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.
