Judas Cat

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “All right,” Alex said. “I’d appreciate it. I don’t suppose you’d part with that letter?”

  “If it ever figures in court, I’ll be glad to loan it,” Gautier said. “But I’m kind of proud of it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Alex said, shaking hands with him. “I wish he’d written it to me.”

  Chapter 29

  “LEARN ANYTHING?” JOAN ASKED as Alex climbed into the car beside her.

  “Not much. Andy wanted a lawyer. I knew that before we came up here. Gautier has a friend in Jackson checking those newspaper items. Maybe I’ll have more when I put it all together. How about you?”

  “I think I know why Andy went to Chicago in 1933. There was an obituary on Anne Turnsby. Look, Alex, I copied it verbatim.”

  He took the paper from her, and read: Anne M. Turnsby, June 28, 1933, beloved mother of Walter Turnsby, at her home 3467 Paula Avenue. Cremation. Services private.

  “No mention of Norah Barnard,” Alex said.

  “Nor of the Addisons. Alex, is it possible Mrs. Barnard doesn’t know who her mother was?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “Well, I have three addresses of the old Addison employees. Do we have time to try them now?”

  “I guess so.”

  The first address took them into the section of Riverdale Joan hated, the old houses that had never taken on a permanent look. She watched Alex’s face as he leaned out the car window to read the street signs. “You look tired, Alex.”

  “I don’t have any reason to be. Maybe I’m not used to thinking this much. I guess this is the place.”

  “Want me to come with you?” Joan asked.

  “I certainly do.”

  A woman with her hair done up in rags came to the door. She was pale and harried looking. Joan wondered that she cared enough about her appearance to put up her hair. The din of children’s voices almost drowned out Alex’s question.

  “Does Mr. Edward Bruckner live here?” he asked, looking at the card Joan had given him. “He worked for Addison Industries, I believe.”

  “You should believe it,” the woman said. “He worked for them fifty years. Sometimes seven months out of the year. But he worked for them all right.”

  “Could we talk to him?”

  “No. Not here you can’t. He’s at the county farm.”

  “Oh,” Alex said. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re sorry too, but it don’t help none. We got no room for him. Four children and Art and me. We only got four rooms.”

  Joan and Alex thanked her and returned to the car. “To hell with it,” Alex said.

  “No,” Joan said. “You don’t mean that. It’s all part of the same story. We might as well get it.”

  “I guess you’re right. I’m an ostrich. Do we try another name or go home by way of the county farm? One look at that place now and I think I’d want to shoot up the whole damned county. There’s no excuse for that sort of living, Joan.”

  “Do you cure it by shooting up the whole damned county? Let’s try Frank Corwig first.”

  The search for Corwig’s home led them into a better district. There was more space between the houses, and they were better kept. Mrs. Corwig was sitting on the porch when they drove up. She explained to them that she and her husband owned the house. They lived downstairs, and her married daughter lived on the top floor. From that she went into a very lucid commentary on the housing situation all over the country. She had no teeth, but she seemed well accustomed to being without them. Her eyes were bright and intelligent. She herself remembered coming to Riverdale from Webber, Massachusetts, fifty-two years ago. They had made the last thirty miles by team, the railroad ending at Jackson. Webber was a much more civilized town.

  “I don’t think you should ask Frank about Mr. Addison,” she said. “It upsets him, and he’s older than me.”

  “We don’t really want to talk to him about Addison,” Alex explained. “We wanted to ask him about some of the people who came out here with you.”

  “He’ll get talking about Mr. Addison just the same,” the old lady said. “I always tell him he shouldn’t. He gets his pension. It isn’t much, but we don’t need much, owning our own home like this. He made good money, you know. But he’ll tell you about a condenser he made and what happened to it. He’s always working on it in the basement. I say he’ll electrocute himself, but he says if he hasn’t by now, he won’t, and if he does it’s about time anyway. Sometimes it frightens me, the way he talks.”

  “Do you remember anyone by the name of Andrew Mattson?” Alex asked.

  The old lady stuck her thumb between her gums. “No,” she said, after giving it considerable thought. “I don’t. And I remember most everybody who came out with us.”

  “How about Michael Turnsby?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember Mr. Turnsby. He was Mr. Addison’s partner in Webber. He didn’t stay long after they came out here. He was getting married and he wanted to go away some place West. Frank, that’s my husband, always said Mr. Addison wanted to get rid of him, but Frank sometimes imagined things. He never felt he was treated right himself, you know.”

  “I don’t suppose you knew who Turnsby was marrying,” Alex said.

  “No. I didn’t know him real well. But it seems like this was his home before he came down east, and I think he sold Mr. Addison the land for the plant.”

  Alex thanked her, and for want of anything else to give her, offered the afternoon paper he had stuck in his pocket at Gautier’s office. She took her glasses from her apron pocket and was polishing them on the collar of her dress as they drove away.

  “I think that’s enough,” Alex said. “If Turnsby was getting married along in 1895, it’s sure the person called Walter Turnsby was Andy’s son.”

  “I don’t think I like Henry Addison very much,” Joan said.

  “I wonder if Andy did,” Alex said. “Gosh sakes, I’d like to get to the bottom of their relationship.”

  “Where now?” Joan asked.

  “Home, I think. I want to see what’s happened with Waterman today.”

  “Alex, would you be willing to take the bus from Three Corners and let me have the car for a while? I could cut back to the county farm and see Mr. Bruckner.”

  “Persistent, aren’t you?” he said, smiling at her. He took her hand beneath his on the steering wheel.

  Chapter 30

  ALEX HAD TWELVE MINUTES to wait for the bus at Three Corners. He bought a coke in the general store and smoked a cigarette. It might be that Barnard was threatened. Or it might be that his wife was plaguing him. Gautier might have been right. He liked the lawyer, but as Joan said once, he liked everyone with the possible exception of Mayor Altman. He was as gregarious as a terrier. He liked Gautier and he knew nothing about him except that he opposed the county machine and that Andy trusted him. He was getting another blind spot. If Andy liked somebody that made him aces. Suddenly something occurred to him. Gautier was the only one who knew Andy wanted a lawyer, at least the only one known to Alex.

  He ground out the half smoked cigarette beneath his heel and went outdoors. He could drive himself crazy following one suspicion after another. He stood on the porch steps waiting for the bus. A woman, obviously waiting for it too, was trying to handle a crate of eggs and a two-year-old boy. He wondered why she didn’t put at least one of them down.

  It was drizzling again. His shirt was clinging to his back like adhesive tape. He thought about Joan and about whether old Bruckner would talk to her. Probably he would. That was the trouble with old people. They talked too much or not at all.

  A grocery truck drove by, backfiring every time the driver pressed his foot on the accelerator. A black sedan passed the truck at a good clip and then swerved in front of it and stopped suddenly at Barnard’s driveway. A man got out and walked around the back of the car and up the walk. It was dangerous to get out on the highway like that. Alex could not see the doorway of the house for the trees, but in a few se
conds the man hurried down the steps. Then he stopped and lit a cigarette, turning around slowly, shielding the match. Actually, Alex thought, he was looking for the lay of the land. He could not see his features closely, and his clothes were nondescript. If he were trying to remember him, the only distinguishable thing about him was the way he turned, not with his body, but with his head, as though he were listening instead of looking. Alex reached for a cigarette. The man got into the car then and drove off toward Hillside. Alex realized how tense he had become just watching him. He stuck the cigarette back in the package.

  Chapter 31

  WATERMAN WAS ALONE WHEN Alex arrived. He had set up an army cot in the station. He intended someone to stay there night and day now. He jumped when Alex opened the screen door.

  “Looks like I’m kind of getting on edge, don’t it?” he said. “Maybe I got good reason. Altman’s gone up to the state’s attorney’s office to ask for a restraining order. He’s got a council meeting called for tomorrow morning, and if they give him a vote of confidence, he’ll slap it on us sure as shooting.”

  Alex slumped into the chair next to the chief’s desk. “I guess you can thank me for this,” he said. “I had to be so damned smart about that coroner’s report.”

  “You done what you thought was right,” Waterman said. “What did you find out from the lawyer?”

  “Not much. We can put it together for what it’s worth.” Alex repeated their conversation.

  “I wonder if the Addison will don’t figure in it some place,” Waterman said when he was finished. “The only reason we got for thinking that, though, is the time. I think we got to ask Joe Hershel out straight what he was up to.”

  “And I think we’ve got to ask the Barnards straight about Mike Turnsby,” Alex said. “Turnsby was in business once with Henry Addison. We’ve got to clear up that part of it.”

  Waterman looked at the clock. Four-thirty. “I think we might as well do it now.”

  Hershel did not even try to be polite to them, and Alex realized for the first time the extent of his and Waterman’s disfavor. It was frightening. An old man had been killed. Two people whose integrity was known to everyone in town were trying to get to the bottom of his death, and yet malice and confusion had made them more suspect than the murderer they were trying to find.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to the two of you,” Hershel said, scarcely glancing at them. “Bill, see that this order is filled the first thing Monday morning. You can short the Jackson order for a week if you have to. This is a new one and we want their confidence …”

  Alex thought for a moment that Waterman was going to reach across the desk and drag the little man out from behind it. Instead he leaned his weight on both hands on the desk. “I am chief of police of Hillside,” he said slowly. “Until I’m removed from authority, you’ll answer my questions or face arrest for obstructing justice.”

  “You do that, Fred Waterman, and as sure as I’m sitting here, I’ll sue you for false arrest.”

  “Then you’ll sue me,” Waterman said. “If you’re not involved in Mattson’s death, you ought to be glad to answer my questions. I know you’re negotiating to expand your plant. I know you got a profit out of Mattson’s gadgets without patents, but you’d get a lot more profit with them, especially if he’d just come up with something special. I know I’d need a lot more information than I got, and a lot more help than I’m getting to prove anything on that. But without that information I got to think of you as a suspect.”

  “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous of me to kill the old man … and no proof has been made yet that I know of that he was killed … but wouldn’t it be ridiculous for me to do a thing like that when the man was ninety-two? I didn’t have to manufacture any of the things he gave me. I bought them. If I wanted to patent them all I had to do was hold them until after his death.”

  “That would depend on a lot of things: market conditions, money. Just a lot of things. All I want to know right now, Joe, is where you were the last three nights.”

  “I was home and in bed by ten o’clock last night and the night before. Tuesday I stayed at the factory until about one-thirty.”

  “Was there anyone with you that could vouch for that?”

  “Mayor Altman.”

  “I see,” Waterman said, straightening up. “I appreciate your cooperation, Joe.” His sarcasm was obvious.

  Chapter 32

  BARNARD WAS MORE CORDIAL. He did not look well and he moved with a quickness that was unlike him, as though he was working on nervous energy. But he seemed genuinely glad to see them. He took them into the laboratory and closed the door. “I’ve got a favor to ask of you, Waterman,” he said, as soon as they had sat down. “I know the spot you’re in. I’ve heard the talk. Altman’s out to discredit you. I’ve got enough respect for your ability to know that you’re going far beyond the circumstances of Mattson’s death. I want you to know I’m on your side, and that isn’t easy for me. God knows, we’d feel easier if Altman was right. There’s a family tragedy involved here. I don’t want to discuss it. I hope it doesn’t come out. Actually, I’m convinced it does not touch on the Mattson affair. But I’m not naive enough to think you won’t stumble on it.”

  Alex offered him a cigarette and the veterinary took it. His hand trembled as he put it to his lips.

  “I hope that if it comes to your attention, or to yours, Alex, you won’t make capital of it because you’re desperate.”

  “Doc, I think you know us well enough to know we aren’t in this to harm anyone. It’s been pretty obvious from the start that Mabel and you people were hiding something. That’s what I came to talk to you about now. If we could clear that up, maybe we could think a lot clearer about what happened to Mattson.”

  “I give you my word it has nothing to do with Mattson’s death.”

  “I don’t mean to insult you, Doc, but right now I need something more than your word. For one thing, just to finish off the records, I’d like to know where you were the night the old man died.”

  Barnard’s eyebrows seemed to jump together in a frown. “I resent the implication in that question, Waterman,” he said.

  “I know that, Doc, but whoever killed the old man would resent it, too, and I’ve got to ask it.”

  “That was Tuesday night,” Barnard said. “I was at home early in the evening. About ten o’clock I drove over to Allendale. The heifer was in premature labor. I worked on her for about an hour, maybe more, to delay it. Then I returned home. I read for a while and then went to bed.”

  “Was Mrs. Barnard at home?”

  “She was.”

  “Doc, why did you go over to see Mabel last night?”

  The question took Alex by as great surprise as it evidently did the veterinary.

  “I have never been in Mabel Turnsby’s house,” he answered.

  Waterman watched him closely for a few seconds. Then he sighed. “It must have been somebody looking like you in the dark then,” he said. “I take it you aren’t going to tell us anything about Mike Turnsby?”

  “No,” Barnard said quietly. “I don’t intend to.”

  “Did Mrs. Barnard go over to Chicago to her mother’s funeral in 1933?” Waterman asked.

  “No. She was not informed of her death until after the funeral.”

  “Funny, Mattson getting word of it and her not.”

  “‘Funny’ is not a good word for the situation,” Barnard said.

  “No, I guess not,” the chief said, “I ain’t found much to laugh about in anything I’ve turned up. Doc, you got pushed around a lot back at the time of that typhus epidemic here in town. Was there anything personal in that?”

  “There’s nothing very personal about an organization the size of Addison,” Barnard said. “There was money involved there. A lot of money. I happened to be the instrument trying to force them to spend it.”

  “Just one other thing I’d like to ask you now,” Waterman said. “I’ve asked it before. Could there have
been anything wrong with that cat, something you suspect but won’t say because you couldn’t prove it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you receive any follow-up on that vandalism here, say maybe, a warning to keep your nose clean?”

  Barnard quashed out the cigarette, working at it nervously until every spark was out. “I received that warning this afternoon,” he said.

  Alex remembered the man in the black sedan he had seen while waiting for the bus. “Was that about four o’clock?” he asked.

  “I presume that was the time. When I went out of here to get the Riverdale paper I found a note had been slipped under the screen door.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this, Doc?” Waterman said. “Let me have the note, for gosh sakes.”

  Barnard shook his head. “I destroyed the note. I didn’t want Norah to know about it.”

  “Doc, do you realize we got about two pieces of evidence in this whole danged thing, and you destroyed the one concrete proof something was up?”

  “Of course I realize it,” Barnard said angrily. “Do you think I’m a damned fool? I saved you a sample of the typing if you want it.” He got up and went to his desk. The key to the drawer he opened was on a ring on his watch chain. He brought back a piece of paper on which was written: “You will be most wise to ignore the investigation of Mattson’s death. May I remind …” That was all. The note had been typed, and there was certainly nothing to distinguish it except possibly the phraseology, its precise English.

  Waterman read it and handed it to Alex. “Was it signed?”

  “No.”

  “But you’d be pretty sure where it came from with that ‘may I remind …’ wouldn’t you?” Waterman said.

  Barnard looked at him but did not answer. Waterman took the note and put it in his pocket. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Doc. I think you’d be much wiser spilling out the whole story to me, and letting me judge for myself where it fits. I’m not Mabel Turnsby, to be starting a gab-fest on it.”