Fourth Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  Venable: “At whose home was the game originally scheduled?”

  “Mrs. Blanche Yesell.”

  Venable: “But she came here instead?”

  “Must I repeat everything twice?” Mrs. Gladys Ferguson said testily. “Yes, she came here instead, as did the others.”

  Estrella: “We just want to make certain we understand your answers completely, Mrs. Ferguson. What time do you ladies usually meet?”

  “The game starts at eight-thirty, promptly. The members usually arrive a little before that. We end at ten-thirty, exactly. Then the hostess serves tea and coffee with cookies or a cake. Everyone usually departs around eleven o’clock.”

  Detective Venable took out her notebook. “We already know that you and Mrs. Blanche Yesell are two of the members. Could you give us the names and addresses of the other two?”

  “Is that absolutely necessary?”

  Estrella: “Yes, it is. You’ll be assisting in the investigation of a violent crime.”

  “That’s hard to believe—the Four Musketeers involved in a violent crime. That’s what we call ourselves: the Four Musketeers.”

  Venable: “The names and addresses, please.”

  The detectives spent the next two days questioning the other two members of the club. They were both elderly widows of obvious probity. They corroborated everything that Mrs. Gladys Ferguson had stated.

  “Well,” Estrella said, staring at his opened notebook, “unless the Four Musketeers are the greatest criminal minds since the James Gang, it looks like Mrs. Yesell is lying in her teeth. She wasn’t home that night, and her daughter is still on the hook.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Helen Venable said bitterly. “I still can’t believe Joan was the murderer. Brian, she’s just not the type.”

  “What type is that?” he asked mildly. “She’s human, isn’t she? So she’s capable.”

  “But why? She keeps saying how much she admired the doctor.”

  “Who knows why?” he said, shrugging. “We’ll let Delaney figure that out. Let’s go up to Midtown North and borrow a typewriter. We’ll work on the report together. I’d like to get it to Sergeant Boone tonight. I have a heavy date with a Ouija board.”

  “And I was going to share an apartment with her,” Venable mourned.

  “Count yourself lucky,” Estrella advised. “You could have picked Jack the Ripper.”

  22

  “I HOPE YOU HAVE some good news for me,” First Deputy Commissioner Ivar Thorsen said. “I sure could use some.”

  The Admiral was slumped in a leather club chair in the study, gripping a beaker of Glenfiddich and water, staring into it as if it might contain the answers to all his questions.

  “Ivar, you look like you’ve been through a meat grinder,” Delaney said from behind his cluttered desk.

  “Something like that,” Thorsen said wearily. “A tough day. But they’re all tough. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “That’s what they say,” Delaney agreed. “Only you happen to like the kitchen.”

  “I suppose so,” the Deputy said, sighing. “Otherwise why would I be doing it? When I leave here, I’ve got to get over to the Waldorf—a testimonial party for a retiring Assistant DA. Then back downtown for a meeting with the Commish and a couple of guys from the Mayor’s office. We’re getting a budget bump, thank God, and the problem is how to spend it.”

  “That’s easy. More street cops.”

  “Sure, but who gets the jobs—and where? Every borough is screaming for more.”

  “You’ll work it out.”

  “I suppose so—eventually. But to get back to my original question—any good news?”

  “Well …” Delaney said, “there have been developments. Whether they’re good or not, I don’t know. So far we’ve eliminated four of the patients: Kane, Otherton, Gerber, and Symington. Some good detective work there and some luck. Anyway their alibis have been proved out—to my satisfaction at least.”

  “But you’ve still got two suspects?”

  “Two possible suspects. One is Ronald Bellsey, a nasty brute of a man. Detective Calazo is working on him. In his last report, Calazo says he hoped to have definite word on Bellsey within a few days. Calazo is an old cop, very thorough, very experienced. I trust him.

  “The other possible suspect, more interesting, is Joan Yesell, suicidal and suffering from depression. Her mother claims she was home at the time of the murder. Detectives Venable and Estrella have definitely proved the mother is lying. She was somewhere else and can’t possibly alibi her daughter.”

  “You’re going to pick them up?”

  “Mother and daughter? No, not yet. I’ve switched everyone except Calazo to round-the-clock surveillance of the daughter. Meanwhile we’re digging into her background and trying to trace her movements on the day of the murder.”

  “Why do you think the mother lied?”

  “Obviously to protect the daughter. So she must have some guilty knowledge. But it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Ellerbee’s death. Joan Yesell could have been shacked up with a boyfriend, and the mother is lying to protect her reputation—or the boyfriend’s.”

  Thorsen took a gulp of his drink and regarded the other man closely.

  “Yes, that’s possible. But you have that look about you, Edward—the end-of-the-trail look, a kind of suppressed excitement. You really think this Joan Yesell is involved, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, but yes, there’s something that’s not kosher there. I’ve spent all afternoon digging through the files, pulling out every mention of the woman. Some of the stuff that seems innocent on first reading takes on a new meaning when you think of her as a killer. For instance, right after Boone and I questioned her for the first time, she attempted suicide. That could be interpreted as guilt.”

  “What would be her motive?”

  “Ivar, we’re dealing with emotionally disturbed people here, and ordinary motives don’t necessarily hold. Maybe the doctor uncovered something in Yesell’s past so painful that she couldn’t face it and couldn’t endure the thought of Ellerbee knowing it. So she offed him.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose. Sooner or later you’re going to have to confront her, aren’t you?”

  “No doubt about that,” Delaney said grimly. “And the mother, too. But I want to do my homework first—learn all I can about Joan and her movements on the murder night. Maybe she really was with a boyfriend. If so, we’ll find out.”

  “Meanwhile,” Deputy Thorsen said, “the clock is running out. Ten days to the end of the year, Edward. That’s when the PC selects his Chief of Detectives.”

  Delaney took a packet of cigars from his desk drawer, held it out to the Admiral. But the Deputy shook his head. Delaney lighted up, using a gold Dunhill cutter his first wife had given him as a birthday present twenty years ago.

  “At least,” he said, puffing, “this investigation has taken the heat off the Department. Right? You’re not getting pressure from the victim’s widow and father anymore, are you? And I haven’t seen anything on the case in the papers for two weeks.”

  “I’d like to see something in the papers,” Thorsen said. “A headline like: COPS SOLVE ELLERBEE MURDER. That would be a big help to Suarez.”

  “How’s he doing? I haven’t spoken to him for a while. Maybe I’ll give him a call tonight.”

  “He’s a better administrator than he is a detective. But I suppose you saw that, Edward.”

  “Well, we’ve still got ten days. For what it’s worth, I believe we’ll clear it before the end of the year, or the thing will just drag on and on with decreasing hopes for a solution.”

  “Don’t say that,” the Deputy said, groaning. “Don’t even suggest it. Well, thank you for your hospitality; I’ve got to start running again.”

  “Before you go, Ivar, tell me something—how are your relations with the DA’s office?”

/>   “The Department’s relations or mine, personally?”

  “Yours, personally.”

  “Pretty good. They owe me some favors. Why do you ask?”

  “I have a feeling that if we can pin the killing on Ronald Bellsey or Joan Yesell, there’s not going to be much hard evidence. All circumstantial. Would the DA take the case, knowing the chances of a conviction would be iffy?”

  “Now you’re opening a whole new can of worms,” Thorsen said cautiously. “Ordinarily I’d say no. But this homicide attracted so much attention that they might be willing to take a chance just for the publicity. They’re as eager for good media coverage as we are.”

  Delaney nodded. “Well, you might sound them out. Just to get their reaction.”

  Thorsen stared at the other man fixedly. “Edward, you think this Joan Yesell could be it?”

  “At the moment,” Delaney said, “she and Ronald Bellsey are all we’ve got. Light a candle, Ivar.”

  “One candle? I’ll set fire to the whole church.”

  After the Deputy departed, Delaney returned to his study and called Suarez. But the Chief wasn’t home. Delaney chatted a few minutes with Rosa, wishing her a Merry Christmas, and asked her to tell her husband that he had called—nothing important.

  Then he went back to the stack of reports on Ronald Bellsey. According to Calazo, the subject was a prime suspect in four brutal beatings in the vicinity of Bellsey’s hangouts.

  Add to that Delaney’s personal reactions to the man, and you had a picture of a thug who got his jollies by pounding on weaker men, including Detective Timothy Hogan. There was little doubt that Bellsey was a sadistic psychopath. The question remained: Was he a homicidal psychopath?

  Uncertainties gnawed. Would a loco who derived pleasure from punishing another human being with his fists and boots resort to hammer blows to kill? If Ellerbee had been beaten and kicked to death, Delaney would have been surer that Bellsey was the killer.

  He groaned aloud, realizing what he was doing: applying logic to a guy who acted irrationally. You couldn’t do that; you had to adopt the subject’s own illogic. Once Delaney did that, he could admit that Bellsey might use a ball peen hammer, an icepick, or kill with a bulldozer if the madness was on him.

  Joan Yesell might be suicidal and depressed, but she didn’t seem to share Bellsey’s mania for wild violence. But who knew what passions were cloaked by that timid, subdued persona she presented to the world? Outside: Mary Poppins; inside: Lizzie Borden.

  Between the two of them, Delaney leaned toward Yesell as the more likely suspect, but only because her alibi had been broken.

  He knew full well how thin all this was. If he wanted to be absolutely honest, he’d have to admit he was no closer to clearing the Ellerbee homicide than he had been on the evening of Thorsen’s first visit.

  He looked at his littered desk, at the open file cabinet overflowing with reports, notes, interrogations: all those muddled lives. All that confusion of wants, fears, frustrations, hates.

  He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and went lumbering into the living room where Monica sat reading the latest Germaine Greer book.

  “What’s wrong, Edward?” she asked, peering over her glasses and catching his mood.

  “We’re all such shitheads!” he burst out. “Every one of us gouging our way through life fighting and scrambling. Not one single, solitary soul knowing what the fuck is going on.”

  “Edward, why are you so upset? Because life is disordered and chaotic?”

  “I suppose so,” he muttered.

  “Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? Making sense of things. Finding the logic, the sequence, the connecting links?”

  “I suppose so,” he repeated. “To make sense out of the senseless. Up at Diane Ellerbee’s place, I said detectives are a lot like psychiatrists—and so we are. But psychiatrists have dear old Doctor Freud and a lot of clinical research to help them. Detectives have percentages and experience—and that’s about it. And detectives have to analyze a dozen people in a single case. Like this Ellerbee thing … I feel like giving up and telling Ivar I just can’t hack it.”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think you’ll do that. You have too much pride. I can’t believe you’re going to give up.”

  “Nah,” he said, kicking at the carpet. “I’m not going to do that. It’s just that someone—the murderer—is playing with me, jerking me around, and I can’t stand that. It infuriates me that I can’t identify the killer. It offends my sense of decency.”

  “And of order,” she added.

  “That, too,” he agreed. He laughed shortly. “Goddamn it, I don’t know what to do next!”

  “Why don’t you have a sandwich,” she suggested.

  “Good idea,” he said.

  On that same evening, Detective Ross Konigsbacher was lounging on Symington’s long sectional couch. He was dragging on one of Vince’s homemade cigarettes and sipping Asti Spumante.

  “No one drinks champagne anymore,” Symington had said. “Asti Spumante is in.”

  So the Kraut was feeling like a jet-setter, with his pot and in drink.

  He was also feeling virtuous because he had filed a report clearing Vincent of any complicity in the murder of Dr. Simon Ellerbee. That had been his official duty. And, as he had anticipated, he had been rewarded by being shifted to a shit detail—spending eight hours that day sitting in a car outside the Yesells’ home waiting for Joan to come out. She hadn’t.

  “A great meal, Vince,” he said dreamily. “I really enjoyed it.”

  “I thought you’d like the place,” Symington said. “Wasn’t that smoked goose breast divine?”

  When they had returned to the apartment after dinner, Vince had changed into a peach-colored velour jumpsuit with a wide zipper from gullet to crotch.

  “And that silk underwear,” Konigsbacher remembered. “Thank you so much. You’ve been so good to me, Vince. I want you to know I appreciate it.”

  Symington waved a hand. “That’s what friends are for. We are friends, aren’t we?”

  “Sure we are,” the Kraut said. And because he felt himself hazing from the grass and all the booze they’d had that night, he figured he better make his pitch while he was still conscious.

  “Vince,” he said, “I’ve got a confession to make to you. I know you’re going to hate me for it, but I’ve got to do it.”

  “I won’t hate you,” Symington said, “no matter what it is.”

  “You better hear me first. Vince, I’m a cop, a detective assigned to check you out on the Ellerbee kill. Here—here’s my ID.”

  He fished out his wallet. Symington looked at the shield and card.

  “Oh, Ross,” he said in a choked voice, “how could you?”

  “It was my job,” the Kraut said earnestly. “To get close to you and learn your movements the night of the murder. I admit that when I started, I really thought of you as a suspect. But as I got to know you, Vince, I realized that you’re completely incapable of a vicious act of violence like that.”

  “Thank you, Ross,” Symington said in a low voice.

  “But,” Konigsbacher said, taking a deep breath, “you stated you had left the party at the Hilton about the time Ellerbee was killed.”

  “Only for a little while,” Symington said nervously. “Just to get a breath of air. I told you where I went, Ross.”

  “I know, I know,” the detective said, patting one of Vince’s pudgy hands. “But you can see how it complicates things.”

  Symington nodded dumbly.

  “It was a serious problem for me, Vince. I knew you were innocent. My problem was whether or not to report that you had left the Hilton. I worried about it a long time, and you know what I finally decided? Not to mention it at all. I just don’t think it’s important. I just stated that you were at the Hilton all evening and couldn’t possibly be involved. You’re cleared, Vince, completely cleared.”

  “Thank you, Ross,” Symington said in a strang
led voice. “Thank you, thank you. How can I ever thank you enough?”

  “We’ll think of something, won’t we?” the Kraut said.

  Two days before Christmas, Edward Delaney, wearing hard homburg and lumpy overcoat, trudged through a mild fall of snow to buy a Scotch pine for the holidays. When he saw the prices, he almost settled for something skinnier and scrawnier.

  But, what the hell, Christmas only comes once a year, so he bought the fat, bushy tree he wanted and lugged it home, dragged it into the living room, and got to work. He went up to the attic and brought down the old-fashioned cast-iron Christmas tree stand with four screw clamps, and boxes and boxes of ornaments, some of them of pre-World War II vintage. He also carried down strings of lights, shirt cardboards wound with tinsel, and packages of aluminum foil icicles, carefully saved from more Christmases than he cared to remember.

  He was trying a string of lights when Monica came bustling in, wearing her sheared beaver, burdened with two big shopping bags of store-wrapped Christmas gifts. Her cheeks were aglow with the cold and the excitement of spending money. She stopped in the doorway and stared at the tree, wide-eyed.

  “Happy Chanukah,” he said, grinning.

  “And a Merry Christmas to you, darling. Oh, Edward, it’s a marvelous tree!”

  “Isn’t it,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you how much it cost or it would spoil your pleasure.”

  “I don’t care what it cost; I love it. Let me take off my coat and put these things away, and we’ll decorate it together. What a tree! Edward, the fragrance fills the whole room.”

  Turning the radio to WQXR and listening to Vivaldi, they spent two hours decorating their wonderful tree. First the strings of lights, then the garlands of tinsel, then the individual ornaments, then the foil icicles. And finally Delaney cautiously climbed the rickety ladder to put the fragile glass star on the top.

  He descended, turned on the lights, and they stood back to observe the effect.

  “Oh, God,” Monica said, “it’s so beautiful I want to cry. Isn’t it beautiful, Edward?”

  “Gorgeous,” he said, touching her cheek. “I hope the girls like it. When are they coming?”