Lawrence Sanders - Tenth Commandment

'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.'