Mr Tabatchnick, dusting fish feed from his fingers, looked at me as if he expected the worst.
'And exactly how, Mr Bigg,' he asked in that trumpeting voice, 'were you able to gain entrance to the Kipper household?'
I wished he hadn't asked that question. But I couldn't lie to him, in case Mrs Tippi Kipper called to check on my cover story. So I admitted I had claimed to be engaged in making an inventory of the Kipper estate. I had feared he would be angered to learn of my subterfuge. Instead, he seemed diverted. At least all those folds and jowls of his bloodhound face seemed to lift slightly in a grimace that might have been amusement.
But when he spoke, his voice was stern.
'Mr Bigg,' he said, 'when a complete inventory of the estate is submitted to competent authorities, it must be signed by the attorney of record and, in this case, by the co-executor. Who just happens to be me. Failure to disclose assets, either deliberately or by inadvertence, may constitute a felony. Are you aware of that?'
'I am now, sir,' I said miserably. 'But I didn't intend to make the final, legal inventory. All I wanted to do was — '
'I am quite aware of what you wanted to do,' he said impatiently. 'Get inside the house. It wasn't a bad ploy.
But I suggest that if Mrs Kipper or anyone else questions your activities in future, you state that you are engaged in a preliminary inventory. The final statement, to which I must sign my name, will be compiled by attorneys and appraisers experienced in this kind of work. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'Just one thing, sir. In addition to the Kipper matter, I am also looking into something for Mr Teitelbaum. The disappearance of a client. Professor Yale Stonehouse.'
'I am aware of that,' he said magisterially.
'In addition to my regular duties,' I reminded him. 'So far, I have been able to keep up with my routine assignments. But the Kipper and Stonehouse cases are taking more and more of my time. It would help a great deal if I had the services of a secretary. Someone to handle the typing and filing.'
He stared at me.
'Not necessarily full time,' I added hastily. 'Perhaps a temporary or part-time assistant who could come in a few days a week or a few hours each day. Not a permanent employee. Nothing like that, sir.'
He sighed heavily. 'Mr Bigg,' he said, 'you would be astounded at the inevitability with which part-time or 153
temporary assistants become permanent employees. However, I think your request has some merit. I shall discuss the matter with the other senior partners.'
I was about to ask for a larger office as well, but then thought better of it. I would build my empire slowly.
'Thank you, Mr Tabatchnick,' I said, gathering up my file. 'One final question: I'd like your permission to speak to the two Kipper sons, the ones who are managing the textile company.'
'Why not?' he said.
'And what story do you suggest I give them, sir? As an excuse for talking to them about the death of their father?'
' O h. . ' he said, almost dreamily, 'I'll leave that to you, Mr Bigg. You seem to be doing quite well — so far.'
I called Powell Stonehouse. It was the second time I had tried to reach him that morning. A woman had answered the first call and told me that he was meditating and could not be disturbed. This time I got through to him. I identified myself, explained my interest in the disappearance of his father, and asked when I could see him.
'I don't know what good that would do,' he said in a stony voice. 'I've already told the cops everything I know.'
'Yes, Mr Stonehouse,' I said, 'I'm aware of that. But there's some background information only you can supply. It won't take long.'
'Can't we do it on the phone?' he asked.
'I'd rather not,' I said. 'It concerns some, uh, rather confidential matters.'
'Like what?' he said suspiciously.
He wasn't making it easy for me.
' W e l l. . family relationships that might have a bearing on your father's disappearance. I'd really appreciate talking to you in person, Mr Stonehouse.'
' O h. . all right,' he said grudgingly. 'But I don't want to spend too much time on this.'
The bereaved son.
'It won't take long,' I assured him again. 'Any time at your convenience.'
'Tonight,' he said abruptly. 'I meditate from eight to nine. I'll see you for an hour after nine. Don't arrive before that; it would have a destructive effect.'
'I'll be there after nine,' I promised. 'I have your address. Thank you, Mr Stonehouse.'
'Peace,' he said.
That caught me by surprise. Peace. I thought that had disappeared with the Flower Children of the late 1960s.
My next call was to butler Chester Heavens at the Kipper townhouse. I told him I'd like to come by at 2.00 p.m. to continue my inventory, if that was satisfactory. He said he was certain it would be, that 'mom' had left orders that I was to be admitted whenever I asked.
I went out to lunch at 1.00 p.m., had a hotdog and a mug of root beer at a fast-food joint on Third Avenue.
Then I walked back to Madison and took another look in the window of that dress shop. The green sweater was still there.
I arrived at the Kipper home ahead of time and walked around the block until it was 2.00 p.m. Then I rang the bell at the iron gate. I was carrying my briefcase, with pens, notebook, and rough plans I had drawn from memory of the six townhouse floors.
Chester Heavens let me in, looking like an extremely well-fed mortician. He informed me that Mrs Kipper was in the sitting room with the Reverend Godfrey Knurr and a few other close friends. Mrs Bertha Neckin and Perdita Schug were in the kitchen, preparing tea for this small party.
'You are most welcome to join us there, sah, if you desire a cup of coffee or tea,' the butler said.
I thanked him but said I'd prefer to get my inventory work finished first. Then I'd be happy to join the staff in the kitchen. He bowed gravely and told me to go right
ahead. If I needed any assistance, I could ring him from almost any room in the house.
I had something on my mind. On the afternoon Sol Kipper had plunged to his death, his wife said she had been with him in the fifth-floor master bedroom. Then she had descended to the ground floor. The servants testified to that. Minutes later Kipper's body had thudded on to the tiled patio.
What I was interested in was how Mrs Kipper had gone downstairs. By elevator, I presumed. She was not the type of woman who would walk down five long flights of stairs.
If she descended by elevator, then it should have been on the ground floor at the time of her husband's death.
Unless, of course, Kipper rang the bell, waited for the lift to come up from the ground level, then used it to go up to the sixth-floor terrace.
But that didn't seem likely. I stood inside the master bedroom. I glanced at my watch. I then walked at a steady pace out into the hallway, east to the rear staircase, up the stairs to the sixth floor, into the party room, over to the locked French doors leading to the terrace. I glanced at my watch again. Not quite a minute. That didn't necessarily mean a man determined to kill himself wouldn't wait for a slow elevator. It just proved it was a short walk from the master bedroom, where the suicide note had been found, to the death leap.
I spent the next hour walking about the upper storeys of the townhouse, refining my floor plans and making notes on furniture, rugs, paintings, etc., but mostly trying to familiarize myself with the layout of the building.
I examined the elevator door on each floor. This was not just morbid curiosity on my party; I really felt the operation of the elevator played an important part in the events of that fatal afternoon.
The elevator doors were identical: conventional portals of heavy oak with inset panels. All the panels were solid except for one of glass at eye-level that allowed one to see when the elevator arrived. Each door was locked. It could only be opened when the elevator was stopped at that level.
You then opened the door, swung aside the steel gate, and stepped into the cage.
Fixed to the jamb on the outside of each elevator door was a dial not much bigger than a large wrist watch. The dials were under small domes of glass, and they revolved forward or backward as the elevator ascended or descended. In other words, by consulting the dial on any floor, you could determine the exact location of the elevator and tell whether or not it was in motion.
I didn't know at the time what significance that might have, but I decided to note it for possible future reference.
As I was coming down to the ground floor, I heard the sounds of conversation and laughter coming from the open doors of the sitting room. Perdita Schug rushed by, carrying a tray of those tiny sandwiches. She hardly had time to wink at me. Chester Heavens followed her at a more stately pace, with a small salver holding a single glass of what appeared to be brandy.
I walked towards the kitchen and pantry. I turned at the kitchen door and looked back. From that point I could see the length of the corridor, the elevator door, the doors to the sitting room, and a small section of the entrance hall. I could not see the front door.
I went into the disordered kitchen, then back to the pantry. A lank, angular woman was seated in one of the high-backed chairs, sipping a cup of tea. She was wearing a denim apron over a black uniform with white collar and cuffs.
'Mrs Neckin?' I asked.
She looked up at me with an expression of some distaste.
'Yus?' she said, her voice a piece of chalk held at the wrong angle on a blackboard.
'I'm Joshua Bigg,' I said with my most ingratiating smile. I explained who I was, and what I was doing in the Kipper home. I told her Chester Heavens had invited me to stop in the kitchen before I left.
'He's busy,' she snapped.
'For a cup of tea,' I continued pointedly, staring at her.
'For a nice, friendly cup of tea.'
I could almost see her debating how far she could push her peevishness.
'Sit down then,' she said finally. 'There's a cup, there's the pot.'
'Thank you,' I said. 'You're very kind.'
Irony had no effect. She was too twisted by ill-temper.
'A busy afternoon for you?' I asked pleasantly, sitting down and pouring myself a cup.
'Them!' she said with great disgust.
'It's probably good for Mrs Kipper to entertain again,' I remarked. 'After the tragedy.'
'Oh yus,' she said bitterly. 'Him not cold, and her having parties. And I don't care who you tell I said it.'
'I have no intention of telling anyone,' I assured her. 'I am not a gossip.'
'Oh yus?' she said, looking at me suspiciously.
'You've been with the Kippers a long time, Mrs Neckin?' I asked, sipping my tea. It was good, but not as good as Mrs Dark's at the Stonehouses'.
'I was with Mr Sol all my working days,' she said angrily. 'Long before she came along.' The housekeeper accompanied this last with a jerk of a thumb over her shoulder, in the general direction of the sitting room.
'I understand she was formerly in the theatre,' I mentioned casually.
'The theatre!' she said, pronouncing it thee- ay-ter. 'A cootch dancer was what she was!'
Then, as if she were grateful to me for giving her an opportunity to vent her malice, she rose, went into the kitchen, and brought back a small plate of petit-fours.
And she replenished my cup of tea without my asking.
Mrs Neckin was a rawboned farm woman, all hard lines and sharp angles. The flat-chested figure under the apron and uniform moved in sudden jerks, pulls, twists, and pushes. When she poured the tea, I had the uneasy feeling that she'd much rather be wringing the neck of a chicken.
'He was a saint,' she said, seating herself again. In a chair closer to mine, I noted. 'A better man never lived.
He's in Heaven now, I vow.'
I made a sympathetic noise.
'I'm getting out,' she said in a harsh whisper. 'I won't work for that woman with Mr Sol gone.'
'It's hard to believe,' I said, 'that a man like that would take his own life.'
'Oh yus!' she said scornfully. 'Take his own life! That's what they say.'
I looked at her in bewilderment.
'But he jumped from the terrace,' I said. 'Didn't he?'
'He may have jumped,' she said, pushing herself back from the table. 'I ain't saying he didn't. But what drove him to it? Answer me that: what drove him to it?'
'Her?' I said in a low voice. 'Mrs Kipper?'
'Her?' she said disgustedly. 'Nah. She's got milk in her veins. She's too nicey-nice. It was him.'
'Him?'
'Chester Heavens,' she said, nodding.
' He drove Mr Kipper to suicide?' I said. I heard my own voice falter.
'Sure he did,' Mrs Bertha Neckin said with great satisfaction. 'Put the juju on him. That church of his. They drink human blood there, you know. I figure Chester called up a spell. That's what made Mr Sol jump. He was drove to it.'
I gulped the remainder of my tea. It scalded.
'Why would Chester do a thing like that?' I asked.
She leaned closer, so near that I could smell her anise-scented breath.
'That's easy to see,' she said. 'I know what's going on. I live here. I see.' She made a circle of her left forefinger and thumb, then moved her right forefinger in and out of the ring in a gesture so obscene it sickened me. 'That's what he wants. He's a nig, you know. I don't care how light he is, he's still a nig. And she's a white lady, dirt-cheap though she may be. That's why he put the juju on Mr Sol. Oh yus.'
I pushed back my chair.
'Mrs Neckin,' I said, 'I thank you very much for the refreshment. You've been very kind. And I assure you I won't repeat what you've told me to a living soul.'
In the corridor I stood aside as Perdita Schug came towards the kitchen with a tray of empty highball and wineglasses. She paused, smiling at me.
'Thursday,' she said. 'I'm off on Thursday, I'm in the book. I told you.'
'Yes,' I said, 'so you did.'
'Try it,' she said. 'You'll like it.'
I was still stammering when she moved on to the kitchen.
I had advanced to the entrance hall when Chester Heavens came from the sitting room. He preceded Mrs Tippi Kipper and the Reverend Godfrey Knurr. Through the open doors I could see several ladies sitting in a circle, chattering as they drank tea and nibbled on little things.
'Well, Mr Bigg,' Mrs Kipper said in her cool, amused voice, 'finished for the day?'
'I think so, ma'am,' I said. 'There's still a great deal to be done, but I believe I'm making progress.'
'Did Chester offer you anything?' she asked.
'He did indeed, ma'am. I had a nice cup of tea, for which I am grateful.'
'I wish that was all I had,' Godfrey Knurr said, patting his stomach. 'Tippi, you keep serving those pastries and I'll have to stop coming here.'
'You must keep up your strength,' she murmured, and he laughed.
They were standing side by side as the butler took Knurr's hat and coat, and mine, from the closet. He held a soiled trenchcoat for Knurr, then handed him an Irish tweed hat, one of those bashed models with the brim turned down all the way around.
'Can I give you a lift, Mr Bigg?' Knurr said. 'I've got my car outside.'
His car was an old Volkswagen bug. It had been painted many times.
'Busted heater.' he said as we got in. 'Sorry about that.
But it's not too cold, is it? Maybe we'll go down Fifth and then cut over on 38th. All right?'
'Fine,' I said. Then I was silent awhile as he worked his way into traffic and got over to Fifth Avenue. 'Mrs Kipper seems to be handling it well,' I remarked. 'The death of her husband, I mean.'
'She's making a good recovery,' he said, beating the light and making a left onto Fifth. 'The first few days were hard. Very hard. I thought for a while she might have to be hospitalized. Good Lord, she was practically an eyewitness. She heard him hit, you know.'
'It was fortunate you were there,' I said.
'Well, I wasn't there. I showed up a few minutes later.
What a scene that was! Screaming, shouting, everyone running around. It was a mess. I did what I could. Called the police and so forth.'
'Did you know him, Pastor?'
'Sol Kipper? Knew him well. A beautiful man. Generous. So generous. So interested in the work I'm doing.'
'Uh, do you mind if I ask about that? The work you're doing, I mean. I'm curious.'
'Do I mind?' he said, with that brisk laugh of his. 'I'm 161
delighted to talk about it. Well… Listen, may I call you Joshua?'
'Josh,' I said, 'if you like.'
'I prefer Joshua,' he said. 'It has a nice Old Testament ring. Well, Joshua, about my work. . Did you ever hear of the term "tentmakers"?'
'Tentmakers? Like Omar?'
'Not exactly. More like St Paul. Anyway, the problem is basically a financial one. There are thousands and thousands of Protestant clergymen and not enough churches to go around. So more and more churchmen are turning to secular activities. There's an honourable precedent for it.
St Paul supported his preaching by making tents. That's why we call ourselves tentmakers. You'll find the clergy in business, the arts, working as fund-raisers, writing books, even getting into politics. I'm a tentmaker. I don't have a regular church, although I sometimes fill in for full-time pastors who are on vacation, sick, hung over, or on retreat. Whatever. But mostly I support myself by begging.' He glanced sideways at me, briefly. 'Does that shock you?'
'No,' I said. 'Not really. I seem to recall there's an honourable precedent for that also.'
'Right,' he said approvingly. 'There is. Oh hell, I don't mean I walk the streets like a mendicant, cup in hand. But it amounts to the same thing. You saw me at work today. I meet a lot of wealthy people, usually women, and some not not so wealthy. I put the bite on them. In return I offer counselling or just a sympathetic ear. In nine cases out of ten, all they want is a listener. If they ask for advice, I give it.
Sometimes it's spiritual. More often than not it's practical.
Just good common sense. People with problems are usually too upset to think clearly.'
'That's true, I think.'
'So that's part of my tentmaking activities: spiritual adviser to the wealthy. I assure you they're just as much in need of it as the poor.'
'I believe you,' I said.
'But when they offer a contribution, I accept. Oh boy, do I accept! Not only to keep me in beans, but to finance the other half of my work. It's not a storefront church exactly. Nothing half so fancy as Chester Heavens' Society of the Holy Lamb up in Harlem. It's not a social club either. A combination of both, I guess. It's in Greenwich Village, on Carmine Street. I live in the back. I work with boys from eight to eighteen. The ones in trouble, the ones who have been in trouble, the ones who are going to get in trouble. I give them personal counselling, or a kind of group therapy, and plenty of hard physical exercise in a little gym I've set up in the front of the place. To work off some of their excess energy and violence.'
By this time we were down at 59th Street where the traffic was truly horrendous. Knurr swung the Bug in and out, cutting off other drivers, jamming his way through gaps so narrow that I closed my eyes.
'Where are you from, Joshua?' The sudden question startled me.
'Uh — Iowa,' I said. 'Originally.'
'Really? I was born right next door in Illinois. Peoria.
But I spent most of my life in Indiana, near Chicago, before I came to New York. It's a great city, isn't it?'
'Chicago?' I said.
'New York,' he said. 'It's the only place to be. The centre. You make it here or you never really make it. The contrasts! The wealth and the poverty. The ugliness and the beauty. Don't you feel that?'
'Oh yes,' I said, 'I do.'
'The opportunity,' he said. 'I think that's what impresses me most about New York: the opportunity. A man can go to the stars here.'
'Or to the pits,' I said.
'Oh yes,' he said. 'That, too. Listen, there's something I'd like you to do. Say no, and I'll understand. But I wish you'd visit my place down in Greenwich Village. Look around, see what I'm doing. Trying to do. Would you do that?'
'Of course,' I said instantly. 'I'd like to. Thank you very much.'
'I suspect I'm looking for approval,' he said, glancing at me quickly again with a grin. 'But I'd like you to see what's going on. And, to be absolutely truthful, there are a few little legal problems I hope you might be able to help me with. My lease is for a residential property and I'm running this church or club there, whatever you want to call it. Some good neighbours have filed a complaint.'
I was horrified.
'Mr Knurr,' I said, 'I'm not a lawyer.'
'You're not?' he said, puzzled. 'I thought you worked for Mrs Kipper's attorneys?'
'I do,' I said. 'In a paralegal job. But I'm not an attorney myself. I don't have a law degree.'
'But you're taking the estate inventory?'
'A preliminary inventory,' I said. 'It will have to be verified and authenticated by the attorney of record before the final inventory of assets is submitted.'
'Oh,' he said. 'Sure. Well, the invitation still stands. I'll tell you my problems and maybe you can ask one of the attorneys in your firm and get me some free legal advice.'
'That I'd be glad to do,' I said. 'When's the best time to come?'
'Anytime,' he said. 'No, wait, you better give me a call first. I'm in the book. Mornings would be best.
Afternoons I usually spend with my rich friends uptown.
Listening to their troubles and drinking their booze.'
Then he pulled up outside the TORT offices. He leaned over to examine the building through the car window.
'Beautiful,' he said. 'Converted townhouse. It's hard to 164
believe places like that were once private homes. The wealth! Unreal.'
'But it still exists,' I said. 'The wealth, I mean. Like the Kipper place.'
'Oh yes,' he said, 'it still exists.' He slapped my knee. 'I don't object to it,' he said genially. 'I just want to get in on it.'
'Yes,' I said mournfully. 'Me, too.'
'Listen, Joshua, I was serious about that invitation. The hell with the free legal advice. I like you, I'd like to see more of you. Give me a call and come down and visit me.'
Acknowledging his invitation with a vague promise to contact him, I took my leave and headed to my office.
I was adding somewhat fretfully to my files of reports, wondering if I was getting anywhere, when my phone rang.
It was Percy Stilton; he sounded terse, almost angry.
He asked me if I had come up with anything new, and I told him of my most recent visit to the Kipper townhouse.
He laughed grimly when I related what Mrs Neckin had said about Chester Heavens putting a curse on Sol Kipper.
'I should have warned you about her,' Stilton said. 'A whacko. We get a lot of those. They make sense up to a point, and then they're off into the wild blue yonder. What was your take on Godfrey Knurr?'
'I like him,' I said promptly. 'For a clergyman, he swears like a trooper, but he's very frank and open. He invited me down to Greenwich Village to see what he's doing with juvenile delinquents. He certainly doesn't impress me as a man with anything to hide.'
'That's the feeling I got,' Perce said. 'And that's it?
Nothing else?'
'A silly thing,' I said. 'About the elevator.'
'What about the elevator?'
I explained that if Mrs Kipper had come downstairs on that elevator, it should have been on the ground floor at the time her husband plunged to his death. Unless he had 165
brought the elevator up again to take it from the master bedroom on the fifth floor to the sixth-floor terrace.
'He could have,' Stilton said.
'Sure,' I agreed. 'But I timed the trip from bedroom to terrace. Walking along the hall and up the rear staircase.
Less than a minute.'
I didn't have to spell it out for him.
'I get it,' he said. 'You want me to talk to the first cops on the scene and see if any of them remember where the elevator was when they arrived?'
'Right,' I said gratefully.
'And if it was on the ground floor, that shows that Mrs Kipper brought it down, which proves absolutely nothing.
And if it was on the sixth floor, it only indicates that maybe Sol Kipper took it up to his big jump from the terrace. Which proves absolutely nothing. Zero plus zero equals zero.'
I sighed.
'You're right, Perce. I'm just grabbing at little things.
Anything.'
'I'll ask the cops,' he said. 'It's interesting.'
'I suppose so.'
'Josh, you sound down.'
'Not down, exactly, but bewildered.'
'Beginning to think Sol Kipper really was a suicide?'
'I don't know. . ' I said slowly. 'Beginning to have some doubts about my fine theories, I guess.'
'Don't,' he said.
'What?'
'Don't have any doubts. I told you I thought someone was jerking us around. Remember? Now I'm sure of it.
Early this morning the harbour cops pulled a floater out of the North River. Around 34th Street. A female Caucasian, about fifty years old or so. She hadn't been in the water long. Twelve hours at most.'
'Perce,' I said, ' not. .? '
'Oh yeah,' he said tonelessly. 'Mrs Blanche Reape.
Positive ID from her prints. She had a sheet. Boosting and an old prostitution rap. No doubt about it. Marty's widow.'
I was silent, remembering the brash, earthy woman in The Dirty Shame saloon, buying drinks for everyone.
'Josh?' Detective Stilton demanded. 'You there?'
'I'm here.'
'Official verdict is death by drowning. But a very high alcoholic content in the blood. Fell in the river while drunk. That's how it's going on the books. You believe it?'
'No,' I said.
'I don't either,' he said. 'Sol Kipper falls down from a sixth-floor terrace. Marty Reape falls in front of a subway train. His widow falls in the river. This sucks.'
'Yes,' I said faintly.
'What?' he said. 'I can't hear you.'
'Yes,' I said, louder, 'I agree.'
'You bet your damp white fanetta!' he said furiously.
Then suddenly he was shouting, almost gargling on his bile. 'I don't like to be messed with,' he yelled. 'Some sharp, bright son of a bitch is messing me up. I don't like that. No way do I like that!'
'Perce,' I said, 'please. Calm down.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'Yes. I mean. Yes. I'm calm now. All cool.'
'You think the three of t h e m. .? '
'Oh yes,' he said. 'Why not? Kipper was the first. Then Marty, because he had the proof. Then the widow lady. It fits. Someone paid her for the files. The evidence Marty had on the Kipper estate. Then she got greedy and put the bite on for more. Goodbye, Blanche.'
'Someone would do that? Kill three people?'
'Sure,' he said. 'It's easy. The first goes down so slick, and so smooth, and so nice. Then they can do no wrong.
They own the world. Why I'm telling you all this, Josh, is 167
to let you know you're not wasting your time on this Kipper thing. I can't open it up again with what we've got; you'll have to carry the ball. I just wanted you to know I'm here, and ready, willing, and able.'
'Thank you, Perce.'
'Keep in touch, old buddy,' he said. 'I'll check on that elevator thing for you. That cocksucker!' he cried vindictively. 'We'll fry his ass!'
Powell Stonehouse lived on Jones Street, just off Bleecker. It was not a prepossessing building: a three-storey loft structure of worn red brick with a crumbling cornice and a bent and rusted iron railing around the areaway. I arrived a few minutes after 9.00 p.m., rang a bell marked Chard-Stonehouse, and was buzzed in almost immediately. I climbed to the top floor.
I was greeted at the door of the loft by a young woman, very dark, slender, of medium height. I stated my name.
She introduced herself as Wanda Chard, in a whisper so low that I wasn't certain I had heard right, and asked her to repeat it.
She ushered me into the one enormous room that was apparently the entire apartment, save for a small bathroom and smaller kitchenette. There was a platform bed: a slab of foam rubber on a wide plywood door raised from the floor on cinder blocks. There were pillows scattered everywhere: cushions of all sizes, shapes and colours. But no chairs, couches, tables. I assumed the residents ate off the floor and, I supposed, reclined on cushions or the bed to relax.
The room was open, spare, and empty. A choice had obviously been made to abjure things. No radio. No TV set.
No books. One dim lamp. There were no decorations or bric-a-brac. There was one chest of drawers, painted white, and one doorless closet hung with a few garments, male and female. There was almost nothing to look at other than Ms Chard.
She took my coat and hat, laid them on the bed, then gestured towards a clutch of pillows. Obediently I folded my legs and sank into a semireclining position. Wanda Chard crossed her legs and sat on the bare floor, facing me.
'Powell will be out in a minute,' she said.
'Thank you,' I said.
'He's in the bathroom,' she said.
There seemed nothing to reply to that, so I remained silent. I watched as she fitted a long crimson cigarette to a yellowed ivory holder. I began to struggle to my feet, fumbling for a match, but she waved me back.
'I'm not going to smoke it,' she said. 'Not right now.
Would you like one?'
'Thank you, no.'
She stared at me.
'Does it bother you that you're very small?' she asked in a deep, husky voice that seemed all murmur.
Perhaps I should have bridled at the impertinence of the question; after all, we had just met. But I had the feeling that she was genuinely interested.
'Yes, it bothers me,' I said. 'Frequently.'
She nodded.
'I'm hard of hearing, you know,' she said. 'Practically deaf. I'm reading your lips.'
I looked at her in astonishment.
'You're not!' I said.
'Oh yes. Say a sentence without making a sound. Just mouth the words.'
I made my mouth say, 'How are you tonight?' without actually speaking; just moving my lips.
'How are you tonight?' she said.
'But that's marvellous!' I said. 'How long did it take you to learn?'
'All my life,' she said. 'It's easy when people face me directly, as you are. When they face away, or even to the side, I am lost. In a crowded, noisy restaurant, I can understand conversations taking place across the room.'
'That must be amusing.'
'Sometimes,' she said. 'Sometimes it is terrible.
Frightening. The things people say when they think no one can overhear. Most people I meet aren't even aware that I'm deaf. The reason I'm telling you is because I thought you might be bothered by your size.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I understand. Thank you.'
'We are all one,' she said sombrely, 'in our weakness.'
Her hair was jet black, glossy, and fell to her waist in back. It was parted in the middle and draped about her face in curved wings that formed a dark Gothic arch. The waves almost obscured her pale features. From the shadows, two luminous eyes glowed forth. I had an impression of no makeup, pointy chin, and thin, bloodless lips.
She was wearing a kimono of garishly printed silk, all poppies and parrots. When she folded down on to the bare floor, I had noted her feline movements, the softness. I did not know if she was naked beneath the robe, but I was conscious of something lubricious in the way her body turned. There was a faint whisper there: silk on flesh. Her feet were bare, toenails painted a frosted silver. She wore a slave bracelet about her left ankle: a chain of surprisingly heavy links. There was a tattoo on her right instep: a small blue butterfly.
'What do you do, Miss Chard?' I asked her.
'Do?'
'I mean, do you work?'
'Yes,' she said. 'In a medical laboratory. I'm a research assistant.'
'That's very interesting,' I said, wondering what on earth Powell Stonehouse could be doing in the bathroom for such a long time.
As if I had asked the question aloud, the bathroom door 170
opened and he came towards us in a rapid, shambling walk. Once again I tried to struggle to my feet from my cocoon of pillows, but he held a palm out, waving me down. It was almost like a benediction.
'Would you like an orange?' he asked me.
'An orange? Oh no. Thank you.'
'Wanda?'
She shook her head, long hair swinging across her face.
But she held up the crimson cigarette in the ivory holder.
He found a packet of matches on the dresser, bent over, lighted her cigarette. I smelled the odour: more incense than smoke. Then he went to the kitchenette and came back with a Mandarin orange. He sat on the bare floor next to her, facing me. He folded down with no apparent physical effort. He began to peel his orange, looking at me, blinking.
'What's all this about?' he said.
Once again I explained that I had been assigned by his family's attorneys to investigate the disappearance of his father. I realized, I said, that I was going over ground already covered by police officers, but I hoped he would be patient and tell me in his own words exactly what had happened the night of January 10th.
I thought then that he glanced swiftly at Wanda Chard.
If a signal passed between them, I didn't catch it. But he began relating the events of the evening his father had disappeared, pausing only to pop a segment of orange into his mouth, chomp it to a pulp, and swallow it down.
His account differed in no significant detail from what I had already learnt from his mother and sister. I made a pretence of jotting notes, but there was really nothing to jot.
'Mr Stonehouse,' I said, when he had finished, 'do you think your father's mood and conduct that night were normal?'
'Normal for him.'
'Nothing in what he did or said that gave you any hint he might be worried or under unusual pressure? That he might be contemplating deserting his family of his own free will?'
'No. Nothing like that.'
'Do you know of anyone who might have, uh, harboured resentment against your father? Disliked him? Even hated him?'
Again I caught that rapid shifting of his eyes sideways to Wanda Chard, as if consulting her.
'I can think of a dozen people,' he said. 'A hundred people. Who resented him or disliked him or hated him.'
Then, with a small laugh that was half-cough, he added,
'Including me.'
'What exactly was your relationship with your father, Mr Stonehouse?'
'Now look here,' he said, bristling. 'You said on the phone that you wanted to discuss "family relationships."
What has that got to do with his disappearance?'
I leaned forward from the waist, as far as I was able in my semirecumbent position. I think I appeared earnest, sincere, concerned.
'Mr Stonehouse,' I said, 'I never knew your father. I have seen photographs of him and I have a physical description from your mother and sister. But I am trying to understand the man himself. Who and what he was. His feelings for those closest to him. In hopes that by learning the man, knowing him better, I may be able to get some lead on what happened to him. I have absolutely no suspicions about anyone, let alone accusing anyone of anything. I'm just trying to learn. Anything you can tell me may be of value.'
This time the consultation with Wanda Chard was obvious, with no attempt at concealment. He turned to look at her. Their eyes locked. She nodded once.
'Tell him,' she said.
He began to speak. I didn't take notes. I knew I would not forget what he said.
He tried very hard to keep his voice controlled. Unsuccessfully. He alternated between blatant hostility and a shy diffidence, punctuated with those small, half-cough laughs. Sometimes his voice broke into a squeak of fury.
His gestures were jerky. He glanced frequently sideways at his companion, then glared fiercely at me again. He was not wild, exactly, but there was an incoherence in him. He didn't come together.
He had his father's thin face and angular frame, the harsh angles softened by youth. It was more a face of clean slants, with a wispy blond moustache and a hopeful beard scant enough so that a mild chin showed. He was totally bald, completely, the skull shaved. Perhaps that was what he had been doing in the bathroom. In any event, that smooth pate caught the dim light and gave it back palely.
Big ears, floppy as slices of veal, hung from his naked skull.
He had tortoise-shell eyes, a hawkish nose, a girl's tender lips. A vulnerable look. Everything in his face seemed a-tremble, as if expecting a hurt. As he spoke, his grimy fingers were everywhere: smoothing the moustache, tugging the poor beard, pulling at his meaty ears, caressing his nude dome frantically. He was wearing a belted robe of unbleached muslin. The belt was a rope. And there was a cowl hanging down his back. A monk's robe. His feet were bare and soiled. Those busy fingers plucked at his toes, and after a while I couldn't watch his eyes but could only follow those fluttering hands, thinking they might be enchained birds that would eventually free themselves from his wrists and go whirling off.
The story he told was not an original, but no less affecting for t h a t. .
He had never been able to satisfy his father. Never. All he remembered of his boyhood was mean and sour criti-173
cism. His mother and sister tried to act as buffers, but he took most of his father's spleen. His school marks were unacceptable; he was not active enough in sports; his table manners were slovenly.
'Even the way I stood!' Powell Stonehouse shouted at me. 'He didn't even like the way I walked!'
It never diminished, this constant litany of complaint, in fact, as Powell grew older, it increased. His father simply hated him. There was no other explanation for his spite; his father hated him and wished him gone. He was convinced of that.
At this point in his recital, I feared he might be close to tears, and I was relieved to see Wanda Chard reach out to imprison one of those wildly fluttering hands and grasp it tightly.
His sister, Glynis, had always been his father's favourite, Powell continued. He understood that in most normal families the father dotes on the daughter, the mother on the son. But the Stonehouses were no normal family. The father's ill-temper drove friends from their house, made a half-mad alcoholic of his wife, forced his daughter to a solitary life away from home.
'I would have gone nuts,' Powell Stonehouse said furiously. 'I was going nuts. Until I found Wanda.'
'And Zen,' she murmured.
'Yes,' he said, 'and Zen. Now, slowly through instinct and meditation, I am becoming one. Mr Bigg, I must speak the truth: what I feel. I don't care if you never find my father. I think I'm better off without him. And my sister is, too. And my mother. And the world. You must see, you must understand, that I have this enormous hate. I'm trying to rid myself of it.'
'Hate is a poison,' Wanda Chard said.
'Yes,' he said, nodding violently, 'hate is a poison and I'm trying very hard to flush it from my mind and from my soul. But all those years, those cold, brutal scenes, those screaming arguments… it's going to take time. I know that: it's going to take a long, long time. But I'm better now. Better than I was.'
'Oh, forgive him,' Wanda Chard said softly.
'No, no, no,' he said, still fuming. 'Never. I can never forgive him for what he did to me. But maybe, someday, with luck, I can forget him. That's all I want.'
I was silent, giving his venom a chance to cool. And also giving me a chance to ponder what I had just heard. He had made no effort to conceal his hostility towards his father. Was that an honest expression of the way he felt — or was it calculated? That is, did he think to throw me off by indignation openly displayed?
'Doubt everyone,' Roscoe Dollworth had said. 'Suspect everyone.'
He had also told me something else. He said the only thing harder than getting the truth was asking the right questions. 'No one's going to volunteer nothing! '
Dollworth said that sometimes the investigator had to flounder all over the place, striking out in all directions, asking all kinds of extraneous questions in hopes that one of them might uncover an angle never before considered.
'Catching flies,' he called it.
I felt it was time to 'catch flies.'
'Your sister was your father's favourite?' I asked.
He nodded.
'How did he feel towards your mother?'
'Tolerated her.'
'How often did you dine at your father's home? I mean after you moved out?'
'Twice a week maybe, on an average.'
'Do you know what your father's illness was? Last year when he was sick?'
'The flu, Mother said. Or a virus.'
'Do you know any of your sister's friends?'
'Not really. Not recently. She goes her own way.'
'But she goes out a lot?'
'Yes. Frequently.'
'Where?'
'To the theatre, I guess. Movies. Ballet. Ask her.'
'She's a beautiful woman. Why hasn't she married?'
'No one was ever good enough for Father.'
'She's of age. She can do as she likes.'
'Yes,' Wanda Chard said, 'I've wondered about that.'
'She wouldn't leave my mother,' Powell said. 'She's devoted to my mother.'
'But not to your father?'
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 behaviour?'
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.
178
'I don't know.' he said in a low voice.
'Maybe,' Wanda Chard murmured.