Lawrence Sanders - Tenth Commandment

His eyes were closed, his respiration shallow but steady.

I thought his face was losing some of that greenish hue that had frightened me. I decided not to call the police or paramedics. I took off my hat and coat and placed them gingerly on a club chair with a brown corduroy slipcover discoloured with an enormous red stain on the seat cushion. Wine or blood.

I wandered back into the house. I found a small kitchen from which most of the odours seemed to be emanating.

And no wonder; it was a swamp. I picked a soiled dish-towel off the floor and held it under the cold water tap in the scummed sink. Pipes knocked, the water ran rusty, then cleared, and I soaked the towel, wrung it out, soaked it again, wrung it out again.

I carried it back to the parlour. I pulled a straight chair alongside the chesterfield. I sat down and bent over the Reverend Stokes. I wiped his face gently with the dampened towel. His eyes opened suddenly. He stared at me dazedly. His eyes were spoiled milk, curdled and cloudy.

A clawed hand came up and pushed the towel aside. I 395

folded it and laid it across his parchment brow. He let me do that and let the towel remain.

'I fainted?' he said in a wispy voice.

'Something like that,' I said, nodding. 'You started to go down. I caught you and brought you in here.'

'In the study,' he whispered, 'across the hall, a bottle of whisky, a half-filled glass. Bring them in here.'

I looked at him, troubled.

'Please,' he breathed.

I went into the study, a shadowed chamber littered with books, journals, magazines: none of them new. The room was dominated by a large walnut desk topped with scarred and ripped maroon leather. The whisky and glass were on the desk. I took them and started out.

On a small marble-topped smoking stand near the door was a white plaster replica of Michelangelo's 'David.' It was the only clean, shining, lovely object I had seen in that decaying house. I had seen nothing of a religious nature — no pictures, paintings, icons, statuary, crucifixes, etc.

I brought him the whisky. He raised a trembly hand and I held the glass to his lips. He gulped greedily and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened his eyes again, flung the towel from his brow on to the floor. He took the glass from my hand. Our fingers touched. His skin had the chill of death.

'There's another glass,' he said. 'In the kitchen.'

His voice was stronger but it still creaked. It had an unused sound: harsh and croaky.

'Thank you, no,' I said. 'It's a little early for me.'

'Is it?' he said without interest.

I sat down in the straight chair again and watched him finish the tumbler of whisky. He filled it again from the bottle on the floor. I didn't recognize the label. It looked like a cheap blend.

'You told me your name?' he asked.

'Yes, sir. Joshua Bigg.'

'Now I remember. Joshua Bigg. I don't recognize you, Mr Bigg. Where are you from?'

'New York City, sir.'

'New York,' he repeated, and then with a pathetic attempt at gaiety, he said, 'East Side, West Side, all around the town.'

He tried to smile at me. When his thin, whitish lips parted, I could see his stained dentures. His gums seemed to have shrunk, for the false teeth fitted loosely and he had to clench his jaws frequently to jam them back into place.

It was like a painted grimace.

'I was in New York once,' he said dreamily. 'Years and years ago. I went to the theatre. A musical play. What could it have been? I'll remember in a moment.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And what brings you to our fair city, Mr Bigg?'

I was afraid of saying the name again. I feared he might have the same reaction. But I had to try it.

'I wanted to talk to you about the Reverend Godfrey Knurr, Pastor,' I said softly.

His eyes closed again. 'Godfrey Knurr?' Stokes repeated. 'No, I can't recall the name. My m e m o r y. . '

I wasn't going to let him get away with that.

'It's odd you shouldn't remember,' I said. 'I spoke to his sister, Miss Goldie Knurr, and she told me you helped him get into the seminary, that you helped him in so many ways. And I saw a photograph of you with young Godfrey.'

Suddenly he was crying. It was awful. Cloudy tears slid from those milky eyes. They slipped sideways into his sunken temples, then into his feathered hair.

'Is he dead?' he gasped.

First Goldie Knurr and now the Reverend Stokes. Was the question asked hopefully? Did they wish him dead?

I turned my eyes away, not wanting to sit there and watch this shattered man weep. After a while I heard him 397

snuffle a few times and take a gulp from the glass he held on his thin chest. Then I looked at him again.

'No, sir,' I said, 'he is not dead. But he's in trouble, deep trouble. I represent a legal firm. A client intends to bring very serious charges against the Reverend Knurr. I am here to make a preliminary investigation …'

My voice trailed away; he wasn't listening to me. His lips were moving and I leaned close to hear what he was saying.

'Evil,' the Reverend Ludwig Stokes was breathing.

'Evil, evil, evil, evil. . '

I sat back. It seemed a hopeless task to attempt to elicit information from this old man. Goldie Knurr had been right; he was fuddled.

But then he spoke clearly and intelligibly.

'Do you know him?' he asked. 'Have you seen him?'

'Yes, sir,' I said. 'I spoke to him yesterday. He seems to be in good health. He has a beard now. He runs a kind of social club in Greenwich Village for poor boys and he also counsels individual, uh, dependants. Mostly wealthy women.'

His face twisted and he clenched his jaw to press his dentures back into place. A thin rivulet of whisky ran from the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away slowly with the back of one hand.

'Wealthy women,' he repeated, his voice dull. 'Yes, yes, that would be Godfrey.'

'Reverend Stokes,' I said, 'I'm curious as to why Knurr selected the ministry as his career. I can find nothing in his boyhood that indicates any great religiosity.' I paused, stared at him. 'Was it to avoid the draft?' I asked bluntly.

'Partly that,' he said in a low voice. 'If his family had had the money, he would have wished to go to a fashionable eastern college. That was his preference, but it was impossible. Even I didn't have that kind of money.'

'He asked for it? From you?'

He didn't answer.

'I understand he had good marks in high school,' I went on. 'Perhaps he could have obtained a scholarship, worked to help support himself?'

'It wasn't his way,' he said.

'Then he could have gone to a low-tuition, state-supported college. Why the ministry?'

'Opportunity,' the Reverend Stokes said without expression.

'Opportunity?' I echoed. 'To save souls? I can't believe that of Godfrey Knurr. And surely not the monetary rewards of being an ordained minister.'

'Opportunity,' he repeated stubbornly. 'That's how he saw it.'

I thought about that, trying to see it as a young ambitious Godfrey Knurr had.

'Wealthy parishioners?' I guessed. 'Particularly wealthy female parishioners? Maybe widows and divorcees? Was that how his mind worked?'

Again he didn't answer. He emptied the bottle into his tumbler and drained it in two gulps.

'There's another in the kitchen,' he told me. 'In the cupboard under the sink.'

I found the bottle. I also found a reasonably clean glass for myself and rinsed it several times, scrubbing the inside with my fingers. I brought bottle and glass back to the parlour, sat down again, and poured him half a tumbler and myself a small dollop.

'Your health, sir,' I said, raising my glass. I barely wet my lips.

'He was a handsome boy?' I asked, coughing. 'Godfrey Knurr?'

He made a sound.

'Yes,' he said in his creaky voice, 'very handsome. And strong. A beautiful boy. Physically.'