“Arsenic is no longer generally used in medicine, having been replaced by more efficient compounds. It was formerly used in the treatment of infections, joint disease, skin lesions, including syphilis, chronic bronchitis, anemia, psoriasis, and so forth. It’s still used by veterinarians, but much less frequently than it once was. Most uses of arsenic today are in manufacturing. It is used for hardening copper, lead, and alloys, to make paint and glass, in tanning hides, in printing and dyeing fabrics. It’s also used as a pigment in painting, in weed control, for killing rodents and insects, and in fireworks.”
“Fireworks,” I breathed, touching the fine silkiness of her hair. It was as soft and evanescent as cobwebs.
“Now, as to the availability…It’s prohibited in food and drugs, and is being phased out as a weed killer. You might find it in rat poison and wood preservatives, but they’d be poisonous for their other ingredients, too. Arsenic is available commercially in large wholesale quantities. It is used in manufacturing parts of car batteries, for instance. But for uses like that, it’s bought by the ton, and the government requires disclosure of the end-use. So what is a poor poisoner to do? It would be difficult to purchase an arsenic-containing product in a garden nursery or hardware store or pharmacy. It would probably be impossible.”
“Impossible,” I moaned. I was kneeling, an arm about her shoulders. The fingers of that hand touched her neck, ear, the loose strands of hair cascading down her back. My other hand stroked the arm closest to me, touched her timorously. I felt her shiver, but too soon she recovered her self-control.
“Still, arsenic trioxide is frequently used in medical and chemical laboratories for research. It is obtained from chemical supply houses by written order, and they must know with whom they are dealing. I mean, a stranger can’t just write in and order a pound of arsenic. The usual order from a lab will be for 100 to 500 grams at a time. In its crudest form, it costs about ten dollars for 250 grams. High-purity arsenic trioxide costs about a dollar a gram. It seems to me that the easiest thing for a poisoner to do would be to steal a small amount of arsenic trioxide from the stock room of a research laboratory or a chemical lab at a university. Such a tiny bit is needed to kill someone that the amount stolen would probably never be noticed and—Oh, Josh!” she cried.
She dropped her research papers to the floor, slipped from the chair, fell onto her knees, twisted and flung herself into my arms. In that position, both of us kneeling, we were nearly of a height, and embraced eagerly. We kissed. Our teeth clinked. We kissed. We murmured such things as “I never”—and “I didn’t—” and “I can’t—” and “I wouldn’t—” All of which soon became “I wanted—” and “I hoped—” and “I wished—” and, finally, “I love—”
Not a sentence was finished, nor was there need for it. After a while, weak with our osculatory explorations, we simply toppled over, fell to the floor with a thump, and lay close together, nose to nose in fact, staring into each other’s eyes and smiling, smiling, smiling.
“I don’t care,” Cleo Hufnagel said in her low, hesitant voice. “I just don’t care.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “About anything but us.”
“Us,” she said, wonder in her voice.
“Us,” I repeated. I smoothed the hair away from her temples, touched the smooth skin of her brow. When I pressed her yielding back, she moved closer to me, and we clove. I began to scratch her spine gently through the flannel of her jumper. She closed her eyes and purred with contentment.
“Don’t stop,” she said. “Please.”
“I do not intend to,” I said, and scratched away assiduously, widening the base of my operations to include shoulder blades and ribs.
“Oh,” she sighed. “Oh, oh, oh. Are you a virgin, Josh?”
“No.”
“I am.”
“Ah?”
“But I don’t want to be,” she said. Then her eyes flicked open and she looked at me with alarm. “But not tonight,” she added hastily.
“I understand,” I assured her gravely. “This is grand. Just being with you.”
“And having you scratch my back is grand,” she sighed. “That’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Another brandy?”
“I don’t think so,” she said thoughtfully. “I feel just right. How old are you, Josh?”
“Thirty-two.”
“I’m thirty-four,” she said sadly.
“So?”
“I’m older than you are.”
“But I’m shorter than you are.”
She wriggled around so she could hold my face between her palms. She stared intently into my eyes.
“But that doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “Does it? My being older or your being shorter? That’s not important, is it?”
“No,” I said, astonished, “it’s not.”
“I’ve got to tell you something awful,” she said.
“What?”
“I must get up and use your bathroom.”
When we kissed goodnight I had to lift onto my toes as she bent down. But I didn’t mind that, and neither of us laughed.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” I said.
She didn’t answer, but drew her fingertips gently down my cheek. Then she was gone.
6
I REMEMBER THE NEXT day very well, since it had such an impress on what was to follow. It was the first Saturday of March, a gruff, blustery day with steely light coming from a phlegmy sky. The air had the sharp smell of snow, and I hurried through my round of weekend chores, laying in enough food so that I could enjoy a quiet, relaxed couple of days at home even if the city was snowed in.
I took care of laundry, drycleaning, and shopping. I bought wine and liquor. I cleaned the apartment. Then I showered and shaved, dressed in slacks, sweater, sports jacket, and carpet slippers. A little after noon, I settled down with the morning Times and my third cup of coffee of the day.
I think I was annoyed when the phone rang. I was enjoying my warm solitude, and the jangle of the bell was an unwelcome reminder of the raw world outside my windows.
“Hello?” I said cautiously.
“Josh!” Detective Percy Stilton cried. “My main man! I’m sitting here in my drawers, my old lady’s in the kitchen doing something to a chicken, and I’m puffing away on a joint big as a see-gar and meanwhile investigating this fine jug of Almaden Mountain White Chablis, vintage of last Tuesday, and God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world, and what can I do for you, m’man? I got a message you called.”
“You sound in fine fettle, Perce,” I said.
“Fine fettle?” he said. “I got a fettle on me you wouldn’t believe—a tough fettle, a boss fettle. I got me a sweet forty-eighter, and nothing and nobody is going to pry me loose from hearth and home until Monday morning. You want to know about that crazy elevator—right? Okay, it was on the sixth floor when the first blues got to the Kipper townhouse. They both swear to it. So? What does that prove? Sol could have taken it up to his big jump.”
“Could have,” I said. “Yes. It’s hard to believe an emotionally disturbed man intent on suicide would wait for an elevator to take him up one floor when he could have walked it in less than a minute. But I agree, yes, he could have done it.”
“Let’s figure he did,” Stilton said. “Let’s not try jamming facts into a theory. I’ve known a lot of good men who messed themselves up doing that. The trick is to fit the theory to the facts. How you doing? Any great detecting to report?”
“Two things,” I said.
I told him about those bills from Martin Reape I had found at Kipmar Textiles. The bills that had been approved for payment by Sol Kipper. And the canceled checks endorsed by Reape.
I awaited his reaction. But there was only silence.
“Perce?” I said. “You there?”
He started speaking again, and suddenly he was sober…
“Josh,” he said, “do you realize what you’ve go
t?”
“Well, yes, certainly. I’ve established a definite connection between Sol Kipper and Marty Reape.”
“You goddamned Boy Scout!” he screamed at me. “You’ve got hard evidence. You’ve got paper. Something we can take to court. Up to now it’s all been smoke. But now we’ve got paper. God, that’s wonderful!”
It didn’t seem so wonderful to me, but I supposed police officers had legal priorities of which I was not aware. I went ahead and told Detective Stilton what I had learned about Tippi Kipper and the Reverend Godfrey Knurr, that they were having an affair and it had existed prior to Sol Kipper’s death.
“Where did you get that?” he asked curiously.
I hesitated a moment.
“From the maid,” I said finally.
He laughed. “Miss Horizontal herself?” he said. “I’m not going to ask you how you got her to talk; I can imagine. Well, it could be true.”
“It would explain the Kipper-Reape connection,” I argued. “Sol got suspicious and hired Marty to find out the truth. Reape got evidence that Knurr and Tippi were, ah, intimate. That’s when Sol called Mr. Tabatchnick and wanted to change his will.”
“Uh-huh. I follow. Sol gets dumped before he can change the will. Maybe the lovers find and destroy the evidence. Photographs? Could be. Tape recordings. Whatever. But street-smart Reape has made copies and tries blackmail. Goom-bye, Marty.”
“And then after he gets bumped, his grieving widow tries the same thing.”
“It listens,” Stilton admitted. “I’d be more excited if we could figure out how they managed to waste Sol. And come up with the suicide note. But at least we’ve got more than we had before. When I get in on Monday, I’ll run a trace on Knurr.”
“And on Tippi,” I said. “Please.”
“Why her?”
I told him what the Kipper sons had said about her Las Vegas background and how she had originally come from Chicago, which had also been Knurr’s home.
“May be nothing,” Stilton said, “may be something. All right, I’ll run Tippi through the grinder, too, and we shall see what we shall see. Hang in there, Josh; you’re doing okay.”
“I am?” I said, surprised. “I thought I was doing badly. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I called you was to ask if you could suggest a new approach. Something I haven’t tried yet.”
There was silence for a brief moment.
“It’s your baby,” he said at last. “But if I was on the case, I’d tail Tippi Kipper and the Reverend Knurr for a while.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Just for the fun of it,” he said. “Josh, my old lady is yelling and I better hang up. I think she wants to put me to work. Keep in touch. I’ll let you know what the machine says about Knurr and Tippi.”
“Thank you for calling,” I said.
“You’re perfectly welcome,” he responded with mock formality, then laughed. “So long, Josh,” he said as he rang off. “Have a good weekend.”
I finished the Times and my cold coffee about the same time, then mixed a weak Scotch-and-water, turned the radio down low, and started rereading my notes on the Stonehouse case. I went back to the very beginning, to my first meeting with Mr. Teitelbaum. Then I read the record of my initial interviews with Mrs. Ula Stonehouse, Glynis, and Mrs. Effie Dark. I found something interesting. I had been in the kitchen with Mrs. Dark, and the interrogation went something like this:
Q: What about Glynis? Does she work?
A: Not anymore. She did for a year or two but she quit.
Q: Where did she work?
A: I think she was a secretary in a medical laboratory.
Q: But now she does nothing?
A: She does volunteer work three days a week in a free clinic down on the Lower East Side.
I closed the file folder softly and stared into the cold fireplace. Secretary in a medical laboratory. Now working in a clinic.
It was possible.
But Mr. Teitelbaum had given me only another week.
I put in some additional hours reading over the files and planning moves. After a solitary dinner I went out to get early editions of the Times and News. It was around 8:30, not snowing, sleeting, or raining, but the air was so damp, I could feel icy moisture on my face. I walked rapidly, head down. The streets were deserted. Very little traffic. I saw no pedestrians until I rounded the corner onto Tenth Avenue.
The Sunday News was in and I bought a copy of that. But the Sunday Times hadn’t yet been delivered. There were a dozen people warming themselves in the store, waiting for the truck. I decided not to wait, but to pick up the Times in the morning. I started back to my apartment.
My brownstone was almost in the middle of the block. There was a streetlamp on the opposite side of the street. It was shedding a ghastly orange glow. The lamp itself was haloed with a wavering nimbus.
I was about halfway home when two men stepped out of an areaway a few houses beyond my brownstone and started walking toward me. They were widely separated on the sidewalk. They appeared to be carrying baseball bats.
I remember thinking, as my steps slowed, that what was going to happen was going to happen to me. Almost at the same time I thought it was an odd sort of mugging; attackers usually come up on a victim from behind. I halted and glanced back. There was a third assailant behind me, advancing as steadily and purposefully as the two in front.
I looked about wildly. The street was empty. Perhaps I should have started screaming and continued screaming until windows opened, heads popped out, and someone had the compassion to call the police. But I didn’t think of screaming. While it was happening, I thought only of escape.
The two men to my front were now close enough for me to see they were wearing knitted ski masks with holes at the eyes and mouth. Now they were swinging their weapons menacingly, and I knew, knew, this was not to be a conventional mugging and robbery. Their intent was to inflict grievous bodily injury, if not death.
I took another quick look back. The single attacker was still approaching, but at a slower pace than the two ahead. His function appeared to be as a blocker, to prevent me from retreating from a frontal assault. He was waving the baseball bat in both hands, like a player at the plate awaiting the first pitch. He, too, was wearing a ski mask, but though I saw him only briefly, I did note that one of the eyeholes in the mask appeared opaque. He was wearing a black eyepatch beneath the mask.
Parked cars, bumper to bumper, prevented my fleeing into the street. I didn’t dare dash up the nearest steps and frantically ring strange bells, hoping for succor before those assassins fell upon me. I did what I thought best; I turned and ran back, directly at the single ruffian. I thought my chances would be better against one than two. And each accelerating stride I took toward him brought me closer to the brightly lighted and crowded safety of Tenth Avenue. I think he was startled by my abrupt turn and the speed of my approach. He stopped, shifted uneasily on his feet, gripped the bat horizontally, a hand on each end.
I think he expected me to try to duck or dodge around him, and he was wary and off-balance when I simply ran into him full tilt. There was nothing clever or skilled in my attack; I just ran into him as hard as I could, feeling the hard bat strike across my chest, but keeping my legs moving, knees pumping.
He bounced away, staggered back, and I continued my frontal assault, hearing the pounding feet of the two other assailants coming up behind me. Then my opponent stumbled. As he went down flat on his back with a whoof sound as the breath went out of him, I seized the moment and ran like hell.
I ran over him, literally ran over him. I didn’t care where my boots landed: kneecaps, groin, stomach, chest, face. I just used him as turf to get a good foothold, and like a sprinter starting from blocks, I pushed off and went flying toward Tenth Avenue, knowing that I was in the clear and not even the devil could catch me now.
I whizzed around the corner, banking, and there was the New York Times truck, unloading bundles of the Sunday edition, wit
h vendors, merchants, customers crowding around: a pushing, shoving mob. It was lovely, noisy confusion, and I plunged right into the middle of it, sobbing to catch my breath. I was startled to find that not only was my body intact, but I was still clutching my copy of the Sunday News under my arm.
I waited until complete copies of the Times had been made up. I bought one, then waited a little longer until two other customers started down my street, carrying their papers. I followed them closely, looking about warily. But there was no sign of my attackers.
When I came to my brownstone, I had my keys ready. I darted up the steps, unlocked the door, ran up the stairs, fumbled my way into my apartment, locked and bolted the door. I put on all the lights and searched the apartment. I knew it was silly, but I did it. I even looked in the closet. I was shivering.
I poured myself a heavy brandy, but I didn’t even taste it. I just sat there in my parka and watch cap, staring into the fireplace where there were now only a few pinpoints of red, winking like fireflies.
That black eyepatch I’d spotted under my assailant’s ski mask haunted me.
A lot of men in New York wore black eyepatches, I supposed, and were of the same height and build as the young man I had seen at the Tentmakers Club on Carmine Street. Still…
Tippi Kipper had obviously reported to Knurr the details of our conversation. Perhaps she’d told him I’d mentioned the name of Martin Reape to her. Perhaps she’d said that I had asked prying questions, doubly suspicious coming from an attorneys’ clerk supposedly engaged only in making an inventory of her husband’s estate.
So the two of them must have decided I had to be removed from the scene. Or, at least, warned off.
Was that the way of it?
I had to admit that I wasn’t comfortable with that theory. If I knew the name of Martin Reape, then presumably my employers did too, and putting me in the hospital wouldn’t stop an inquiry into the alleged bills of the private detective. And as for my “prying questions,” I had asked nothing that could not be accounted for by sympathetic interest.
The Tenth Commandment Page 25