The Tenth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Suppose a spouse or child attempts to inflict grievous bodily harm upon the head of the family. The head of the family has proof of the attempt and disinherits the spouse or child in a holographic will that includes proof of the attempt upon his life. The head of the family disappears. But the will is never found. At the end of ten years, or earlier if the body is discovered, the estate is then divided under the laws of intestacy. The guilty person would then inherit his or her share?”

  “Of course,” he said promptly. “If the will was never found, and proof of the wrongdoing was never found.”

  “If the body was discovered tomorrow, sir, how long would it take to probate the will?”

  “Perhaps a year,” he said. “Perhaps longer if no will existed.”

  Then he was silent. He unlatched his fingers, spread his brown hands out on the desktop. His head was lowered, but his bright eyes looked up at me sharply.

  “You think the body will be discovered tomorrow, Mr. Bigg?” he asked.

  “I think it will be discovered soon, sir,” I said. “I don’t believe whoever did this has the patience to wait ten years.”

  “You’re assuming a second will was drawn,” he said. “Perhaps the head of the family never got around to it. Perhaps his original will is in existence and still valid.”

  I hadn’t considered that possibility. It stunned me. But after pondering it a moment, it seemed unlikely to me. After getting the results of those chemical analyses, Professor Yale Stonehouse would surely write a new will or amend the original. It was in character for him to do that. He was an ill-natured, vindictive man; he would not take lightly an attempt to poison him.

  “One final request, Mr. Teitelbaum,” I said. “I am convinced that when Professor Stonehouse left his home on the night of January 10th, he went somewhere by cab or in a car that was waiting for him. It was a raw, sleety night; I don’t think he’d wait for a bus or walk over to the subway. I can’t do anything about a car waiting for him, but I can attempt to locate the cab he might have taken. All taxi drivers are required to keep trip sheets, but it would be an enormous task checking all the trip sheets for that night, even if the taxi fleet owners allowed me to, which they probably wouldn’t. What I’d like to do is have posters printed up, bearing the photograph of Professor Stonehouse and offering a modest reward for any cabdriver who remembers picking him up at or near his home on the night of January 10th. I admit it’s a very long shot. The posters could only go in the garages of fleet owners, and there are many independent cabowners who’d never see them. Still, there is a chance we might come up with a driver who remembers taking the Professor somewhere on that particular night.”

  “Do it,” he said immediately. “I approve. It will be part of that ‘diligent search’ the law requires.”

  He started to say more, then stopped. He brought two wrinkled forefingers to his thin lips and pressed them, thinking.

  “Mr. Bigg,” he said finally, “I think you have conducted this investigation in a professional manner, and I wish to compliment you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “However,” he said sonorously, “it cannot be openended. The responsibility of this office is, of course, first and foremost to our clients. In this case we are representing the missing Professor Stonehouse and his family. I cannot hold off indefinitely the filing of an application for the appointment of a temporary administrator of the Professor’s estate. It would not be fair to the family. Can you estimate how much more time you will require to complete your investigation?”

  “No, sir,” I said miserably. “I can’t even guarantee that I will ever complete it.” He nodded regretfully.

  “I understand,” he said. “But I cannot shirk our basic responsibility. Another week, Mr. Bigg. I’m afraid that’s all I can allow you. Then I must ask you to drop your inquiries into this, uh, puzzling and rather distasteful affair.”

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him to go ahead with his legal procedures, but to let me continue digging. But in all honesty I didn’t know what more I could do in the Stonehouse case after I placed those reward posters in taxi garages. Where did I go from there? I didn’t know.

  Mrs. Gertrude Kletz had left a memo in the roller of my typewriter. It read:

  Mr. Bigg, your notes on the Kipper case question why Tippi was so upset when you told her you had a private meeting with Rev. Knurr. Well, if the two of them are in on this together, as you and I think, it would be natural for her to be upset because they are both guilty, and so must depend on each other. But they would be suspicious as neither of them are dumb, as you said, and so would be very suspicious of each other, fearing the other might reveal something or even connive to turn in the other, like when thieves fall out. I should think that if two people are partners in a horrible crime, they would begin to look at each other with new eyes and wonder. Because they both depend on each other so much, and they begin to doubt and wonder. I hope you know what I mean as I do not express myself very well. G.K.

  I knew what she meant, and I thought she might be right. If Tippi and Knurr were beginning to look at each other with “new eyes,” it might be the chink I could widen, an opportunity I could exploit.

  I called Percy Stilton. The officer who answered said formally, “Detective Stilton is not available.” I gave my name and requested that he ask Detective Stilton to call me as soon as possible.

  My second call was to Mrs. Effie Dark. I chatted awhile with that pleasant, comfortable lady, and she volunteered the information I sought.

  “Mr. Bigg,” she said, “I checked my liquor store bills, and Professor Stonehouse didn’t order any Rémy Martin for almost two months before he disappeared. I don’t know why, but he didn’t.”

  “Thank you, Effie,” I said gratefully. “Just another brick in the wall, but an important one.”

  We exchanged farewells and hung up. It was then late Friday afternoon, the business world slowing, running down. There is a late Friday afternoon mood in winter in New York. Early twilight. Early quiet. Everything fades. Melancholy sweeps in. One remembers lost chances.

  I sat there in my broom-closet office, the files of the Kipper and Stonehouse cases on my desk, and stared at them with sad, glazed eyes. So much passion and turbulence. I could not encompass it. Worse, I seemed to have been leached dry of inspiration and vigor. All those people involved in those desperate plots. What were they to me, or I to them? It was a nonesuch with which I could not cope, something foreign to my nature.

  Me, a small, quiet, indwelling, nonviolent man. Suddenly, by the luck and accident that govern life, plunged into this foreign land, this terra incognita. What troubled me most, I think, was that I had no compass for this terrain. I was blundering about, lurching, and more than discovering the truth, I wanted most to know what drove me and would not let me put all this nastiness aside.

  Finally, forcing myself up from the despair toward which I was fast plummeting, I packed the Kipper and Stonehouse folders into my briefcase, dressed in coat, scarf, hat, turned off the lights, and plodded away from the TORT building, the darkness outside seeming not half as black as that inside, not as forbidding, foreboding.

  I did arrive home safely. I changed to casual clothes, then built a small blaze in the fireplace. After that luncheon, I was not hungry, but I had a cup of coffee and a wedge of pecan coffee ring. I sat there, staring into the flames. The file folders on the Kipper and Stonehouse cases were piled on the floor at my feet. My depression was again beginning to overwhelm me. I was nowhere with my first big investigation. I was a mild, out-of-place midget in a world of pushers and shovers. And I was alone.

  I was alone, late on a Friday evening, wondering as we all must, who I was and what I was, when there came a hesitant tapping at my door. I rose, still frowning with my melancholic reverie, and opened the door to find Cleo Hufnagel, her features as sorrowful as mine. I think it would not, at that moment, have taken much for us to fall into each other’s arms, weeping.

&nbs
p; “Here,” she said stiffly, and thrust into my hands a sealed manila envelope.

  “What is this?” I said bewilderedly.

  “The information you wanted on arsenic.”

  I felt the thickness of the envelope.

  “Oh, Cleo,” I said, “I didn’t want you to do the research. I just wanted the sources: where to look.”

  “Well, I did it,” she said, lifting her chin. “I thought it might—might help you. Good night.”

  She turned to go. I reached out hastily, put a hand on her arm. She stopped, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  “Cleo, what is it?” I asked her. “You seem to be angry with me.”

  “Disappointed,” she said in a low voice.

  “All right—disappointed. Have I offended you in any way? If I have, I apologize most sincerely. But I am not aware of—”

  I stopped suddenly. Adolph Finkel!

  “Cleo,” I started again, “we said we wanted to be friends. I know I meant it and I think you did, too. There must be honesty and openness between friends. Please, come inside, sit down, and let me tell you what happened. Give me that chance. If, after I have explained, you still wish to leave and never speak to me again, that will be your decision, But at least it will be based on facts.”

  I concluded that lawyer’s argument and drew her gently into my apartment, closing and locking the door behind us. I got her into the armchair where she sat upright, spine straight, hands clasped in her lap. She stared pensively into the dying flames.

  “Could we have a drink?” I asked. “Please? I think it might help.”

  She gave the barest nod and I hastened to pour us two small glasses of brandy. I pulled a straight-back chair up close to her and leaned forward earnestly, drink clasped at my knees.

  “Now,” I said, “I presume you are disappointed in me because of something Adolph Finkel may have alleged about my, uh, visitor this morning. Is that correct?”

  Again, that brief, cold nod.

  “Cleo, that young woman is an important witness in a case I am currently investigating, and I needed information from her. Here is exactly what happened…”

  I think I may say, without fear of self-glorification, that I was at my most convincing best. I spoke slowly in a grave, intense voice, and I told Cleo nothing but the truth. I described my bus ride uptown in the storm, the atmosphere at Mother Tucker’s, my meeting with Perdita Schug and Colonel Clyde Manila.

  “It sounds like a fun place,” Cleo said faintly, almost enviously.

  “Oh yes,” I said, encouraged, “we must go there sometime.”

  Then I went on to explain my failure to elicit any meaningful intelligence from Perdita during dinner, and how I had decided the evening was wasted and that I should return home alone by any means possible. I described how Perdita and the Colonel insisted on driving me in the chocolate-colored Rolls-Royce, and how we all drank, and they smoked joints en route. I held nothing back.

  “I’ve never tried it,” Cleo Hufnagel said reflectively. “I’d like to.”

  I tried to conceal my amazement at that. I described how Perdita Schug had forced her way into my apartment and how, after a drink, she had revealed information of inestimable value in the case under investigation.

  “And then…” I said.

  “And then?” Cleo asked sharply.

  As delicately as I could, I explained what happened then.

  During this part of my confession, Cleo had begun to smile, and when I described my makeshift bed and how I awoke a mass of aches and pains, she threw back her head and laughed outright. And my telling of the tender conversation in the morning, just prior to Perdita’s departure, sent her into a prolonged fit of hearty guffaws and she bent over, shaking her head and wiping her streaming eyes with a knuckle.

  “Then we came out into the hallway,” I said, “and there was Adolph Finkel. I swear to you, Cleo, on our friendship, that’s exactly what happened.”

  “I believe you, Josh,” she said, still wiping her eyes. “No one could have made up a story like that. How did you get her home?”

  I told her how we had discovered Colonel Manila still waiting in the snowdrift, and how they had driven me to work and then gone off together.

  “Will you see her again?” she asked, suddenly serious.

  I thought about that.

  “Cleo, I cannot promise you I will not. Things may develop in the investigation that will necessitate additional conversations with her. But I assure you, my only motive in seeking her company will be in the line of business. I have no personal interest in Perdita whatsoever. Would you like another brandy?”

  “Please,” she said, and I went gratefully to replenish our glasses, fearing she might detect guilt in my face. I had told her the truth—but not the whole truth.

  I came back with our drinks, pulled my chair closer, took her free hand in mine.

  “Am I forgiven?” I asked.

  She was looking uncommonly handsome that night. But each time I saw her I discerned new beauty. The long hair I had once thought of as only gleaming chestnut now seemed to me to have the tossing fascination of flame. The smile I had defined as pleasant but distant now appeared to me mysterious and full of promise. The thin nose was now aristocratic, the high, clear, brow bespoke intelligence, and the wide mouth, instead of being merely curvy, was now sensuous and madly desirable.

  As for her figure, I could not believe I once thought her skinny. I saw now that she was elegant, supple as a willow wand, and her long arms and legs, slender hands and feet, were all of a piece, pliant and flowing. There was a fluency to her body, and I no longer thought of her as being a head taller than I. We were equals: that’s what I thought.

  “Of course I forgive you,” she said in that marvelously low and gentle voice. “But there is nothing to forgive. The fault was mine. I have no claims on you. You can live as you please. I was just being stupid.”

  “No, no,” I said hotly. “You were not stupid. Are not stupid.”

  “It was just that…” she said hesitantly. “Well, I was—I was hurt. I don’t know why, but I was.”

  “I would never do anything to hurt you,” I vowed. “Never! And I haven’t forgotten about the kite either. I really am going to buy a red kite for us. With string.”

  She laughed. “I’m glad you haven’t forgotten, Josh,” she said, gently taking her hand from mine. “Now do you want to talk about what I found out? About the arsenic?”

  I nodded, even though at that moment I most wanted to talk about us.

  She took the envelope from the floor at my feet and opened the flap. I moved the table lamp closer.

  “I’ll leave all of this for you to read,” she said. “Most of it is photocopies, and photostats from medical journals and drug company manuals. Josh, it’s awfully technical. Maybe I better go over the main points, and that will be enough for you, and you won’t have to read it all. That man you said was poisoned by arsenic—was he killed? I mean, was he fed a large quantity of arsenic at one time and died? Or small amounts over a period of time?”

  “Small amounts,” I said. “I think. And I don’t believe he died. At least not from the arsenic.”

  “Well, arsenic comes in a lot of different chemical compounds. Powders, crystals, and liquids. There’s even one type that fumes in air. Pope Clement the Seventh and Leopold the First of Austria were supposed to have been assassinated by arsenic mixed in wax candles. The fumes from the candles were poisonous, and whoever breathed them died.”

  “That’s incredible,” I murmured, and before I could help myself I had flopped to my knees alongside her chair and taken up one of her long, slender hands again. She let me.

  “I think what you’re looking for, Josh, is arsenic trioxide. It’s the common form and the primary material of all the arsenic compounds.”

  “Yes,” I said, putting my lips to the tips of her fingers. “Arsenic trioxide.”

  “It is white or transparent glassy lumps or a crystalline powder.
It is soluble if mixed slowly and used extremely sparingly. It is odorless and tasteless. A poisonous dose would be only a small pinch. There might be a very slight aftertaste.”

  “Aftertaste,” I repeated, kissing her knuckles, the back of her hand, then turning it over to kiss that pearly wrist with the blue veins pulsing faintly.

  “Only two or three-tenths of a gram of arsenic trioxide can kill an adult within forty-eight hours, so you can see how a tiny amount could cause illness.” She obviously intended to finish her lecture despite the distractions. “Arsenic affects the red blood cells and kidneys, if I read these medical papers correctly. The symptoms vary greatly, but a victim of fatal arsenic poisoning might have headaches, vertigo, muscle spasm, delirium, and stupor. Death comes from circulatory collapse. In smaller doses, over a period of time, there would probably be a low-grade fever, loss of appetite, pallor, weakness, inflammation of the nose and throat. You notice that those symptoms are quite similar to the flu or a virus, and that’s why arsenic poisoning is sometimes misdiagnosed. In tiny doses over a long period of time, there is usually no delirium or stupor.”

  “Stupor,” I said, touching the tip of my tongue to the palm of her hand. Her entire arm quivered, but her voice was steady as she continued.

  “After repeated poisonings, loss of hair and nails may result, accompanied by hoarseness and a hacking cough. Arsenic collects in the hair, nails, and skin. There is some evidence that Napoleon may have been poisoned with arsenic on St. Helena. It was found in a lock of his hair years later.”

  “Poor Napoleon,” I whispered. I craned upward to sniff the perfume of her hair, to bury my face in the sweet juncture where neck met shoulder, to breathe her in. She, who would not brook diversion.

  “An alert physician may sometimes spot a garlicky odor of breath and feces.” She showed no evidence of slowing down. “Also, urine analysis and gastric washings usually reveal the presence of arsenic. But the symptoms are sometimes so similar to stomach flu that a lot of doctors don’t suspect arsenic poisoning until it’s too late.”

  “Too late,” I groaned, pushing her hair aside gently to kiss her divine ear tenderly. She trembled, a bit, but continued to read from her notes.