The Tenth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  He shrugged.

  “Anything you can tell me about the servants?”

  “What about them?”

  “You trust them?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you and your father quarrel about? The final quarrel?”

  “He caught me smoking a joint. We both said things we shouldn’t have. So I moved out.”

  “You have an independent income?”

  “Enough,” Wanda Chard said quickly.

  “Your sister doesn’t have one particular friend? A man, I mean. Someone she sees a lot of?”

  “I don’t know. Ask her.”

  “Was your father on a special diet?”

  “What?”

  “Did he eat any special foods or drink anything no one else in the house ate or drank?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “In the last month or two before your father disappeared, did you notice any gradual change in his behavior?”

  He thought about that for a few seconds.

  “Maybe he became more withdrawn.”

  “Withdrawn?”

  “Surlier. Meaner. He talked even less than usual. He ate his dinner, then went into his study.”

  “His will is missing. Did you know that?”

  “Glynis told me. I don’t care. I don’t want a cent from him. Not a cent! If he left me anything, I’d give it away.”

  “Why did your mother stay with such a man as you describe?”

  “What could she do? Where could she go? She has no family of her own. She couldn’t function alone.”

  “Your mother and sister could have left together. Just as you left.”

  “Why should they? It’s their home, too.”

  “You never saw your father’s will?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see the book he was working on? A history of the Prince Royal, a British battleship?”

  “No, I never saw that. I never went into his study.”

  “Did your father drink? I mean alcohol?”

  “Maybe a highball before dinner. Some wine. A brandy before he went to bed. Nothing heavy.”

  “Are you on any drugs now?”

  “A joint now and then. That’s all. No hard stuff.”

  “Your mother or sister?”

  “My mother’s on sherry. You probably noticed.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Nothing as far as I know.”

  “Your father?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Either of the servants?”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Do you love your mother?”

  “I have a very deep affection for her. And pity. He ruined her life,”

  “Do you love your sister?”

  “Very much. She’s an angel.”

  Wanda Chard made a sound.

  “Miss Chard,” I said, “did you say something? I didn’t catch it.”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  That’s what I had—nothing. I continued “catching flies.”

  “Did your father ever come down here?” I asked. “To this apartment?”

  “Once,” he said. “I wasn’t here. But Wanda met him.”

  “What did you think of him, Miss Chard?”

  “So unhappy,” she murmured. “So bitter. Eating himself up.”

  “When did he come here? I mean, how long was it before he disappeared?”

  They looked at each other.

  “Perhaps two weeks,” she said. “Maybe less.”

  “He just showed up? Without calling first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he give any reason for his visit?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to Powell. But Powell was in Brooklyn, studying with his master. So Professor Stonehouse left.”

  “How long did he stay?”

  “Not long. Ten minutes perhaps.”

  “He didn’t say what he wanted to talk to Powell about?”

  “No.”

  “And he never came back?”

  “No,” Powell Stonehouse said, “he never came back.”

  “And when you saw him later, in his home, did he ever mention the visit or say what he wanted to talk to you about?”

  “No, he never mentioned it. And I didn’t either.”

  I thought a moment.

  “It couldn’t have been a reconciliation, could it?” I suggested. “He came down here to ask your forgiveness?”

  He stared at me. His face slowly congealed. The blow he had been expecting had landed.

  “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice.

  “Maybe,” Wanda Chard murmured.

  3

  OLGA EKLUND AGREED TO meet me in a health-food cafeteria on Irving Place. The salad, full of sprouted seeds, was really pretty good. I washed it down with some completely natural juice.

  I listened to her lecture on health and diet as patiently as I could. When she paused I said, “So when you told me Professor Stonehouse was being poisoned, you were referring to the daily food served in his house?”

  “Yah. Bad foods. I tell them all the time. They don’t listen. That Mrs. Dark, the cook—everything with her is butter and cream. Too much oil. Too rich.”

  “But everyone in the house eats the same thing?”

  “Not me. I eat raw carrots, green salads with maybe a little lemon juice. Fresh fruit. I don’t poison myself.”

  “Olga,” I said, “you serve the evening meal every night?”

  “Except my day off.”

  “Can you recall Professor Stonehouse eating or drinking anything the others didn’t eat or drink?”

  She thought a moment.

  “No,” she said. Then: “Except at night maybe. After I left.”

  “Oh? What was that?”

  “Every night he worked in his study. Late, he would have a cup of cocoa and a brandy before he went to bed.”

  I was alive again.

  “Where did the cocoa come from?”

  “Come from?” she asked, puzzled. “From Holland.”

  “I mean, who made the cocoa every night for Professor Stonehouse?”

  “Oh. Mrs. Dark made it before she went to bed and before I went home. Then, when the Professor wanted it late, Glynis would heat it up, skim it, and bring it to his study.”

  “Every night?”

  “I think so.”

  “No one else in the house drank the cocoa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was sounding better and better.

  “Let me get this sequence right,” I said. “Every night Mrs. Dark made a pot of cocoa. This was before you went home and before she went to bed. Then, later, when the Professor wanted it, Glynis would heat it up and bring it to him in his study. Correct?”

  “Yah,” she said placidly, not at all interested in why I was so concerned about the cocoa.

  “Thank you, Olga,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Yah?” she said, surprised.

  “Does Glynis go out very often? In the evening, I mean.”

  “Oh, yah.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  She pondered that.

  “I think so,” she said, nodding. “Before, she was very sad, quiet. Now she smiles. Sometimes she laughs. She dresses different. Yah, I think she has a man who makes her happy.”

  “How long has this been going on? I mean, when did she start to be happy?”

  “Maybe a year ago. Maybe more. Also, one night she said she was going to the theatre. But I saw her that night in a restaurant on 21st Street. She did not see me and I said nothing to her.”

  “Was she with anyone?”

  “No. But I thought she was waiting for someone.”

  “What time of night was this?”

  “Perhaps nine, nine-thirty. If she had gone to the theatre, as she said, she would not be in the restaurant at that time.”

  “Did you ever mention that incident to her?”

  “No,�
�� she said, shrugging. “Is no business of mine.”

  “What do you think of Powell Stonehouse, Olga?”

  “He poisons himself with marijuana cigarettes.” (She pronounced it “mary-jew-anna.”) “Too bad. I feel sorry for him. His father was very mean to him.”

  I drained the remainder of all that natural goodness in my glass and rose to my feet.

  “Thank you again, Olga,” I said, “for your time and trouble. The food here is delicious. You may have made a convert of me.”

  What a liar I was getting to be.

  When I got back to TORT I was confronted by Hamish Hooter, that tooth-sucking villain. “See here,” Hooter said indignantly, glaring at me from sticky eyes, “what’s this about a secretary?”

  “I need one,” I said. “I spoke of it to Mr. Tabatchnick.”

  “I am the office manager,” he said hotly. “Why didn’t you speak to me?”

  “Because you would have turned me down again,” I said in what I thought was a reasonable tone. “All I want is a temporary assistant. Someone to help with typing and filing until I complete a number of important and complex investigations.”

  I had always thought the description “He gnashed his teeth” was a literary exaggeration. But Hamish Hooter did gnash his teeth. It was a fascinating and awful thing to witness.

  “We’ll see about that,” he grated, and whirled away from me.

  As soon as I reached my desk I phoned Yetta Apatoff and made a lunch date for Friday, then got back to business.

  Headquarters for Kipmar Textiles were located in a building on Seventh Avenue and 35th Street. When I phoned, a dulcet voice answered, “Thank you for calling Kipmar Textiles,” and I wondered what the reaction would be if I screamed that I was suing Kipmar for six zillion dollars. After being shunted to two more extensions, I finally got through to a lady who stated she was Miss Gregg, secretary to Mr. Herschel Kipper.

  I forbore commenting on the aptness of her name and occupation, but merely identified myself and my employer and asked if it might be possible for me to see Mr. Herschel Kipper and/or Mr. Bernard Kipper at some hour that afternoon, at their convenience. She asked me the purpose of my request, and I replied that it concerned an inventory of their late father’s estate that had to be made for tax purposes.

  She put me on hold—for almost five minutes. But I was not bored; they had one of those attachments that switches a held caller to a local radio station, so I heard the tag end of the news, a weather report, and the beginning of a country singer’s rendition of “I Want to Destroy You, Baby,” before Miss Gregg came on the line again. She informed me that the Kipper brothers could see me “for a very brief period” at 3:00 P.M. I was to come directly to the executive offices on the 34th floor and ask for her. I thanked her for her kindness. She thanked me, again, for calling Kipmar Textiles. It was a very civilized encounter.

  I walked over from the TORT building, starting out at 2:30, heading due west on 38th. I strolled down Fifth Avenue to 35th, where I made a right into the garment district and continued over to Seventh. The garment center in Manhattan is quintessentially New York. From early in the morning till late at night it is thronged, jammed, packed. The rhythm is frantic. Handtrucks and pedestrians share the sidewalks. Handtrucks, pedestrians, taxis, buses, private cars, and semitrailers share the streets. There is a cacophony that numbs the mind: shouts, curses, the bleat of horns, squeal of brakes, sirens, bells, whistles , the blast of punk rock from the open doors of music shops, the demanding cries of street vendors and beggars.

  I suppose there were streets in ancient Rome similar to these, and maybe in Medieval European towns on market day. It is a hurly-burly, a wild tumult that simply sweeps you up and carries you along, so you find yourself trotting, dashing through traffic against the lights, shouldering your way through the press, rushing, rushing. Senseless and invigorating.

  Kipmar’s executive offices were decorated in neutral tones of oyster white and dove gray, the better to accent the spindles of gaily colored yarns and bolts of fabrics displayed in lighted wall niches. There were spools of cotton, synthetics, wools, silks, rayon, and folds of woven solids, plaids, stripes, checks, herringbones, satins, metallics, and one incredible bolt of a gossamer fine as a spider’s web and studded with tiny rhinestones. This fabric was labeled with a chaste card that read: STAR WONDER. Special Order. See Mr. Snodgrass.

  At the end of the lobby a young lady was seated behind a desk that bore a small sign: RECEPTIONIST. She was on the phone, giggling, as I approached, and I heard her say, “Oh, Herbie, you’re just awful!” She covered the mouthpiece as I halted in front of her desk.

  “Yes, sir?” she said brightly. “How may I help you?”

  “Joshua Bigg,” I said, “to see Mr. Kipper. I was told to ask for Miss Gregg.”

  “Which Mr. Kipper, sir?”

  “Both Mr. Kippers.”

  “Just a moment, sir,” she said. Then, sotto voce, “Don’t go away, Herbie.” She pushed some buttons and said primly, “Mr. Joshua Bigg to see Mr. Kipper. Both Mr. Kippers.” She listened a moment, then turned to me with a divine smile. “Please take a seat, sir. Miss Gregg will be with you in a moment.”

  I sat in one of the low leather sling chairs. True to her word, Miss Gregg came to claim me in a moment. She was tall, scrawny, and efficient. I knew she was efficient because the bows of her eyeglasses were attached to a black ribbon that went around her neck.

  “Mr. Bigg?” she said with a glassy smile. “Follow me, please.”

  She preceded me through a labyrinth of corridors to a door that bore a small brass plate: H. KIPPER, PRES.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, ushered me in, then closed the door gently behind me.

  It was a corner office. Two walls were picture windows affording a marvelous view of upper Manhattan. The floor was carpeted deeply, almost indecently. The desk was a slab of black marble on a chrome base—more table than desk. Two men stood behind the desk.

  I had an initial impression that I was seeing double or seeing identical twins. They were in fact merely brothers, but Herschel and Bernard Kipper looked alike, dressed alike, shared the same speech patterns, mannerisms, and gestures; during the interview that followed I was continually confused, and finally looked between them when I asked my questions and let him answer who would.

  Both were men of medium height, and portly. Both had long strands of thinning hair combed sideways over pink scalp. Their long cigars were identical.

  Both were clad in high garment district fashion in steel-gray, raw silk suits. Only their ties were not identical. When they spoke their voices were harsh, phlegmy, with a smokers’ rasp, their speech rapid, assertive. They asked me to be seated, although they remained standing, firmly planted, smoking their cigars and staring at me with hard, wary eyes.

  Once again I explained that I was engaged in a preliminary inventory of their father’s estate, and had come to ascertain if he had left any personal belongings in the offices.

  “I understand he maintained a private office here,” I added softly. “Even after his retirement.”

  “Well…sure,” one of them said. “Pop had an office here.”

  “But no personal belongings,” the other said. “I mean, Pop’s desk and chairs and all, the furnishings, they belong to the company.”

  “No personal possessions?” I persisted. “Jewelry? A set of cufflinks he might have kept in his desk? Photographs? Silver frames?”

  “Sure,” one of them said. “Pop had photographs.”

  “We took them,” the other one said. “They were of our mother, and Pop’s mother and father.”

  “And all us kids,” the other said. “And his grandchildren. In plain frames. No silver or anything like that. And one photograph of her. She can have it.”

  “The bitch!” the other Kipper son said wrathfully.

  I had pondered how I might introduce the subjects of Tippi and the will without s
eeming to pry. I needn’t have fretted.

  “I assume you’re referring to the widow?” I said.

  “I said bitch,” one of them said, “and I mean bitch!”

  “Listen,” the other said, “we’re not complaining.”

  “We’re not hurting,” his brother agreed. “But that gold-digger getting a piece of the company is what hurts.”

  “Who knows what that birdbrain might do?”

  “She might dump her shares.”

  “Upset the market.”

  “Or waltz in here and start poking around.”

  “She knows zilch about the business.”

  “She could make plenty of trouble, that fake.”

  “I understand,” I said carefully, “that she was formerly in the theatre?”

  “The theatre!” one of them cried.

  “That’s a laugh!” the other cried.

  “She was a nightclub dancer.”

  “A chorus girl.”

  “All she did was shake her ass.”

  “And she wasn’t very good at that.”

  “Probably hustling on the side.”

  “What else? Strictly a horizontal talent.”

  “She played him like a fish.”

  “She knew a good thing when she saw one, and she landed him.”

  “And made his life miserable.”

  “Once the contract was signed, no more nice-nice.”

  “Unless she got what she wanted.”

  “The house, which they didn’t need, and clothes, cars, cruises, jewelry—the works. She took him good.”

  “It hurt us to see what was going on.”

  “But he wouldn’t listen. He just wouldn’t listen.”

  “Uh,” I said, “I understand she also persuaded your father to make contributions to charity. A certain Reverend Godfrey Knurr…?”

  “Him!”

  “That gonniff!”

  “Hundreds!”

  “Thousands!”

  “To his cockamamie club for street bums.”

  “Pop wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “Couldn’t see how they were taking him.”

  “Even after he’s dead and gone.”

  “But you probably know that.”

  I didn’t know it. Didn’t know to what he was referring. But I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance by asking questions.

  “Well…” I said judiciously, “it’s not the first time it’s happened. An elderly widower. A younger woman. Does she have family?”