Monkey Puzzle Read online

  The smaller paintings on the walls were delicate and lovely in their way – but overshadowed by the four large modern oils that hung, one to each wall. All by the same artist, and painted by a hand of true power. Stryker didn’t have to know much about modern art to know that. What was equally obvious was that they had all been painted for this room and no other. The colours toned with their surroundings, the proportions were exactly right – and the subjects would have made them unsaleable to the general public. The subjects were men, their activities detailed precisely, the erotic intention totally clear.

  ‘Good God,’ murmured Stewart, as Neilson snickered and muttered something to Pinsky, who shifted from one foot to the other and began examining the rugs. Stryker silenced Neilson with a glance, then looked at Stewart. The little man was obviously embarrassed. ‘I had no idea . . . that is to say, one guessed, but . . .’ He cleared his throat, regained his calm. When he spoke again there was a wry, humorous edge to his voice. ‘No doubt his neighbours waited in vain for an invitation to tea.’

  Stryker grinned. ‘You didn’t know him well?’

  Stewart shook his head. ‘No, I’m glad to say, I did not. We’ve handled his account for years, of course, but it was not a social relationship. My wife would love this.’

  ‘Your wife?’ Toscarelli exclaimed, deeply shocked.

  Stewart smiled. ‘She’s a psychiatrist.’ He unbuttoned his coat and looked around. ‘Well, where do you want to begin, Lieutenant? And what, exactly, are you hoping to find?’

  ‘Anything that might give us a lead to his killer,’ Stryker said. ‘For example, where did he get his money?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easily answered,’ Stewart said. ‘He inherited it.’

  Stryker stared at him, having expected anything but that. ‘But – I was told he was illegitimate. Brought up in an orphanage.’

  ‘So he was. But the man who fathered him eventually acknowledged the relationship in his will. He had no other living child to leave his money to, so Adamson got it all. I’ve always thought it was in the nature of a guilt payment. The old man had never acknowledged Adamson in his lifetime. It came as a complete shock to Aiken when we got in touch with him. He’d had a difficult and rather unpleasant time of it until the age of twenty or so, and I think it had made him very bitter. At first he even considered rejecting the inheritance – until he learned the full amount.’

  ‘If there were no other children . . .’

  ‘Oh, there had been other children, but they had died before the father. Rather tragically, in their teens. A boating accident. Wife went a little crazy, killed herself a few months later.’

  Something stirred in the back of Stryker’s mind. ‘You don’t mean Adamson was – Ezra Craddick’s son?’

  Stewart looked at him and his mouth twitched, as if it wanted to smile. ‘I said no such thing, Lieutenant, you jumped to that conclusion on your own.’

  Stryker considered this. Ezra Craddick had been a local millionaire who’d hit big with some early automative patents and parlayed the income into a fortune with shrewd investments. He’d been a pillar of local Catholic society, a man known for his great rectitude and high moral stan-dards.

  ‘Why didn’t Adamson change his name when he found out?’

  ‘It was a condition of the will that he did not, and that the relationship was, as far as possible, kept secret.’

  ‘His mother?’

  ‘Had died when he was a year old. Syphilis, contracted in a professional capacity. The support of her – patron – ended with her death, and the boy was placed in public care.’

  ‘Until inheriting a fortune in his twenties,’ Stryker said. ‘No wonder he was bitter. But instead of going wild with his inheritance, he became a Professor of English. Why?’

  Stewart raised his hands and shrugged. ‘He did raise a little discreet hell for a few years. Then he settled down. I believe he said he’d found frivolity and idleness boring. I don’t think he was fitted for any other occupation, temperamentally. He certainly had no business sense whatsoever – we’ve handled all his investments for him since he inherited.’

  And done well out of it, no doubt, Stryker thought, with-out rancour. Stewart seemed pretty straight. For a lawyer. ‘What happens to the money now? Who inherits?’

  ‘Quite a few people, as a matter of fact. He was by way of being a will-freak. Always cutting people out and putting others in. It hasn’t been through probate, but as there are no surviving relatives, I thought there would be no objection to my providing you with a list of cui bono.’ He reached into his inside pocket and drew out a folded paper. ‘This is the current – the final list. Frankly, I have no way of knowing what criteria he used in choosing them. Nor do I know whether he told them about it or not. He was a secretive man. But he might have – he was the sort who liked to manipulate people.’

  ‘So we’ve been told,’ Stryker said, taking the paper and opening it. As his eyes went down the list, he became very still.

  There were about twenty names on the list – with a note beside each indicating the amount they were to receive. Among the names that were not known to him were some that were – including one that he’d seen a few hours earlier. Richard Wayland was to inherit fifty thousand dollars.

  Frank Heath, Chris Underhill, Kate Trevorne, and Lucy Grey-Jenner were to get ten thousand each.

  ‘Is this all his estate?’ Stryker asked. The bequests listed added up to nearly half a million.

  ‘Oh, no, not at all,’ Stewart said. ‘The balance goes to various things. Orphanages, hospitals, the University. I’ve brought you a copy of the will, too. It’s a very – ’ He hesitated as he drew it out of his inside pocket. ‘It’s a very personal document. Not at all the usual thing. Some of the comments in it are very odd, indeed, a few virtually libellous. I tried many times to get him to alter some of the passages, but he was adamant. I always hoped he would mellow in time – but there wasn’t enough time, unfortunately.’

  ‘How large is the estate?’

  ‘Oh, once all the assets are realised, I should say somewhere in the region of three million,’ Stewart estimated. ‘He never used the capital, really, lived on the interest for the most part. It simply grew – like Topsy.’ He grinned, suddenly.

  ‘I can see why you took the trouble to come yourself,’ Stryker said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Stewart nodded, taking no offence. For all his dapper elegance he seemed a very practical man. ‘The firm has and shall do nicely out of it. My problem will be to administer the will without offending anyone. With his being murdered like this the Press will be sniffing around like hounds. Especially when they find out how wealthy he really was. Aiken has even managed to be awkward in death – how like him.’

  ‘Fifty thousand is a damn good motive for murder,’ Neilson said, peering over Stryker’s shoulder.

  ‘So is ten,’ Pinsky observed. ‘Ten isn’t bad.’

  ‘That’s why I thought you should see it,’ Stewart murmured.

  ‘Look at this,’ Toscarelli said. He had taken the will from Stewart and begun to scan it. He held it out to Stryker, pointing with a huge finger.

  ‘I see Dan Stark is in the will, too, but you didn’t list him,’ Stryker said to Stewart. ‘A hundred thousand – is that right?’

  Stewart shook his head. ‘He’s not a direct beneficiary, he doesn’t inherit himself, but on behalf of the English Department of the University. A Special Fund to be used at his discretion for the improvement of the department. He did know about that, because Aiken had discussed it with him and we’d exchanged several letters on the subject. Stark could either use it to establish scholarships or lure good teaching talent – whichever seemed appropriate. It was conditional on Stark being Chairman – any change there and the money reverted to the estate.’

  ‘Pinchman, too,’ Toscarelli said, moving his finger down.

  ‘
Edward Pinchman, yes – but again, not directly benefiting. Most extraordinary, that. An endowment on Pinchman’s behalf to the Cattlemen’s Association to pay the medical expenses of any member injured sufficiently to require amputation.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Neilson said.

  ‘No, I am not. Aiken seemed to find it very amusing. Said Pinchman didn’t need the money himself- had plenty. That’s what I meant about his will. If you look further down you’ll see there’s a bequest to a certain Mary Jeske for the “purchase of medical equipment”. I happen to know – ’

  ‘She runs a whorehouse down on Clary Street,’ Pinsky said, in his slow, ruminative way. ‘Kinky stuff.’

  ‘So I hear,’ Stewart said, drily. ‘Then there’s the Maud Fineman Scholarship to be established at the Horticultural College for the benefit of “promising young male gardeners”. You see what I mean about its being a personal document. There are dozens of bequests like that – all open to a number of interpretations. Mostly small, but all – rather unpleasant.’

  ‘Legal?’

  ‘Oh, yes, entirely legal. I drew the document myself.’ Stewart made a face. ‘God help me when it comes to administering it. He specified a public reading – ’ He made a despairing noise and shook himself. ‘Well, where do you want to begin?’

  Stryker, bemused by these revelations of Adamson’s twisted personality, deployed his men. They went systematically through the sitting-room, and library, looking for address books, diaries, letters – anything that would give them leads into the private life which Adamson had kept so scrupulously separate from his professional one.

  They found letters, all right, and a sheaf of poems written to someone called ‘Apollo Emergent’ that made even Stewart blush.

  Pinsky found the card file. A catalogue of ‘friends’ (or conquests), describing each as to appearance, performance, and duration of relationship. Most seemed to have been ‘paid off’ with gifts or money after a night or a week, very few lasted longer. The file went back for about five years – presumably he culled it annually. Four seemed to have meant something to him – and all four of these names were among the direct beneficiaries of his will. One was the artist who had painted the pictures in the living-room. None were connected with the University.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Stewart murmured, shaking his head. ‘How could he have had the time for it all? The energy? He taught full-time, he published articles regularly . . .’

  ‘He never had to take his wife shopping or change any diapers,’ Pinsky observed. ‘Or take out the garbage, even.’

  ‘Let’s try the bedroom,’ Stryker suggested.

  All the beautiful things in Adamson’s home could not ameliorate the atmosphere which was building up as they turned over papers and photographs revealing his private obsessions. Stryker felt almost sick to his stomach. He’d worked for Vice for a while on his way up, and was supposedly immune to such things. He was enthusiastically heterosexual himself, but counted several homosexuals among his acquaintances and one as a good friend. None of them were anything like Adamson had been. In all his experience, he couldn’t recall having encountered such a person. Underlying everything Adamson had been, done, or said was a feeling of resentment and hate that was sour, bitter and frightening.

  He found himself feeling almost glad the man was dead.

  That’s very unprofessional, he told himself. Stop it.

  The bedroom was, in its way, the worst of all. It was a monument to Adamson’s ego. It was difficult to imagine him doing anything as mundane as sleeping there, or suffering from the ‘flu, or belching or scratching. The ceiling was mirrored, as were portions of each wall. Louvered mahogany doors accounted for the rest of the wall space. These slid back silently to reveal, in turn, closets, an entertainment centre with video cassettes neatly labelled and racked, a bar with refrigerator, and the entrance to a luxurious bathroom that connected with another, smaller and more austere guest bedroom.

  The only furniture in the room was the king-sized bed overlaid with a fur spread in shades of red-brown.

  As Neilson and Pinsky went gingerly through clothing and drawers, Stryker looked around, wondering what was missing. Then it hit him – no windows. He went to the mirrors at the head of the bed and examined them closely. After a moment he found an indentation and swung one panel back to reveal a window beside the bed, uncurtained and dusty. If this mirror swung back, did the others?

  They did. And behind the sixth one, he found the safe. Stewart, catching sight of it, straightened up. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I wondered where that was.’

  Stryker looked at the steel door. ‘Do you have the combination by any chance?’

  ‘Not by chance – Aiken gave me the combination for just such an event. He kept what he called “loose change” in it. I’ll need you to witness any cash for audit purposes.’ He sighed and turned the knob, referring to a small notebook he’d produced. ‘I find all this very distasteful . . . I suppose you’re used to it.’ As he swung the door open, he turned, ‘I didn’t mean that in a derogatory way, I meant . . .’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ Stryker said, quietly.

  Stewart flushed slightly, and opened the safe. It contained two small grey steel boxes and a green-backed looseleaf notebook. The boxes were not locked and contained various pieces of gold jewellery (male) and about two thousand dollars in cash. While the others were counting and listing the cash, Stryker picked up the notebook.

  After a moment, he dropped it, turned away, and went into the bathroom to wash his face with cold water. When he returned he found Stewart had picked it up and was looking at it, his face rather pale.

  ‘I think this should be burnt, immediately,’ he said, in a thin voice. ‘No question, it should be destroyed.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ Stryker said. ‘It could be evidence.’

  ‘It is evidence,’ Stewart said. ‘Evidence that Adamson was a vicious monster.’ He put the book down. Neilson, curious, stared at it, then at the two of them.

  ‘What’s so terrible?’ he asked.

  ‘Try it,’ Stryker said.

  Neilson picked up the book and began to leaf through it. Stryker watched his face, the tough young smart-ass of a streetwise cop, newly into plain clothes, all ambition and lip. Maybe he and Stewart were wrong, maybe they were middle-aged and over-reacting. Then Neilson looked up and he knew he was right.

  Looked at coldly, word for word, what was in the book wasn’t so terrible. Merely the jottings of a gossip magpie. Notes about the failings of Adamson’s fellow human beings. Sometimes letters or photos were attached to the relevant page – along with notes about the victim’s reactions when Adamson revealed to them what he knew. For Adamson had been a blackmailer.

  Not for money.

  But for fun.

  Stryker remembered Kate Trevorne’s comment about Adamson ‘turning his guns on you’. In the tight backhanded writing of the green notebook Adamson repeatedly wrote with venemous relish of the ‘trembling lips’ or ‘pale face’ of his ‘target’. How cleverly he had dropped this hint or that, letting his victim (and only his victim) know that he was privy to their secrets. And not the big, dark secrets, either. That would have been too easy, too ordinary, too much like crime for a connoisseur.

  The source of Adamson’s glee were the petty, shameful secrets that revealed so much about a victim’s inner life. Page after page of it, gloated over, savoured, and used. Stryker could almost imagine Adamson’s voice. He thought it would have been a high, light voice, as thin and sharp as a hypodermic needle filled with acid.

  ‘. . . bloated Maud Fineman and her hot-house roses. They aren’t the only thing that young gardener of hers gets up in that greenhouse of hers – although how he can manage it with that two-legged Pekinese I’ll never know. Perhaps he’s near-sighted – or very, very desperate for money . . .’

  �
�. . . Dr Kuchinsky’s little “operations” at Mary Jeske’s. Did he take a Hypocritic Oath instead of the one that says he’s supposed to ease pain? I’m told the girls cry for hours, but he never leaves a scar. What skill. . .’

  ‘. . . Councilman Griggs and his “private” toilet. Ought to be private with that peep-hole through to the Ladies Room so he can watch all their little movements . . .’

  ‘. . . doesn’t anyone wonder why Abernathy buys so much chocolate sauce? Or where he puts it, so the dog can lick it off? . . .’

  ‘. . . I’ve heard of bodies buried in the garden, but Nancy is running out of places to hide those rum bottles . . . and all in memory of that sailor . . .’

  ‘. . . only got the money back in time. Church funds were never meant for horses, were they? Or is it all God’s creatures? I must ask him next week, after the service . . .’

  ‘The names will have to be checked out,’ Stryker said, feeling suddenly weary. ‘We’ll be as discreet as we can, but we have to know if they had alibis. They all must have hated his guts.’

  ‘Talk about grinding the faces of the poor . . .’ Neilson murmured, and put the book down.

  There was silence in the room, and then Stewart spoke, his back to them, his voice reflective. ‘My wife had a theory about him, you know.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stryker asked, hoping for some objectivity.

  ‘Yes,’ Stewart said, ‘According to her, he was a compulsive victim, a monstrous egotist and yet a self-hater, in search of an executioner.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘Then I guess we could say Aiken Adamson was a successful man,’ he said, and reluctantly began to copy names from the green book. ‘We now have a suspect list of about two hundred. We really appreciate that, don’t we, boys?’

  ‘We really appreciate that,’ echoed Toscarelli, Pinsky and Neilson.