by Gary Lovisi
“Harvey doesn’t drink,” Uncle Charley said.
“Sometimes,” she contradicted. At Christmas Harvey would drink, or when he was in Chicago entertaining some business associate.
“Harvey doesn’t know he’s alive,” Uncle Charley said. Then he started looking at her again.
“About Harvey’s new business,” she said. “You know what he did, don’t you? He started a soft drink bottling plant. He put all his money into equipment.”
“Ha!” Uncle Charley sat down on the library table. “Soft drinks. Like Harvey. A blasted Puritan.”
“We can’t all drink brandy,” Julie reminded him. “And there’s money in it.”
Uncle Charley refilled his glass. He practically leered at Julie.
“To our better acquaintance, my dear.”
Julie took a deep breath and lunged into her subject. She didn’t understand quite what it was all about, but soft drink production had been curtailed. It had to do with sugar and the war, and you got a certain percent of the sugar you had used the year before and, of course, Harvey’s business hadn’t been running the year before.
“Put his money on the wrong horse,” Uncle Charley said. “A stupid fool!”
“He’s not!”
“Didn’t make any mistake when he hooked you, though,” Uncle Charley said. “But what you can see in him, I don’t know.”
Julie frowned, wet her smooth curving lips, and plunged on with a hint of desperation getting into her tone.
“Harvey needs some money,” she blurted. “He could remodel his plant and manufacture something for the war effort. He’s tried banks and they won’t lend him anything on his present equipment.”
“No credit,” Uncle Charley said. “He can’t borrow any money from me.”
Julie put her glass down on the floor because there was no place else to put it. The gray cat immediately became interested.
“He’s not asking you for money, Uncle Charley,” she said. “I am. Of course, you mustn’t let him know that.”
“That’s different. That’s entirely different.” Uncle Charley chuckled. “You’ve got credit with me, pet.”
Other men of fifty-five had looked at Julie that same way and implied the same thing with different words. They had offered her everything from a mink coat to a tropic cruise, and they had been very little different from Uncle Charley. Dressed different, heavens knows.
Julie’s lips thinned and curled at the outer extremities. Disgust narrowed her long blue eyes.
“Uncle Charley, be your age!”
Uncle Charley put down his glass. He blinked at her.
“So you think I’m old? Just a dozen, fifteen years older than that milksop you’re married to.”
He took a step toward Julie. She stood up. It was obvious that she was going to have some trouble with Uncle Charley. He reached out to paw her shoulder, chuckling.
“Guess I know you models,” he said.
“You’re sure about that?” And then she clipped the side of Uncle Charley’s gaunt face.
It wasn’t a slap. It was a blow from a small, hard fist. It rocked Uncle Charley back so that he stepped on the paw of the white cat. He didn’t seem to hear his pet’s pained cry.
“You—you hit me,” he said, but not whining. “You’ve got spirit. Picture Harvey married to a girl with spirit. I like girls with spirit.”
She turned her back on him and stepped indignantly to the door. Harvey had been entirely right in his declaration that his uncle was a rather poor specimen of a man. She had reached for the doorknob when Uncle Charley suddenly uttered a roar that was halfway between rage and drunken laughter. She wheeled, and he lunged.
He caught her in a bearlike embrace and did his best to kiss her. She felt the sandpaper of his cheek against hers, and that spurred her to get her right arm free. Her purse was in her right hand and it had a heavy natural wood frame that was all the rage that season because of the metal shortage.
She hit Uncle Charley on the side of the head with the wooden section of the purse. And then Uncle Charley was completely at her feet without knowing about it. Julie pressed back against the door and stared down at the long, thin figure on the floor.
“Uncle Charley,” she cried faintly.
Uncle Charley didn’t move. She stamped her foot angrily.
“Uncle Charley!”
He still didn’t move. Cautiously she knelt beside him. This could be a trick intended to get her sympathy. She flipped off her glove and pressed a thumb against Uncle Charley’s throat to discover a strong, rapid pulse.
Julie sighed with relief. He was just knocked out, and the chances were the brandy had hit him harder than she had.
She looked away from Uncle Charley because seven pairs of slitted eyes drew her gaze. There were the cats sitting in a semi-circle, staring at her. They were very unemotional about it.
Julie straightened. She felt that she ought to call a doctor for Uncle Charley. But in a small town like this, the very fact that she had visited Uncle Charley after dark while her husband was away would be frowned upon. The town, she was certain, already talked about her, because the town, like Uncle Charley, thought it knew models. No, she’d better leave him where he was, to sleep it off.
Opening the door quietly, she looked up and down the dark street. She went out on the stoop and made no sound closing the door. She tiptoed to the sidewalk, turned to the south, and ran.
Four blocks down Pinkney Street she turned east, walked to Harrison Street, to the neat, modern red brick bungalow she shared with Harvey. Their neighbors on the north were Dr. and Mrs. John Palet, and as Julie was unlocking her door, she sent an apprehensive glance toward the Palet house. The blinds were down, but Julie had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Palet might be peering around the edge of a shade of one of the windows.
Mrs. Palet was always watching her neighbors. A large, unattractive and spiteful woman, Mrs. Palet. She had—or so Harvey said—a tongue that was tied in the middle and wagged at both ends.
Julie unlocked the door carefully. When she was inside and the light was on, she double-locked herself in and drew a long breath. Harvey wouldn’t be back from Washington until tomorrow night. She wished tonight was tomorrow.
She was in bed by eleven with a night lamp burning in the front bedroom. But it was absolutely futile to try and sleep.
She lay there and stared at the ceiling. She worried about Uncle Charley. She worried about telling Harvey what she had done. He wouldn’t like her going to Uncle Charley in the first place. And he’d be furious with Uncle Charley for acting the way he had. It might be better to just keep the whole thing a secret.
* * * *
The following day, Tuesday, Julie walked to the grocery the long way, around and up Pinkney Street. She kept on the side of the street opposite Uncle Charley’s house and was very much relieved to see a plumber’s truck parked in front of the shabby house.
A downspout from the eaves was disconnected, and the plumber was working on the drainage tile at the south end of the stoop. Uncle Charley, of course, must be all right this morning. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to call a plumber.
That afternoon, Julie fixed icebox rolls for dinner. For Harvey, really. He wouldn’t be home until the eight o’clock train, but she was going to put off dinner that long and have steak and butterscotch pie and just about everything he liked.
At five o’clock, the front doorbell took her out of the kitchen with flour on her hands. Dr. John Palet, the veterinarian from next door, was on the porch. Both of the doctor’s hands were occupied with a large sheet of newspaper that looked on the point of bursting beneath the weight of half a dozen or so plants and the dirt that came with their roots.
“Heliotrope,” Dr. Palet said without preamble.
He was a meek little man with a bald head and watery blue eyes. Knowing his wife as she did, Julie felt sorry for him. His passion for flowers and particularly heliotrope was the source of much gentle amused comment among the townspeo
ple.
“For me?” Julie clapped her hands.
“Uh huh.” Dr. Palet gave her an oddly penetrating glance that surprised and bewildered Julie. “Mrs. Palet doesn’t care for heliotrope. Can’t just let them die, can I?”
“Of course not,” Julie said. “And thanks so much.”
She put her hands out for the plants, wondering just what she would do with them now that she had them. Cooking she had learned. but gardening—after spending most of her life in an apartment—was something of a mystery.
Dr. Palet, however, wouldn’t hand her the plants.
“They ought to go in right away. I see you’re busy, so I’ll plant ’em for you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t trouble you.”
“No trouble at all. Like to grub in the earth, just put them here and there along the front, huh?” Dr. Palet nodded his bead to indicate where he wished to plant. “They’ll look nice in front of the shrubbery.”
She thanked him again. Dr. Palet backed from the door, bowing, his eyes clinging strangely to hers.
“It’s a perennial,” he said in a flustered manner.
“How nice!” Julie said.
She hoped that was the right answer. She went back to the kitchen and whistled while she worked. She was well acquainted with that adage about whistling girls and crowing hens, but she didn’t think there was anything to it.
* * * *
An hour or more rolled by before the telegraph company phoned her a message from Harvey:
WILL NOT BE BACK UNTIL END OF WEEK. HAVE FINE OPPORTUNITY FOR GOVERNMENT POSITION.
LOVE, HARVEY.
Julie sank down in the kitchen stool. There was just enough good news in the brief message to buoy up sinking disappointment. It was unfortunate that Harvey couldn’t have let her know earlier. The steak would keep in the freezer compartment, but there was the pie and all those rolls.
She would take most of the rolls and the biggest part of the pie over to Dr. and Mrs. Palet, she decided.
* * * *
Mrs. Palet, large and too obviously permanented, stood on her back steps and peeked under the napkin at Julie’s rolls.
“My, these look real nice,” she said.
Dr. Palet took the pie from Julie’s hands, and smiled at his wife.
“Harvey is a very lucky man, don’t you thing so, my dear?”
“Why, yes,” she answered. “We all know that Julie is a model wife.”
She got in a side glance at Dr. Palet that had a point and two edges on it. Then she smiled at Julie and asked when Harvey would be back. Harvey, Julie told them, would be away until the weekend.
“For goodness sake, what do you do with your time, Julie?” And Mrs. Palet added with malice, “Especially at night. I’d think you’d go crazy with loneliness.”
Julie said that she got along very well and always found small tasks about the house to occupy her attention. She was glad when she finally broke away from the Palets and hurried back to her own kitchen.
* * * *
She slept quite soundly that night and the next. It was on Thursday that the thing happened that really exiled sleep. It was something that had really occurred on Monday, but Thursday’s evening paper told about it in staring headlines:
CHARLES H. PEDLOW FOUND DEAD IN HOME
Julie scowled at that for a moment until she realized that Charles H. Pedlow was Harvey’s Uncle Charley. Then her startled eyes quickly scanned the story, picking out significant details of the report.
The police suspected foul play.… Someone had tinkered with the lock of Mr. Pedlow’s front door.… A bruise on the side of Mr. Pedlow’s head where his assailant had struck him.… Mr. Pedlow had fallen near the front door and a doorstep had penetrated the frontal part of his skull, resulting in his death.… Coroner Michel placed the time of death at sometime Monday night.…
Julie looked away from the paper, her lips parted. Something that was pretty close to a scream ached in her throat. No, it couldn’t be! She hadn’t killed Uncle Charley!
Her frantic eyes returned to the paper. That bruise on the side of Uncle Charley’s head. Why, it was from her purse, of course. But it—it wasn’t murder. Uncle Charley had fallen, but she couldn’t remember seeing a doorstep that he might have fallen against. However, if the doorstep had actually entered Uncle Charley’s forehead, wouldn’t she have seen it?
She hadn’t moved him, hadn’t turned him over. She had simply felt for a pulse in that pressure point on Uncle Charley’s neck, just as her first aid course had instructed her to do. She had taken off her glove—
That was another thing which filled her with sudden terror, left her muscles weak and trembling. She had left the house with one glove off and one on. To save her life, she couldn’t think whether she had handled the doorknob with her gloved hand or bare hand.
Fingerprints! They could trap her, seal her doom as a murderess! Again she consulted the newspaper for any mention of fingerprints, for any incriminating evidence.
Mr. Pedlow was well known as a lover of animals, cats in particular.… He is survived by a nephew, Harvey E. Enders, of this city.
No, nothing about prints. Not that it mattered. The police, suspecting murder, would come here first of all. Harvey was Uncle Charley’s only relative and probably his only heir. And the whole town knew about Harvey needing money.
Immediately she was wishing Harvey was here to tell her what to do. She hadn’t actually murdered Uncle Charley. She had struck in self defense. Julie dropped the paper and pressed both hands to her pounding head.
She’d have to control herself. She’d have to keep everything a secret. No one had seen what had happened except the seven cats. Cats didn’t talk. They stared at you, but they didn’t talk. No one had seen her go to Uncle Charley’s house—
Wait! What about that shadowy figure she had seen standing beside the door?
The doorbell rang. Julie got out of her chair, gave the door a quick glance. Mrs. Palet’s frizzled hair was visible through the glass lights at the top of the panel. Julie took just a moment to see what her own face was like in the mirror above the fireplace before coming under Mrs. Palet’s critical glance.
Mrs. Palet came into the room, rattling her newspaper in front of her. Her protruding eyes found new fascination in Julie who was now a relative, if only by marriage, of a murder victim.
“Of course, you’ve seen the papers, Julie, but then you haven’t seen what Doctor saw.” Mrs. Palet always referred to her husband as ‘Doctor’. She said, “You know Doctor is a friend of Michel’s, the coroner. Doctor went with Michel to the Pedlow house after the corpse had been discovered.”
Mrs. Palet’s red hands fluttered over her ample bosom as though looking for a pin. Actually, this seemed to help her get her breath.
“You see, Doctor talked with the policeman who broke into the house after the neighbors decided there must be something wrong with Mr. Pedlow.
“The first thing that happened when the patrolman opened the door, was the cats. They came out in a streak—all seven of them. You see, they’d been shut up with the corpse ever since Monday night, and they were all half wild with hunger.”
Mrs. Palet’s eyes rolled horribly.
“It wasn’t a pleasant sight, as my husband put it to me. Mr. Pedlow’s body had been in the house for almost three days, slowly putrefying. Doctor said the odor inside was nauseating—”
Julie felt her head start to swim. Mrs. Palet rushed forward.
“Oh, my dear! You’re not going to faint? You’re not going to keel over, are you?”
Julie had gripped the back of a chair for support, and she wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t going to keel over, as Mrs. Palet put it. She allowed the doctor’s wife to help her sit down.
“Well, Julie, you just mustn’t look on the black side of it, dear,” Mrs. Palet said, going toward the door. “After all, your husband Harvey is a mighty lucky man, especially now that Harvey’s money has all been moving one way—out. Don�
�t you think?”
Julie couldn’t speak. She just waved toward the door.
“Harvey is the only possible heir, isn’t he?” Mrs. Palet persisted. “And that’s what you’ve got to think of, because Mr. Pedlow certain wasn’t anything to you, and you can always use money.”
“Mrs. Palet,” Julie faltered, “will you please just go?”
“Of course, dearie. I do have to get supper, don’t I?”
After the door had closed on Mrs. Palet, the telephone rang. It proved to be a call from the telegraph office, which had received a wire for her from Harvey. It stated that he had seen a newspaper dispatch about his uncle’s death but would be unable to come for the funeral because of the importance of his negotiations in Washington.
Julie was disappointed, and the knowledge that she would be alone for several more days heightened her uneasiness. She wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. She moved wearily into the bedroom, sat down in front of her dressing table, and absently removed her makeup. And then, with methodical care, she put it back on again.
She knew she was behind the eight ball, and there wasn’t much she could do to get around it except look beautiful. She couldn’t think her way out, for her mind was a riotous tumult of nagging thoughts and impressions.
The doorbell rang again. Julie knew instinctively the police were outside. She had to decide instantly whether to tell the unbelievable truth or to pretend ignorance of the whole thing.
“In a minute!” she called sweetly to whoever it was at the door.
Bending close to her mirror, she picked up her lipstick with steady fingers. She couldn’t tell the truth. She couldn’t because of the twenty thousand wagging tongues that would be saying the same things that Mrs. Palet had said.
Twenty thousand people would be jumping at the same conclusion, supplying the same motive for murder. She couldn’t hope to convince anybody that she had struck Uncle Charley in self defense when there was such a perfect motive for deliberate murder.
Julie blotted off surplus lip rouge on a cleansing tissue. Then she walked unhurriedly into the living room and opened the door for a stout, gray-haired man in police uniform.
He mumbled his name in his embarrassment, but Julie immediately forgot it. However, she did hear him state that he was the chief of the force.
