing him. At his command they began to go through a series of what I presumed were warmup exercises, following Knurr. He stood with left foot advanced, left arm extended, hand clenched, knuckles down. The right foot was back, right arm cocked, right fist clenched. Then, at a shouted “Hah!” everyone took a step forward onto the right foot, striking an imaginary opponent with the right fist while bending the left arm and retracting the left fist to the shoulder. At the second “Hah!” they all took a step backward to their original position.