Tenth Commandment (51 page)

Maybelle Hawks had been right; she hadn't known.

'Desertion?' she asked casually, and I noted that the charge of blackmail hadn't stirred her at all.

'Oh yes,' Detective Stilton said. 'Knurr was married about twenty years ago and has never been divorced or legally separated. Mr Bigg, do you have the licence?'

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I plucked it from my briefcase and held it up before Tippi Kipper, making certain it did not leave my hands.

She leaned forward to read it.

'Yes,' she said dully, 'I see.'

Percy leaned back in his chair and folded his hands comfortably on the tabletop.

'Well,' he said, 'the request from the Gary, Indiana, police was circulated, and a copy came across my desk.

Ordinarily I would just file it and forget it. I'm sure you appreciate how busy we are, ma'am, and how an out-of-state request gets a very low priority on our schedule. You can understand that, Mrs Kipper?'

I admired the way he was taking her into his confidence — even confessing a little weakness with a small chuckle.

'Oh sure,' she said, still stunned. 'I can understand that.'

'But the name caught my eyes,' Detective Stilton went on. 'Only because I had interviewed Godfrey Knurr in connection with your husband's unfortunate death. So I knew who he was and where I could find him.'

She didn't say anything. She was pulling herself together, sipping her coffee and lighting another cigarette.

Fussing. Doing anything to keep from looking at us.

'Then,' Stilton continued, speaking gently and almost reflectively, 'before we had a chance to reply to the request from the Gary police, Mr Bigg came to us, representing the attorneys he works for. They wanted us to dig deeper into the case of a missing client of theirs. A Professor Yale Stonehouse. He had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Well, we looked into it and discovered that prior to his disappearance he had been the victim of arsenic poisoning. Mr Bigg?'

I whipped out the chemical analyses and held them up before her eyes. I don't think she even read them, but she was impressed. They were official documents. I began to appreciate Detective Stilton's insistence on such evidence.

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They could be true or false, but printed foolscap carried weight.

'So,' Percy went on, sighing, 'we dug deeper and discovered that the poison had apparently been administered by Glynis Stonehouse, the daughter of the missing man. In addition, we found out that Glynis has been having an affair, is still having an affair, with the Reverend Godfrey Knurr. We do not know for sure, but we suspect that Professor Stonehouse has been murdered and that Knurr is deeply involved. So we are here, Mrs Kipper, to ask you to help by telling us what you can about this man. He's already charged with blackmail and wife desertion. It's only a matter of time before we can bring a first-degree homicide charge against him.'

For a moment I thought we had her. She stood up, circled her chair, started to sit down again. Then she stalked off to a far corner of the room, twisting her hands.

We watched her. She stood, facing a blank wall, then turned and came back. The air vibrated; you could feel it.

I had to admire her. She had been rocked, there was no doubt of that, but she rallied. I thought of the word

'spunk.'

She sat down again, carelessly this time, sprawled. No longer the queen. She dug a last cigarette from the crumpled pack. Percy Stilton was there with his lighter. She inhaled deeply, let the smoke escape lazily from her nostrils.

The silver-blonde hair was damp and tangled. The profile had lost its crispness; the bruise bulged an entire side of her face. The eyes seemed muddy, the thin lips were tightened and drawn. The chin she once carried so high had come down; there was soil in the wrinkles of her neck.

Her body had slackened; the breasts sagged under the peignoir, the thighs had flattened.

Is it possible to suffer from an excess of sympathy? At that moment I felt sorry for her. She was being buffeted 422

cruelly, but was far from surrender.

'This is very, uh, distressing,' she said finally.

'I can imagine,' Detective Stilton said.

I nodded madly.

We stared at her, silent again.

'All right,' she burst out, 'the man was a — a -'

'Close friend of yours?' Percy suggested.

'Not exactly,' she said quickly, already cutting her losses.

'More like a — a -'

'Spiritual adviser?' I said innocently.

She looked at me sharply.

'Yeah,' she said, 'spiritual adviser. For a few years. All right — bad news. Now he turns out to be a bummer. He's wanted. But what's it got to do with me?'

The use of the slang — the 'yeah' and the 'bummer' — was the first indication I had that she was slipping back to her origins. The grand lady was fading.

Stilton, the gentleman, still treated her with soft politesse, leaning towards her with a manner of great solicitude.

'Let me tell you what we've got, Mrs Kipper,' he said.

'Warrants have been issued for Knurr's arrest and the arrest of his paramour, Glynis Stonehouse. In addition, we have search warrants for her home, his home, and his houseboat. Sooner or later we're going to pick him up.'

'So?' she said. 'Pick him up. It's got nothing to do with me.'

Percy sat back, crossed his knees, selected a cigarette from his case and lighted it with slow deliberation.

'I think it does,' he said, looking at her steadily. 'I think it has a great deal to do with you. In addition to the out-of-state charges and complicity in the disappearance of Professor Stonehouse, the Reverend Godfrey Knurr will also be charged with the murder of Martin Reape.'

'Who?' she croaked. 'Never heard of him.'

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'No?' Stilton said. 'Your late husband employed him.'

He motioned towards me. 'Mr Bigg, the cancelled cheques, please.'

I dug into my briefcase, came up with copies of Martin Reape's bills and the cancelled cheques. I showed them to her. She looked at them with smoky eyes.

'Martin Reape was a private detective,' Stilton went on inexorably. 'He was pushed to his death beneath the wheels of a subway train. We have the testimony of two eyewitnesses placing the Reverend Godfrey Knurr at the scene of the homicide at the time it occurred. Reape's widow was also murdered. We have evidence proving Knurr's complicity in that homicide as well.'

He lied so skilfully I could hardly believe it. His lies were 'throwaway' lines, spoken casually, as unemphasized as if he had mentioned 'Chilly out today.' They were absolutely believable. He was stating falsehoods and giving them no importance. He was saying, 'These things exist; everyone knows it.'

Tippi Kipper had gone rigid. She was motionless.

Frozen. I think that if I had flicked her flesh, it would have pinged. She was in an almost catatonic state. Every time she had adjusted to a blow, thought she had countered it, Stilton had jolted her again. He kept after her, feeding her confusion.

'So,' he said, 'on the basis of this and other evidence, the investigation into the circumstances of your husband's death has been reopened, Mrs Kipper. If you doubt that, I suggest you call the New York Police Department and verify what I am saying. We now believe your husband was murdered.'

'Murdered?' she cried. 'Impossible! He left a suicide note.'

Detective Stilton held out a hand. I gave him the notes I had taken from Tippi Kipper's dressing room. Percy held them up before her.

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'Like these?' he asked stonily.

She glanced at them. Her face fell apart.

'Where did you get those?' she yelled.

'I, uh, obtained them,' I said.

She whirled and glared at me.

'You little prick!' she said.

I bowed my head.

'As I said,' Percy went on relentlessly, 'the investigation into your husband's murder has been reopened. We know how it was done: Knurr staying in an empty room overnight, going upstairs, killing the victim, running downstairs, going out the door only to turn around and ring the bell, coming right back in again while all of you were at the body in the backyard.'

'Ridiculous,' she said. 'You'll never prove it.'

'Oh, I think we will,' Stilton said. 'We've filed for a search warrant for these premises. On the basis of what we've got, I think it will be granted. We'll come in here and tear the place apart. The lab boys will vacuum every inch.

They'll find evidence of Godfrey Knurr spending the night in an upstairs room. Dust from his shoes, a partial fingerprint, a thread or crumbs of his pipe tobacco, maybe the weapon he used. Maybe just a hair or two. It's impossible for a man to sleep somewhere overnight without leaving some evidence of his presence. And we'll confiscate that house diary the butler keeps. It shows Godfrey Knurr arrived the afternoon before the day your husband was killed, with no record of his departure. Oh yes, I think we have enough for an indictment, Mrs Kipper. Godfrey Knurr for homicide and you as accomplice. Both of you are going down the tube.'

She made gulping sounds. Stilton continued lecturing.

'And even if we can't make it stick,' he said tonelessly,

'there's the publicity. Tabloids, radio, TV. The fashionable Mrs Tippi Kipper, active in social and charitable affairs, with a prior arrest record for prostitution.'

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I could barely hear. Her head was down. But she was saying, 'Bastard, bastard, b a s t a r d . . . '

Percy Stilton looked around. He spotted the handsome, marble-topped sideboard with a display of decanters. He went over, inspected the offerings, selected a captain's decanter bearing a porcelain label: BRANDY. He brought it back to the dining room table, poured a healthy wallop into the dregs of Tippi Kipper's coffee cup.

'Drink up,' he ordered.

She drained it, holding the cup with trembling hands. He poured in another shot, set the bottle on the table close to her. She dug, fumbling, into her empty cigarette pack.

Percy offered his case, then held his lighter for her again.

He didn't look at me. There was no triumph in his manner.

'Mrs Kipper,' he said, 'I've been as honest with you as I know how. As of this moment there is no warrant out for your arrest. But I think it's time we talked about you, your legal position, and your future.'

'Now comes the crunch,' she said bitterly.

'Correct,' he said equably. 'Now comes the the crunch.

We're going to pick up Godfrey Knurr; you know that.

We're going to lean on him. Do you really think he's going to remain steadfast and true? Come on, Mrs Kipper, you know better than that. He's going to sing his rotten little heart out. Before he's through, the whole thing will be your idea. You seduced him, you planned the murder of your husband; he was just the innocent bystander. You know that's how he's going to play it. That's the kind of man he is.'

She rose abruptly, scraping her chair back on the polished parquet floor. She stood leaning forward, knuckles on the table: a chairman of the board addressing a meeting of hostile executives. But she was not looking at us. She was staring between us, down the length of that gleaming table, the translucent china, the silver candelabrum. Wealth.

Gentility. Security.

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'The first one in line makes the best deal,' Detective Percy Stilton said softly.

Her eyes came back to him slowly.

'Talk business,' she said harshly.

We had her then, I knew, but Perce didn't change expression or vary his polite, solicitous manner.

'This is how I suggest it be done,' he said. 'We didn't come to you; you came to us. You called Mr Bigg at the law firm that represented your late husband, and Mr Bigg then contacted me. But you made the initial move. You volunteered. Mr Bigg and I will so testify.'

He looked at me. I nodded violently.

'What was my motive for calling in the cops?' she asked.

'You wanted to see justice done,' Stilton said.

She shook her head. 'It won't wash,' she said.

'Duress,' I said. 'Physical assault. Knurr threatened you. So you went along with his plan. But now you're afraid for your life.'

Percy looked at me admiringly.

'Yeah,' Tippi Kipper said, 'that's just how it was. He said he'd kill me if I didn't go along. I'll take off my makeup and you can get a colour picture of this.' She pointed at the puffy bruise on her cheek. 'He punched me out,' she said furiously. 'He has a wicked temper, and that's the truth. I was afraid for my life.'

'Beautiful,' Percy said. 'It fits.'

'You think the DA will believe it?' she asked anxiously.

Stilton leaned back, crossed his knees again, lighted another cigarette.

'Of course not,' he said. 'He's no dummy. But he'll go along. You're going to be his star witness, clearing up three homicides and probably four. So he'll play ball. We're giving him something.'

'What do you think I'll draw?' she asked him.

'Bupkes,' he said. 'Time suspended and probation.

You'll walk.'

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'And the prostitution arrest?' she demanded.

'Buried,' Stilton said. 'Nothing to the press. You have my word on that.'

She took a deep breath, looked around that lovely room as if she might never see it again.

' W e l l . . . ' she said, 'I guess we better get the show on the road. Can I get dressed?'

'Of course,' Percy said, 'but I'll have to go upstairs with you. I hope you understand.'

We all moved out into the entrance hall. Chester Heavens, Perdita Schug, and Mrs Neckin were gathered in a tight little group in the corridor to the kitchen. They watched, shocked, as their mistress and the detective entered the elevator. I retrieved my hat and coat and left hurriedly. I didn't want to answer their questions.

Lou, behind the wheel of the blue Plymouth, saw me coming. He leaned across to the passenger's side and rolled down the window.

'How'd it go?' he asked.

'Fine,' I said. 'They'll be coming out soon.'

'Is she going to spill?'

I nodded.

'It figures,' he said. 'That Perce, he's something. I'm glad we're on the same side. If he was on the wrong, he'd end up owning the city.'