The Judas Cat Read online

  “I don’t get it,” Alex said.

  “I don’t either,” said Waterman. “That’s why I want Doc Jacobs up to take a look at him.”

  Mabel appeared in the doorway. “What’s happened, Fred?”

  Waterman was across the room as though he had flown it. He whirled her out. “You get out of here, Mabel Turnsby,” he said, “and stay out till you’re invited.”

  Chapter 2

  ALEX WENT TO CALL the doctor, taking Mabel out of the house with him. She went reluctantly, hesitating here and there to get a look at something as they passed. It was hard to like her, Alex thought, a person with curiosity at a time like this. But then she had not seen Mattson’s face. He unlocked the door and held it for her to precede him.

  “Tell Gilbert to post Central where we are and come up here,” the chief called.

  “My, but he’s nasty this afternoon,” Mabel said.

  “Upset,” said Alex. “It wasn’t easy for him to kill that cat.”

  “Terrible,” she said. “Poor Andy’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Very.”

  “I told Fred Waterman. I told him this morning. But he had to take his own good time getting here.”

  “May I use your phone, ma’m?”

  She led him up the back steps and through the kitchen. What a difference between her place and Andy’s, Alex thought. To a man living alone a house is nothing. To a woman, everything. The floor linoleum was waxed and highly polished. In front of a wicker rocker was a hooked rug. Mabel was famous for her rugs and quilts. In the center of the porcelain-topped table was a bowl of sweet William and marigolds.

  In the living room Mabel fluffed up the cushions while Alex phoned. She did not intend to miss the calls. Her face didn’t betray her curiosity, but it didn’t betray anything, except, perhaps, a brashness, Alex thought. It was neatly powdered and rouged, and as nondescript as her grey-white hair which she wore gathered up straight into the knob on the top of her head.

  The Turnsbys were once important people in Hillside, in fact, in the whole of Riverdale county. They had been among the first settlers over a hundred years before. A street occupied now almost entirely by the lumber and coal yards had been named after them. But somehow you never connected Turnsby Street with Mabel, or at least not until you were sitting in her living room and looking up at the faded pictures of bearded and braided Turnsbys in their oval frames. There was a strong family resemblance among all of them, and it had come down to Mabel.

  “Why’s Fred Waterman so crabbed with me?” she asked when Alex had finished his calls. “After all, he’d never come near the place if I didn’t plague him into it.”

  “What made you call him?”

  “Andy Mattson never missed a morning on that porch, rain or shine till this. And that cat—it acted queer.”

  “How, queer?”

  “Just human like. Walking up and down as though it was calling for help.”

  “Ever seen the cat close up, Miss Turnsby? Close enough to pet him?”

  “I’m not one for petting things, but I’ve seen him close enough, I guess. Had to get rid of my Bessie, the way he was over here all the time, yowling and screeching and carrying on enough to distract a person. … Something indecent about it.”

  “But the cat wasn’t vicious? He didn’t go after you?”

  “Mercy, no. He was a sight more friendly than his master.”

  Chapter 3

  IN THE OLD MAN’S HOUSE Waterman, having covered the body, went from room to room again, getting from each of them the feeling that Andy Mattson had been dead much longer than was apparent. He wondered if it was not the way with very old people. They left off doing the things that seem so necessary to ordinary life, like polishing shoes or mending linen or putting up curtains. Andy’s dishes were on the table from the last time he had prepared a meal. They were probably never in the cupboard from one meal to the next. In the refrigerator he found two cans of condensed milk, one of them half used. There was a can of cat food, also partially used and an unopened jar of prepared spaghetti. No relishes or catsups such as he always found cluttering up the refrigerator at home. On the floor was a saucer where the cat had probably taken its last meal. How long ago, he wondered. A glass with a half-burned red candle in it stood on the sink.

  Alex returned from Mabel’s. “There’s a real crowd out there, Chief. Want me to try and break them up?”

  “They’d only come back again. What’s keeping Gilbert?”

  “Probably walking over,” Alex said.

  The two of them went into the living room. “I wouldn’t touch anything, Alex,” Waterman said. “I just don’t like the looks of this thing. It doesn’t make sense, a man of ninety-two getting murdered. But then murder never makes sense except to one person.” He drew the blind away from the window far enough to look out. “Would you look at Mabel out there? Jawing away two-forty like it was a wedding. And Dan Casey. I never knew a guy who walked all over town for a living to be on hand so quick.”

  Alex was looking around the room, careful not to touch anything.

  “What a way to live,” he said. “As bare as Cobbler’s Hill in winter time.”

  “Here comes Gilbert now,” the chief said, dropping the blind. “You didn’t tell Turnsby anything?”

  “Just that Andy was dead.”

  “If this is murder,” the chief said. He rubbed the back of his neck.

  Alex looked at him. The chief was getting a stoop, Alex noticed. Waterman had been chief of police in Hillside as long as he could remember, and he had always looked the same, tall, spare, with thin straight hair that was grey now. He squinted a bit when he looked at you as though he wanted to understand you exactly. Alex remembered that his son had been killed in the war, and he knew that was part of the reason the chief liked having him around.

  “I don’t know, Alex. Seems funny, being a policeman forty years and never coming on a murder.”

  “But how can it be murder, Chief? This place was locked up tight.”

  “I don’t know. But I think I’ll call the sheriff’s office just to be on the safe side.”

  Gilbert’s arrival on his motorcycle stirred the imagination of the people gathered at the gate. They pressed around him for information.

  “No statements,” he said. “No statements till I’ve talked with the chief.”

  He clanged the gate behind him and bounded up on the front porch. He banged on the door and kicked at it when it wouldn’t open.

  “Come around the back way, you danged fool,” the chief called.

  Gilbert’s face was flushed when he ran down the steps and around the house. He could hear the snicker of the crowd. The color drained away when he saw the sheet. He looked beneath it and then at the chief without speaking.

  “You’ll stay here till Doc Jacobs comes. Don’t let anybody in except Alex, here. And Gilbert, you can look. But don’t touch anything.”

  The boy nodded.

  “I’m going over now and call the sheriff.”

  Gilbert gradually regained his self-assurance. “Was he murdered, Alex? Buckshot, maybe?”

  “We don’t know yet. His cat may have scratched him up.”

  “He looks more like a disk ran over him. Remember when Johnnie Lyons got his leg cut up?”

  Alex went into the dining room. Andy Mattson got his name in the Sentinel once a year. That was when Henry Addison came to visit him—and now thinking of the times when he had written up the visit, he could not recall having ever said anything more descriptive of Andy than that he was the life-long friend of the inventor. Words like “solitary” and “secluded” sometimes got into the items about him, but for the most part they were accounts of Addison and the empire he had built since the days when Mattson was supposed to have loaned him five hundred dollars. As far as Alex was concerned, Andy had always been a part of the town, a queer old codger stupid parents frightened their kids with because of the fierceness of his eyes and the sharpness with which he spoke.
But Andy had never harmed any one, and Alex remembered stopping at the house once when he was twelve or thirteen years old. He was delivering Sentinels to everyone in town free. His father had been on one of his crusades then. Mattson had taken the paper from him at the door. Alex remembered his fine teeth, and the eyes, of course, and the voice, for the old man gave out with a great “Ha,” when he saw what it was. “The revolutionary press. Good! Good boy, good father.” After that Alex defended him when he heard tales about his queerness, and later when he came across pictures of John Brown in his history book, he thought he looked like Andrew Mattson. But that was all he knew of the hermit who lay dead in the living room.

  Doctor Jacobs came then and Alex waited in the dining room until Waterman returned. They went in together. “Well, what do you think, Jake?” Waterman asked after the doctor had made a cursory examination.

  “About what?”

  “What caused his death?”

  “Offhand, I’d say he was scared to death. Had a shock, maybe. Heart naturally weak at his age.”

  “But those scratches, Doctor,” Alex said.

  “I see them. Had nothing to do with him dying. Not direct, from what I can tell now. Died soon after getting them though.”

  “But they wasn’t the cause of death?” Waterman said.

  “I just said that. Can’t tell for sure just looking at him. Want me to do an autopsy?”

  “I just called the sheriff’s office. Better wait till they get here.”

  “What did you call me for then?” the doctor said irritably.

  “An opinion,” said the chief. “I hadn’t made up my mind to call them in when I called you.”

  “All right. You’ve had an opinion. Now forget I was here.”

  “Don’t go talking like that, Jake. I know how you feel. But you know what they’re like up there. The old man and Addison was thick as buttermilk. Supposing he was murdered? We’d be in a hell of a jam if I wasn’t to call them. They’ll want your opinion anyway.”

  “Then let them ask for it. They got a coroner. An undertaker, that’s what Mark Tobin is. What does he care why a man dies? How can he tell? He can just about make sure he’s dead and put in a bid for the burial. I’ll be in my office.”

  “Brother, is he a sour apple this morning,” Alex said when Jacobs was gone. “What’s eating him?”

  “Altman tried to get him on the county slate for coroner last election,” Waterman said. “You know how he does every once in a while, trying his power with the county boys. Happens this time he was right, but Jacobs didn’t have a chance against that outfit.”

  “And Tobin really is an undertaker, isn’t he?”

  “Sure. Same way up in Bay County. It ain’t uncommon. People just got sold on the idea undertakers know more about dead people than doctors.”

  Alex and Waterman sat down on the window seat in the dining room. “Waiting’s a slow business,” the chief said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “I wish we could open some windows, but I don’t think we ought to.”

  Gilbert came out of the living room. “I don’t feel so good, Chief,” he said.

  “Go outside then. See to it nobody comes rummaging around here, and don’t talk to anybody.”

  “I wonder if Mabel Turnsby can’t tell us something,” Alex said. “If anybody in town knows a thing about the old man it should be her.”

  “I don’t know. You can’t believe half what she tells you, anyway. Makes it up to fit the pattern.”

  Alex was looking out of the window. “She’s got a coopful of biddies on her front porch.”

  “They can mobilize quicker than a posse.”

  “What gets me,” Alex said, “is the door there being closed. The cat in here and him in there.”

  “One sure thing, it didn’t blow shut.”

  “They’ll look for fingerprints,” Alex said.

  Waterman nodded.

  “How much do you know about Andy, Chief?”

  “Not enough to put on his tombstone. He’s lived here thirty years at least. Kept to himself. Never talked much. Bid you time of day, but that’s about all. He never worked that I know of.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “I don’t know that either. I guess the only thing I do know about him is that old Henry Addison came to see him once a year or so.”

  “When was he here last?”

  “Maybe Mabel could tell you that, Alex. I think he died some time last spring.”

  “Do you suppose he brought Andy the cash to live on?”

  “Not by his reputation. Tight as a beer cap. Except to institutions and the like.”

  Alex lit a cigarette. He held the match until it was cool and then put it in his pocket. “You know, Chief, I’d like to know something about Andy Mattson. A man who knew the likes of Addison that well doesn’t just come to Hillside for no reason at all and then spend the rest of his life alone in a bare house like this. And now the way he died …”

  “It does seem kind of queer,” Waterman said. “But you better wait and see what the county has to say about his death. That cat was vicious. Maybe she got rabies or something. It’s August.”

  “But the door, Chief. The sliding door.”

  “Yes, boy. I know.”

  “Besides,” said Alex. “She was a he. Shocked hell out of Miss Turnsby, wooing her Bessie.”

  Waterman grinned. “I’ll bet.”

  Chapter 4

  AS IT HAPPENED, CHIEF Waterman’s call to the sheriff’s office was inopportune for the county officials. Both the sheriff and the state’s attorney were on vacation. A young deputy sheriff came down with the coroner. The two men looked at Alex as though he had no right being here, which, when you came right down to it, he thought, was the truth.

  Jim Olson, the deputy, asked Waterman a lot of questions while the coroner examined Andy’s body: when he had received the call, from whom, exactly what she had said, how long it had taken him to get there, why he had killed the cat.

  “You must have done a lot of talking by the crowd that’s out there,” the coroner said, looking up.

  “I know better than that, Mark,” he said. “That’s Turnsby. She’s been chattering like a gopher since she called me.”

  “You took your time getting here,” said Olson. “Any particular reason for the delay?”

  “I don’t put much stock by Mabel,” Waterman said. “She’s got more imagination than sense. But I should have come right along.”

  The coroner was working with a tape measure. He looked efficient, Alex thought, but he had the feeling that he was going through motions he himself did not quite understand. He could not forget Doctor Jacob’s remark about his being an undertaker.

  “Just to be on the safe side we’ll take him up and do a post-mortem on him,” the coroner said. “But I think he died a natural death.”

  “With those scratches?” Alex said.

  “Yes,” said Tobin, “with those scratches. Probably monkeying with the cat. This weather, it must of turned on him. Shock was what killed him.”

  Alex wondered why he bothered with an autopsy if he was that set in his opinion. “His position doesn’t make that kind of sense to me,” he said persistently.

  The coroner stared at him. Mark Tobin looked exactly what he was—an irritable old man who expected his word to be taken for law. “Are you qualified to pass on the causes of a man’s death?” he said as though that should have ended it.

  Alex was tempted to throw the question back in his teeth. Instead he spoke quietly. “Maybe not. But I’ve seen a few men die.”

  “That’s the trouble with you guys out of the army. You’re experts on everything.”

  The deputy sheriff was examining the house. “Doors all locked from the inside?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” the chief said.

  “Windows?”

  “The way they are now, excepting the one I broke to get in the house.”

  “Blinds?”

  “I pu
lled up the one in the bedroom.”

  Alex looked at those in the living room. They were drawn. There were two windows to the front of the house, and two to the south—Mabel’s side. One small window that opened on hinges into the room faced north. The deputy had climbed up on a chair to examine it. “Locked like the rest of them,” he said, jumping down.

  He picked up Andy’s cane from where it lay in front of the couch. “No indication this was used?”

  “No,” Tobin said.

  “See any reason Waterman can’t take over here?”

  “None.”

  “I’ll go over the place for prints just in case something shows in the autopsy. Meanwhile it’s all yours, Waterman.” He turned back to the small window.

  At that moment the vibration of heavy footsteps came through from the back of the house. Waterman knew the step. “Altman,” he said.

  The mayor appeared in the doorway, a big, red-faced man. Alex had never liked him. He was too much politician, he explained to his father once, not quite sure of what he meant by it beyond a smoothness that enabled Altman to slip in and out of situations with credit when it was due, but without blame when that was due.

  “What’s this all about, Fred?” Altman demanded, his eyes taking in the people in the room and the form of Mattson.

  Before Waterman had a chance to speak, Mark Tobin had sized the mayor up. “We’re investigating a man’s death. Who let you in here?”

  “I let myself in. I’m the mayor of Hillside.”

  “I don’t give a damn if you’re the lord mayor of London. When I’m conducting an investigation, I’ll say who’s to be on the premises and who’s not. This ain’t no side-show at a circus. Now take yourself out of here till we’re finished.”

  The color in Altman’s face deepened, but his voice had all the smoothness Alex disliked. “I’m only trying to be helpful, Mark. I wondered if anyone had contacted the Addisons on the old man’s death.”

  Of course, Alex thought, the Addisons. Altman had been working for years to get one of their plants for Hillside.