Free The Sixth Commandment by Lawrence Sanders Page A

caught the bulge in his hip pocket. This bucko was carrying a sap. All right, I’ll go along with that in an establishment where some of the guests were not too tightly wrapped.
    “Now this is the main floor,” Mary Thorndecker was babbling away, “and in the rear are the dining room, kitchen, social rooms, and so forth. The library, card room, and indoor recreational area. All used by our guests. Their private suites, the medical rooms, the doctors’ offices and nurses’ lounges, and so forth, are in the wings. We’re going up to the second floor. That’s where we live. Our private home. Living room, dining room, our own kitchen, daddy’s study, sitting room … all that.”
    “And the third floor?” I inquired politely.
    “Bedrooms,” she said, frowning, as if someone had uttered a dirty word.
    It was a handsome staircase, curving gracefully, with a gleaming carved oak balustrade. The walls were covered with ivory linen. I expected portraits of ancestors in heavy gilt frames. At least a likeness of the original Mr. Crittenden. But instead, the wall alongside the stairway was hung with paintings of flowers in thin black frames. All kinds of flowers: peonies, roses, poppies, geraniums, lilies … everything.
    The paintings blazed with fervor. I paused to examine an oil of lilac branches in a clear vase.
    “The paintings are beautiful,” I said, and I meant it.
    Mary Thorndecker was a few steps ahead of me, higher than me. She stopped suddenly, whirled to look down.
    “Do you think so?” she said breathlessly. “Do you really think so? They’re mine. I mean I painted them. You do like them?”
    “Magnificent,” I assured her. “Bursting with life.”
    Her long, saturnine face came alive. Cheeks flushed. Thin lips curved in a warm smile. The dark eyes caught fire behind steel-rimmed granny glasses.
    “Thank you,” she said tremulously. “Oh, thank you. Some people …”
    She left that unfinished, and we continued our climb in silence. On the second floor landing, a man stumbled forward, hand outstretched. His expression was wary and hunted.
    “Yes, Mary,” he said automatically. Then: “Samuel Todd? I’m Kenneth Draper, Dr. Thorndecker’s assistant. This is a …”
    He left that sentence unfinished, too. I wondered if that was the conversational style in Crittenden Hall: half-sentences, unfinished thoughts, implied opinions.
    Agatha Binder had said Draper was a “studious, scientific type … supposed to be a whiz.” He might have been. He was also a nervous, jerky type … supposed to be a nut. He shook hands and wouldn’t let go; he giggled inanely when I said, “Happy to meet you,” and he succeeded in walking up my heels when he ushered me into the living room of the Thorndeckers’ private suite.
    I got a quick impression of a high vaulted room richly furnished, lots of brocades and porcelains, a huge marble-framed fireplace with a blaze crackling. And I was ankle-deep in a buttery rug. That’s all I had a chance to catch before Draper was nudging me forward to the two people seated on a tobacco-brown suede couch facing the fireplace.
    Edward Thorndecker lunged to his feet to be introduced. He was 17, and looked 12, a young Botticelli prince. He was all blue eyes and crisp black curls, with a complexion so enameled I could not believe he had ever shaved. The hand he proffered was soft as a girl’s, and about as strong. There was something in his voice that was not quite a lisp. He did not say, “Pleathed to meet you, Mithter Todd,” it was not that obvious, but he did have trouble with his sibilants. It made no difference. He could have been a mute, and still stagger you with his physical beauty.
    His stepmother was beautiful, too, but in a different way. Edward had the beauty of youth; nothing in his smooth, flawless face marked experience or the passage of years. Julie Thorndecker had stronger features, and part of her attraction was due to artifice. If Mary Thorndecker found