The Judas Cat

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I think there’s a skeleton in the closet there some place,” Alex said.

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s it.”

  “I’d like to go over Andy’s place again. Right now, if I can. And I’d like to show Joan that painting.”

  Waterman gave him the key. “I’d steer clear of Mabel if I was you, Alex. I want to give her enough rope to hang herself, as the saying goes.”

  “Right.” At the door he remembered the letter Casey had mailed to the lawyer. He told Waterman about it. “Call him up now,” the chief said. Gautier was going directly to court that morning, but his secretary made an appointment with him for Alex at two.

  Chapter 25

  “I WONDER WHAT THE old man would say if he knew the amount of traffic into this house these last few days,” Alex said, as he unlocked the door.

  “Maybe he would have liked it,” Joan said. “Who knows?”

  Alex opened a kitchen window for while they were in the house. Mabel was not at her window that morning. He missed her.

  “There’s a terribly empty feeling about the house, isn’t there, Alex?”

  “As though we were opening it for the first time in fifty years,” he said. He took her from one room to the other. In the dining room they stood at the window seat for a moment. “This is where the cat begged for its deliverance.”

  Joan turned her back to the window and sat down where she could look at the room. “It’s not as dirty as you’d expect,” she said.

  Alex sat down beside her. She continued to survey the room. “A case of dishes nobody’s eaten from, four chairs nobody’s sat upon, a rug only the moths enjoyed.”

  Alex’s eyes moved from one item to another as she mentioned them. He looked at the floor and remembered commenting when he and Waterman had first come into the room that it had been swept. From where they sat he could see the dust heavier in some places than others. Actually the entire floor had not been swept, only the section between the hall to the kitchen and the living room. He got up and went over to where it was cleaner. He lifted the edge of the rug. Beneath it had been swept too. There were the marks of dust from the rug where it had flopped into place. He laid it down gently. Joan was watching his every move. He wondered if Mabel Turnsby was too, from one of her upper windows. His mind moved from one sequence of events to another, from one object in the room to another, fastening presently onto Mabel’s fingerprints and the chair on which they were found. He pulled it out from the table and turned it upside down. The furniture tacks were marked from the hammer. He set the chair down for a moment and examined one of the others. The springs showed against the bottom cambric in them. There were no springs in the chair in which he was interested. He got a knife from the kitchen and pried loose the tacks. Before he had removed half a dozen of them, the stuffings began to seep out. He lifted out the entire padding and laid it on the floor. There was enough room for a box the size of the one in which he had found the tax receipts and money in the living room drawer. But the space now was tightly stuffed with excelsior.

  “I know now why Miss Turnsby got me out of here yesterday,” he said, “and why her temper changed. She was afraid she’d left a speck of excelsior, and I’d seen a bit of it on her step. She swept up behind me and then burned the rest of the stuff and I came back to ask her about Addison while she was doing it.”

  “It’s hard to believe she’s involved in anything like this, Alex.”

  He was putting the chair back together. “Can you think of anybody it’s easy to believe involved?”

  “No.” Joan looked out the window. “The sun’s trying to come out,” she said.

  “Let’s go into the living room while it’s lighter.” He took her hand and led her to the old man’s chair. “I want you to sit down there and then look at the painting.”

  He watched the changing expression on her face. Her lips were parted a little and the light seemed to grow in her eyes. He stood beside her and looked at the picture again. Then he went back to where he could see only her, small, visibly moved by the picture, and herself more lovely to him than the painting.

  “It’s frighteningly beautiful, Alex.”

  “Yes,” he said without taking his eyes from her. “Joan.”

  She looked at him then. He came and leaned down, his hands supporting him on the arms of the chair, and kissed her.

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. “This isn’t why I brought you here,” Alex said, “but it might have been.” He kissed her again, this time lingering a bit longer. Through the medley of sounds that might have been of their imagining, came a low hissing. Alex straightened up and turned. Both of them saw Mabel Turnsby in the doorway, her disapproval and hatred escaping with the breath through her teeth. She whirled around without speaking and left them.

  “We don’t have much luck, do we?” Alex said. “She’ll do us up right for this.”

  Joan got up from the chair. “Magic was never meant to last long,” she said. “It’s a lovely painting.”

  Alex lit a cigarette. “We aren’t going to run out of here like a couple of birds she’s flushed out of the bushes. There’s a stack of newspapers in the kitchen. I want to go through them while we’re here.” He looked at his watch. “Five minutes to nine.”

  In the kitchen Alex lifted the papers out one at a time. The top papers were dated a few days before, but suddenly, the dates dropped to 1943. He took one after another to the table and went through it sheet by sheet. Joan did the same. Once their hands touched. Joan did not look up to meet his eyes. She continued turning the pages. There was nothing marked in the papers. Nothing. “I guess this is a waste of time,” he said. The dust was drying his throat.

  “Wait a minute, Alex. There’s a page missing in this one.”

  “Probably wrapped his garbage in it,” he said.

  “Let’s not lose patience,” Joan said. “Look at the variations in these dates.” Some of them lagged as much as three years.

  “Looks like he saved those particular papers?”

  Seven papers were missing one page each. Alex wrote down the dates in his notebook and the number of the missing pages. They covered a span of six years.

  “Let me have them,” Joan said. “I’ll look them up while I’m after the Industries’ report.”

  “Something else you might tackle,” Alex said. “Andy went to the address of Mike Turnsby’s son in 1933, in Chicago. The Turnsbys moved again then. I don’t suppose it was something to get in Chicago papers, but it might be worth checking.”

  “Maybe the death notices,” Joan said.

  “That might be it.”

  “I’ll have to go to Riverdale for that. Miss Woods doesn’t get those papers.”

  “I have to be up there at two. You could go with me. Joan … I’m sorry if Turnsby starts some gossip about us. She’s on the defensive now. She probably came in to see if we’d examined the chair, and now she knows we did. I didn’t clean that place up in there …”

  “Don’t worry about it, Alex. If Mattson’s death is solved, nothing else will be important.”

  Chapter 26

  THERE WERE NOT MANY who came to Andrew Mattson’s funeral who came to mourn the old man, Alex thought. People did not mourn someone they did not know. A few were there out of respect. But more came out of curiosity. It should please Altman, the crowd that was on hand to appreciate his conduct of the services.

  The cemetery was near the top of Cobbler’s Hill. Just inside the gate was the oldest marker in the town, January 3, 1845. It accounted for the location of the cemetery and the name of the hill. Jason Greene, a shoemaker, had come out of Ohio with the first settlers of Hillside. When he was dying, so the story went, he named the site where he was to be buried, choosing it because the echo of his hammer rode from hill to hill from there, never ceasing. One by one the other settlers had been buried beside him. Now, Alex thought, most of the hills had been leveled, and the cobbler was one with the hill named after him.

  Many of the pe
ople who were on hand for the funeral had spread over the entire cemetery, taking the opportunity to visit their family plots and pull out stray weeds or dead leaves from around the markers. In a remote corner, edging an alfalfa field, the sod was piled high above the open grave. A few people stood about it awaiting the arrival of the funeral procession from Riverdale.

  “Andy’s still a recluse,” Alex said.

  “We’re great ones for respecting privacy,” Mr. Whiting said.

  Chief Waterman was talking with his wife not far from the grave. A few feet away from them, Mabel Turnsby was standing alone, like an old fence post. Alex looked around. Dan Casey was there. He must have done his rounds double time. Joe Hershel and his wife. Alex wondered if his mother knew her. She did not go out much. The kids called her the “goat woman.” Joe looked drawn, worried. Kruger had closed up the cigar store. Phil Robbins, the postmaster, and his wife were there, and her sister who lived with them; Jesse Lyons and his new wife. It took real courage for Jesse to come. He had buried his first wife there less than a year ago. The new one was half his age and nearly twice his size. Jesse still looked lonely.

  Alex looked across the open grave at Waterman. The chief seemed tired. Mrs. Waterman was talking rapidly, and loudly enough for anybody within twenty yards to hear her. “… And I says to her, my Fred knows what he’s doing. He took the crime detection course two years ago at the state police school …” Alex raised an eyebrow at the chief. Waterman grinned.

  Barnard was there alone. Alex wondered why he had come. Doc Jacobs was there, looking at his watch impatiently, and Alex remembered his comments on Mrs. Barnard’s health, and Turnsbys in general. His father had gone over to speak to the veterinary.

  The clouds were getting low again, the heat seemingly heavy in them. Alex moved about restlessly. He looked at the names on the various monuments, family names, with the little markers carrying the names and dates of each member buried in the plot … Baldwin, Withrow, Fabry, Turnsby … Mabel had been right that her family helped found the town. There was a Turnsby died in 1846, at the age of two. Somehow you didn’t think of them ever as children, Alex thought. … Jonathan Turnsby, 1812-1858 … Irene Wilson Turnsby, 1840-1901 … That might be Mabel’s mother. The last burial in the plot had been in 1907. He looked for other markers, but there were only empty lots, and beyond them the beginning of the Sanders plots. Where were Michael Turnsby and his wife buried? Why not the family lot, wherever they might have died? He could remember when they brought Matt Sanders’ brother back from New York …

  “Here they come,” someone called.

  Alex heard the sputter of Gilbert’s motorcycle. Two cars came over the crest of Cobbler’s Hill. They looked extraordinarily alike in their limousine lines and high polish. The name “Addison” ran through the crowd as the cars turned in the gate. As though he had been given a signal, Mayor Altman drove up from the opposite direction and turned in the gate behind them.

  Alex went back to where his father stood. Mabel was looking at him. She had been watching him as he had gone from one grave to another in the Turnsby lot. Her eyes were wide, and he could not tell what was in them, whether it was fear or hatred.

  A chauffeur opened the door for Addison and a young woman Alex presumed to be his daughter. She was an attractive person, thirty maybe, quietly dressed, and with just the right attitude for one attending the funeral of her grandfather’s friend.

  “Where are the pall bearers?” Alex whispered to his father. It was a depressing thing to see the funeral director motion to the two gravediggers who were standing by, to come and help him and his assistant with the coffin. Alex was angry. “No! My father and I will act as pall bearers.”

  Chief Waterman and Hershel fell in behind them. They lifted the wooden coffin from the hearse and laid it on the straps over the grave. Mayor Altman looked flustered, as though he wished he had done something about it, but by the time they had returned to their places, he had the book open. The rain began to fall then, and the mayor hurried. He prefaced his reading of the prayer by a remark to the effect that Andrew Mattson had not been known to profess any religious tenets, and therefore it seemed more appropriate not to ask a minister to perform his last rites.

  As though Andy gave a damn who performed them, Alex thought. He had never been confined in his life by the little proprieties, and he was not likely to enjoy his rest any the more for the mayor acting God’s little brother over him now. Alex bowed his head. He did not want thoughts like that. He wanted to pay tribute to Andy Mattson. The old man had died for a reason, and he wanted to know that reason. There were moments when he almost felt old Mattson’s presence. He could imagine him smiling sardonically at this sight—Altman reading the Episcopalian service because it was sonorous, and probably because he heard the Addisons were Episcopalians. Since Andy’s death, he had had such moments of exultation—the workshop, the picture, the integrity and kindness of Waterman, his discovery of Joan and their lovely moment together, the feeling of which was still with him despite Mabel and the velvet voice of the mayor.

  Altman reached the ending dramatically. He put on his hat, and there was a murmur of “amens.” He was already moving around to speak to the Addisons. Alex nodded across the grave to George Addison and turned away. He waited until he heard the earth fall in regular thuds against the coffin, and then walked back to the car. The crowd was still staring at the Addisons, grateful to the mayor that he had held them up to talk to them, even in the rain. Looking from face to face, Alex wondered if it were possible that among them was the person responsible for the old man’s death. He saw Mabel picking her way among the tombstones to the gravel path, her legs unsteady, and her felt hat drooping under the rain. No matter what she might have done, she was a pathetic sight at that moment.

  “Miss Turnsby,” he called, going after her, “won’t you ride back to town with us?”

  “No thank you, Alex. I’d rather walk.”

  He would never forget her face at that moment. The perspiration and rain had washed away the powder, and her skin was like yellow clay smeared thin over the bones. Her eyes were dry, but there was remorse in them, and a great fear that was eating into her. She was an old woman now, and she no longer cared who knew it. He put on his hat and went back to the car where his father was waiting for him. He looked at his watch. Ten-twenty.

  “It didn’t take long,” he said.

  “No,” Mr. Whiting said. “The longer a man lives the less time it takes to bury him.”

  Chapter 27

  ALEX AND HIS FATHER went directly to the plant. Maude was in the office. “How was the funeral?”

  “As gay as a broken leg,” Alex said. “Everybody there. The mayor wore patent leather shoes and spoke with a broad ‘A’. The new Mrs. Lyons had the old Mr. Lyons on a leash, and half a dozen kids fell into the grave playing leap frog over it.”

  “Oh shut up,” she said. “I’ve never heard you like this.”

  “I’ve never felt like this.”

  “What’s going on between you and Joan, Alex?” She brushed a wisp of hair away so that she could watch him closely.

  Alex felt a little sick at what he knew was coming. “What do you mean, going on between us?”

  “What happened in that old house this morning, if you want it straight.”

  His father had stopped opening the mail to listen.

  “I felt like it, and I kissed her,” Alex said, angry at feeling as though he were a little boy who had just discovered the wonders of life and was about to get a lecture on it.

  “Don’t get on your high horse to me, young man,” Maude said. “I wondered how long it would take you. But did you have to do it in front of Mabel Turnsby? It’s all over town, now.”

  “Oh, to hell with the town,” Alex said.

  His father whistled softly and went into the private office.

  “That’s fine,” Maude said. “You’ve got the discretion of a goat. Go find another wall to butt your head into.” She wen
t back to the plant. The building was vibrating with the presses.

  Alex went into the office where his father was. “What were you and Barnard talking about at the cemetery, Dad?”

  “Not much. The way reputations are being ruined over this business. I watched him look at you when you were poking around the Turnsby lot up there. He didn’t take his eyes off you.”

  “I don’t think Mabel did either. She’s a miserable soul if I ever saw one.”

  Joan came in from the library then. “Alex, there was an item about Addison Industries in every one of those seven papers.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll have to wait until I type them up. Miss Woods wouldn’t let me take the papers from the library.”

  Alex read each one as she rolled it out of the typewriter. He handed it to his father when he had finished. They all pertained to new products Addison was putting on the market. “Any reason you can see for Andy’s interest in them, Dad?”

  “No. They’re a long way from toys. Consumer goods, as they say in the surveys.”

  “No particular value to the war, either,” Alex said.

  “Anything Hershel could manufacture?” his father asked after a moment.

  “Maybe. I don’t see why, though.”

  “Anything Andy might have invented?”

  Alex shrugged. “That’s an idea, though, Dad. I wonder what the patent story is on them.”

  “The only patent library in the state’s in Jackson,” Mr. Whiting said. “And my experience on ’em, you’d need a Philadelphia lawyer to understand them.”

  Alex lit a cigarette. “I’ve got an appointment with a lawyer this afternoon. Maybe that’s what I’m going to find out.”

  He pocketed the notes and went to the station. Waterman listened carefully, making him repeat parts of what had happened at Andy’s that morning. Then he read the items from the Jackson papers. “I don’t just see where these would figure in his death,” he said.