Tenth Commandment

Part II
1

I was waiting to see Mr Ignatz Teitelbaum on Monday morning, loitering outside his office and gossiping with Ada Mondora. She stared at me calculatingly.

'I don't know what to do,' she said.

'About what?' I asked innocently.

'About you,' she said. 'And Yetta Apatoff. And Hamish Hooter.'

'Oh,' I said. 'That.' With a shamed, sinking feeling to learn that my intimate affairs were a matter of public knowledge.

'There's an office pool,' she said. 'Didn't you know?'

I shook my head.

'You put up a dollar,' she explained, 'on who marries Yetta — you or Hooter. Right now the betting is about evenly divided, so all you can win is another dollar.'

'Who are you betting on?' I asked her.

She looked at me narrowly.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I haven't made up my mind.

Are you serious about her, Josh?'

'Sure,' I said.

'Uh-huh,' she said. 'We shall see what we shall see.'

The door of Mr Teitelbaum's office opened and Hamish Hooter exited, carrying a heavy ledger.

He looked at me, then looked at Ada Mondora, then strode away. Wordless.

'Mr Personality,' Ada said. 'You can go in now, Josh.'

He looked smaller than ever. He looked like a deflated football, the leather grained and wrinkled. He sat motionless behind that big desk, sharp eyes following me as I entered and approached. He jerked his chin towards an armchair. I sat down.

'Report?' he said, half-question and half-command.

'Mr Teitelbaum,' I started, 'about this Stonehouse business… I hope you'll approve an expenditure of a hundred dollars. For confidential information.'

'What information?'

'For a period of about six months, ending a month prior to his disappearance, Professor Stonehouse was suffering from arsenic poisoning.'

If I was expecting a reaction, I was disappointed; there was none.

'Sir, the information was obtained in such a manner that the firm's name will not be connected with it. I believe it is valid. The Professor was a victim of arsenic poisoning beginning in late summer of last year. Finally the symptoms became so extreme that he consulted a physician.

After a series of tests, the correct diagnosis was made.'

'You know all this?' he asked. 'For a fact?'

'I'm extrapolating,' I admitted. 'From information received from several sources. After the Professor became aware of what was going on, he apparently took steps to end the poisoning. In any event, he recovered. He was in reasonably good health at the time of his disappearance.'

He began to swing slowly back and forth in his swivel chair, turning his head slightly each time he swung to keep me in view.

'You think he was being deliberately poisoned, Mr Bigg?'

'Yes, sir.'

'By a member of his family?'

'Or his household, sir. There are two servants. I don't see how else it could have been done. It's my impression that he rarely dined out. If he was ingesting arsenic, he had to get it in his own home.'

'No one else in the household became ill?'

'No, sir, not to my knowledge. It's something I'll have to check out.'

He thought about this a long time.

'Ugly,' he said finally. There was no disgust in his voice, no note of disappointment in the conduct of the human race. It was just a judicial opinion: 'Ugly.'

'Yes, sir.'

'What would be the motive?' he asked. 'Presuming what you believe is true, why would anyone in the Stonehouse family wish to poison him?'

'That I don't know, sir. Perhaps it had something to do with the will. The missing will. Mr Teitelbaum, can a person draw up his own will?'

He stared at me.

'A holographic will?' he said. 'In the handwriting of the testator? Properly drawn and properly witnessed? Yes, it would be valid. With several caveats. A husband, for instance, could not totally disinherit his wife. A testator could not make bequests contrary to public policy. To finance the assassination of a president, for example. And so forth. There are other requirements best left to the expertise of an attorney. But a simple will composed by the testator could be legal.'

'With what you know about Professor Stonehouse, sir, do you think he was capable of drawing up such a document?'

He didn't hesitate.

'Yes,' he said. 'He would be capable. In fact, it would be likely, considering the kind of man he was. You think that's what he did?'

'I just don't know,' I admitted. 'It's certainly possible.

Did you ask Mrs Stonehouse if her husband had dealings with any other attorneys?'

'I asked,' he said, nodding. 'She said she knew of none.

That doesn't necessarily mean he didn't, of course. He was a very secretive man. Mr Bigg, I find this whole matter 141

increasingly disturbing. I told you I feared Professor Stonehouse was dead. I had nothing to base that belief on other than a feeling, instinct, a lifetime of dealing with the weaknesses of very fallible human beings. Your news that Professor Stonehouse was the victim of poisoning only confirms that belief.' He paused. 'We have both used the term "victim." You do not suppose, do you, that the poisoning could have been accidental?'

'I don't think so, sir.' We sat awhile in silence. 'Mr Teitelbaum,' I said, 'do you want me to continue the investigation?'

'Yes,' he said, in such a low voice that it came out a faint

'Ssss.'

'You don't feel the matter of the arsenic poisoning should be reported to the police?'

He roused, a little, and sat up straighter in his chair.

'No, not as yet. Continue with your inquiries.'

I walked down to the main floor, hoping to have a moment to chat with Yetta Apatoff. But Mr Orsini was just coming through the main entrance, the door held ajar for him by a worshipful aide, and two more bobbing along in his wake.

'Josh,' he cried, grabbing my arm. 'I've got a new one you'll love!'

He pulled me close. His aides clustered around, twittering with eagerness.

'This very short man is sitting in a bar,' Orsini said, 'and down at the other end he sees this great big gorgeous blonde by herself. Get the picture?'

When it was over I stumbled back to my office, called Ardis, and asked her to meet me on 74th and Amsterdam in twenty minutes, about 1.45. Next I rang up the Stonehouse residence and asked if I could come by at 2.00 p.m., to talk to the maid, Olga Eklund, and to pick up a photograph of Professor Stonehouse to be used on reward posters. This was a ruse to get into the house again. I spoke to Glynis Stonehouse; she told me that she and her mother would be happy to see me.

I grabbed a gyro and a Coke on my way to meet Ardis.

She was on the north-west corner, waiting for me.

'Thank God! You're on time! I had one of the nurses cover for me, but if Stolowitz calls in and I'm not at my desk, he'll go crazy.'

'Thank you, Ardis,' I said in a low voice, handing her an envelope. 'A big help.'

'Any time,' she said, whisking the envelope out of sight.

'You're in the neighbourhood, give me a call. We'll have lunch — or whatever.'

'I'll do that,' I said.

I walked south on Central Park West to the Stonehouse apartment house and went through the business of identifying myself to the man behind the desk.

The door to 17-B was opened by a Valkyrie. She lacked only a horned helmet. This was undoubtedly Olga Eklund.

She was almost a foot taller than I, broad in the shoulders and hips, with long, sinewy arms and legs. Her head seemed no wider than her strong neck, and beneath her black uniform I imagined a hard torso, muscle, and tight skin flushed with health.

I had fantasized flaxen tresses. They existed, but had been woven into a single braid, thick as a hawser, and this plait had been wound around and around atop her head, giving her a gleaming crown that added another six inches to her impressive height. The eyes, as I had fancied, were a deep-sea blue, the whites as chalky as milk. She wore no makeup, but the full lips were blooming, the complexion a porcelainized cream.

She gave such an impression of bursting good health, of strength and vitality, that it made me shrink just to look at her. She seemed of a different species, someone visiting from Planet 4X-5-6-Gb, to demonstrate to us earthlings our sad insufficiencies.

'Mr Bigg,' she asked in the sultry, throbbing voice that had conjured up all those exciting images when I had heard it on the phone.

'Yes,' I said. 'You must be Miss Eklund.'

'Yah,' she said. 'Hat? Coat?'

She hung my things away in the hall closet. I followed her down the long corridor. She moved with a powerful, measured tramp. Beneath the skirt, rounded calves bunched and smoothed. She had the musculature of a trapeze artist, marble under suede. I was happy she hadn't offered to shake hands.

Mrs Ula Stonehouse and Glynis were waiting for me in the living room. There was a tea service on one of the small cocktail tables, and at their urging I accepted a cup of tea from the efficient Olga Eklund.

'I'm sorry I have no news to report,' I told mother and daughter. 'I have discovered nothing new bearing on the Professor's disappearance.'

'Mother said you asked about Father's health,' Glynis said. 'His illness last year. Did you speak to his doctor?'

She was curled into one corner of the long couch, her splendid legs tucked up under her.

'Yes, I spoke to Dr Stolowitz,' I said, addressing both of them. 'He wouldn't reveal the exact nature of the illness, but I gathered it was some kind of flu or virus. Tell me, was anyone else in the family ill at the same time the Professor was sick?'

'Let me think,' Mrs Stonehouse said, cocking her head.

'That was last year. Oh yes. I had a cold that lasted and lasted. And poor Effie was sniffling for at least a week.

Glynis, were you sick?'

'Probably,' the daughter said in her husky voice. 'I don't really remember, but I usually get at least one cold when winter comes. Does this have anything to do with my father's disappearance, Mr Bigg?'

'Oh no,' I said hastily. 'I just wanted to make certain he 144

was in good health on January 10th. And from what you and Dr Stolowitz have told me, he apparently was.'

Glynis Stonehouse looked at me a moment. I thought she was puzzled, but then her face cleared.

'You're trying to determine if he might have had amnesia?' she asked. 'Or be suffering some kind of temporary mental breakdown?'

'Yes,' I said, 'something like that. But obviously we can rule that out. Mrs Stonehouse, I wonder if you'd mind if I talked to your maid for a few moments. Just to see if she might recall something that could help.'

'Not at all,' Glynis Stonehouse said before her mother could answer. 'She's probably in the kitchen or dining room. You know the way; go right ahead. I've already instructed Olga to tell you whatever you want to know.'

'Thank you,' I said, rising. 'You're very kind. It shouldn't take long. And then there are a few more things I'd like to discuss with you ladies, if I may.'

I found the maid in the dining room, seated at one end of the long table. She was reading Prevention.

'Hi,' I said brightly. 'Miss Stonehouse said it was all right if I talked to you in private. May I call you Olga?'

'Yah,' she said.

She sat erect, her straight spine not touching the back of the chair; seated, she still towered over me.

'Olga,' I said, 'I work for the family's attorneys and I'm investigating the disappearance of Professor Stonehouse. I was hoping you might be able to help me.'

She focused those turquoise eyes on mine. It was like a dentist's drill going into my pupils. I mean I was pierced.

'How?' she said.

'Do you have any idea what happened to him?'

'No.'

'I realize you weren't here the night he disappeared, but had you noticed anything strange about him? I mean, had he been acting differently?'

'No.'

'At the time he disappeared, he was in good health?'

She shrugged.

'But he had been sick last year? Right? Last year he was very ill?'

'Yah.'

'But then he got better.'

'Yah.'

I sighed. I was doing just great. Yah, no, and one shrug.

'Olga,' I said, 'you work here from one o'clock to nine, six days a week — correct?'

'Yah.'

'You serve the afternoon lunch and dinner?'

'Yah.'

'Did he eat anything special no one else ate?'

'No.'

I gave up. The Silent Swede. Garbo was a chatterbox compared to this one.

'All right, Olga,' I said, beginning to rise. 'You've been very kind, and I want to — '

Her hand shot out and clamped on my arm, instantly cutting off the circulation. She drew me to her. I instinctively resisted the force. Like trying to resist a Moran tugboat. She pulled me right up to her. Then her lips were at my ear. I mean I could feel her lips on my ear, she clutched me so tightly.

'He was being poisoned,' she whispered.

The warm breath went tickling into my ear, but I was too stunned to react. Was this the breakthrough I needed?

'By whom?' I asked.

'I could have saved him,' she said.

I stared.

For answer to my unspoken question she solemnly raised the health and diet magazine and pointed to it.

She meant Stonehouse was sick of commercial-food processing, like everyone else.

In the living room Glynis and her mother were as I left them. Mrs Stonehouse was licking the rim of a filled glass.

'Nothing,' I said, sighing. 'It's very frustrating. Well

. . I'll keep trying. The only member of the family I haven't spoken to, Mrs Stonehouse, is your son. He was here the night his father disappeared. Perhaps he can recall something…'

They gave me his address and unlisted phone number.

Then I asked to see any family photos they might have, and presently I was sitting nervously on the couch between the two women, and we went through the stack of photos slowly. It was an odd experience. I felt sure I was looking at pictures of a dead man. Yale Stonehouse was, or had been, a thin-faced, sour man, with sucked-in cheeks and lips like edges of cardboard. The eyes accused and the nose was a knife. In the full-length photos, he appeared to be a skeleton in tweed, all sharp angles and gangling. He was tall, with stooped shoulders, carrying his head thrust forward aggressively.

'Height?' I asked.

'Six feet one,' Mrs Stonehouse said.

'A little shorter than that, Mother,' Glynis said quietly.

'Not quite six feet.'

'Colour of hair?'

'Brownish,' Ula said.

'Mostly grey,' Glynis said.

We finally selected a glossy 8 x 10 publicity photo. I thanked Ula and Glynis Stonehouse and assured them I'd keep them informed of the progress of my investigation.

Downstairs, I asked the man behind the desk if he had been on duty the night Yale Stonehouse had walked out the apartment house, never to be seen again. He said No, that would be Bert Lord, who was on duty from 4.00 p.m. to midnight. Bert usually shows up around 3.30 to change into his uniform in the basement, and if I came back in fifteen or twenty minutes, I'd probably be able to talk to him.

So I walked around the neighbourhood for a while, trying to determine Professor Stonehouse's possible routes after he left his apartment house.

There was an IND subway station on Central Park West and 72nd Street. He could have gone uptown or downtown.

He could have taken a crosstown bus in 72nd Street that would have carried him down to 57th Street, across to Madison Avenue, then uptown to East 72nd Street.

He could have walked over to Columbus Avenue and taken a downtown bus.

He could have taken an uptown bus on Amsterdam.

A Broadway bus would have taken him to 42nd Street and eastward.

A Fifth Avenue bus, boarded at Broadway and 72nd Street, would have taken him downtown via Fifth to Greenwich Village.

The Seventh Avenue IRT could have carried him to the Bronx or Brooklyn.

Or a car could have been waiting to take him anywhere.

When I returned to the apartment house precisely seventeen minutes later, there was a different uniformed attendant behind the desk.

'Mr Lord?' I asked.

'That's me,' he said.

I explained who I was and that I was investigating the disappearance of Professor Stonehouse on behalf of the family's attorneys.

'I already told the cops,' he said. 'Everything I know.'

'I realize that,' I said. 'He left the building about 8.45 on the night of January 10th — right?'

'That's right,' he said.

'Wearing hat, overcoat, scarf?'

'Yup.'

'Didn't say anything to you?'

'Not a word.'

'But that wasn't unusual,' I said. 'Was it? I mean, he wasn't exactly what you'd call a sociable man, was he?'

'You can say that again.'

I didn't. I said, 'Mr Lord, do you remember what the weather was like that night?'

He looked at me. He had big, blue, innocent eyes.

'I can't recall,' he said. 'It was a month ago.'

I took a five-dollar bill from my wallet, slid it across the marble-topped desk. A chapped paw appeared and flicked it away.

'Now I remember,' Mr Bert Lord said. 'A bitch of a night. Cold. A freezing rain turning to sleet. I remember thinking he was some kind of an idiot to go out on a night like that.'

'Cold,' I repeated. 'A freezing rain. But he didn't ask you to call a cab?'

'Him?' he said. He laughed scornfully. 'No way. He was afraid I'd expect two bits for turning on the light over the canopy.'

'So he just walked out?'

'Yup.'

'You didn't see which way he headed?'

'Nope. I couldn't care less.'

'Thank you, Mr Lord.'

'My pleasure.'

I went directly home, arrived a little after 5.00 p.m., changed into chino slacks and an old sports jacket, and headed out to eat. And there was Captain Bramwell Shank in his wheelchair in the hallway, facing the staircase. He whirled his chair expertly when he heard my door open.

'What the hell?' he said. 'I been waiting for you to come home, and you been inside all the time!'

'I got home early,' I explained. 'Not so long ago.'

'I been waiting,' he repeated.

'Captain,' I said, 'I'm hungry and I'm going out for something to eat. Can I knock on your door when I come back? In an hour or so?'

'After seven,' he said. 'There's a rerun of Ironsides I've got to watch. After seven o'clock is okay. Nothing good on till nine.'

Woody's on West 23rd was owned and managed by Louella Nitch, a widowed lady whose late husband had left her the restaurant and not much else. She was childless, and I think she sometimes thought of her clientele as her family. Most of the customers were from the neighbourhood and knew each other. It was almost a club. Everyone called her Nitchy.

When I arrived on the blowy Monday night, there were only a dozen drinkers in the front room and six diners in back. But the place was warm, the little lamps on the tables gleamed redly, the juke box was playing an old and rare Bing Crosby record ('Just a Gigolo'), and the place seemed a welcoming haven to me.

Louella Nitch was about forty and the skinniest woman I had ever seen. She was olive-skinned and she wore her hair cut short, hugging her scalp like a black helmet.

Her makeup was liberally applied, with dark eyeshadow and precisely painted lips. She wore hoop earrings, Victorian rings, necklaces of baroque medallions and amulets.

She was seated at the front of the bar when I entered, peering at a sheaf of bills through half-glasses that made her small face seem even smaller: a child's face.

'Josh!' she said. 'Where have you been? You know, I dreamed about you the other night.'

'Thank you,' I said.

I took the stool next to her and ordered a beer. She told me about her dream: she was attending a wedding and I stood waiting for the bride to come down the aisle; I was the groom.

'What about the bride?' I asked, 'Did you get a look at her?'

She shook her head regretfully. 'I woke up before she came in. But I distinctly saw you, Josh. You're not thinking of getting married, are you?'

'Not likely,' I said. 'Who'd have a runt like me?'

She put a hand on my arm. 'You think too much about that, Josh. You're a good-looking man; you've got a steady job. Lots of girls would jump at the chance.'

'Name one,' I said.

'Are you serious?' she said, looking at me closely. 'If you are, I could fix you up right now. I don't mean a one-night stand. I mean a nice, healthy, goodhearted neighbourhood girl who wants to settle down and have kids. How about it?

Should I make a call?'

'Well, uh, not right now, Nitchy,' I said. 'I'm just not ready yet.'

'How old are you — twenty eight?'

'Thirty-two,' I confessed.

'My God,' she said, 'you've only got two years to go.

Statistics prove that if a man isn't married by the time he's thirty-four, chances are he'll never get hitched. You want to turn into one of those old, crotchety bachelors I see mumbling in their beer?'

'Oh, I suppose I'll get married one of these days.'

I think she sensed my discomfort, because she abruptly changed the subject.

'You here for a drink, Josh, or do you want to eat? I'm not pushing, but the chef made a nice beef stew, and if you're going to eat, I'll have some put aside for you before the mob comes in and finishes it.'

'Beef stew sounds great,' I said. 'I'll have it right now.

Can I have it here at the bar?'

'Why not?' she said. 'I'll have Hettie set you up. There's a girl for you, Josh — Hettie.'

'Except she outweighs me by fifty pounds.'

'That's right,' she said, laughing raucously. 'They'd be peeling you off the ceiling!'

The stew was great.

I was putting on my parka when Louella Nitch came hurrying over.

'So soon?' she asked.

'Work to do,' I lied, smiling.

'Listen, Josh,' she said, 'I wasn't just talking; if you want to meet a nice girl, let me know. I mean it.'

'I know you mean it, Nitchy,' I said. 'You're very kind.

But I'll find my own.'

'I hope so,' she said sadly. Then she brightened. 'Sure you will. Remember my dream? Every time you've come in here you've been alone. But one of these days you're going to waltz through that door with a princess on your arm. A princess!'

'That's right,' I said.