PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS

“Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Josephine Tey … Dorothy Salisbury Davis belongs in the same company. She writes with great insight into the psychological motivations of all her characters.” —The Denver Post

“Dorothy Salisbury Davis may very well be the best mystery novelist around.” —The Miami Herald

“Davis has few equals in setting up a puzzle, complete with misdirection and surprises.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Davis is one of the truly distinguished writers in the medium; what may be more important, she is one of the few who can build suspense to a sonic peak.” —Dorothy B. Hughes, Los Angeles Times

“A joyous and unqualified success.” —The New York Times on Death of an Old Sinner

“An intelligent, well-written thriller.” —Daily Mirror (London) on Death of an Old Sinner

“At once gentle and suspenseful, warmly humorous and tensely perplexing.” —The New York Times on A Gentleman Called

“Superbly developed, gruesomely upsetting.” —Chicago Tribune on A Gentleman Called

“An excellent, well-controlled piece of work.” —The New Yorker on The Judas Cat

“A book to be long remembered.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch on A Town of Masks

“Mrs. Davis has belied the old publishing saying that an author’s second novel is usually less good than the first. Since her first ranked among last year’s best, what more need be said?” —The New York Times on The Clay Hand

“Ingeniously plotted … A story of a young woman discovering what is real in life and in herself.” —The New York Times on A Death in the Life

“Davis brings together all the elements needed for a good suspense story to make this, her fourth Julie Hayes, her best.” —Library Journal on The Habit of Fear

“Mrs. Davis is one of the admired writers of American mystery fiction, and Shock Wave is up to her best. She has a cultured style, handles dialogue with a sure ear, and understands people better than most of her colleagues.” —The New York Times Book Review on Shock Wave

The Judas Cat

Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

About the Author

Chapter 1

HILLSIDE IS A SMALL Midwestern town lying among the green hills almost an equal distance from two great cities. In the summer of 1948 the town’s chief claim to renown was the annual visit of a famous inventor. He had been known to spend at least one day out of every year with Andrew Mattson, who, legend had it, loaned him five hundred dollars to help finance his first invention.

It was little enough, the people said, referring to the visit. Some even wondered if he had ever repaid the five hundred dollars, for he parted with money uneasily and Andy lived a frugal life. Others said that Andy would have lived that way if he had had the inventor’s millions, which, obviously, he did not … Or did he? In any case, the inventor had died that spring, and throughout the state a thirty-day mourning period had been observed. But old Andy sat day after day in the sun on his front porch rubbing the soft neck of his cat with a leathery finger.

“Old Andy hasn’t got much to look forward to in this world,” the neighbors said.

“Or in the next if you ask me,” Mabel Turnsby always added. “Hasn’t set foot inside a church for seventy years.”

No one ever asked her, but Mabel was a great one for opinions. She lived next door to Andrew Mattson, and at almost any hour of the day you could see her white knob of hair poking above the half curtains on her kitchen windows. Naturally, it was Mabel who called Chief of Police Waterman that day when Andy had not taken his customary place on the porch by noon.

“Maybe he’s got a cold,” the chief said. “Why don’t you just be neighborly, and drop over and see him?”

“Me in his house?” said Mabel. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“He’s an old man,” the chief said. He might have added that she was no chicken, but Waterman was a kind man. “Call it charity. Say you’re collecting for the church.”

“I did that thirty years ago,” said Mabel, “and I’d like never to have been so humiliated. No. I’m not going near the place. It’s your duty when a body reports something unusual.”

“What’s unusual about an old man staying in bed till noon?”

“And the cat. That’s another thing, Fred Waterman. That cat’s been at the window looking at me like it was human, pleading with me.”

“Mabel, I don’t like to be ornery about this,” the chief said, “but I can’t help thinking maybe your imagination’s playing tricks again. Remember the fire on Pasteriki’s barn roof?”

“You promised,” she said. “You promised me you’d never mention that again.”

On the occasion of which he spoke, Mabel had watched the smoke for half an hour. After she had turned in the alarm, she discovered it was from the smoke funnel on the toy factory, half a mile over the hill from Pasteriki’s.

Before he hung up the chief agreed that if Mabel had not seen the old man by twelve-thirty he would stop by.

“I suppose that’s how it’ll happen one of these days,” the chief said to Gilbert, his one assistant. “Andy’s ninety-two. Go to lunch, boy. When you get back I’ll drop over there.”

Gilbert banged the screen door behind him, the door skipping its catch. Waterman was fastening it when the twelve o’clock siren sounded overhead, the noise of it surrounding him as though his head were in a bucket. It was about time they did something about the building. All the town offices were tucked in as tight as a picnic lunch in a shoe box, someone said at the last council meeting. There had been talk of floating a bond issue and building a separate police and fire department, and possibly a library. At the present time the library occupied the whole top floor of the two-story building. It was a bit snug, the mayor admitted, but he was not one for saddling the town with a debt for his comfort. That diverted the issue. Sometimes Altman had a way of diverting issues. His attitude irked the other officials who stayed in their offices from nine until five each day. The mayor spent very little time at the executive desk—two or three hours at most. The rest he devoted to his hardware store. This was only reasonable, he said, since the office was largely honorary, and by no means lucrative enough to meet the needs of his wife and six children.

The men felt much the same about their incomes from the town, but prices were not high, comparatively, in Hillside, and they got by on it. Their real complaint was the lack of space and air where they had to work, and the mayor’s attitude.

Chief Waterman went outdoors and sat down on the steps where he could hear the telephone. Agnes Baldwin, the mayor’s secretary, was calling the librarian from the bottom of the stairs.

“Miss Woods. Oh, Miss Woods. It’s after twelve.”

Agnes came out twirling a key impatiently. She had to lock up that wing of the building during the noon hour.

“Ain’t the siren loud enough for her?” the chief said.

“She always does this,” said Agnes. “Waits till the siren blows and then picks up.”

Presently Miss Woods came out, brushing half a dozen children out ahead of her. “Tomorrow morning at ten-thirty,” she said. “Now watch yourselves crossing the highway. Look both ways.”

She nodded to Waterman and disappeared around the side of the building. She had been librarian since half the town could read, he thought. She was a pert little thing when he became police chief. The young fellows did a lot of reading those days and now their kids were attending her summer reading sessions. Agnes was already at the door of Cooley’s drugstore. That was where Gilbert hung out too. The chief could hear the juke box all the way from where he was sitting. For a few moments he watched Cooley’s fill up with the youngsters who worked around the town, clerks in the two super markets, the Emporium, stenographers in the real estate office and the bank, Fabry’s lumber yard, the Whiting Press. Without his realizing it, his eyes moved directly from the door of Cooley’s to the town square in front of him and rested a moment on the servicemen’s plaque still standing at the edge of the square opposite the memorial to the Hillside dead in World War I. He gathered his long legs under him and got up. It suddenly occurred to him that his skepticism of Mabel’s calls had distracted him from the possibility that the old man might be ill and helpless. He went in to the phone and gave the operator the number of the Whiting Press.

Alex Whiting was in the plant when Maude called him to the phone. “Fred Waterman wants to talk to you,” she said. “I wish I could find you that way when I want you.”

“See if you can open up that Durkin ad, will you, Maudie?” Alex said. “It looks like a death notice.”

“The only way you can open it up is to throw out half his copy … ‘Specialties for intimate occasions’ … What’s intimate about sardines and Camembert cheese? …”

Alex winked at Joan Elliot as he passed her desk on the way to the phone. If Maude found anything to be cheerful about these days, she kept it to herself. She had been with the Whiting Press since it was started in 1910 by Charles Whiting. When Alex returned from service, he had taken over the business from his father, but Maude refused a pension. Alex was just as glad. She knew more about printing than he would learn in twenty years, and he was more interested in the Weekly Sentinel editorially, than in the printing business.

“I don’t know if it’s another of Mabel’s wild goose calls, Alex,” Waterman said over the phone, “but she says she hasn’t seen old Mattson around his place all day. I’m going over there now and I thought you might give me a hand in case anything’s happened to him.”

“I’ll be right over,” Alex said. “I’ll call you in a little while,” he said to Joan. “Waterman thinks something may have happened to old Mattson.”

“If you’re going to the station, Alex,” Maude called, “stop up and see Stella Woods. You got yourself into that … I told you not to run that letter …”

Waterman was standing at the curb when Alex drove up. He drove his own car getting an annual allowance from the town for it. Alex drove to Mattson’s behind him. A couple of minutes after they had parked in front of the house, a dozen people gathered on the sidewalk outside the old iron fence.

The chief knocked at the front door. He didn’t look across the yard, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Mabel maneuvering behind the curtains for a better view. “I was sitting at the station thinking about Andy,” he said to Alex. “It’s funny how we get to take people for granted. He ain’t had any visible source of income the thirty years he’s lived here, and Dan Casey was saying at the last Legion meeting the old fellow hasn’t got mail ten times since he’s been on the route.”

“He used to scare the devil out of us when we were kids,” Alex said, “the way he’d look at us with those eyes of his. You know the way kids exaggerate things.”

“Hey Alex,” someone called from the gate, “something happened to the old man?”

Alex was waiting on the steps. He waved but did not say anything.

“Doggone Mabel Turnsby,” Waterman said. “She’s been setting on that phone since she called me. We’ll have the whole town down on us.” He tried the two windows on the porch. They were locked and the blinds were drawn over the dusty panes of glass. The old man’s rocker moved a little in the hot wind. Its cane bottom was hollowed with its many years of service.

“We better go round back,” the chief said.

Alex followed him. Mabel tapped on her window for their attention and then pointed. Following her directions they looked up. The cat was walking the length of the window seat inside, back and forth, as though it were in a cage. Waterman approached the window there and tried to open it. The cat lunged at him against the glass and he jumped back.

“Something queer all right,” he said. “That cat’s like a cornered badger.”

Mabel came down her back steps, wiping her hands in her apron. Alex tipped his hat.

“There’s something wrong. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yes, Mabel,” the chief said. “I think the old boy’s gone.”

“Gone? Dead, don’t you mean?”

“Dead, gone, departed. However you want to put it.”

She followed them to the back door. The cat had measured their steps and waited for them at the kitchen window, its back arched. The chief hesitated.

“Aren’t you going to try the door?” Mabel asked.

Waterman took out his gun and examined the chamber. The last time he had used it was for target practice out on the baseball field at the edge of town. But he had kept it oiled.

“What’s that for?” said Mabel.

“You’re asking too doggoned many questions, Mabel Turnsby. I’d be more than grateful to you if you’d go back in the house.”

“I’ll be real quiet, Fred.”

She’d be as quiet as a magpie, he thought. In all the years Andy had lived there she had probably got no closer to him than the tops of the kitchen curtains. Now she wasn’t going to miss a trick. He put his hand against the window. The cat flew at it, screaming and tearing at the glass.

“See,” he said, “that cat’s vicious.”

Mabel had already retreated several steps. “Mercy,” she said. “I’ll just watch from my porch till I hear the gun.”

“Trouble with this town is you can’t see if a man’s sleeping or dead without everybody hanging over you,” the chief said. “I ain’t going to trust that cat, Alex. I just ain’t taking any chances.”

The door was locked. Waterman took an old mop handle and smashed the glass of a window. The cat leaped for the hole, tearing its stomach on the jagged glass and shrieking with pain. Waterman fired, blessedly silencing the cry. The distraught animal drew itself together like a caterpillar and fell to the porch.

“I never saw or heard anything like that,” Alex said.

Waterman knocked out the rest of the glass and climbed through. Alex went in after him. There was a peculiar odor in the house, as though no air had been in it for many hours. There were dishes on the table, washed, but already filmed with dust. A huge box of old newspapers stood between the wall and the stove. Alex stopped to look at them. Then the ancient refrigerator started up, a familiar noise to be so startling. Alex and Waterman looked at one another.

“Come on, boy.”

The bathroom was at one side of the hallway out of the kitchen. Opposite it was the bedroom. The bed had not been made, but neither did it look slept in. Waterman stood over it a few seconds. “Kind of looks like he got in and out again without staying very long, don’t it?” he said. He pulled up the blind. There were no more buildings on that side of the street until Fitzsimmons’ gas station at the corner. The goldenrod was thick in the field, something the health department should have attended. The window was locked and the dust had gathered on the lock as though it had not been opened for many days. The old man’s pajamas lay across the one chair in the room.

Alex followed Waterman into the dining room. Here the shades were up, and Alex thought, the glare of midday light was more eerie than the gloom of the bedroom. The furniture was inexpensive and unused, but the upholstery had faded until the design was indistinguishable. A sliding door beyond was closed.

“It’s been swept lately,” Alex said.

Waterman stood at the bay window, and Alex could see a drop of perspiration running down his temple. “This is where Mabel saw the cat all morning,” the chief said. He went to the door then and pulled it open, the rollers squeaking as though it had not been used for a long time. The living room was almost dark, seeming darker after the brightness from which they had come. The blinds were drawn, but even in the dimness, they could see the figure of the old man huddled up on the sofa. His cane lay on the floor beside him.

“He’s a goner, all right,” Waterman said. “Better not raise the shades in here till we see what happened.”

Alex found the wall switch.

“Holy Joseph,” Waterman said.

The old man was twisted up like a baby, his arm over his face as though he were protecting it. His white shirt sleeve was stained with blood. The chief pulled the stiffened arm away from the face. Andy’s eyes were open. They were black and fierce, but there had been terror in them when he was dying, and it had remained after the life had gone out of him.

“Those scratches,” Alex said, “the poor old guy.”

“I think we better get Doc Jacobs,” Waterman said.

“It must have been the cat,” said Alex. “But he’s had it for years.”

“It looks like it all right. But that door was closed, and he don’t look like he got up and closed it, and then came back here to lie down in this position.”

“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 pulled 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.

“What have they got to do with it?” Tobin asked.

“I don’t think Mattson had a friend left on earth after Henry Addison died,” the mayor said. “The old gentleman used to visit him regularly until his death.”

Alex caught a quick exchange between Tobin and the deputy. “You don’t volunteer any useless information do you, Waterman?” Tobin said. “All right. Let’s get Jacobs up here so’s he can make out a death certificate before the ambulance gets here.”

“He’s already been here,” Waterman said.

“Why in hell didn’t you say so?”

“Didn’t see no reason to.”

“What did he say caused the death.”

“He didn’t say. Said that was the coroner’s job.”

“Have him send me the certificate.”

“I don’t think he’ll make one till he gets the autopsy report,” the chief said.

The coroner made a sound of disgust. “All right, all right. Let’s have everybody out of here except Olson and me.”

Waterman and the mayor went down the back steps together. Alex stopped on the porch. For a man of ninety-two, Andy Mattson was remarkable. Apparently he took care of all his own needs. The grass was growing high around the place, but there was a neat fence with sunflowers growing along it, separating the place from the vacant lot to the north. On the other side the fence ran from the front sidewalk as far as the back yard between Andy’s and Mabel’s place. Alex wondered if the old man had run out of fencing there, or if he had deliberately left the opening between the two yards. Andy’s back yard was a mass of shrubbery, growing wild now. There was considerable depth to the yards on that side of Sunrise Avenue. Most of the people kept gardens, and a good many of them raised chickens enough to supply their tables. A path from Andy’s doorstep ran through the long grass and passed out of sight among the bushes.

Alex looked down at the carcass of the cat, stiff and open with the wound across its stomach it had received from the jagged glass. In front of one ear there was a small blood-stained hole from Waterman’s bullet. Alex waved the flies away with his handkerchief. It occurred to him that perhaps the cat had a sore paw or some sensitive spot the old man might have touched, prompting it to scratch him that way. He examined the paws and legs. In the soft fur under the right forearm, almost concealed in the smear of blood, he found a scab about the size of the nail on his little finger.

“Chief,” he called.

Waterman came up the steps.

“I’ll be in your office, Fred,” the mayor said. “You should do something about the crowd out front.”

“They’ll go as soon as the coroner leaves,” Waterman said. He looked at the carcass where Alex pointed with his pencil.

“That might be it,” Alex said. “Andy might have picked him up by that forearm.”

“Maybe,” Waterman said, straightening up. Alex dropped his handkerchief over the animal.

“Now what?” Tobin said from the doorway.

“I think you might do an autopsy on the cat while you’re at it,” Waterman said.

The coroner did not answer him, but a few minutes later when the attendants carried Andy’s body out, they wrapped up the cat and took it along.

Meanwhile, Alex walked out to the gate. It was strange, he thought, that people had not pushed through the old fence and swarmed all over the place. Certainly they were not cowed by Gilbert, straddling the railing on the front porch like a kid on a barn gate.

Dan Casey was amusing the people around him and it was altogether like a festive occasion. But they had not seen Mattson’s face, and Alex could not forget it. Cars lined the street all the way to the gas station. Durkin’s delivery truck was alive with youngsters squirming over it in order to see above the crowd. Mabel was commuting between the ladies on the porch and the mob trampling her forsythia bushes. She looked rather as though she were trying to shoo chickens out of the garden. The crowd broke around Alex, pelting him with questions:

“Who was screaming back there?”

“The shot? Somebody get killed?”

“What’s taking them so long?”

Alex glanced among them, women in aprons, men in shirt sleeves, their faces flushed and moist with the excitement and the summer heat. He knew them all, tradespeople mostly, anyone who could close up shop and come when word spread that Chief Waterman was at Andy’s house. Years of seclusion had given the old man the reputation of being queer, but the annual visit of Henry Addison gave him a distinction he would scarcely have attained with a visitation by the angel Gabriel.

“Take it easy,” Alex said. “They say it was nothing but his heart giving out. You wouldn’t expect him to live forever, would you?”

“I always said he wouldn’t live long after Addison went,” Mrs. Oakes said. She lived across the street.

“That’s the way with old people when their friends go. I had an aunt once …”

“Poor man could have starved to death without a soul knowing it. I always say …”

“Didn’t old Addison leave him anything? With the millions he had you’d think …”

“You’d think Mabel’d have the decency to look in on him once in a while, the way she carried on about him twenty years ago …”

“I saw him at Durkin’s last week. Terrible feeble he looked. When people get up in years …”

The same things were said over and over again to each newcomer on the scene. Alex wished that he could get away quickly. It was curiosity that had brought him there himself in a way, and yet its manifestations in this mob of people sickened him.

“Alex. Alex Whiting!”

Miss Turnsby was flailing her way through the crowd to him. She pulled him back into her yard after her. “Look what they’re doing to my lawn,” she said. “Look at my forsythia and they bloomed the first time this year. How can people carry on this way?”

She was almost in tears, as close to tears as Mabel ever came, he thought. She had more in this crowd than she bargained for and he wanted to say as much to her. But what was the point? Instead he collared a youngster leaping across the bushes and assisted him into the crowd on the sidewalk. “How would you like it if this was your place?” he said.

“Aw, I wouldn’t put it past the old maid to have done him in herself.”

The words “done in” passed through the crowd like a fly.

The county ambulance pulled up then, and presently the attendants carried Andy’s remains out of the house. The deputy and the coroner followed them. Alex drifted back to where Waterman was standing at the side of the house. Together they watched the crowd dwindle down to a handful of men who might have been seen talking in the same fashion on the post office steps any day of the week.

“Ain’t people the dangedest things?” Waterman said.

“Aren’t they?” said Alex. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Want to go through the old man’s things?”

“I’d like to. I’d like to see what I can find out about him.”

“I’ll be in the station, Alex. I’d appreciate your making a list of anything you find.”

Alex, alone in the house, wondered where he should begin. It was singularly bare of any of the comforts one associates with a long-time residence. The drapes were faded and dust-ridden, and there were no cushions except those that were a part of the sofa. A bucket half-filled with coal stood by the old-fashioned stove, evidently there since the last fire in spring. Three volumes stood between a set of tarnished book ends on the table, untouched and unread for years, by their appearance. Alex looked at the titles: Theories of Compressed Air, Hydraulics and Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason.

He picked up one of the science books and blew the dust from it. At one time it had been well read and studied, with notations in the margins. Alex did not know much about hydraulics, but he gathered from the jottings, that whoever owned the books did. On one page after another, problems had been neatly copied in the white spaces, illustrating the theories or questioning them. Alex turned to the flyleaf. Andrew Mattson, 1893. The writing was bold, well-disciplined.

He looked at The Age of Reason. There was an inscription on the flyleaf, the writing thin and delicate:

To Andrew,

Heaven forgive my encouraging you—but bless you in your pursuit of truth.

My love,

October 11, 1885 Anne

1885. That was sixty-three years ago. Alex tried to imagine how Andy Mattson might have looked then. He would have been about thirty. Who was Anne? Someone in love with him? His sister? “… in your pursuit of truth,” she had written. There should be other books in the house, writing, evidences of study. Or had he abandoned the pursuit when he came to Hillside?

He opened the drawer to the table. In it were tax receipts on the property, one for each year from 1917 to date, except for 1933. Alex took a notebook from his pocket and jotted down “Tax—1933?” He thought for a moment and then wrote “Anne?” On another page he began the list for Waterman.

In a tin box in the corner of the drawer was one hundred and eighty-three dollars in cash. That was all.

He switched off the light and went into the dining room. There were only the table and chairs, cheap, upholstered furniture that looked faded with age but not with use. The cupboard contained nothing but dishes.

In the bedroom, the one chest of drawers contained clothes. There was a trunk in the closet, and an old suitcase lined with dismal striped canvas. They were both empty except for a small faded campaign ribbon and a button marked USA that rattled out of the suitcase pocket. Alex put them in a handkerchief and replaced the luggage. In the overcoat and one suit coat he found nothing but a few cents in change. Andy’s extra pair of shoes were on the closet floor.

In the bathroom, the shelf above the sink held soap, a bottle of iodine, a razor and tooth paste. Alex looked at his reflection in the age-speckled mirror. Tan and healthy, he felt out of place in this house, and somehow weary with the loneliness of it. The only thing of warmth he had seen was the inscription in Tom Paine, and that had been written sixty-three years before.

He looked at the box of old Jackson newspapers and decided to return to them at another time. Now he wanted to get away from the house. Something inside him ached for the old man who, apparently, had outlived by many years his desire to live.

Outdoors, he escaped the feeling of depression. Gilbert was sprawled in the sun in the long grass between Andy’s house and Miss Turnsby’s.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Nothing to speak of,” Alex said.

Even the last stragglers of the crowd were gone now, except for the ladies gathered on Miss Turnsby’s porch. None of them liked Mabel. She was a person they included “because they couldn’t very well get out of it.” But if the old lady was aware of it she never let on, for there was not a function in town she missed. And all this was a part of being good neighbors. Alex thought. There was something cruel about it. Everyone wanted to be liked, and probably Mabel more than anyone else in town.

“Better not let anybody in there yet, Gilbert,” he said. “Not till we hear from the coroner.”

“Not me.” He patted the revolver on his hip.

Alex wondered if it were safe for him to carry it, but he did not say anything.

“If you see the chief tell him not to forget I’m here.”

“Okay, Gilbert.”

Alex looked at his watch as he started for the car. It was after four. Maude would be waiting at the office with a hundred things that needed doing. Miss Turnsby leaned over the porch railing. The other ladies smiled and nodded. He felt that they were watching to see his attitude toward her.

“What did you find, Alex?”

“Nothing interesting, ma’am.”

“Those men were from the county. Are they burying him at the county farm?”

“I don’t know that.”

Mabel Turnsby was angry. He could feel the sting of her eyes although her mouth was smiling at him. You couldn’t like her even if you wanted to. He wondered how old she was, powdered and primped up, with the high collar covering her neck.

“If there’s anything I can do …” she said.

She wanted something to throw to her guests, some nibble of gossip to reward her for the patient vigil she had kept on Andy. At some time he might want every fragment of information she could give him. He walked over to the railing, motioning for her to lean down.

“I’m thinking of trying to start his story where he might have had a love affair once that ended unhappily.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I don’t want to talk about it until I find out more.”

She nodded somewhat abstractly as though she were turning the thought over in her mind. He did not wait to see whether she passed it along to her friends.

He felt uncomfortable with himself as he climbed into the car. It was a cheap thing to do, telling old Turnsby that. But he had to tell her something to keep her on his side. On his side for what? Why did the idea of Andy Mattson’s being murdered persist? He was ninety-two years old. The doors and windows to the house were locked from the inside. He knew the coroner’s report without seeing it. And yet the terror on the old man’s face stayed with him. Why should all the windows be closed up tight on the warmest days of summer?

The sweet smell of the goldenrod reached him through the open car window. He could see the yellow panicles bending in the wind like women praying at an outdoor meeting. The field was so bright in contrast to the bleakness of Andy’s house.

Andy did not have any close neighbors except Mabel Turnsby. The town seemed to have stopped growing there. The back yards of all the houses on that side of the street ran into the prairie. Half a mile away was Townline Road. Where it joined Highway 62 there was a barbecue stand. That was the nearest building to the east.

Across the street the property holders seemed to have indulged themselves in acres of front lawns. For the most part they were well-to-do people—Art Baldwin, the barber, whose wife was cashier at the First National Bank; Martin Fabry, Fabry and Sons Lumber and Coal; Ned Oakes, owner of Hillside’s one shoe store, and Matt Sanders, the plumber. The four of them owned the entire west side of the street. It was strange, Alex thought, that the town had been built out that way, increasing in property value up to the east side of Sunrise Avenue. There a fringe of wooden frame houses remained from several generations back. Mabel’s house was the best of them, and all the others belonged to people of a lower income—workers in the toy factory for the most part.

“Something wrong with the buggy?”

It was Gilbert, and Alex realized that he had been sitting there for some time. The ladies on Miss Turnsby’s porch were looking at him. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking. See you later.”

When Alex returned to the Sentinel office the plant had closed. Maude and Joan were still in the office. He liked this time of day best there. The presses were off and there was not the pressure of grinding out the routine printing orders that kept them in business.

“I wonder what you’d be like if you had to meet a dateline oftener than once a week,” Maude said. “What happened? We heard you had the coroner over there.”

“The old man’s dead,” Alex said.

“Complete coverage,” Maude said.

Joan came over from her desk to Maude’s. She had attended the state university with Alex, and when he had gone into the army, she had come into the Sentinel office, doing what Mr. Whiting called “leg work,” enjoying his own sententiousness. “I’ve dug up everything I could find in our files on the old man, Alex. It’s not much. Addison mostly. The last time he was here was March 12.”

“Thanks, Joan. That’s what I figured. There isn’t much any place on Mattson, I’m afraid, not even in his house. I’ve been up there poking around all afternoon. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems to me there’s something fishy about it.”

“How, fishy?” Maude said.

“I don’t know exactly.” He sat down on the side of her desk and fit a cigarette. He offered one to Maude and she took it. Before she lighted it, however, she glanced up to see if the Venetian blinds had been drawn. Alex grinned.

“You old hypocrite,” he said.

She exhaled a healthy burst of smoke and brushed the hair back from her forehead. Alex could not remember when her hair had not look disheveled, and the gesture with the heel of her palm was as familiar as breakfast. Her fingers were always black with ink.

“Never mind that. Let’s hear what happened over there.”

Alex told them.

“The poor soul,” Maude said. “I’ve never liked cats myself. You can’t tell when they’ll turn on you. Regular Judases. What do you think’s fishy about it?”

“I’ve got a feeling something’s missing out of the house, Maude. It’s as bare as a bone.”

“Did you talk to Mabel Turnsby? She’s had an eye on him for thirty years. I think she’d have married him yesterday if he’d have had her.”

“That’s a dirty crack.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Up till ten or fifteen years ago I’d have done it myself.”

“Why then?”

“He was a handsome man, Alex. I was shocked to find out how old he was.”

“Do you remember anything about him, Joan?”

“Not very much. We were frightened of him as youngsters. We used to call him ‘the cat man.’”

“I wonder why a cat and not a dog,” Alex said. “I always associate cats with old ladies.”

“That’s a silly association,” Maude said. “I had an experience with Mattson once. Not much of an experience. More an impression. You know how curious everybody was when old Henry Addison came to see him? Well, one day about three years ago I thought I’d stick my nose into it. When Mabel called—it was always her told us he was there—I went up and sat on her front porch with her the whole blessed day waiting for him to come out. I thought they were playing chess maybe. Anyway, along about four o’clock the chauffeur arrives and I got down by the gate. The chauffeur tried to get rid of me every way, but I stuck it out till Addison came down the steps.

“‘Mr. Addison,’ says I, ‘the Hillside Sentinel would like to do a story on you and Mr. Mattson, such old friends, and you being famous and all that.’

“Addison looked me over and called off the chauffeur. Mattson was standing on the porch grinning down on us like the devil himself. ‘I think Mr. Mattson would be the person for you to approach,’ says the big bug, ‘especially since he’s a member of your community.’

“I knew what I’d get out of Andy—what the little boy shot at, so I stood my ground. ‘We’d like to have a few words from you about him, Mr. Addison,’ says I. ‘It would be important, you commenting on one of our people.’ I never felt Andy was one of our people but I said it anyway. Addison was flustered, I could see that. He hedged around as though he could feel Andy’s eyes on the back of his head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t oblige you, madam,’ he says. ‘Mr. Mattson’s a very humble man. But he is the smartest man I have ever known.’

“With that he turns, nods to Andy, and gives his arm to the chauffeur. Old Andy was leaning against a porch pillar, almost as tall and thin as it was. He just threw back his head and laughed like a man of forty. I was mad, spitting mad, and I could see old Turnsby’s white top bobbing around the windows like a ping-pong ball.”

Alex stepped on his cigarette. “I get more interested in Andy Mattson every turn I take,” he said. “Now I better get home. Dad’ll be wanting to know what’s happened.”

“He’s called a couple of times,” Joan said. “Alex, did you pick up the Three Corners’ news this morning?”

“I’m sorry, honey. I’ve had it in my pocket all day.” He took several hand written pages from his pocket and gave them to her.

“If Jennie Williams wore another lovely brocade dress, I’ll scream,” she said.

“Are you coming out to the ball game tonight?” he asked.

“I imagine.”

“Good.”

“Alex, did you get over to the library?” Maude asked. “Some people like those ‘library jottings,’ and I know Stella well enough to know she won’t come around till you do.”

He had run a letter in the last Sentinel from the English teacher calling the librarian on a dangling participle in one of her reviews. “I’ll make it in time,” he said. “I’ll bet she has them all ready for me.”

Maude squashed out her cigarette. “Maybe you don’t work us to death, Alex Whiting,” she said, “but you sure worry us enough.”

“He’s changing, isn’t he, Maude?” Joan said after Alex had left the office.

“Mmm, I don’t know. He’s a lot like his father.” Maude could remember the day he was born. It was in 1919, days similar to the present: peace conferences without the certainty of peace, Balkan troubles, reparations. It was not the sort of news the Sentinel carried, but things Alex’s father felt called for comment and thought in every community, even Hillside. He had had his say, and for a time the Sentinel had been delivered free and without advertising. He couldn’t afford it then, and the only bright spot in those days was the birth of Alex. The Whitings had lost two children before that, and they had all but given up hope of having one. “I’d say he was having growing pains. It’s not easy to be Charlie Whiting’s son. When he does something good, people say he’s a chip off the old block. When he makes a mistake, they say he’ll never be the man his father was. He’s finding his own way now. I know all his symptoms. He’ll break out in a crusade one of these days, just like his father used to.” Maude sighed. “I don’t know if I’m up to them any more. It’s all very well to go out swinging for some cause or other. But when you’re sitting back here trying to balance the books, the flavor’s more like ashes.” She looked up at Joan. “I suppose you think he’s wonderful?”

“No. Very nice, but not wonderful.”

Joan was not a pretty girl, but there was a quiet depth about her. It was in her eyes, her slow smile. Only when you talked with her for a long time did you discover the scope of her awareness and imagination. Or you could see it in the hundred different ways she found to spice the drab news of Hillside.

“In some ways he’s a danged fool,” Maude said, taking her hat from the letter basket.

Joan’s color heightened, and at that moment, Maude thought, she was the most beautiful girl in town.

Chapter 5

ALEX STOPPED AT THE station on his way home. Mayor Altman was sitting beside the chief’s desk when he walked in. His legs were spread apart, the better to support his ample stomach. One of the things Alex didn’t like about him was the way he parted his hair in the middle so that it looked like a toupee, which, he thought to himself, was a fine basis for prejudice.

“Hello, Mr. Altman,” he said. “Still hot, isn’t it?”

“Terrible. I’d like to scratch August off the calendar. How’s your father these days, Alex?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Still taking it easy? It must be wonderful.”

“Not to hear him tell it!”

“A wonderful man, Alex. Wonderful man.”

Yes, he thought. Altman would say that as long as Charlie Whiting wasn’t tearing into one of his pet schemes. For years the mayor had been trying to lure one industry after another to Hillside. At one time he had induced the town board to buy a two-acre plot on which he intended a tractor outfit to build a factory: The tractor company decided in favor of the county seat at Riverdale, and the town treasurer had to unload the property. Altman was not happy with Mr. Whiting’s Sentinel comments on the town as a real estate brokerage.

“Find anything up there, Alex?” Waterman asked.

“Not much. A hundred eighty-three dollars, two books on hydraulics and one by Tom Paine. Also an old army campaign ribbon.” He laid the money on the chief’s desk, and a page from his notebook, listing the items.

“I wouldn’t go any further on this, Waterman, if I were you,” the mayor said.

Alex looked at him.

“I only mean that there’s no use antagonizing the county. After all they have the equipment. What I mean is, they’re more qualified than … Well, Hillside isn’t exactly prepared to investigate a thing like this.”

“I think we might muddle through with a little cooperation,” Alex said.

“I just don’t think Waterman should undertake it,” the mayor said.

“Why not? He’s a qualified police officer.”

“The qualifications to meet the needs of Hillside are scarcely … What I mean is, as long as the county stepped in, why not let them follow through on it?”

“That would suit me fine,” said Alex. “But I just don’t think they look at it that way. So far they don’t think there’s anything to investigate.”

“Alex,” the mayor said, pointing at him with a pencil, “it seems to me the townspeople have elected the men they intended to conduct the town business.”

“I can see what you mean,” Alex said, “but you can’t blame me for being curious.”

“Of course not, my boy. That’s a newspaperman’s job.”

“I’m not a newspaperman,” Alex said. “I’m a printer.”

“Of course, of course,” Altman said. He turned to the chief who had been trying to get his pipe to draw. “What do you think, Fred? Can we go ahead with the funeral arrangements? I might call the Addisons, since there aren’t any relatives we know of.”

“I suppose we might as well,” Waterman said. “I ain’t exactly satisfied about how he died myself, but I don’t see how we can hold up the funeral.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Altman said. “The coroner’s report will cover you.”

It was amazing how sure everyone was of the coroner’s verdict.

“It ain’t me I’m worried about,” the chief said.

The telephone rang. It was the coroner’s office.

“No, Mark,” Waterman said. “We didn’t find much. Nothing to show any relatives alive. He had a hundred eighty-three dollars cash in the house. That’s about all …”

Yes, Alex thought. That was about all. He could see Altman relaxing under Waterman’s monotone.

“… I guess you’re right, Mark. He could have shut the cat in the other room and then collapsed. If you say so …”

Alex shook his head. “What about fingerprints?” he prompted.

“Anything show up in the fingerprints?” Waterman asked. He turned to Alex. “He’s checking. … No, none of us touched anything I know of. Wait a minute. Mabel Turnsby pussyfooted in after us. She might’ve leaned on the chair. I’ll check and be sure. A scar, index finger, left hand …”

“There’s an example of what I mean,” the mayor said. “What competent investigator would let a thing like that happen?”

Alex shrugged. “Did you ever try to keep Mabel Turnsby out of some place she was set on getting into?”

Waterman hung up the phone. “They won’t have the results on the tests for a while, but Tobin’s pretty sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“They can make short work of something up there if they want to, can’t they?” Alex said angrily.

“Alex, you got to go deeper in thinking this thing out. It just don’t make sense that anyone’d try to kill the old man. He was bound to go out pretty soon. What’d be the use risking your neck when he was going to kick off any day?”

“Chief Waterman’s right,” the mayor said. “It makes no sense at all.”

“Suppose you’d waited years for him to go, and he just wouldn’t die?”

“You’d still wait for a man in his nineties to go the regular way,” the chief said.

There were a lot of things Alex wanted to say, but there was no use saying them now. “You’d better not forget Gilbert, Chief. He’ll be getting hungry. He’s a big boy now.”

“I’ll stop by. I’d better put some sort of “no trespassing” sign on the house.”

“Do you mind if I poke around a bit? For my own satisfaction?”

“Nope. Go ahead, Alex. If you’d feel any better, I’ll give you an auxiliary badge.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Waterman,” the mayor said. Both Alex and the chief looked at him. His face showed that he regretted the words immediately.

“I guess it’ll be all right,” Waterman said. “I got the authority to do this if I see fit. And it looks fit to me. Here, Alex. This sort of makes it legal.”

He took the badge. It required so little in Hillside to make a thing legal.

Chapter 6

THE WHITINGS LIVED IN the oldest part of town, on Deerpath Avenue. The street was supposed to have been a hunting trail the Indians followed on their way to the north woods. Where it crossed Appleseed Avenue, there was an iron fence around a knotted apple tree said to have been planted by the legended Johnny Appleseed more than a hundred years before. Horticulturists scoffed at the idea, but no one in Hillside paid any attention to them. They much preferred the legend.

The houses on Deerpath Avenue were old, and most of them had been handed down from one generation to another from the earliest settlers in the town. The lawns and gardens were spacious, for once each family had kept its cow and chickens, but they now had a zoning law against it. Charlie Whiting had had a word to say on that … when it came to zoning a town with twelve hundred people, but it was one of his lost causes. The frame houses were built on stone foundations, two stories high, every one of them with a screen porch the width of the house. Huge elm trees arched across the street, allowing only a dapple of sunlight through.

Alex’s father was sitting on the porch when he drove up. He came to the door to meet him. “I’d rather wait for Christmas than for you, son. Laura, Alex is home. Come on out and let supper be for a while.”

Alex watched his mother come through the hall, his hand outstretched to take hers. She was the light of his life, as he always said. Nearly seventy now, she still walked quickly, leaning forward a little as though she couldn’t wait to get where she was going. Alex had her eyes, and the habit of arching one eyebrow when he doubted the truth of what someone said.

“The poor old man,” Mrs. Whiting said. “It’s a terrible thing to have to die alone. Did you see him, Alex?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Did he die a peaceful death?”

Alex looked away from her. He loosened his tie and sat down on the swing next to his father. “I don’t think so, Mom. I’m afraid he had a rough time of it.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” she said.

“Something happened to his cat. It scratched him up pretty bad. Coroner thinks the shock of it was what killed him.”

“That’d be Mark Tobin,” his father said. “Was Jake up to take a look at him?”

“He was there first. That’s what he thought, too.”

“How do you feel about it, son?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I was up there with Waterman when he found him. Both of us felt as though there was something more to it than we could see. The county men came down and looked around. They didn’t have much to say, and as far as Tobin was concerned it was all cut and dried. Nothing to it.”

“How about Waterman?”

“Like I said, he felt the way I did until Altman went to work on him.”

“Altman’s an inferior sort of person,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“There’s a lot of things I want to know,” Alex said. “More about Andy, mostly. You’ve got no idea how desolate that house is. It was like seeing bones on a desert. I just can’t believe a man could live in one place for thirty years and not accumulate a lot of junk.”

“It’s not likely,” Mr. Whiting said. “On the other hand, Andy knew he was going to die soon. He might not have wanted people prying around. He certainly didn’t want it when he was alive. I’ve been trying to remember all I know about him. It’s funny, we don’t pay much attention to people when they’re alive.”

“Andy was around Hillside for a long time, wasn’t he, Dad?”

“About thirty years or so. I think the first time I saw him was when he came into the office to put an ad in the Sentinel for some used plumbing equipment. I took the ad myself. The way I remember it, I suggested he get Matt Sanders to put it in for him. He said he’d do it himself, and I wondered if Matt was going to have competition. He didn’t. Whatever Andy did for a living, it wasn’t plumbing.”

“He did a good job,” Alex said. “It’s still working.”

“He was a big man then. Six-foot-two at least. Sharp black eyes that darted at you. And he had a sense of humor with a knife in it. He kept it to himself unless you pried into his business. Then God help you.”

“Weren’t people curious about where he came from, Dad?”

“Sure they were, but I don’t think they ever found out. He was as close-mouthed a man as I ever knew. There was a big increase in population about then—during the first war. By the time it was over people were used to Andy being around.”

“Who sold him the property? He didn’t build that house.”

“I think it was up for sale. That whole strip belonged to the Turnsbys once. Mike Turnsby lived there, and he moved to Chicago along about then. A lot of talk at the time. His wife couldn’t get along with his sister. That’s Mabel. Mike’s wife was sort of a flapper, and Mabel … well, she wasn’t much different then from what she is now. Norah Barnard, the vet’s wife is Mike’s daughter. She came back to Three Corners after her and Doc were married. I guess Mike left her that land out there. Turnsbys owned a lot of land around here once. She won’t speak to Mabel, though. Some tiff there.”

“Mrs. Barnard doesn’t speak to anybody very much,” Mrs. Whiting said. “Gives herself airs like a duchess. You wouldn’t think she was a veterinary’s wife. Last year she came to the Hillside Anniversary dressed like a fashion model.”

“I remember,” Alex said.

“Doc’s a pretty well-known man in his field,” Mr. Whiting said. “He’s written a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t care,” said Mrs. Whiting. “If you’d written Pilgrim’s Progress I wouldn’t go around that way.”

“Mabel’s falling off her porch with curiosity,” Alex said.

“I’ll bet she is,” said his father. “I’ll tell you one thing, son, if there’s a person in town knows anything about Andy, it’s Mabel Turnsby.”

“How did she act when Andy moved in next door?”

“Right neighborly, at first. There was talk. I think she helped it along. She was getting on to being an old maid then. If Andy bid her time of day, she could fix it up in her mind to look like a marriage proposal.”

“The poor, unhappy soul,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“Yes, it was kind of pathetic, especially with the kind of tongue Andy had. I remember once she got him to go to a social up at the church. He was a fine figure of a man, big shoulders, the head of a lion. You remember that, Laura?”

Mrs. Whiting nodded.

“He was dressed like a king—cravat, tie-pin, smooth-shaven, his fingernails clean. Everything perfect. He was what the women liked to call “grave.” He got a private amusement out of everything, and I didn’t think it was very funny. None of the men did.”

“He could dance,” Mrs. Whiting said. “He was the best dancer on the floor, including your father.”

Alex grinned.

“That’s only because you danced with him that once. You’ve had to dance with me all your life. But he was proper, all right. Danced with half the women in the place. Shared his supper basket with Mabel. Bid handsome for it, too. But just the same there was something in his eyes … around the corners of his mouth that made you think he was sizing you up, thinking this is what good people call ‘church work.’”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Charles,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“I’m just telling you how I felt about it, that’s all. I know I was mighty glad he never showed up for another shindig.”

“I’ll bet old Turnsby was in heaven that night,” Alex said.

“She was. He gave her the night of her life, and by gosh, she looked mighty pretty. I’ve never seen her look that way before or since.”

Something about Mabel’s position in the community was hurting Alex again—the frustration in her life, and her poor brave attempts to ignore it and pretend to happiness.

“I don’t think she ever forgave him for it, though,” Mr. Whiting continued “All the old biddies thought she had something. Maybe she thought so, too. But after that night, I don’t think she ever had another fling in her life.”

“It was a mean thing for him to do,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“Sure it was. I don’t think Andy was ever known for his kindness.”

“I guess she asked for it,” Alex said. “When I see her smiling and scraping, and I know butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, I can’t stand her. But what in hell could she do about it? Go and hang herself?”

Mr. Whiting sighed and looked down at his hands. They were whiter now than they had ever been in his life, almost as white as his hair. Everybody grew old and white and lonely. He at least, had a full life and Laura and Alex. “Yes, I know what you mean, son. I don’t much care for them old maid jokes myself.”

“She’s done a lot of good things in her day,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“How old would you say she is, Mom?”

“Probably in her seventies.”

“That old?”

“She was out of high school before your father got in.”

“You know it’s a queer thing,” said Alex. “I can never remember what people looked like years ago. I just see them now. I don’t remember Andy as anything but a dried up old man. I can’t get over there not being pictures or letters or something in that house.”

“There should be a deed to the property at least.”

“That’s right,” said Alex, “unless he has a box in the bank. But why would he keep that much cash in the house if he had?”

“You can find out easy enough. Call Milt Johnson. He’s home by now.”

Alex went into the house to phone. Mrs. Whiting went to the kitchen to get supper.

“Nope,” he said when he returned to the porch, “never set foot in the bank all the years he’s been here.”

“Give me a cigarette, boy,” his father said. He lit it and inhaled thoughtfully. “Just what do you expect to do in this business?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Maybe just look for a story. The more inklings I get into the kind of guy old Andy was, the more I want to know about him.”

“Is that all?”

“No. I still feel somebody wasn’t satisfied he was dying fast enough. And I think the attitude of the county is typical of their whole rotten setup there.”

“That’s something else again,” his father said. “That’s serious stuff for you to step into.”

“I know it is. But damn it, Dad, I know Waterman had the same idea at noon today.”

“But somebody side-tracked him.”

“Between the mayor and Mark Tobin he went cold as a mackerel.”

“Who else came down from Riverdale, Alex?”

“Jim Olson, a deputy sheriff.”

“That’s Mel Olson’s boy,” his father said. “He’s a good man, I think. Just light on experience. You know they’re not all bad up there. Just most of them.”

“He seemed to be doing a good job. I don’t know much about it.”

“Where did Mayor Altman come in on it?”

“He came up to the house while the county men were there. I figure he wants to keep the town’s skirts clean in case the Addison clan’s involved.”

Mr. Whiting looked intently at his son.

“Yes, that’s probably it,” he said. “That’s going to make all of them wary. I don’t like you bucking into that outfit, Alex. I know that’s what you’re after, but I hate to see it start this way.”

“I’d like to see them cleaned out,” Alex said.

“I know. But it’s a hard, long job. You know what happened to me while you were away. It bears thinking about again now. I figured there was funny business in the draft board. The whole damn town was going into war plants—Addison Industries. Every recruit was coming from the farm kids. I broke it up, but for two years I couldn’t get enough newsprint for a handbill.”

“That’s power,” Alex said.

“Sure it’s power. And it’s one thing to buck into that every election time, but when you go in there swinging a charge of murder at somebody, or willful negligence … that’s dynamite, Alex.”

He got up and flicked his cigarette out the door.

“It makes you wonder where to begin, doesn’t it, Dad?”

“Yes, it does. You’ve got to have the discretion of St. Paul.”

“There was something thicker than water between Andy and old Addison. Maybe that’s the place to start.”

“Maybe. But don’t fool yourself, Alex. They’re too big to take any chances. I want you to think about something it’s taken me a long time to learn: people with influence don’t very often corrupt a community. It’s the community corrupts themselves trying to curry favors.”

Mrs. Whiting called them to supper.

Chapter 7

EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY evening, weather permitting, the teams of the soft ball league met at the edge of town for seven innings. On Labor Day the league winners, or “the survivors” as the Sentinel referred to them, took on their counterpart from Mason City. It was late in the season now, and that night Baldwin’s Bottlers, composed mostly of fellows who worked at the bottling plant, were meeting Fabry’s Fables. Alex played first base on the latter team. Both teams had suffered eleven defeats, each having won a single game. Very few people would have been on hand ordinarily, but that night half the town was there.

Scarcely a man got to first base who hadn’t some comment to make on Andy Mattson’s death. That would also account for the crowd along the sidelines and on the car fenders. Every once in a while Alex heard somebody yell, “Hey, what happened?” They weren’t paying much attention to the ball game. He saw Joan talking with Sarah Randalls. Sarah worked for the telephone company. Overworked today, no doubt, unless she was on the board at night this week.

“Come on, Whitie. Get some life into it.”

Alex scooped up a handful of dust and trotted away from the bag. “All right, gang. Let’s go. Let’s go. Put him away, Pete. This guy couldn’t hit a barrel with buckshot. Give it to him slow. Nice and slow.”

Jim Brennan swung hard on the spinner and loped it over second base. The center fielder, coming in fast, overran it, and the ball rolled out to the target Chief Waterman had set up for practice. Here he trained Gilbert, and kept his own hand in. It had taken a steady hand to hit the cat, flying at him as it had. There was something wrong with it. No animal turned like that unless there was something physically wrong with it.

“For cripe’s sake, Whitie, get the lead out of your shoes.”

He should have been covering second base, but it was too late now, anyway. Brennan was already sliding into third. This was not his night in the field. Lou Ivantic got to first on a bunt, but Brennan was held at third. The pitcher grew cautious then and the game slowed up.

“Some business up there with the old man, huh, Whitie?”

“Yeah.”

“He was in thick with the Addisons, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know how thick,” Alex said.

“I’ll bet Altman had convulsions.”

Alex followed him off the bag a couple of steps. “Why?”

“He’s been out at the factory a lot. Going over expansion plans with Hershel. I got a notion they’re working on a deal with Addison.” Lou Ivantic worked at the toy factory.

“Are you guessing, Lou, or are you sure of that?”

“I wouldn’t go to court and swear to it, if that’s what you mean. I just work there. He don’t consult me on those things. I heard the name a couple of times and put two and two together.”

The Fables’ pitcher was standing with his hands on his hips looking at them. “Are you playing Siamesie with that guy, Whiting? For cripe’s sakes, make up your mind if you’re going to play ball or detective.”

“Keep your shirt on, Pete. I’ll get on it now.”

The game ended in a twelve to ten victory for the Fables, no thanks to Alex in the field. Most of the crowd hung around for a while. “… Used to deliver coal in that shack of his. It’d come out the window and he wouldn’t let me go in and shovel it away. The place all boarded up. You’d think he had the atom bomb secret. What the hell, I didn’t care. Less work for me. Crazy as a loon if you ask me …” Alex went to the car and changed his shirt. A shack would have to be in the bushes behind the house. He remembered the path. The bushes were so thick it had not been visible from the porch.

“Going to the stand for a coke, Whitie?”

“Yeah. I’ll be over.” He met Joan at the door of the barbecue stand. Someone had already started the juke box, and the place was jammed. “Let’s stay outdoors for a while,” he said. “You look nice tonight.”

“Thanks. Alex, everybody’s talking about Andy Mattson. They seem to take for granted he was murdered.”

“That’s because the coroner was down. You know how people are. When they see a fire truck there has to be a fire. Want to take a walk, Joan? I don’t have the heart for a jam session tonight.”

“I’d just as soon stay outdoors,” she said.

The gravel of the parking lot crunched beneath their feet. It was almost dark now, the way darkness comes quickly in late August, and in the open field at the back of the stand the lightning bugs were as thick as stars. “I wonder where it’ll all end,” Alex said. “I wonder where it started. I get a melancholy sort of feeling when I think of the old man.”

“Peggy Shiel and I were talking at the game,” Joan said. “She told me how she had met him down in front of the town hall one day during the war. He was looking at the honor roll. When he saw her he asked her if she knew the boys on the list. She said she knew most of them, and he pointed his stick at her and asked her if she knew why they were there. ‘Greed,’ he said. ‘That’s all it is, my dear. Greed, stupidity and arrogance.’ Then he asked her where they were fighting now. She told him about the Battle of the Bulge. He kept repeating ‘the bulge, the battle of the bulge. And where is the bulge, my dear?’ She started to tell him. ‘Not geographically, silly child.’ Peggy was afraid of him then and got away as fast as she could. I think he spoke more sharply than he really meant to.”

“Peggy’s not very smart anyway,” Alex said. “But then none of us are. Not one of us had the brains or heart to think about the old man until he was dead.” At the edge of the parking lot he stooped down to examine a path that began there and continued through the field toward the backs of the houses on Sunrise Avenue. “Wait here a moment for me, Joan.” He went to the car and got his flashlight. He threw its beam through the long grass, catching in its light pieces of the white gravel. “A car’s been through here lately,” he said. “I’d be willing to bet on it.”

They followed the tracks. As they neared the shrubs they heard someone whistling for his dog. Alex switched off the light. Presently the whistling stopped and a door banged. Closer to them the chickens in a nearby coop had been disturbed. “No zoning laws over here,” he said. With the flashlight on again, he caught the glisten of grease on the grass tops. “I think whoever was in here turned the car around right here. If we’d had some rain there might be tracks, but this stuff’s hard as a straw mattress.”

“We’re behind Mattson’s place, aren’t we?” Joan said.

“Directly behind it.” They followed a path through the bushes past the door of Andy’s shack. For a moment he played the light on the back steps of the house. “Let’s see if the shack is open.” As they pushed the door open the smell of damp coal and wood reached them. Alex found a light switch at the side of the door. The sudden light blinded them for a moment. He closed the door. There were windows in the place, but they were boarded up with inside shutters.

“I’ll bet you can’t even see the light in here from the outside,” Joan said.

Alex turned around and examined the door. It had been unlocked from the outside, but there was a bolt on the inside. “Seems as though he felt safe outdoors,” Alex said, “but inside he didn’t take any chances.”

“We shouldn’t touch anything, should we, Alex?”

Alex felt a draft of wind behind him. “No ma’m, and by rights you shouldn’t even be here.”

It was Waterman who had come in the door soundlessly behind them. “You want to tell me when you’re coming here, Alex. I was just laying out there waiting for somebody to show up.”

“Why?”

“No particular reason. Take a look around here, Alex. I didn’t mean to speak sharp to you, Miss Joan.”

“It’s our own fault,” she said. “It just gave me a start.”

“Look at this place,” Waterman said. “You’ll get more than that.”

Alex was getting his first feeling that Andy Mattson had ever been alive. There was a work bench the length of the building, about twenty feet. The light he had turned on hung from a cord above the bench, shaded by an old-fashioned office globe, green on the outside and white within. Directly beneath the light was a drafting board built above the bench. It had been sandpapered smooth, but a film of dust clung to it now. Beside the drafting board was a tall stool, the kind bookkeepers used many years before. Chief Waterman sat down on it and stretched his long legs.

“Some nest, ain’t it?” he said.

In one corner of the room was the coal bin. Beside it was a sink between the work bench and the bin. A couple of feet from the other side of the bin was a stove, the same kind that was in the house, and beyond that, against the wall, an old leather couch with an Indian blanket folded at the bottom.

“Andy must have worked here at night,” Alex said.

“A queer old duck,” the chief said, “sitting on the front porch dozing that way all day, and larking out here at night. Except he wasn’t larking. Beats everything what you don’t know about people.”

Beneath the table of the bench was a row of drawers. Alex opened one after another of them. “Would you look at the tools he had?”

Some of the finer tools were wrapped in cotton batten. “Took care of ’em too,” Waterman said. “They say you can tell a workman by the care he takes of his tools.”

The bench was cupboards from one end to the other beneath the drawers. Alex opened the doors. “Joan, take a look at this,” he said. He threw the beam of his flashlight over a tray of miniature animals carved by hand.

Joan picked one up and turned it around and around. “What beautiful, beautiful work.”

“Here’s one that works on some sort of track,” Alex said. He opened one cupboard after another. “There’s everything—farm animals, wild animals, little men, trains, tractors. Would you look at this squirrel!”

Waterman took it from him. Its legs were on wires that gave it an amazing mobility. It could be wound up by turning the tail. Waterman set it loose across the bench. It ran and bobbed and stopped. “Watch, Alex.” In a second it started up again and repeated its life-like routine. “Did you ever see a squirrel more like it?”

“Never.”

“Everything’s got the same naturalness,” Waterman said. “It’s like he spent a lifetime watching things move and making them over like he was God.”

“That may be the reason he was so fond of cats,” Joan said. “They have wonderful movement, the staccato sort of thing when they’re kittens, and a gracefulness as they mature.”

“That might be it,” Alex said. In the last cupboard he found the wired board into which some of the animals could be set and operated on a battery. “I wonder what he used for models for the inanimate things.”

“Mail order catalogues,” Waterman said. “They’re in the desk part under the drafting board. There’s sketches too, and arithmetic going into the x, y, z business. I used to wonder what good that did anybody.”

Across the bottom of the two cupboards were blocks of wood and two sheets of metal. Alex drew his finger along them. The dust was very heavy. “He hadn’t been working lately,” he said. “But I don’t know how he could have done it this long. This stuff takes a steady hand and good eyes.”

“Just now I wouldn’t put anything past him,” the chief said. “But it looks like we might visit Joe Hershel at the toy factory, don’t it?”

Alex closed the cupboard doors and straightened up. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Somebody told me tonight Altman was going over plans with Hershel for an expansion of the factory. He heard the name Addison mentioned between them.”

“That a fact?” Waterman said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder if this is what the old man and Andy worked on when he came to see him.”

“Henry Addison wasn’t very active in the Industries for quite a while,” Alex said.

“No. That’d be George, and they don’t go in for this kind of stuff.”

“Any more word on the post-mortem, Chief?”

“It’s finished,” Waterman said. “I’ll get a copy in the morning. Just like they figured, weak heart aggravated by the attack from the cat. Dead eight to ten hours.”

“What about the cat?”

“Nothing wrong with it except the tear in its stomach from the glass, the bullet hole in its head and a sore under the right forearm.”

“I’d say it was in pretty bad shape,” Alex said. “What kind of sore?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say. What kind of sores do cats get?”

“Cat sores,” Alex said. “Do you honestly think they did an examination on it, Chief?”

“Between you and me, Alex, I don’t. If something showed up in the tests on the old man, maybe they would have.”

“Chief, Joan and I walked in along an old path from the barbecue stand. There was a car through there recently. There’s grease on the grass tops where it brushed the transmission. I don’t think anybody’s delivered coal here in months.”

Waterman didn’t say anything for a moment. The corners of his eyes were crinkled the way he looked at Alex trying to weigh the importance of what was said. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know. The county’s closed the case up. Or to put it right, they didn’t find any case. If I go looking for one and don’t find it …” He let the sentence finish in his mind and in theirs. Waterman was getting old, Alex thought. There was a motion before the town board for his pension next year. “But I’ll tell you something else that’s kind of funny, boy. Andy had an extra key made to his back door the other day, and it ain’t showed up any place.”

“Would Mabel have it?”

“She says no.”

They stood a few seconds, the three of them, looking around the room. “Anything personal here?” Alex asked. “Anything that would give you a clue to the old man himself?”

“Not a thing.”

“No deed to the property, or anything like that?”

“Nope.”

“Where do we go from here, Chief?”

“I don’t know, Alex. I want to think about it tonight. I’m going to board up that window in the house. Then I’ll go out back with you and see where you say that car was.”

“I rather hate to leave here,” Joan said. “There’s something about this room. It gives you a feeling of a whole life, almost a world.”

“It does,” said Alex, looking around it once more, and at the squirrel Waterman was returning to its place in the cupboard. “Andy made everything, just everything people use.”

“Except one thing,” Waterman said, straightening up. He laid his hand on the revolver in his holster. “Out of all them little gadgets there ain’t a gun. Out of all them little men, farmers, coal miners, engineers—out of them all, there ain’t a soldier.”

They went outdoors.

Chapter 8

THE SOUND OF WATERMAN’S hammer in the quiet night gave Joan a choking feeling, as though the nails were hurting something, or sealing off the air from something in which there was still life. She shivered. In August the nights already had an autumn dampness, however hot the days. Alex was holding the flashlight for Waterman. Across the yard there was a light in Miss Turnsby’s kitchen, and Joan remembered the many times when as a youngster she had sold chances on Mabel’s quilts for church bazaars, and the good things Mabel made to eat that never tasted quite so good if you ate them in her house. “Ah, Miss Turnsby’s cookies,” or “These are Miss Turnsby’s spiced apples?” At socials people always recognized them and relished them, but at her own table everything had the tang of jessamine just as there was always the scent of it about her person … There were times when she thought of herself in Mabel’s terms, capable, self-reliant, but not self-sufficient. Mabel made a show of being that. Maude Needham was more adept at it. She had become aggressive, belligerent, fiercely efficient with certain masculine traits that forced you to meet her on her terms. No one ever felt sorry for Maude because she lived alone. She made you think she liked it, and even now, Joan thought, perhaps she did. But Mabel was a mixture of pride and fawning that made her the butt of old maid jokes.

A half moon was edging over the tree tops … “How oft, hereafter, rising, shall you look for me …” How many times from his front porch had the old man watched it rise? Each rising was no more in time than the washing of waves in an hour’s watch on the lake shore. No more? It was less than that. The quiet between the falls of the hammer carried the tinkling sound of music the half mile from the barbecue stand, but Joan thought it might have been hundreds of miles from there, or perhaps nowhere at all except in her imagination. Waterman seemed to have been hammering for ages. The familiar at the moment was the unfamiliar. She knew why this feeling was upon her. There was so much of Alex that she knew, the easy, sure way of him, his tenaciousness, his weighing of right and wrong … his light hair that looked as though it had the texture of a baby’s, the way it curled on damp days or when he was perspiring, the calluses on his hands from the ball bat and the lawn mower, the smell of his shaving soap when he came into the office in the morning, the acid smell of him when he had been playing ball … and so much that she did not know, and of which she was ashamed for wanting to know, and then unashamed because she was honest with herself as she could be honest with no one else. Maude knew. Perhaps others did too. She was twenty-seven. There might have been a reason for Maude’s knowing in what Joan felt quite sure she knew of Maude. Although she admitted it to no one, much less to herself, Maude had been in love with Charles Whiting through all the years she had worked for him. Her roughness was the defense she had thrown up early in the relationship. People, Joan thought, their complications, their frustrations.

“That ought to hold it,” Waterman said.

Chapter 9

JOAN AND ALEX WALKED back across the field when the chief left them. “Want to go back to the stand?” he asked.

“No. I think not, Alex. I think I’ll go on home.”

“I’ll drive you in.”

“Do you think Mrs. Wilkes might have seen someone drive in there last night, Alex? They’d have to go pretty close to the stand and she and Jimmie live in the back.”

“I thought of that. But this is no time to ask her with that gang around.” He sat at the wheel a moment before starting the motor. “That darned cat bothers me. What did they take it up there for if they weren’t going to examine it? I wish I’d picked it up myself now. I don’t think they’d have missed it and I could have taken it to Doc Barnard. He’d know what was wrong with it if anyone would.”

“How do they dispose of it at the county?” Joan asked.

“Incinerator, I guess … I wonder. Maybe it’s worth a try. Can you ride up to Riverdale with me, Joan?”

She held her watch close to the dashboard. “It’s ten minutes to nine. I’d like to,” she said.

It was twenty-one miles to Riverdale through a series of hills and woods that formed the nicest country in the state. They were mostly dairy farms of a hundred to two hundred acres each. The smell of fresh straw was in the air from the recent harvest, and there a canvased threshing machine stood like a prehistoric animal in the moonlit fields. At Three Corners, a village three miles from Hillside, with only a general store and a restaurant where truck drivers made their half-way stop, Alex and Joan passed the Barnard house. A car was parked in the driveway.

“If I thought I had a chance of getting the cat I’d stop and tell Doc what I’m doing,” Alex said. “It’ll be kind of late when we get back. The whole thing’s a harebrained idea anyway.”

“Maybe not,” Joan said. “They’ve been so casual up there.”

“Casual’s too nice a word for it.”

“Alex, do you think Barnard’s the person to help you?”

“I don’t know of anyone else. I’ve brought every dog I ever had to him. He’s more than a veterinary. He’s a scientist. Remember that typhus epidemic? We were kids then. But he and Dad fought that almost single-handed.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Joan said. “Supposing you find the cat and take it to him. Let’s even say he finds something wrong with it, then what, Alex? You’ll have gone outside the county authority.”

“There’s a lot of maybes in there,” he said. “I’ll take them up if I come to them.”

A rabbit bobbed in front of the headlights. Alex slowed down and the animal scurried parallel to the car for a few yards. “It’s hard to believe a man in his nineties could do such intricate work, isn’t it?” Joan said.

“And why?” said Alex. “That must be how he’s made his living all these years. Why haven’t we heard about it? What do you know about Joe Hershel, Joan?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. I think his father came here from the old country. The factory’s been there a long time, forty years or so. Mr. Hershel must be in his fifties. He’s on the council now. He’s very self-conscious about his size, and doesn’t go out much. He and his wife raise goats as a hobby. They have two children. Joe is a dentist in Masontown, I think. Alice works in the First National Bank.”

“A walking Who’s Who,” Alex said, grinning.

“He had a tough time of it during the Depression,” Joan continued, “but government work during the war pulled him out of it.”

Mention of the war returned both of them to thoughts of Andy Mattson. “Leave it to Waterman to notice there weren’t any soldiers in Andy’s menagerie,” Alex said.

“He misses Freddie terribly.”

“He never mentions him,” Alex said, “but sometimes when he’s looking at me, I can almost feel him thinking about him.”

“It’s tragic what happened to Mrs. Waterman,” Joan said. “I remember when she’d hardly go to a card party. Staying home most of the time, a quiet sort of person. Very pleasant, but not much to say. She and mother were good friends. Now she doesn’t stay in the house a minute she can help, unless she has all sorts of people around her. And she talks a blue streak about nothing at all.”

“And the chief doesn’t say a word he doesn’t have to. Ah, Joan, you’d think we didn’t have enough troubles in our own back yards without wars and threats of war.”

“Sometimes I wonder, Alex, why we have to see evil blown up to the size of war before we do anything about it, before we even recognize it.”

“We recognize it, but nobody wants to really admit that an offense is the best defense, except maybe a few crusaders. Then somebody slaps a label on ’em and that’s that. Take the county offices. Hardly anybody would say they weren’t corrupt. It’s a joke that all the slot machines get carted away before elections. Do they get destroyed? Oh no. It’s the same old machines operating on the same old corners two months after the same state’s attorney goes back into office. I’ll tell you one thing, Joan. I’ve done a lot of thinking since I’ve been back. The good warm feeling of being home wears off, especially when you see people like Altman in the easy chair next to you. And sometimes when I think of the energy it would take, the expense, the time, to dislodge him … let alone the guys he emulates up at the county, it makes me sick to my stomach. The waste of it, Joan. The horrible, sickening waste.”

Joan watched the ornament on the car hood seem to ride the center marker of the road for a while. “I don’t think you’re right, Alex,” she said, her voice just carrying above the sound of the motor. “I was thinking tonight how little time, really, the whole long life of Andy Mattson was. From what you’ve just said you could go to two things. You could say that every good effort you make is wasted, for you, at least, and you’ll forgive me if I say you’re setting a very high store by your values—and mind, I agree with them. Or you set yourself up as the sole authority on what’s right and wrong. Again, I’d agree with you now, but I might not always agree with you. To put it very simply, Alex, I don’t think time spent fighting corruption even on its lowest plane is time lost. In fact, I think that’s the only place to fight it. There at least, you know what you’re fighting.”

“But is there time, Joan? Is there time?”

“There’s time enough,” she said. “There has to be.”

They were in Masontown then. Alex looked at the gasoline gauge. “I’d better get some gas before they close up.” He pulled into a station at the one traffic light between Hillside and Riverdale.

“Hi, Whitie,” the attendant said. “What team you playing with this year?”

“Fabry’s gang. We’re all old men.”

“Fill her up?”

“Got change for twenty, Phil?”

“No, I don’t, Whitie. I just sent my money up to the bank.”

“Make it a dollar’s worth then.”

When the attendant came around to take the money, he stuck his head in the window and said “hello” to Joan. “I hear an old guy up your way got murdered today, Whitie. That a fact?”

“If it is, the coroner’s going to be surprised,” Alex said. “He returned a verdict of death from natural causes.”

“Oh.” The man was obviously disappointed. “Funny how things get twisted up, ain’t it?”

“Not always,” Alex said, starting the motor. “Good night, Phil.”

Ten minutes later they reached the limits of the county seat. Riverdale had grown into one of the ugliest towns in the state. It had about it the look of age without permanence. At its edge the houses were squat and unfinished looking, although most of them had been there for years. In many places a second house had been built on the lot intended for one dwelling and perhaps a little square for gardening. After seasonal layoffs, the workers had sold half their land to a new influx of laborers, hoping in that way to lay up enough against the next hard pull. This practice scarcely brought harmony to the community, selling to people they resented. And, all in all, it kept a large part of the population interested only in their own troubles, and impervious to town or county business.

Alex pulled the car out of a streetcar rut, causing it to swerve sharply, and bob along the bricks. “Sorry, Joan,” he said.

“I hate this street,” she said. “I hate the whole town, in fact.”

The cemetery to their right was bogged down in weeds. Even in the dim street lights, the shadows of the uncut grass hung across the dusty tombstones. Beyond the cemetery on the lower level near the river, lay Plant Number 4 of the Addison Industries, and from the chimneys blue-green flames whipped into a murky sky.

“They’re roaring now,” Alex said. “Look at them belch fire.”

“I guess that’s good,” Joan said.

Alex looked at her a second. “Go on and say it, honey. ‘It has to be’.”

He drove around the county building a couple of times. There was a deputy sitting outside the jail. Alex parked the car near the alley and Joan slid over to the driver’s seat when he got out. He winked at her and laid his hand on hers on the steering wheel for a second, for reassurance, Joan thought. “Say a prayer, Joanie.” Yes, she would say a prayer. There were many things to pray for in this venture.

Alex checked the trunk of the car first to be sure that it was unlocked. He walked past the building. The deputy was reading a magazine in the pale glow of the naked bulb over the door. The bugs and moths were thick as a cloud around the light and every once in a while the deputy slapped at one as it dropped down on him. Across the street the hollow sound of bowling balls striking pins came through the open windows, and from up the street a ways came the sound of traffic but at the moment he could not see a soul except the deputy. Alex turned up the alley and tried to hold himself to a casual pace. The windows were open on the ground floor of the building—barred windows. He was at the back of the jail. Only one window was lighted. Through it, he saw a man sitting on a bunk, reading. Apparently he was the only occupant. The other windows were darkened.

There was a garbage can outside the jail door. From the angle of its lid, he figured that the night’s pick-up had not been made yet. The morgue was next to the jail, and beside the wide door there was a large metal box. He could feel his heart pounding faster and his hands were moist. There was only a latch on the box and Alex threw it and lifted the lid. The smell of formaldehyde made him catch his breath. In college he had had to give up biology on account of it.

“Looking for something, buddy?” a soft voice drawled from the last cell window.

He could see the face indistinctly against the bars. He felt that he had jumped six feet off the ground.

“Sorry if I made you nervous,” the voice continued. “You must be pretty hard up, filching from the trash cans in this dump. What they give you on plates ain’t good enough for it.”

“I’m looking for something,” Alex said. “For God’s sake, shut up.”

“No kidding. Don’t let me interrupt.”

Inside the box he found two well-wrapped bundles. There was no time to think, to weigh them. He took them both out and let the lid down slowly.

“It’d be embarrassing,” the prisoner drawled, “if I started a ruckus on the bars in here, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Tell you what. I’m collecting from my friends to get me a decent lawyer.”

Alex reached into his pocket and drew out the only bill he had. “Here. Go back to sleep and forget you saw me.”

“It’s for a good cause. Take it off your income tax.”

Alex picked up the bundles. He had to pass the jail windows again.

“I wonder if I’ll remember your face. I don’t forget a kind one easy. My friends say I got a long memory. Hope you got what you were after, chum …”

Amen to that, Alex thought. The fifty yards through the alley were the longest he had ever walked. He threw the bundles into the car trunk. Joan had the motor running when he climbed in beside her.

“What a filthy smell,” she said, shifting the car into gear, “but you had luck.”

“I hope it’s luck. Now we really need it. Do I smell very bad, Joan?”

“Just medium bad.”

It was Barnard himself who came to the door when Alex rang. He was in his shirt sleeves and came out on the steps, closing the door behind him. If he had been asked to guess his age, Alex would have put the veterinary at about fifty, although it was hard to tell by looking at him. He was large boned, but without much flesh. He had huge eyebrows that moved a little every time he spoke. When Alex was a kid they had fascinated him, and when Doc was working on one of his many pups, Alex would watch them for signs of recovery or relapse. Some people’s mouths were expressive, Alex thought. With Doc you saw nothing but the eyebrows.

“I’m sorry to bother you this late, Doc,” he started.

“That’s all right, Alex. Jock?”

Jock was the Whiting’s airedale. “No, it’s not,” Alex said. “I need your help on something and I don’t know whether it’s fair to ask you or not. You heard that old Andy Mattson was found dead today?”

“Yes. Norah and I were talking about it at dinner. She lived in that house as a girl, you know.”

“I know,” Alex said. “I might as well tell you the whole story, and if you don’t want to touch it … Well, we’ll see from there.”

When he finished the veterinary nodded. “It’s a pretty thin case,” he said. “But then if somebody’s trying to cover up, it would be. Do you think Tobin is deliberately whitewashing the business?”

“I’d have to have pretty strong evidence before I’d go as far as saying that.”

“Naturally. I was asking for my own information. I’ve been around long enough to see some peculiar things happen up there. Well, let’s take a look at the animal and go from there. How long has it been dead?”

“Since about noon.”

“That’s ten hours. It may be hard to tell anything, but we’ll see.” He walked to the car with Alex and leaned over to see who was at the wheel.

“You know Joan Elliot, Doc?”

“Yes, of course. The girl with the molting turtle doves. How are you, Joan?”

“Fine, Doctor. That’s a long time to remember. Fifteen years.”

“They’ve been kinder to you than to me, my dear. Wouldn’t you like to wait in the house? I don’t believe Mrs. Barnard has gone to bed yet. I think she’d like to see you.”

“Thank you, doctor, but it’s late, and I like it out here.”

He nodded and went around to the trunk where Alex was taking out the packages. “I was in a hurry and took them both,” he said. “I think the heavier one’s the cat.”

Barnard weighed them both in his hands. “This is it,” he said. “I can tell the dead weight of it.” Again he stopped at the car door. “We may be some time. You’ll be more comfortable indoors, Joan.”

She went in with them then, and Barnard took them first to his laboratory. It was two large rooms and occupied a wing of the house. It was meticulously neat, and well equipped. He excused himself and went to find Mrs. Barnard. Joan examined the titles of the books in one of the cases. “He’s done a lot of writing,” she said. “Alex, we’re finding out more things about more people.”

“I told you he was a scientist,” Alex said.

“I know, but why is he in Hillside, Alex?”

He shrugged. “Why not? This is the heart of the dairy country, and his specialty is cattle. He’s worked himself up what amounts to a practice. Gets an annual sustainer from all the farms around here.”

Mrs. Barnard came in with her husband then. “I’m sorry we’re disturbing you this late, ma’m,” Alex said.

“Not at all. I rarely go to bed before twelve, and I’m delighted to have company. When Jeff’s working hard he’s not the best of company, and he’s been very busy lately. Won’t you come in and have some tea with me, Miss Elliot?”

Alex watched them leave the room. There was a resemblance between Mrs. Barnard and Mabel Turnsby, he thought, but there was more refinement in her features. She walked in the grand manner, rather as though she were carrying a book on her head, and he remembered his mother’s comments on the way she “gave herself airs.” She might have been twenty-five or forty-five with the smoothness of her skin, the light eyes, and the straw-colored hair. She had a set little smile, and never, never laughed out loud, he thought.

“Well,” Barnard said, “let’s take this in to the table and get it over with.” He cut away the wrappings and disposed of them in a container at his foot.

“Ugly business,” Alex said when he saw the carcass.

“Think of roses, whiskey, beautiful women,” Barnard said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to be sick,” he said, but he could feel a turning in his stomach. Barnard went to the windows and opened them.

“It doesn’t look like they did very much work on it, does it, Doc?”

“That’s hard to say, Alex, the condition it’s in.”

“It’s that sore under its forearm I’m most interested in. The cat was injected with something, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not being an amateur, Alex, I wouldn’t say. It looks as though that’s what it might have been.”

“Like vaccination?”

“Somewhat. The position is strange for an injection.”

“My theory, strictly amateur, is that the old man picked the cat up there. That might have been why it turned on him.”

“Possibly.”

“How long before it died did it eat? Can you tell that, Doc?”

“I would need more time. In fact, I need more time before I can tell you anything, Alex. Immediate symptoms of disease or poison aren’t present, and it’s pretty late to make cultures, that is, late from the time of its death. That should have been done in two or three hours. But suppose you leave it here. I’ll take some specimens and see what I can develop. I’ll call you in the morning and tell you whether it’s worth your while to come over.”

“You don’t give me much encouragement, Doc.”

“I don’t give you false encouragement. This was a foolhardy stunt, Alex. I can understand your doing it, but doesn’t it seem unlikely to you that the coroner’s office would have been so brazen if they weren’t pretty sure of themselves?”

“I suppose you’re right, Doc. But it seemed like such a slick job to me, and I feel sure we don’t have the full story of what happened in that house last night.”

“Did you question the neighbors?”

“Yes. Mabel Turnsby’s the only one who could really see the place, and she didn’t see anything.”

“If Mabel didn’t see anything, Alex, believe me, there wasn’t anything to see. She’s had the eyes and ears of the world all her life.” He went to the sink and washed his hands.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Alex said. “It didn’t take so long after all.”

“It will take me a while after you leave. Let’s see if they’ll give us a cup of tea first. How’s your father these days? I was in the Sentinel office the other day and it seemed mighty strange without him.”

In the living room Mrs. Barnard was pouring the tea. She sat very straight on the edge of the couch and maneuvered the cups with great dignity. Joan had her tea and a plate with cookies. Her movement with the sugar and creamer were quite relaxed, and it struck Alex as he caught a glimpse of the two women from the doorway, that Joan was more at ease, more natural in this elegant house than her hostess.

“How nice that you can join us,” Mrs. Barnard said. “I brought the extra cups in hopes that you would. Lemon, Alex?”

“No thank you, ma’m, straight with sugar.”

“Miss Elliot and I were talking about that poor old gentleman’s death.”

“I was telling Mrs. Barnard how lonely you found the house, Alex.”

Mrs. Barnard gave that set half-smile of hers. “Yes. I’ve often wondered what becomes of us when we grow old. Our inner selves. It seems to me that we’re like flowers … Take a cookie, Jeff. You didn’t eat much dinner—like flowers, in that we spread outward, unfolding in our growth, and then we contract again until there’s nothing of us left.”

“Except the seed,” Alex said.

“Yes, of course. That is the most important part, isn’t it?”

If Norah Barnard had grown up in the four rooms of Andy’s house, she had come a long ways in luxury. The room was sweet with fresh flowers, and large with well-chosen furniture that exaggerated its size. But the books were too orderly, the nap on the rug too full, and Alex thought the veterinary would be much happier in the brown leather chairs in his part of the house than on the white one he now occupied. They talked of nothing much for a while. Alex waited for a good moment.

“Mrs. Barnard, do you remember if Andy Mattson bought the place directly from your father?”

“I don’t think he could have,” she said. “I believe the place was left with an agent when we left Hillside. Why?”

“No particular reason,” Alex said. “We didn’t find a deed to the property, and we don’t have any clue as to where the old man came from, or whether he had any heirs. I was just wondering.”

“The property should be registered with the town clerk. Shouldn’t it, Jeff?”

“I think that’s the way it’s done. I was just thinking, Norah. It’s funny the way Alex came to me on this, and our connection with the old place.”

The smile came too quickly. “Oh,” was the only word that came with it. She would not like it, he thought. She was not particularly proud of her connection with Mabel Turnsby, and she would not want any publicity. There would be hell to pay when he and Joan left and Barnard told her why they had come. He laid the cup and saucer on the red lacquered tray.

“It’s getting late, Alex,” Joan said.

“Yes, I think we should move along.” He stood up. “Doc, I appreciate what you’re doing. No one knows I was coming here except ourselves.”

“That’s just as well,” Barnard said. “I think we should keep it that way. For the time being at least.” Both of the Barnards went to the door with them.

Mrs. Barnard gave Alex her hand. “I hope you will call on us again some evening when you and your young lady are by this way. It was nice having you both, even by accident.”

If Joan had any charity in her heart for Norah Barnard until that moment, it was gone then. In the car, as they backed out of the driveway, she tried to think of something to say that would distract Alex from “your young lady,” if he was thinking of it. She wasn’t good at making up small talk. “What did he say about the cat?” she asked.

“Nothing. He thinks I’m a damned fool. Maybe I am.”

Joan did not say anything, and it was then that Alex thought of Mrs. Barnard’s words, “your young lady.” The wind was in Joan’s hair and she put up her hands to capture it. Out of the side of his eye he noticed the lines of her dress against her drawn tight by the lifting of her arms. He had known Joan Elliot all his life, around town, in school and at the office, but he had never been so much aware of her as at this moment.

“Smell the sweet clover, Alex?”

“That’s me,” he said.

Not a store in town was open after eleven except on Saturday night. Most of the house lights were out on Joan’s street as they drove up in front of her home. A small yellow lamp was on in the hallway. “Dad’s left the light, anyway,” Joan said. “They’ll wonder where I’ve been.”

Alex walked up to the porch with her. Oak Street was lazily lighted by the converted gas lamps. He could remember when each one was lighted by hand. He had made the rounds of them with Ned Thorson many times when he was a boy. “You wouldn’t think anything worse than gossip could happen here, would you?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “But there’s something very wrong here, isn’t there, Alex?”

“I hope not. But I think there is.”

“I feel it,” Joan said. “It’s silly, but I feel it. I feel as though people in the town were a thousand miles apart.”

“Hillside isn’t that big,” he said.

“I think it is now. Good night, Alex.”

Chapter 10

HE PARKED THE CAR in the driveway, not bothering to put it in the garage on warm nights. His father was in his pajamas, but he was waiting in the den. “Where the devil have you been, Alex? You might have let us know.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t think I’d be this late.”

“It’s not so late. We just wanted to know where you were. Waterman was around to see you.”

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. Altman was looking for you, too. He made himself pretty clear. He wants the coroner’s report published in Friday’s paper.”

Alex lit a cigarette. “Maybe I did a stupid thing tonight, Dad. Joan and I went up to the county building and found the carcass of the cat where it had been put out for the incinerator. I brought it back to Barnard.”

Mr. Whiting motioned to Alex for a cigarette.

“Barnard says it’s been dead too long to tell much, but he’s going to try.”

They were both thoughtful for a few moments. Then Mr. Whiting asked: “Did you have any trouble getting the cat?”

“I got it. It seemed like trouble, but I guess it wasn’t. A prisoner at the jail saw me and shook me down for twenty bucks.”

“That’s not good, Alex. You can’t trust those fellows. And if nothing shows up in the cat you may have yourself in trouble for nothing.”

“I couldn’t help it, Dad. I had to take that chance. I don’t think he’d recognize me again, and it was either that or have him raise the whole place.”

“I suppose. Did you tell Barnard the whole story before you involved him?”

“Yes. He took it with his eyes open. Oh my God …”

“What is it, Alex?”

“There were two packages in the box for the incinerator. I wasn’t sure so I took both of them. One’s probably old Andy’s clothes. They’re still in the car trunk.”

“You can get rid of them in the morning. Now that you’ve gone this far you mustn’t get the jitters about it, Alex. If you do you’re in real trouble.”

“I don’t have the jitters, Dad. But it’s easier to dump something at night.”

“All right. Burn them in the furnace now.”

“Maybe that’s best.” Alex went to the car. The only sounds in the town were the sing-song of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs from Craig’s marsh. The car trunk was empty.

Chapter 11

ALEX STOOD AT THE side of the car for a few moments. There was the sound of a truck motor somewhere on Highway 64 and a little rustle of the leaves in the wind, but nothing moved at all on Deerpath Avenue. He went back into the house. “It’s gone,” he said.

“Gone? You mean someone took it from the car?”

“That’s right. Do you know what this means, Dad? This is the first positive indication that Andy Mattson’s death was not an accident. Everything else might have a natural explanation, but not this.”

“Are you sure it was the old man’s clothes?”

“No. Just guessing.”

“Where could it have been taken?”

“Either at Barnard’s or in the few minutes I’ve been talking to you.”

“It was a mistake to give that prisoner that much money, Alex. He must have set them after you immediately.”

“But how, Dad? I didn’t see anyone around the place except the deputy. He wouldn’t leave the jail unattended. And who would know where I was going? The prisoner didn’t know who I was from Adam.”

“Two and two add up fast in this, Alex. Anybody knowing what was in the box at the morgue would know who was interested in it. The people knowing the coroner’s verdict narrows it down still further. It comes out to you or Waterman. A phone call at the time might have eliminated him. It’s not the kind of thing he’d have been likely to do anyway.”

“Then if it was taken here,” Alex said, “it’s pretty sure whoever got it thought he was getting the cat … unless he’d been following me all evening, and I think I’d have known that. If it was taken at Barnard’s place it means they wanted the old man’s clothes. That doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“Nothing makes sense from here,” his father said. “I’ll tell you one thing. You’ve really got Barnard involved now. I think you ought to warn him at least.”

Alex looked at his watch. It was almost twelve o’clock. People had a horror of night phone calls in Hillside, and whoever was on the switchboard would have ears for nothing except the call. “I don’t like to call him at this hour, Dad. Besides, his wife was annoyed at him for letting himself become involved.”

“I don’t blame her, but I think you should call him just the same. A vet gets late calls sometimes.”

“Who’s on the switchboard tonight?”

“Sarah Randalls. She was about ten o’clock anyway.”

She had gone directly to work from the ball game, Alex thought. She might be on a split shift and she was a good friend of Joan’s. “I’m going to run over to the station first,” he said.

His father sighed. “All right, Alex. Do it your way. But use your good sense. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Alex took his jacket from the hall closet and went out. The car starter sounded raucous in the stillness. He did not turn on his lights until he was in the street. At the town hall the only lights were in the fire station. Whoever was on duty there would take police calls too. Waterman had gone home for the night. He drove across the town again and turned up Oak Street. There was a light in the Elliot living room. Joan had not gone upstairs yet. He parked the car and went to the door.

“Sarah’s off at twelve,” Joan said when he told her what he wanted. “We could drive by and offer her a ride home.”

They waited until Sarah was half a block from the exchange before pulling up beside her. “Can we drop you home?” Joan asked, opening the door.

“I’d love it.” She pushed in next to Joan. “It sure was hot in the exchange. I thought I’d die trying to keep awake. … Something smells funny in here. Like a hospital.”

“Lifebuoy,” Alex said. “Would you like a little ride to cool off?”

Sarah giggled. “I’d love it. You kids go up to the late show in Riverdale? I’m dying to see it. Every picture we get is ten years old. I’m surprised we got talkies yet. Talkies,” she repeated. “Gee, that sounds old-fashioned.”

Alex took the road toward Three Corners. Sarah chattered on. “… Who cared about the score, anyway, if you don’t mind my saying it, Alex. All people wanted was to talk about the old man getting killed. And is the mayor sore! He’s been calling up everybody, telling ’em the old man died. ‘Died. That’s all. Just died,’ he says.”

“I don’t know how you could fall asleep with all that going on,” Alex said.

“It just got monotonous after a while. He’s such a big blow, anyway. I guess I shouldn’t say that about the mayor. Everybody says he’s good for business and he’ll get Hillside on the map some day. Gee, it’s pretty out here, with the moon and all. I’ll be off nights next week and it’ll be full then …”

She was off again. Alex looked back at the veterinary’s house as they passed. There was a light in the laboratory and one upstairs. Barnard was probably working on the cat. The Venetian blinds were drawn but the windows were open. Alex felt better. At the highway restaurant two automobile transports and a moving van were parked. “How about some ice cream cones if I bring them out?” he asked.

“That would be nice,” Sarah said, “then I better get home, Alex. I hate it, but mother might worry. She doesn’t like me walking from the exchange at this hour anyway. Says a girl mustn’t take chances. Even in Hillside …”

Alex put his hand in his pocket at the sudden thought of not having any money. But there were thirty cents in change and the auxiliary police badge Waterman had given him. In the restaurant he called Barnard. The phone was answered immediately.

Barnard’s voice sounded edgy, he thought, and that angered him. The veterinary could have said “no” in the first place. “I’m virtually certain the precaution was unnecessary, Alex. But I’ll call you in the morning, anyway. Good night.”

To hell with it, he thought. Barnard had found nothing so far. Then it must have been the other package they wanted. In the car on the way home it was Joan who brought them back to the subject he was interested in. “Sarah, was anyone looking for Alex tonight? We forgot to leave word we were going to Riverdale.”

“Chief Waterman called the house a couple of times. Then Altman called. He talked to your father, though, Alex. Waterman came in the exchange about ten and I asked him if he’d found you. He just gave me that ‘why don’t you mind your own business look’ and I shut up. The way I look at it if you want things private you send a telegram. I was just trying to be helpful. Then I felt sorry for him. Altman said nasty things about him wanting to make a show of being a policeman before his pension got decided on.”

“What did Waterman want at the exchange?” Alex asked directly.

“He wants us to mark down any out of town calls. There was only five or six of them and you couldn’t call Three Corners out of town hardly.”

“I wonder why,” Alex said.

“I think I know. Nat Watkins’ wife went up to Jackson two weeks ago. I think she’s getting a divorce. Imagine. A divorce in Hillside.”

“Scarcely police business, though,” Alex said.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s all over town he threatened to beat her. Then tonight he calls her long distance begging her to come home, and she says if he ever threatens her again she’ll get a disturbance warrant for him or something like that …”

Alex made up his mind then not to use the phone when Sarah was on duty. And he was reasonably certain that Chief Waterman didn’t give a damn about the Watkins’ divorce.

Chapter 12

IN THE MORNING MR. Whiting announced that he intended to relieve Alex at the office for a few days. He tried to make it sound casual, but his eyes were dancing at the prospect. They drove downtown together. Neither of them mentioned the incidents of the last night, but before he got out of the car, Mr. Whiting laid his hand on Alex’s arm for a moment.

“Son, you aren’t trying to be smart on this thing and work it alone, are you?”

“No,” Alex said, although he realized as he said it that that was exactly what he had been doing. He met his father’s eyes for a moment and then grinned sheepishly.

“Let him do the police work, Alex, unless he asks you. He’s a wily old duck.”

Alex stopped at the office only long enough to leave word with Joan as to where he would be. Maude caught sight of him going out the door. “Alex Whiting, two o’clock on anything you’re running on Mattson. And I mean two o’clock. We’re not paying overtime tonight.”

“Okay, Maudie. I’ll have it in. Joan has the rest of my stuff.” On the way to the station he tried to think of what he could write about Mattson. Precious little, and at the moment he was not well disposed toward running the coroner’s report, as Altman demanded. Waterman had just arrived when Alex walked into the station. The chief looked tired and uneasy.

“I hear you were looking for me last night,” Alex said.

“Nothing very much. I thought we might get together on a couple of things. I want to go out and see Hershel this morning, but first I got to meet the nine-forty from Jackson …”

Alex was trying to remember a recent association with Jackson. The long distance call Sarah had recorded at the exchange last night: Nat Watkins and his wife. It was foolish to think that everything in Hillside stood still because of Mattson’s death. People still ate breakfast and went to work, quarreled and made up, and Mrs. Watkins probably was coming home to a husband for whom Waterman was holding a disturbance summons.

“Alex, maybe it’s none of my business, but you called Doc Barnard kind of late last night …”

“I came over to tell you about it,” Alex said. He told him the whole story.

“Maybe it was kind of kiddish,” Waterman said when he was finished, “but I’m glad you did it. Now we got some notion there’s real grounds for an investigation, even if Doc don’t come up with anything spectacular.”

“He promised to call me this morning.”

“If he promised, he’ll call. Gilbert’s on his way up for our copy of the report.”

“I’d like to go through the old house again,” Alex said. “And I’d like to sit down and talk to Mabel Turnsby.”

Waterman threw him the key to the house. “Go easy on Mabel, Alex. She’s as touchy as a sore tooth. See if you can find out if that was her fingerprint.”

Mabel Turnsby was at the door before Alex reached her top step. The flower boxes on the porch were freshly watered, and as Alex looked back at her lawn, he saw that most of the damage from yesterday’s crowd had been repaired.

“I’ve been wondering if you weren’t ever coming to see me, Alex Whiting. Seems a pity to me Fred Waterman couldn’t put someone with experience on the case. Although who that’d be in Hillside, I’m sure I don’t know.”

Alex laid his hat on the cretonne-covered sofa, and sat down beside it. Miss Turnsby picked up the hat and hung it on the hall tree.

“Well, there may be a lot of angles to this thing, Miss Turnsby. All I’m looking for is a story on Andy Mattson. As far as the case goes, there may not be any at all.”

“Fudge,” she said. “How can you tell that till you investigate?”

“You’re right, of course,” Alex said.

Mabel settled herself in a straight-backed chair, and he was reminded of Mrs. Barnard’s erectness pouring tea the night before. “Now, what do you want to ask me, Alex?”

“First, a question for Chief Waterman. I’d like to know if you touched anything in Andy’s place?”

“Certainly not.”

“Accidentally, I mean. With your hands, maybe when we were in there yesterday.”

“No,” she said, more thoughtfully. “I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Try to think carefully, Miss Turnsby. It might be important.”

“I guess I know what I did,” she said.

Alex sighed. “Did you ever cut one of your fingers, so that there’s a scar on it?” he asked patiently.

“Oh. As a matter of fact I did. Cut it as a girl with the bread knife. It taught me a lesson I never forgot. Don’t ever cut with the knife facing you. See?” She showed him the index finger of her left hand.

“Now couldn’t you have leaned that hand on a chair, say, in Andy’s place?”

“No,” she said.

Alex was about to let it go. Obviously it was her print the county men found. Then Mabel changed her mind. “Oh, I could too. I know when I did it. When you were dragging me out I caught hold of a chair.”

“That’s right,” he said, although he would not have said he dragged her out. “The deputy sheriff found the print. Now do you see how important little things can be?”

“Mercy,” she said.

“Now I’d be grateful to you, Miss Turnsby, if you’d tell me all you can about Andy Mattson.”

“From when he came here?”

“I’d like that.”

“Well, I was a young woman, then. It’s thirty years ago. Naturally, a fine looking man like him, well, it seemed kind of nice, most Hillside men being gone off to the war.”

He was going to have to take all the trimmings of her poor vanity.

“I tried to be neighborly. It seemed right pleasant to have someone respectable there …” Alex wondered if the implication was that she did not consider her brother and his wife respectable. “… and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“He always looked kind of sad. But he didn’t take to sympathy. I tried being nice to him. Went out with him several times. We had the grandest dances in those days. People aren’t sociable like they used to be. But it just didn’t seem proper, me going out with him, and him so much older.”

“Any idea what made him unhappy?”

“No. And once in a while, being neighbor-like I tried to find out. He was just awful close-mouthed.”

“Ever hear him mention the name Anne?”

Something in Miss Turnsby’s eyes sharpened, and yet her expression remained unchanged and she answered quickly. “Not that I remember.”

Alex felt that she was lying. But it might have been that the old man had mistakenly called her by the name. For all his intended logic, Alex had embroidered on his idea of Anne … beautiful, strong-minded, trying to condition herself to Andy’s agnosticism, maybe his anti-social ways, and then despairing of it. He shook his head. It was silly, sentimental stuff and Miss Turnsby was talking to him. She had asked him to have coffee and rolls.

“Thank you,” he said. “I do love a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning.”

The coffee had been prepared beforehand. And she had baked the cinnamon rolls that morning. He wondered if that was what he had smelled in the house and about her. But to prepare fresh rolls in hopes of a caller … it told of her loneliness. At the table she seated herself opposite him so that she had a full view of the street and Andy’s house.

“Have you any idea where Andy came from, or why he picked Hillside?” he asked.

She shook her head and then leaned across the table confidentially. “He didn’t learn them fine manners of his in any small town,” she said. “And the way he made things when he was younger, I’d say he was a mighty well-educated man.”

“What kind of things?”

“Bird houses and the like. He gave me one once. I had it for years. There was one thrush came there every spring. Then a grackle came and drove him away. They’re mean birds, and noisy and homely like witches. It just broke my heart so I took it down.”

Alex sipped his coffee thoughtfully. An old-fashioned coffee grinder was sitting on the cupboard with a jar of coffee beans beside it. “Andy must have been a fine figure of a man in his day,” he said.

“Indeed he was. Spruce, down-right dapper, as we used to say.”

“These rolls are delicious, ma’m. You’re a wonderful cook.”

“For plain cooking I can’t be beat,” Miss Turnsby said.

Alex nodded. “Andy held his age mighty well until the last few years, didn’t he? I wonder when he began to show it.”

“I can tell you that,” she said. “He closed up the house for a couple of months about fifteen years ago and went off. Right in the depression it was. I guess we all remember them years. I began to think he was gone for good. Then he was out on the porch like usual one morning. I took him over some rolls. Same as these, I remember. And my, he was different. Thanked me. Told me that afternoon how nice they were. He wasn’t a mean man before that, mind you, Alex, but he had an awful bite.”

“And after that?”

“He wasn’t neighborly, exactly. But he passed time of day, and it seemed people just didn’t think much about him anymore.”

“But it was then people began thinking of him as an old man?”

“I think so. I remember saying how stooped he was, and he didn’t take care of himself like he did before that.”

“I don’t know that it means anything,” Alex said, “but could you put it more closely what year it was?”

“Let me see,” she said. She had a habit of sucking in her under lip when she was thinking. “It was the first year during the depression my Endicott stocks paid anything. Not much, but I got the check the same morning he came back and it kind of cheered me up, them both coming on the same day. It’s right lonesome with no neighbor on the kitchen side of the house. What will they do with his place now, Alex?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think it’s impounded for so long to see if any heirs show up. I’d be grateful if you could tell me the year he went away. Maybe from there we could learn something about him.”

Miss Turnsby pulled the chair from the table to the cupboard. Putting a newspaper on it, she climbed up and took a tin box from the top shelf. Alex helped her down. She returned to the table with a yellowing notebook. He watched her fingers as she turned the pages. They were nimble fingers for a woman in her seventies.

“Here it is,” she said. “1933. And they came due in July.”

Alex put the date in his notebook. It coincided with the year of the missing tax receipt. “Thank you, Miss Turnsby. Maybe it means something, maybe not. You can’t ever tell in these things. Can I put the box up for you?”

“Much obliged,” she said.

When Alex returned to the table he finished his coffee.

“Can I warm you another cup?”

“No thanks, ma’m. I’m going to have to be moving soon. I don’t suppose Andy mentioned anything about where he’d been that trip?”

“No. I hinted around a bit. My mother taught me never to ask direct questions. It’s the best way I know of not finding out anything.”

Alex smiled. “Anything else you can think of I should know, Miss Tumby?”

“Not off-hand, there isn’t.”

“I wonder where he got the cat. Did he have it for long?”

“Ten years or more. I think it just come to him.”

“Cats have a way of doing that,” Alex said. “He took good care of it, didn’t he?”

“Like a baby. Fed it more than he ate. Good stuff from what Mrs. Durkin says.”

He got up from the table and folded the linen napkin she had given him. Even that was hand embroidered, with the monogram M.T. “I’m going over and take another look around. May I go out your back door?”

“Of course, Alex. Tell your mother to be sure and come to the luncheon tomorrow. It’ll be nice even if she don’t play cards. There’ll be bunco.”

He noticed a ring of keys on a hook by the door and he wondered if one of them did not match the key to Andy’s house in his pocket. Mabel was holding the screen door open for him. She picked up the broom.

“My mother tried to teach me that indirect question business,” Alex said, “but it doesn’t work for me. Did you hear or notice anyone over at Andy’s place the night before last?”

“No, and I looked too. Something woke me in the middle of the night and I looked out the window. His lights were still on, but then he stayed up till all hours, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

“About what time was that?”

“Two-thirty. I looked.”

“Any idea what wakened you?”

“No. Most nothing wakes me, except cats screeching. I can’t abide that. Got rid of my Bessie on that account.”

Alex pushed some excelsior from the step with his toe. “Thanks for breakfast, Miss Turnsby. Your rolls are out of this world.”

“Alex,” she said, following him down the steps, “why did they look for fingerprints?”

“They always do when a person dies suddenly like that.” As he climbed through the long grass between the houses, he could hear her sweeping the steps behind him.

Chapter 13

ALEX OPENED ALL THE WINDOWS in Andy’s kitchen to let in the sunlight. The place was damp and musty. All in all, he was well satisfied with his chat with Miss Turnsby. At least one of the pieces to the puzzle had fallen into place: the tax receipt and Andy’s trip. He was rather pleased with himself for the way he had gone about it. He walked all through the house. Nothing had changed. The house looked as though nothing in it had changed for twenty years, and yet, he thought, standing in the living room, something was different there although the furniture was all as he remembered it. It was the mid-morning light from the small window, and its rays fell between him and a painting he had not even noticed in the artificially lighted room yesterday. Now it had the luminousness of the misty sunlight that probably came to it only at this hour of the day. Alex went to a chair across the room from it and sat down. There was nothing at all in the room except the painting from where he sat—a long sweep of meadow into a sparse wood that almost sang with changing fragments of color, as though there was the movement in it of birds or dampened leaves myriad in the sunlight as the wind stirred them. He looked at it for a long time and then grew conscious of his heartbeat, noisy in the quiet room. He closed his eyes that he might think of other things. The chair in which he sat was molded to the shape of a body, and he did not quite fit, for Andy Mattson was a larger man. But here the old man must have sat for many hours through many days through many years, and enjoyed an ecstasy he shared with no one. He got up and went to the picture. The artist was the famous French impressionist Pissarro. Alex realized that his knowledge came of having gone to an exhibit with Joan when they were both in college. The exhibit was on loan to the university from the Addison collection.

He turned his back on the painting. He had neglected to ask Miss Turnsby about the Addison visits and she had not brought up the subject. They were events of history in Hillside and certainly not lost upon her. It was she who called the Sentinel every time he came.

He felt sure that the picture was an original. He wrote down the name of the artist. From the dining-room window he could see Mabel in her yard brushing the contents of the dustpan into the wire burner. He decided to speak to her again. She did not hear him coming up behind her for the crackle of the fire she had just started. She jumped when he spoke her name.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said.

She smiled presently, but it was a tight-lipped smile, and her eyes had no part in it. “What is it, Alex?”

“Something else I meant to ask you.” It was all wrong, he thought. Mabel Turnsby was not the same helpful person she had been a few minutes before. Something he had asked or done had miffed her. He wanted to stall, to get into his subject more gradually. “Excelsior used to fascinate me as a kid,” he said, “the way it burns.”

“I got new dishes from the Emporium,” she said. “What did you forget, Alex?” Her voice was false with her controlled annoyance.

“I wondered if we might be able to work out anything on Andy from his friendship with Henry Addison. What do you think?”

“I gave up thinking of that a long time ago.”

“I wonder what they did when he came to visit.”

“Talked.”

“Friendly, would you say?”

“I wouldn’t say, Alex. There’s some things I don’t pry into. I just know they talked.”

It was hopeless, Alex thought. She just did not know anything about it, and it was that, not his asking, that irked her. “Well,” he said, “I just thought I’d ask.”

“Mr. Addison had relatives. Why don’t you ask them?”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “Thank you, Miss Turnsby. Can I give you a lift any place? I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Where’d I be going?”

“Shopping maybe. I just thought I’d ask.”

“Thank you, Alex, but I’ve walked it many years. I can still do it.”

He was depressed when he re-entered Andy’s house. His good relationship with Miss Turnsby had curdled, although for the life of him he did not know why. It was also disconcerting that he had noticed the painting for the first time today. His powers of observation were just not keen enough. He made up his mind to go over the house foot by foot. He had just removed his coat and hung it over the kitchen chair when he heard someone calling him. He went to the back porch. It was Miss Turnsby.

“Alex,” she said. “They just called up from the police station. Chief Waterman wants you down there right away.”

Chapter 14

WATERMAN HAD BEEN TIRED before he got out of bed that morning, and in the first few moments of his waking he had wished that he might fall asleep again and reawaken to another day, another responsibility. He had heard his wife singing downstairs, an intense sort of singing in which the words didn’t matter, nor the melody, as long as she was singing. When her throat gave out, she probably talked to herself, he thought, until he came down. Then she would talk to him, and ask him questions and not wait for the answers.

He was not on the street long when he picked up word of Altman’s attempts to discredit him, just in case he did not close up the Mattson business quickly, and there were too many things about it that left his conscience unsatisfied. All in all, it didn’t matter very much to him what Altman said, and when Alex told him about having taken the cat to Barnard, and the disappearance of the package, he knew what he had to do.

On the way to the toy factory he stopped at the barbecue stand. There was a boy behind the counter when he walked in. He ducked into the kitchen when he saw the chief and presently his mother came out. “Chief Waterman,” she said.

“Mrs. Wilks, the old man, Andy Mattson that died a couple of days ago, I was wondering if you ever saw him?”

“I saw him every once in a while, heading out toward the toy factory.”

“That’s quite a ways past here.”

“I didn’t say he was going there,” she said. “I just say he was heading that way. He didn’t stop here.”

“Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

“Early spring, I’d say. The way I remember, I was thinking he’d freeze to death in that field if he was to fall down and nobody saw him. He gave me heart failure picking his way through.”

“Why do you suppose he’d go through a field like that instead of along the walk?” the chief asked.

“Shorter. Besides there’s a lane back of the stand. It must run all the way to his place. Always had coal and lumber sent in that way.”

“Have you seen anyone go in that way lately?”

“No. Come out here, Jimmie,” she called to her son. “He’s been pestering me about a car he says was out back in the middle of the night, night before last. I don’t put much stock in it, the imagination he’s got.”

“I see,” Waterman said. “When did he first tell you about it?”

“Yesterday morning he was talking about it. I paid no attention till I heard what they’re saying in town.”

“Why didn’t you come to me about it, ma’m?”

“He’s always imagining things,” the woman said, pushing Jimmie in front of her. “It’s the kind of books they let him read from the library. All these scary things. And the stuff he hears on the radio.”

“Suppose you tell me what you saw, son,” Waterman said.

“I just woke up and looked out,” the boy said. “I saw the car cutting through the field, no lights or nothing. I thought it was a buffalo at first the way it was bucking, like.”

“Did it get close enough for you to get a good look—maybe to see what color it was?” Waterman asked.

“Came out past our place. In the field it looked kind of blue, but everything was blue so’s I couldn’t tell for sure.”

“Good boy!” Waterman said. “Did you get up out of bed to look out?”

“Sure. I cracked my shin on the rocker. You can see the black and blue mark.”

“That don’t sound much like imagination, ma’m,” the chief said.

“He’s got black and blue marks all over him.”

“Did you see the driver at all, Jimmie?”

“Not good. He was leaning away close over the wheel, trying to see, I guess.”

“How many people were in the car?”

“Just him.”

“Which way did he turn?”

“Must have been out of town,” the boy said. “I watched for a couple of minutes to see if he turned on his lights, but I didn’t see the car even.”

“I see,” the chief said. “You’d have seen if there’d been any other cars up there lately, wouldn’t you, ma’m?”

“I might and I might not. It ain’t a thoroughfare and it goes right through our parking space. And I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Jimmie says, Chief Waterman. Like I say, with all them radio programs and books and things. Jimmie, show the chief that book you brought home yesterday.”

The boy reluctantly drew a book from beneath the counter and handed it to Waterman. “I saw it just as plain as anything,” he said.

The chief was turning the pages of The Nelson Boys at Secret Cove. “I don’t think it does the boy much harm,” Waterman said, handing it back. “Maybe it sort of makes him alert.”

“Alert,” she said. “In the middle of the night. Healthy kids are asleep then.”

Waterman winked at Jimmie, thanked them and went out. Even in the way he turned the car around there was a purpose in him from then on.

The office to the toy factory was behind the loading platform. Hershel was giving orders to the loaders when Waterman drove up. He led him through the crates indoors. He was a short man. His feet didn’t touch the floor when he sat behind the desk, but he had made a bee-line for it. He probably felt more comfortable when his stature was less conspicuous. He was about fifty years old, still dark although there were traces of grey in his hair and mustache. People liked Joe. They still had not forgotten that during the depression he had kept on his employees until he had to borrow from them to keep the business going. The manufacture of miniature golf sets had pulled him out of one bad spot, which was a bit ironic, considering his self-consciousness about his size. It was hard to think of him in any sort of connivery, Waterman thought.

“I guess maybe you know why I’m here, Joe,” he said.

“Andrew Mattson? I was sorry to hear about the old man dying. Mighty sorry. I always felt there was something decent about him. It’s a shame he had to go that way. Cats are strange animals.”

“They aren’t much stranger than men,” Waterman said.

Hershel leaned across his desk close to the chief. “If he was alive I wouldn’t want to talk to you,” he said. “I made an agreement with him a long time ago, and by the green grasshoppers, I’ve kept it. I suppose you saw the model toys in his place?”

“Mighty cute little gadgets,” Waterman said.

“Whenever he needed money he brought one to me,” Hershel continued. “And I could use them. Oh my, how I could use them. You know how kids get tired of toys? Just think what it’s like trying to keep up with them.”

“A good business, though,” Waterman said, thinking of the expansion plans.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t. I’ve had good times and bad.”

“Did you pay Andy much?” the chief asked.

“I pay the highest prices in the business.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. If you was to tell me what you paid I wouldn’t know whether it was good or bad. What I meant was, did it amount to much money or just enough for the old man to live on?”

“He never brought me anything until he wanted money to live on,” the manufacturer said. “The most I ever gave him at one time was two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“When was the last time you gave him money?”

“Last spring. I gave him two-fifty cash. He always wanted cash. No checks for people to know where he got it.”

“Did he sell them outright to you, or did he get money against their sales over the years?”

Hershel looked at him as though he was not sure whether he wanted to answer the question. He offered Waterman a cigar and when the chief refused, he took the paper off it for himself.

“That was the funny part of our arrangement,” he said. “Mattson laid down the law to me the first time he came. I wasn’t to patent anything. At first, I thought to hell with you, mister. I’m not cutting dies on these things and then have some competitor pick up the idea and undersell me all over the country.” He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it into a piece of Kleenex. It amused Waterman. You couldn’t guess people’s personal habits by their surroundings.

“But he sold you on the idea?”

“No. I liked the darned things so much, I had confidence in them. I decided to risk a big run of them for the Christmas trade and it worked. Sure, I could have made a fortune, but I’ve never been in too much of a hurry for it.”

Waterman wanted to ask him then if he expected his fortune soon, but he had no doubt that Altman had already talked to Hershel the way he had to a lot of people. His only chance of getting information was to not be too keen about it. “Was the agreement you speak of the patent business?” he asked.

“That was part of it. The main thing was that I was not to tell anybody about it or about him making them.”

“Did he say why?”

“Never.”

“How long has he been making them?”

“Twenty-five years, at least. I think he was making them for my father. My father never told me, though, and he died suddenly. Andy came to me with the proposition cold. But we had a couple of things in the files I got looking at later, and they were Andy’s drawings all right.”

“Did he come often?”

“No. Two or three times a year. And he only came to the office once or twice altogether. Generally my home. There’s hardly anyone around there ever. Maybe on account of the goats.”

Waterman remembered the goats now that he mentioned them. Hershel pulled at his cigar thoughtfully. “I gave him more money once,” he said. “I just thought of it now. It hit me at a tough time, but I knew he needed it if he asked it, and I raised five hundred dollars for him. Right in the middle of the Depression, that was.”

“Did he tell you what he needed it for?”

“Oh no.”

“He sure kept his business to himself,” Waterman said. “Did he make what he felt like or did you ever ask him for anything particular?”

“I only asked him once,” Hershel said. “I thought the way he made little people—regular characters they were—he could make me some United Nations soldiers.”

“But he didn’t,” Waterman said.

“No, he certainly didn’t. He was sitting on the porch steps with me, and I can see him yet. His lip curled up like a dog ready to snap at you, and I could feel his eyes scalding me. Black, but alive, like they had specks of fire in them, like coals in a hearth. ‘I’ll make you the men,’ he said. ‘Boys. That’s what you want. They make better soldiers. But I’ll give them to you naked. Naked and strong, and made in the image of God. Put the togs of war on them if you like, but I’ll have no part of it’.”

Waterman’s hand trembled as he reached for the desk to pull his chair upright from where he had tilted it. He got to his feet slowly. “When did you say was the last time he came?”

“Last spring. March, or April maybe.”

“Did he act different at all?”

“Yes, he did. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him what I’d call happy till then. It did my heart good.”

“Any idea why he was feeling good?”

“No. It wasn’t anything he said. Just the way he walked. Kind of jaunty for an old man, and his eyes weren’t brooding. It seemed like things were right for him for the first time. I thought then he wouldn’t mind dying. Funny I should think that the last time I saw him. I don’t know what it was about him, but he sort of got inside you and twisted.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Waterman said.

Chapter 15

ALEX’S ONE THOUGHT WHEN Mabel called him was that word had come from Barnard. He turned the key in the back door and hurried to the station. Gilbert had his feet on Waterman’s desk when Alex walked in.

“Where’s the chief?” Alex asked.

“Went out to the toy factory.”

“I thought he wanted me. Did someone call me from here?”

“Not that I know of,” Gilbert said. “He might have done it from out there.”

“Then why didn’t he say so?”

Gilbert shrugged. He nodded toward the wall clock. “He ought to be back soon.” It was twenty minutes to eleven.

Alex asked the operator to reach the toy factory for him. He could hear the phone ringing.

“Thursday,” Gilbert said. “He might have stopped home to give the missus a ride to the church. They’re having a big shebang tomorrow.”

Alex broke the connection and clicked the receiver, trying to signal the operator.

“You’re going to break that thing,” Gilbert said.

“Operator, I’d like some information. Did you have a call to Miss Mabel Turnsby’s house about ten minutes ago? … This is the police station … No, Waterman’s not here … Skip it.” He hung up the receiver. “Gilbert, have there been any calls here for me?”

“Nope.”

Alex looked up Barnard’s number and called him. Again he heard the steady rhythm of the signal. Again he received no answer. This time he waited, asking the operator to ring continually. Finally he gave up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Gilbert. If the chief comes in, will you ask him to wait for me?”

Gilbert nodded. “You’re getting the police a bad name talking that way to the operator,” he said.

By the time Alex reached the car, the sudden anger had left him, but he knew that he had been duped. Someone had wanted him out of Andy’s house, if only for a few moments. Why? In the hope that he would leave the door unlocked? He drove back to the old house. Miss Turnsby was sitting on her front porch, knitting.

“Waterman wasn’t there,” he said. “Did you recognize the voice?”

“No. It sounded kind of familiar, but I didn’t think it was Fred. Whoever it was just gave me the message. Why would anyone want to do a thing like that?”

Why, indeed? Her imperturbability galled him. “Was there anyone around Mattson’s house while I was gone?”

“Not that I seen.”

Alex went back to Andy’s then. He could not very well say to her that she had deliberately made mischief. He knew that nothing he could see would be changed in the house. And no one really had a view of the place except Mabel Turnsby, unless from the gas station, and that was too far. He went into the bedroom and looked out. There was only the goldenrod gathering the heat of the sun, and giving out its warm, sweet smell. He realized that a window was open. The upper glass pane had been pried loose from the frame, and the lock opened. Alex went outdoors. Bits of old putty and slivers of wood lay on the hard ground, and there were marks in it from the ladder, but the ground was too hard for footprints. Even the pane of glass was gone, most likely because the housebreaker was afraid his prints might be on it.

Waterman had returned when Alex got back to the station. “Hear you got a wild-goose call,” the chief said.

“They’ve got me bouncing like a rubber ball.” He told him what had happened.

“How long were you away from the house, Alex?”

“Fifteen minutes at most.”

“Whoever broke in there must have done it in the middle of the night,” Waterman said. “I don’t think the call had much to do with it.”

“Can’t you check the call to Mabel’s house? They wouldn’t give me the information.”

Waterman picked up the phone. While he waited, Alex looked at the coroner’s report and the attached report of the examining medical officer. The autopsy had been extensive. There was no doubt of that.

“No way of knowing,” Waterman said. “The board’s been so busy Hazel ain’t had her coffee yet. Any word from Barnard?”

“No, and I called him a few minutes ago. No answer.”

Waterman called the veterinary then. When he received no answer, he signaled the operator. “Hazel, do you have any message on where Doc Barnard is?” While he waited he covered the mouthpiece. “I was out to the barbecue stand this morning. The kid saw a car in back of his place the night Andy Mattson died.”

“How about last night?”

Waterman shook his head. “Thanks, Hazel. Barnard’s out to Allendale Farm on an emergency call,” he said, hanging up. “We’ll just have to wait.”

“How about his wife?”

“Shopping maybe. Alex, I think we better sit here a while and put a few things together.” He took a large tablet from his drawer and tore several sheets from it. On one he wrote “J. Hershel,” on another “Mabel Turnsby,” on the third “M. Altman.” “I wonder how many more of these we’ll have before this thing ends. All right, boy. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. What did Mabel have to say this morning?”

Half an hour later Waterman was reading the notes he had made back to Alex when the mayor’s car pulled up in front of the station. “Thunder and lightning on a summer’s day,” the chief said. “Let me do the talking.”

The mayor got to the point immediately. “Fred, I understand you and young Whiting have been asking questions in connection with Mattson’s death. I thought the county closed the matter.”

“They did as far as the county was concerned. I’m just trying to tie up the loose ends from here.”

“Your ambition is commendable,” Altman said. “I’ll see that the pension board hears about it. But I hope you’re sure of what you’re doing, Fred. People are very impressionable. I had no idea they were so concerned about the old man. Well, a word to the wise …”

“Sure,” Waterman repeated. “A word to the wise.”

“Alex, I presume you’re running the coroner’s report, as I asked?”

“I don’t know whether I am or not, yet, Mr. Altman,” Alex said.

“I recommend it very highly, Alex. It has always been your father’s practice to print the truth. If you’re looking for sensationalism in this thing, I think you’ll regret it.”

“I’m looking for the truth, Mr. Mayor,” Alex said. “And if I’m convinced the whole truth is in the coroner’s report when I study it, I’ll see that it’s printed.”

“I don’t want it next week, Alex. I want it this week.”

“Mr. Altman, I’m publisher of the Sentinel. Its integrity depends on what I put into it. So does mine.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Waterman said, getting up from his desk. “Did you make the arrangements for the funeral?”

“Yes. That’s what I came to see you about. Ten o’clock at the cemetery. I’ll make it a simple service, non-denominational. I think it might be appropriate for you to send your assistant up, Fred, and give it a motorcycle escort. The Addisons will be coming down …”

“Well …” Waterman said. He did not finish. The telephone interrupted him. “I’ll be out,” were the only words he said into it. “I guess you can have Gilbert in the morning, mayor.” He got up from his desk easily. “Alex, want to take a ride over to Three Corners with me?”

The mayor went out the door with them and around to his chambers in the other wing of the building. In the car, Waterman said, “Barnard’s place was broken into this morning while he was out on that call.”

Chapter 16

THE FRONT DOOR TO the house was open when Alex and the chief drove up. They pushed the bell and walked in. Even from the doorway to the laboratory they could see the shambles that had been made of the place, cases smashed, instruments strewn around, glasses broken, as though someone had gone through whirling a brick on a string. Barnard was inside the door, going from one broken piece to another. The veins were standing out on his temples.

“Holy God,” Alex said.

Barnard looked up at them and then back at his laboratory. He held his hands palms upward and then dropped them again without speaking.

“Better not touch anything till I go over it for fingerprints,” Waterman said. “You two better go into the other part of the house till I’m finished.”

“Where’s Mrs. Barnard?” Alex asked as the two of them went into the living room.

“Lying down.”

Waterman had come to the door after them. “Was she here when it happened?”

“No. She was very nervous this morning. In fact, she didn’t sleep at all last night, so I suggested she go on my call with me and sit in the car. She sometimes does that.”

“Is there anything missing in there, Doc?” the chief asked.

“Some specimens I was working on. That’s all I can tell.”

“I’ve told the chief I brought Mattson’s cat to you, Doc,” Alex said. “Is that what’s missing?”

“Yes.”

Alex looked at Waterman. “Maybe you better tell me just what happened as far as you can, Doc,” the chief said, “being as particular as possible about time.”

Barnard took the cigarette Alex offered him. “I’ve been attending a heifer a few miles from here. I got a call about seven o’clock this morning. We left right away. I saw it was going to take me some time when I got out there, so Norah took the car and went on up to Masontown and did her shopping. She picked me up about eleven and we came right home. With the groceries we went in the back way. The screen had been pulled off a kitchen window. That’s how whoever it was got into the house.”

“How about the cat?” Waterman asked. “What did you find out about it?”

“Nothing. I hadn’t a chance to get into my lab at all this morning. The truth is, I didn’t expect to find anything. Nothing irregular was evident from the preliminary tests. Now I don’t know … I just don’t know.”

“I’m very sorry I got you into this, Doc,” Alex said.

“I told him he should have sent you away from here last night,” Mrs. Barnard said from the doorway. “I knew something would happen.” Her face was drawn and pinched looking, and as she came in the room with that gliding walk of hers, Alex thought she looked as though she were sleepwalking.

“Norah, why don’t you stay upstairs and rest, my dear? Chief Waterman will do everything he can.”

“Have the police ever been able to do enough in this county, Jeffrey? Answer me that.”

“You will go to your room and rest, Norah. There’s enough confusion in this house now.”

Mrs. Barnard lingered a moment, a pouting defiance on her face, and then wisped out of the room. “She has never been very well,” Barnard explained. “I’m afraid I’ve become more a father than a husband to her. But that has nothing to do with the business at hand. I admit this thing has shaken me. I had some valuable instruments, and some notes on months of research that were destroyed. I suppose I must start over now. But it’s hard to start over.”

“Yes,” Waterman said. “It’s always hard to start over. Doc, had you any notion this might happen?”

“No. No notion. Alex called me last night and warned me that the other package had been taken from his car. But I had no idea they’d go this far.”

“Did you see anybody around the place when you left this morning?”

“No. I’d have been suspicious if I had.”

“Where’d you say you were this morning?”

“Allendale Farm. It’s near Masontown.”

“And they really needed you up there?”

“What do you mean ‘they really needed me?’”

“The call was on the up and up. It wasn’t to get you out of the house.”

“It was quite legitimate.”

“All right, Doc. We’ll see what we can find out. Maybe we’ll get some help out of the county now. But as far as I can see we’d be just as well off without their help.”

Waterman got his kit from the car and went over the laboratory for prints. Meanwhile, Alex went outdoors. In the back yard of the veterinary’s were several runs for small animals. In one of them was an opossum, and in another segregated one, two white rats. The field at the back of the house was stubbled after the recent threshing. Far beyond it were the farm buildings, fronting on another road. To the west was a large signboard advertising the Hillside Inn; to the east was the only house, about half a mile away. He walked down to it, and inquired if anyone had noticed visitors at the veterinary’s that morning. No one had seen anything. When he returned, Waterman shook his head. “Only one strange set of prints, Alex, and I’ve a hunch they’re yours. We’ll check and make sure. But I don’t think we’re dealing with the kind that leave trademarks.”

“I’m going to take my suspicions up to the sheriff’s office,” Waterman said on the way back to town. “If they don’t cooperate then, there’s got to be a reason for it. And maybe we’ll know where to start. You sure needled somebody when you took that cat.”

“Chief, what do you think of Mrs. Barnard?”

“Alex, I give up thinking about women a long time ago. They got more angles than the crazy house at a carnival. Why?”

“Mabel’s her aunt, you know.”

“Almost everybody’s related to everybody else in Hillside, Alex.”

“I know. But she didn’t want Doc in on this, and I’d like to know why. Now I’m beginning to get curious as to what’s wrong between them and Mabel.”

Chapter 17

ALEX WENT DIRECTLY TO the office from the station. He had less than an hour to decide what was to go into the Sentinel about Mattson’s death. He had the copy of the coroner’s report, but he was still reluctant to print it. All the same he realized that part of his reluctance came from his antagonism toward Altman. Joan and Maude were at lunch. He told his father what had happened at Barnard’s, but there was no time then for talking. He went to his desk and began the account of the old man’s death:

HILLSIDE’S OLDEST CITIZEN DIES

Sometime after midnight Wednesday, August 18, Andrew Mattson, 92, died at his home on Sunrise Avenue. Chief of Police Waterman found him at noon the next day. Miss Mabel Turnsby, Mattson’s neighbor, called the police when the old man had not come outdoors that morning.

Little is known of Mattson, who in his thirty-one years’ residence in Hillside had gained the reputation of being a recluse. His one visitor, the late Henry Addison, came once each year to spend a day with him, and since his death, no one is known to have entered the house until Mr. Waterman broke in the day of Miss Turnsby’s call.

Alex stopped and lit a cigarette. He picked up a pencil and jotted notes on a pad, repeating the first notes he had made: “Anne, 1933,” and adding: “cat, missing key, package from the car, painting, car seen that night, toys, house broken into, Barnard’s lab, call from Mabel’s, Hershel’s expansion …”

Maude was coming in from lunch. He waved her away and continued to smoke his cigarette thoughtfully. What could he say about the old man that would be the truth? Altman wanted the coroner’s report published. The reason was obvious. He wanted any suspicions about Mattson’s death allayed. He would like a nice syrupy story that would make it stick. Alex pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and threw it in the waste basket. He stuck his notes in his pocket. Taking the coroner’s report, he went out to Maude’s desk and gave it to her. “You can run this,” he said, “verbatim on the front page.”

“All right, if you say so,” she said. “Where’s the story?”

“There isn’t any story. When I’ve got one I’ll give it to you.”

“You can say something, Alex.”

“What can I say? That the old man died in his sleep? He didn’t. More drivel about Addison?”

“Now you listen to me, Alex Whiting. We’ve had enough phone calls here this morning to last us a year. People want an explanation in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Maude, if I had an explanation, I’d give it to them. Altman wants me to give an explanation, too. He wants me to say the old man died a natural death, all’s right with the world. It isn’t. But at the same time it isn’t right to fill the page with a lot of suspicions I can’t prove. We’ll run the report. That’s what he wants, but the fact that we make no comment on it will tell my story the way I want it told for now.”

“All right, Alex. But why didn’t you say that this morning? I’ve saved you space. What am I going to put in it?”

“I’ll get you the doggoned ‘library jottings’.” He stopped at the door and called back: “What kind of calls came in, Maudie?”

“I can tell you when Andy bought his last pair of shoes, when he got a haircut, when he got his glasses changed. Old lady Liston wanted to know if the cat was killed humanely. She’s on another rampage. We’re doing a story for her on her Mongrel Haven.”

Glasses, Alex thought. He had not seen any at the house or in the workshop. “Anything else, Maudie?”

“Tom Ferguson wants to loan you a book on how to detect a criminal.”

“Nuts,” he said, but he was grinning when he left the office.

He could remember the smell of the library since he had borrowed his first book. No matter how many new books had been added there were always enough old ones to smell that way. It was like opening an old trunk. Miss Woods gave him a quick, vanishing smile. “I guess we shouldn’t have printed that letter last week,” he said. “Dad wouldn’t have done it. Sometimes my sense of humor is a little perverse.”

“A participle is a very easy thing to make a mistake on, Alex,” she said. “I found one the other day in George Eliot.”

She had looked for them, too, he thought. “I know, Miss Woods.”

“And I remember one in Time magazine and you know how literate they are.”

“Very.”

“And newspaper stories are full of them.”

“I apologize for printing the letter,” he said.

“Very well, Alex. But you don’t need to print the apology.”

“No ma’m.”

“What can I give you?”

“‘Library jottings,’” he said, “and I’d like to look at your latest Who’s Who, if I may.” He took the book to a table near the window and opened it to Henry Addison. Born in Webber, Massachusetts in 1859, one of two children. It listed his clubs, business affiliations and philanthropic interests. Alex copied it all into his notebook and closed the big book. What good it would do him, he had no idea. Certainly it brought him no closer to a reason for a friendship between the famous man and old Andy. Someone was mowing the grass in the town square. The smell drifted in on the hot wind. He returned the book to Miss Woods. She had her column ready for him. It had been neatly typed, waiting in her drawer for his apology.

“Thank you, ma’m. Do you know if there’s any way I could trace the stories on the paintings of a French artist, Pissarro. Where each one is, when it was purchased, where?”

“I should think I could find out from the National Galleries. I’d be glad to try, Alex.”

“Would you, Miss Woods? I’d appreciate it.”

“I can send a wire if you want me to.”

“Maybe that would be best. I’ll pay you whatever it costs.” He pocketed the jottings. “Thank you, ma’m.”

“Alex, is it true Doctor Barnard’s place was vandalized because he was helping you on Andy Mattson?”

Out already, he thought. “It was broken into this morning. We’re not sure why, yet.”

Downstairs in the town clerk’s office, he learned that the 1933 property tax had been paid by money order. The return address was 3467 Paula Ave., Chicago. He wrote it down. “Really going after this thing, aren’t you, Alex?” the clerk said, wiping the sweat from his face.

“Trying to get a history on the old man. It’s like pulling teeth. You should have a record of the deed on that property, shouldn’t you?”

“I was afraid you’d ask for that. The danged vaults are like an oven. I’d like to stick Altman in there and let him fry for a while.” The clerk was gone a few moments. He returned with a filing box and a smear of dust on his clean shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. He went over the dusty papers. The property had been deeded to Mattson by Michael Turnsby and notarized in Chicago. Mrs. Barnard had mentioned an agent, but there was no indication on the record that one had been consulted. It seemed reasonable to assume that Andy might have dealt directly with Turnsby. Hillside was a logical place for Andy to come if he intended to make toys, but why was he so secretive about it, and where had he known Turnsby? Or had he merely answered an advertisement of the property in a Chicago paper? Alex jotted down the dates of the deed and thanked the clerk. “Ever talk with the old man?”

“Nope. He wasn’t one for talking much. Just pushed his cash through the window and waited for a receipt.”

“Not even complaints about that goldenrod next to his place?”

“Nope. I don’t think he had any allergies except people.”

Waterman was not in the station when Alex went around to that wing. Gilbert said he had gone over to Mattson’s house to look for prints on his way to lunch. Alex returned to the office. The speed with which Maude snatched the librarian’s copy from him and ran it back to the composing room made him feel guilty. The one busy day in the week at the plant and he was walking around in a blue fog. He went back to the plant himself. His father and Joan were proofreading the galleys. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“Just do what you’re doing,” Maude said. “But do it some place else.”

Joan looked up at him and smiled. His father winked at him. As indispensable as the fifth wheel, he thought. But he did have work to do. He went into the office and called the Addison Industries at Riverdale. He could see George Addison at three o’clock.

Chapter 18

AS HE CLIMBED THE steps of the main office of the Addison Industries, he noticed the date on the foundation stone of the massive brick building, 1895. That was the real beginning of Riverdale. Before that it had probably been a lazy village like Hillside. In fifty-three years it had sprawled and tumbled over thousands of acres, attracting workers from all over the country, and contributing industries, like the tannery and the woolen mill. And what affected one, affected all of them, and all the people in the town.

At the information desk on the first floor he waited while someone came from Addison’s office to get him. He looked at the floor directory—Advertising department, 2nd floor, north; Accounting, 3rd floor, south; George Addison, 2nd floor; George Addison, Jr., 2nd floor; Henry Addison estate, 5th floor, north. … He looked from the directory to a huge map of the United States, marked with the various plants of the company and subsidiary industries, main plants in New Bedford, Wilkes-Barre, Riverdale, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles …

“Mr. Whiting?” a boy said.

Alex followed him up the steps to the second floor and through row after row of desks. There was the sound of business machines and typewriters, and the rumble of many voices telephoning, dictating, gossiping … invoice department, sales department, export department. The executive offices were partitioned off by half-wood, half-glass panels. George Addison arose and shook hands with him across the desk. His secretary picked up her book and left the office.

“I presume you want to see me about Andrew Mattson,” Addison said, settling back in his chair and motioning Alex to one.

“Yes. I thought with the friendship between your father and him, you might be able to tell us something about him”

Addison was a pleasant-faced man—sixty, maybe. His hair was thin and greying. He had taken off his glasses when Alex came in. If he had met him on the street, Alex thought, he would not have known him from a barber, a pharmacist, a bookkeeper.

“Your mayor called me yesterday,” Addison said. “I guess it was about time for Mattson to die. Not many of us live that long, eh?”

“Not many,” Alex agreed.

“I never met the old man myself,” Addison said. “My father was very fond of him, had a great respect for him.”

“Why?”

Addison scratched his nose. “By gosh, when you put it directly, I don’t know. We never talked much about him. It was one of those things I took for granted. I remember father saying he was getting queer. But I didn’t ask him to explain. There were times when we thought he was getting a little queer himself. You know how old men are. Father was eighty-nine when he went, you know.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “He died last spring, didn’t he?”

“April.”

“Do you know if Mattson had any relatives?” Alex asked.

“Altman—that’s your mayor’s name, isn’t it?—asked me that yesterday. To tell you the truth, I don’t know a thing about him. I think my father must have come to know him away before my time. As I said, it was something we took for granted. Father had many old cronies. I recall having heard that Mattson loaned him money once.”

“That seems kind of strange to think about now,” Alex said, “when you think of the size of Addison and the simplicity of Mattson’s four rooms.”

“My father was a very simple man, for all his acumen,” Addison said.

“Did you ever work together?” Alex asked, stepping over his own lack of tact in using the word “simplicity.”

“Possibly. It’s quite possible. When father got older, he became active in a lot of pet projects, mathematical theories, mostly. He had a very keen mind for an old man. I’ve always had the notion that’s what he and Mattson talked about. It might have been my imagination, of course, but I could just see the two old boys going at it hammer and tongs. Before he went to see him, father would be busy for a week, very secretive about it all, but I saw some of his papers once—problems that would choke a horse.”

“Did you ever have the notion they might be building something?”

“No. That never occurred to me. Why?”

“No particular reason,” Alex said. “Andy had the reputation of being handy at carpentry and the like. Your father was quite an art collector at one time, I believe. I saw the collection when I was at the University. I think there’s a valuable painting in Mattson’s house—a Pissarro. I remember his work in the Addison Collection. I wondered if we could get any of their story out of that.”

Addison was thoughtful. “I’d like to make inquiries. Let me talk to the curator and let you know.” He wrote the name of the artist on a pad. “I presume the house will be impounded?”

Alex thought that it was likely.

“By the way, Mattson wasn’t broke, was he?”

“No. There was nearly two hundred dollars in cash in the house.”

Addison smiled. “This might amuse you,” he said. “My father provided twenty-five thousand dollars for him in his will, but the estate doesn’t go to probate until this week when the court convenes. Well, I thought about the old man one day and wondered if he might be hard up. I think father used to take him something now and then. So I wrote to him advising him of the legacy and offering to send him something if he needed it. He wrote me a note that would have curled my hair as to what he thought of my charity. He told me to give the twenty-five thousand to an organization for displaced persons. What do you think of that for a man of ninety-two?”

“I would be the last person in the world to underestimate Andrew Mattson,” Alex said.

“Just so,” Addison said. “I thought of the letter yesterday when Altman called. I had no intention of so disposing of the money before that, of course. In fact, I could not have done it until the will was settled. If no heirs to Mattson show up, I’ll turn the letter over to the state.”

“I wonder if the twenty-five thousand will turn up any heirs,” Alex said. Addison had not answered his direct question on the subject a moment before.

“If there are any, that will do it,” said Addison. “As they say on the radio, it works every time.”

“Do many people know of the bequest?” Alex asked.

Addison put on his glasses. “No. There was no secret about it, but the provisions of a will aren’t generally known before an estate goes to probate. Mattson might have spoken of it, but I doubt that from what I’ve heard of him.”

“So do I,” Alex said. “I guess there isn’t much else, Mr. Addison.”

“I’m afraid you don’t know much more about him than when you came.” He got up and came around the desk to walk to the door with Alex. “I wish I could be of more help.”

“Maybe we should let the old boy rest in peace,” Alex said. “But as Chief Waterman says, we don’t know enough about him to put on his tombstone.”

“Altman said his cat had scratched him up. That was a terrible thing. Cats are strange animals. I wouldn’t have one in the house, myself. They belong in a barn yard.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Addison.”

“Not at all. Thank you for coming up. By the way, if money’s needed for the funeral, tell whoever’s handling it, I’ll take care of it.”

The two men shook hands, and as though it were a signal, the boy was at his side to guide Alex out of the office.

It had been a well conducted interview, he thought grimly. Addison had conducted it. There were things he might have asked directly, for example, the business with Altman and Hershel, but he had no one’s word for that except Lou Ivantic. Hershel had not mentioned it to Waterman either. He drove to the Riverdale County Museum. It was called a museum, but it might well have been called a curiosity shop, having everything from an enormous collection of Indian arrowheads to pewter mugs said to have come over with the early French explorers. The old curator was an authority on everything that pre-dated 1900. Alex gave him the service ribbon and button he had taken from Andy’s suitcase, and waited while he checked it in a catalogue he himself had compiled.

While he waited he looked around the room. Stuffed birds were perched above all the cases, and the inevitable elk, moose and deer heads were mounted on the walls. In the cases were sample fabrics of Indian weaves, beads of many varieties, samples of the barks of all the trees known to Riverdale county. There was a case of butterflies, another of insects, two cases devoted to coins, one to shells and another to the various mineral deposits in the soils of Riverdale. It was compulsory that every child in the county make at least one “field trip” to the museum before passing from the eighth grade. Alex was trying to remember which of his classes brought him there—geography, history, botany …

“Spanish-American War,” the curator said. “Engineers. Philippine Island. You don’t see many of them anymore. I can remember when Civil War decorations were more plentiful. When President Taft was through here he commended me. He came here and stood right where you’re standing this minute …”

“You’ve been here a long time,” Alex said. “I suppose you remember the beginning of the town?”

“No. Not the beginning of the town. But I remember when it became county seat. I remember when Addison built his first plant out there on the river. I remember his people wagoning down from Jackson. There weren’t even trains through here in those days. They moved a lot of stuff up the river. It was a big drink then. Now it’s not even a sip for the cows in pasture.”

“I wonder why he picked this spot,” Alex said.

“See those cases? Minerals. Cheap power on the river. He knew what he was doing.”

Alex thanked the curator and started for home. The old man’s mention of the river reminded him of the typhus epidemic which had caused the first real battle between his father and the powers at the county seat. It was Barnard who had put his finger on the source of infection, as he remembered it, tracing it to the Addison plant disposal. He pulled off the road and entered several questions in his notebook.

Chapter 19

WATERMAN KEPT TELLING HIMSELF that he had to stick to facts. Alex Whiting could afford to indulge in fancy because he was looking for a story. As an officer of justice he must keep his mind on the evidences of crime. Barnard’s laboratory was one. And the break-in at Mattson’s house was another. As far as Mattson’s death was concerned, he had very little chance of making a case, with the coroner’s report against it. The vandalism at Barnard’s suggested a poison in the cat, presumably transferable through its claws or teeth, that would not show up in Mattson’s body but would in the cat’s. There was a lot of presumption there, and it would be difficult to convince anyone of it, particularly the county men. Then there was the matter of Alex taking the cat. No matter how he approached it they were not going to be anxious to help. One thing at a time. He stopped at home for a brief lunch, grateful that his wife was at the church working on the ladies’ luncheon for tomorrow.

It was a little after two when he got to Mattson’s house. Mabel was at home. He wondered that she, too, had not gone to the church. She made herself a driving force in every social. He went in Mattson’s back door. It was funny the way you got used to going in back doors. He had not gone in the front door at home that he could remember unless he had company with him, and that had not been for a long time.

He went all over the house himself looking for prints. There were none. In the living room he saw the painting Alex had mentioned. The sun was overhead now and much of the translucence of the picture was gone. If it were valuable, Waterman thought, it was a good thing Alex had seen it. He, himself would scarcely have noticed it at all. He sat down in the big chair. Presuming the cat was carrying some sort of poison, where did he get it? Was he allowed out for the night? If the old man took such precautions in locking himself in, was he likely to open the door in the middle of the night for the cat if he cried to get in? Then there was the question of what the murderer wanted (if there was a murder). Yesterday he might have said that the old man was murdered because he was wanted out of the way (if he was murdered). That was where he had to accept Hershel as a suspect. But now that the house had been broken into, it was obvious that the old man had something whoever did it wanted, and whatever it was, he could afford to wait until the police examination had been made before coming for it. And why that window? It would have been easier to have removed the boards from the back window. But it was in view from Mabel Turnsby’s. And who had the other key?

Waterman laid his head on the back of the chair, and thought of the old man as he had found him. His body had stiffened while he was in terror of the cat. And yet the cat was closed in another room in the morning. Andy was fully dressed and the coroner had put his death at approximately two o’clock in the morning. Mabel told Alex something had awakened her at two-thirty. He would have to go over that again with her himself. The old man had been dressed, but in the bedroom he and Alex had observed the bed. It looked as though he had gotten into it and out again without having slept in it. He might have lain down with his clothes on expecting a visitor. Everything indicated that someone had been with him that night, except that the house had been locked up from the inside. Olson had examined every window. Waterman ran his hands along the cushion of the chair and down between the upholstery. He could remember doing that as a kid, and he could remember Freddie doing it. It never failed to yield a penny or two and a handful of hairpins. In Andy’s chair he found only a stub of a pencil. He got up and went to the couch where he repeated the quest. There, when he removed the bolster, just out of sight, he found the old man’s glasses. He moved them to and from his eyes. Mattson had been extremely far-sighted. He would check with Doc Rose, the optometrist, but he was quite sure that without his glasses the old man would not recognize the hand in front of him. He would not even recognize his own cat.

Waterman thought about that for several minutes. It would account for someone driving in the back way, if he were carrying a strange animal, and if he had to remove one from the house. He could not risk leaving it outdoors for it would surely return. Andy’s was the striped kind, one of which looked like another to the casual observer or to a far-sighted person close at hand. Every farm in the country was propagated with them. He got up and began to walk back and forth between the rooms, and then from window to window again. Every one of them had been fastened with a lock that hooked the upper and lower frames together, everyone except the small window through which the morning light caught the painting. Olson had been examining it when Mayor Altman walked into the house yesterday. Waterman pulled a chair to it and climbed up. He could have reached it easily enough from the floor, but he wanted to examine the hinges near the ceiling. There was a safety catch. It, too, had been locked. Waterman opened the window toward the ceiling and let it drop again. He stepped down and his hand trembled as he reached for the chair to put it back where he had found it. Whoever had been with Andy Mattson the night he died, had known the old man was dead before he left the house. He had thrown the cat into the dining room after whatever devilish business he had accomplished and closed the door between it and Andy. Perhaps he had finished off the old man with threats. Perhaps Andy was already dead. Then he had taken what he had come for, turned out the light and pulled himself up and out of the small window and let it swing closed. He had locked himself out, of course. And if he later discovered he had made a mistake in what he had taken, he did not return then to break in after it. He had relied on the slow wits of the examining officers not to find it, or not to understand it if they found it. And they had not disappointed him, Waterman thought bitterly. He went over the small window for prints, but there were none.

Chapter 20

FROM THE HOUSE WATERMAN went back to the workshop. He had padlocked it, and the lock had not been disturbed. Neither had anything in the shop. Mabel was shaking a dust mop from the back porch when he returned, and going over he sat down on the top step. “Mabel, there’s a couple of things I’d like to ask you.”

“You too?” she said. “Young Whiting quizzed me like I was a criminal yesterday. I don’t think you should allow that, Fred.”

“Well, there’s no law says you have to answer him, Mabel, but I don’t think he’s asking things just out of curiosity. We got some serious trouble here. I can’t help wondering why you sent him on that wild-goose chase yesterday. There wasn’t any message for him.”

“I did so get a message. If Hazel says there wasn’t she’s fibbing. Furthermore, you can do your calling some place else after this, if that’s all the thanks I get. People traipsing in and out of my house like it was a parade grounds.”

“Seems to me you’re awful touchy,” the chief said. “It don’t make sense you’re being like that after the way you were helping out yesterday.”

“Yesterday was different,” she said.

Yes, Waterman thought, yesterday was a great deal different. “Mabel, are you sure Andy didn’t give you the key to his place? You’d be the only person he was likely to give it to.”

“I don’t like what you’re saying, Fred Waterman. Not a little bit.”

“All right, Mabel. I don’t blame you if you’re telling the truth. But somebody broke into that house last night, and if they knowed you had a key, I don’t think you’d be very safe yourself.”

“Broke in?” she repeated, the color of her skin paling beneath the rouge.

“Yes. It makes me wonder if maybe Andy gave you something before he died, something the housebreaker might have wanted.”

“No.”

“Would you have any idea of what he might have had that somebody would want awful bad?”

“No. Like I told Alex, we never talked. Not any more than passing time of day.”

“I know,” the chief said. “But sometimes you’ve got ways of finding things out the rest of us wouldn’t think of. Did you know anything about that shack of his out back?”

“What do you mean, did I know anything? I knew he had one, if that’s what you mean. Had his coal delivered out there. I’d see him carting it in wintertimes.”

“Ever see him take any visitors out there?”

“I never seen him take visitors any place.”

“Not even Addison?”

“Not even him. I never seen them go out there.”

“Were you ever in the place, Mabel?”

“Never.”

Waterman sighed. She was as silent as a fish, he thought. And that was strange for her. He had never known her when she didn’t want to tell everything she knew and to make up what she thought would add to it. “Did he let the cat out nights, do you know?”

“He used to. I don’t know about lately.”

“You never heard it crying to get in?”

“No.”

“I wonder if you’d like to tell me what you did and saw Tuesday night,” Waterman said.

“What time?”

“Say, from six o’clock on.”

“I had my supper. Five-thirty that was. Then I went across to the Baldwins’. She’s been selling chances on my quilt, and working tomorrow, she won’t be at the party.”

Waterman interrupted. “Did you notice Andy before you left?”

“He was on the porch when I went out.”

“The cat was with him?”

“On his lap, it was.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“Just said ‘good evening.’”

“But he didn’t act worried?”

“No.” Waterman nodded to her to go on. “Well I must have stayed there till nine o’clock maybe. It was dark when I came home. There was a light in his house but the blinds were down.”

Again Waterman interrupted. “All the blinds?”

“All them on my side of the house,” she said. “And he didn’t generally pull them down. Well, like I say, I came home at nine. There was light in the front of the house and in the dining room. I just didn’t pay any attention to it. I sewed for a while. Fixed myself a cup of Ovaltine about ten and went to bed. I always aim to be in bed asleep by ten-thirty.”

”Were the lights still on in Andy’s place?”

“They were. He stayed up all hours. Even when I woke up at two-thirty, like I told Alex, I didn’t think much about them still being on.”

“What woke you up then?”

“I’ve no idea. No idea at all. I sleep sound.”

“Were the same lights on?”

Mabel waited a few seconds before she answered. “No,” she said slowly, “the dining room light was out.”

“Were the blinds still down?”

“No they weren’t,” she said thoughtfully. “The dining room blind was up. I could see the light from the front room shining through on the floor.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“No movement in the house at all?”

“No.”

“How long were you watching?”

“I wasn’t watching, Fred Waterman. I was just looking. I just took a book and went back to bed.”

“Did you go right to sleep?”

“Practically.”

Waterman got up from the steps and stood beside her. “Did you get a good look at the cat in the window yesterday, Mabel?”

“I saw it, if that’s what you mean. Walking up and down. Up and down.”

“Would you say for sure it was his cat?”

She looked at him, her eyes growing wider. She sucked her lips in close to her teeth, and when she spoke again, her voice was small and unsteady. “I just took for granted it was his cat,” she said. “It looked like his cat.” She cleared her throat. She was trying to control her voice, just as she was trying to control her hands tightening them around the handle of the mop stick.

Waterman’s voice droned on evenly, unperturbed, as though he had not noticed her uneasiness. “Would you have any reason to think now it might not have been his cat?”

“No.”

“Mabel, didn’t you ever hear of Andy Mattson before he came to live here, from your brother, Mike?”

“No.”

“Mike’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Many years.”

“And in the years since they moved from here, and his daughter moved back you ain’t spoken to her?”

“She don’t speak to me,” Mabel said. “And that’s none of your business, Fred Waterman. I don’t have to be persecuted like this.”

“It’s funny,” Waterman said as though he was merely thinking aloud, “Alex taking that cat to him for an examination, and your connection with them.”

“I got no connection with them,” Mabel said. “Never.”

“You didn’t like Mike’s wife much either, as I recollect.”

“I don’t see as that’s your business.” She wanted to go indoors and leave him, but she was afraid to trust her legs.

Waterman didn’t like doing this. It was hard to see the old lady growing old almost before his eyes. “No I guess it ain’t much,” he said. “There was two children, wasn’t there? The boy was older as I remember him. Never around much. … Well, I guess that’s about all for now, Mabel. You’re sure now there ain’t some information you’d like to give me of your own accord?”

The perspiration had come out on her upper lip. “I just want to be left alone,” she said. “I’m going to call Mayor Altman. A person’s got some rights.”

“He’d be a good man for you, ma’m. He ain’t trying to help me none either.”

Chapter 21

WATERMAN DROVE DIRECTLY TO Riverdale when he left Mabel’s. Later he wished that he had stayed at home, and saved himself the time. The county men stood by the autopsy report. Tobin pointed out to him the various tests for poison that had been made upon the old man. The chief could not prove that anything had been taken from the house, and even the vandalism at Barnard’s did not budge them. They saw no reason to take the matter out of his hands. They just didn’t want any part of it, he thought. All they wanted was to be kept informed.

On the way back from Riverdale he stopped at Barnard’s. The veterinary was slow to conceal his lack of enthusiasm for Waterman’s visit. “I’m afraid this business has upset my wife a great deal more than I thought,” he said, leading the way into the laboratory.

“That’s a shame, Doc. I feel awful bad about it myself.” He noticed that the laboratory had been put back in order although the glass was missing from some of the cases. “I was thinking if we come out right side up on this, we might get the town board to pay for the damage.”

“Do you think you have a chance of coming out right side up?”

“I’d hate to be going at it this way if I didn’t have,” Waterman said. “Doc, do you know of any poison that might have been in the cat, that wouldn’t show up in the autopsy of the old man?”

Barnard frowned. “No,” he said after a moment, “I don’t, and I’m virtually certain there was no poison in the cat.”

“You got that far in the examination?”

“The effects of any known poison would most likely have been evident in the organs of the animal as I separated them.”

“How about the claws?”

“Have you ever observed a cat, Waterman? Put anything on its claws and it licks them immediately. There would have been internal evidence.”

“I see. Then you just don’t know any reason why your lab should have been destroyed?”

“None. It was wanton destruction.”

“Well,” the chief said, “there must have been a reason for it. Aimed at you or at us. Mrs. Barnard wasn’t very keen on you tackling the cat in the first place, was she?”

“No.”

“Any particular reason?”

“She didn’t want me to get involved in the thing.”

That was a circle if Waterman had ever gone in one. He had to answer his own question. “I suppose it comes of her having lived in that house and all. Her father’s been dead a long time, hasn’t he?”

“A good many years.”

“And her mother?”

“She’s been dead a long time too, although I don’t see what that has to do with this matter.”

“Maybe nothing,” Waterman said. “But I might get somewhere if I could get a line on Mattson before he came to Hillside. There was a brother of Mrs. Barnard’s. He was a lot older than her as I remember it. I wonder if she could tell me where I might get in touch with him.”

“I don’t believe Norah’s heard from him in years.”

“I’d kind of like to ask her myself, if I could, Doc.”

“You can, of course. But I’d appreciate your waiting a day or two, Fred. Doctor Jacobs was out this afternoon. He says she must have absolute quiet today.”

“I guess it can wait,” Waterman said. “I’d like to know something else though, Doc, and if it’s none of my business you can say so. The only relative you’ve got around here is Mabel Turnsby …”

“You want to know why we’re not on better terms,” Barnard said. “That’s between the women themselves. I don’t like grudges, but I’ve given up on it. The whole trouble was the way Mabel treated Norah when she was a youngster. Norah had to stay with her when her mother went away sometimes. Mabel would take her to church and all her clubs with her. Whenever Norah’d squirm or get restless, the old lady would pinch her, and smile if somebody caught her at it as though she was playing with the child. Norah never forgave her.”

“Women are the doggonedest things, aren’t they?” Waterman said, getting up to go.

“The most complex creatures in the world,” Barnard said.

As he got into the car the chief saw a flutter of curtains at the window of the upstairs bedroom. Norah Barnard and Mabel had more in common than a dislike for one another, he thought.

At the station he learned that Alex had been in, Altman had been in, and Gilbert was complaining of a cramp in his arm from answering the phone. Waterman sent him home for supper. For a few moments the chief sat at his desk writing notes on the case, and he was satisfied now that it was a case. On his way home he stopped at the Whitings’. They were about to sit down to supper. “I ain’t going to stay but a minute,” he said. “I just want a word or two with Alex.”

“Sit down and have a bite with us,” Mrs. Whiting said. “It’s pot roast. We’ve got plenty.”

“Well,” the chief said, “I was going to shift for myself tonight. Ida’s up getting ready for that shindig tomorrow. But I don’t like to put you out none.”

“You’re not putting us out at all.”

“I hear you’re back in the inkpot, Charlie,” Waterman said, sitting down at the table.

“And I haven’t felt better in months.”

“That’s how I feel about retiring, too,” Waterman said. “But by the looks of it, I’ll go out with a bang at least. This thing’s stirring up like a real ruction. Altman’s talking about calling a council meeting.”

“Maybe the coroner’s report in tomorrow’s paper will take care of it,” Alex said.

“It ought to,” the chief said. “But some people think a coroner’s report means murder no matter what it says.”

“That’s a hell of a logic,” Alex said. “Carry it through and the only reason you have for a police force is catching criminals. No crime prevention at all.”

“Well, when you stop to think about it, boy, that’s the way most people think, including some police. Take these state troopers hiding behind signboards waiting for people to speed by. I never did go for that much. That’s all Gilbert thought his motorcycle was for.”

“And now he’s going to be a funeral escort,” Alex said.

“With Altman major-domo-ing,” his father said. “It’s a devil of a thing to say, but that’s what it amounts to. He’s got a great sense of politics. Still expects to bring Hillside up to his size.”

“The way he’s going, he’ll do it all by himself,” Waterman said. “His wife’s due any day now.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Whiting said, returning with a place setting. “This will be the seventh, won’t it?”

“I went up to see George Addison this afternoon,” Alex said presently.

He told them of the conversation.

“Twenty-five thousand is quite a chunk of money,” Waterman said when he had finished. “I turned up a couple of things today myself.” He told them his deductions on how and why someone might have been in the house the night the old man died. “Mabel was mighty uneasy when I told her someone broke in there last night, and when I mentioned the cats might have been switched, I thought she’d faint dead away. She’s sure got something she’s not talking about.”

“I felt that way too,” Alex said. “It makes the cat all the more important, doesn’t it?”

“Yep, it does. I was out to see Doc Barnard again. I wanted to ask Norah a question or two, but I couldn’t get to see her. Seems Jake recommended a complete rest. And Doc Barnard wouldn’t throw a bone in our pot if we was never to get fed. He just won’t admit there might have been anything wrong with the cat. Did Addison mention the deal with Altman and Hershel, Alex?”

“No. I didn’t want to ask him out straight.”

“And we got nothing to go on there except what that kid, Ivantic, told you. Hershel didn’t mention it. But we’ve got to face it, Alex. If there’s murder involved, that’s one motive that showed up. It’d be hard to prove. Hershel could be expanding naturally these days. Addison’s the only person with the kind of money he’d need.”

“How about the bank?” Mr. Whiting said. “They’d put up cash if the project was sound.”

“I’m checking them,” Waterman said. “Now we got another motive: that twenty-five thousand. If Andy’s got an heir, with him dying before the Addison will was probated, that money goes to him.”

“I’ll bet one of those two things is more than coincidence,” Alex said.

“I don’t very much like the idea of sitting around waiting for an heir to show up,” the chief said. “But I sure don’t know where to go and look for him.”

Alex reached into the pocket of his coat where it hung on the back of his chair. He took out his notebook. “I looked up the Who’s Who on Henry Addison,” he said. “Want to see it?”

Waterman studied it for a moment. “Webber, Massachusetts,” he said. He returned the notebook.

“And I checked on the house today,” Alex said. “The deed was transferred from Mike Turnsby to Andy in Chicago in 1917. Another thing I got was the address in Chicago from where he sent his property tax in 1933.”

“Good boy!” Waterman said enthusiastically. “1933’s a long time ago, but in Andy’s life it’s as close to the present as we’ve come. That’s when he got five hundred dollars from Hershel.”

“And it’s when Mabel says he was gone a couple of months and came back an old man.”

“I’ll get a wire out to the Chicago police on it. Maybe something. Maybe nothing.”

“Eat your supper. It’s getting cold,” Mrs. Whiting said.

Waterman took a few bites. “It’s awfully good, ma’am,” he said, but he ran the next sentence into his compliment. “Chicago’s a mighty big place. But I can’t help thinking the two times we know Andy was there have some connection. Maybe that’s what Mabel knows. Maybe that’s why the Barnards don’t want to talk much about them early times, either.”

“But it was Mabel told me of his going away,” Alex said. “Dad, I wish you’d tell us all you remember about Mike Turnsby. How long did he live here? What kind of work did he do?”

Mr. Whiting thought for a few seconds. “I remember he was here when I started in business. He was born here I think, but he was away for a while. It’s so doggoned long ago, I can’t remember, Alex. He came back from the Spanish-American War, I know that.”

“I think Andy was in the Philippines then, too,” Alex said. “I took that ribbon and medal of his up to the museum this afternoon.”

“Later I know Turnsby was the first water and sanitary commissioner in Hillside.”

Alex remembered Andy’s books on hydraulics. “It’s queer Andy had to put in his own plumbing if Turnsby had that kind of job.”

“I don’t think Turnsby planned staying around Hillside long,” Waterman said. “I remember that fuss now. They said he was making a guinea pig out of the town. He had a lot of hare-brained ideas on our water system. Said it carried every disease they had in Riverdale down here. Matter of fact, it wasn’t so hare-brained as it turned out. About ten years later the whole thing came up again with the typhus epidemic.”

“And that I want to know about, too,” Alex said.

“You were in the thick of that, Charlie,” Waterman said. “You better tell it.”

“It came on us like the plague,” Mr. Whiting said. “You took Alex away then, Laura. Remember?”

“I won’t ever forget it.”

“We had county and state men all over here and they couldn’t find the source. Finally it was Doc Barnard traced it down to the milk, then to the cows that grazed along the river, and then to the disposal system of Addison Industries up in Riverdale. Then we had a fight on our hands. The county wouldn’t accept his research, much less his deductions, and we went head-on into the stone foundation of Addison. We couldn’t even get cooperation from our own people. The cheap river power for the mill, the toy factory. It was a big factor in transportation. The farmers fought us. Taxation was brought into it. We had a hell of a time. In the end we got what we wanted, but there was no victory in it for us. Henry Addison made the magnanimous gesture of diverting the Industries’ drainage. We’d won in fact, if not in principle, and we had to let it go at that.”

“How did Barnard come out of it?” Alex asked.

“He was a long time getting into local favor again,” Mr. Whiting said. “But I think it did something for his prestige in research.”

“He don’t live on his prestige in research,” Waterman said. “I wonder if that’s why his wife was dead nuts against him getting into this business.”

No one answered him.

“Getting back to Mike Turnsby,” Alex said presently. “What happened to him?”

“He was costing the town too much money,” the chief said. “Got contractors in to bid on a whole new water system. It got rumored around he was getting a cut from them. Between the stink they kicked up and the fur flying at home between his wife and Mabel, I think he figured the hell with it, and cleared out.”

“How did Mabel feel about that business?” Alex asked. “There must have been quite a hullabaloo.”

“She didn’t like it much. I don’t remember rightly,” Waterman said. “Seems to me she took on martyr airs. Mighty sensitive woman in those days, wouldn’t you say, Laura?”

“I’m not a fair judge of Mabel,” Mrs. Whiting said. “Like Alex, I always felt butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I remember her coming up to Charles at the time. We had the plant at the back of the house. She brought pictures and a whole long tale of how many Turnsbys lived and died in Hillside, how they’d founded it.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Whiting said. “I’d forgotten that. She was put out the way I set it up. She never has forgiven me. I sided with Mike. I thought he was getting a raw deal.”

“What did you put in, Dad?”

“I don’t remember exactly. I was smart-alecky about it. I remember feeling mighty cheap reading it over a few years later. I slanted it to read that a man could do good things in spite of his background.”

“I remember it now,” Waterman said. “You weren’t re-elected to the council for a while.”

Mr. Whiting pushed his chair away from the table. “I’ve been on and off the council so many times, you’d think it depended on the weather cock. And do you know what, Fred?” He leaned forward and drummed on the table with his finger as he spoke. “I’ve never been elected because I was for something. It’s when I’m against something I get the votes.”

“I see what you mean,” the chief said.

“About Mike,” Alex said persistently. “Was he older or younger than Mabel?”

“Older,” Waterman said. “I’d say quite a bit older. Ten years maybe.”

“Mom, how old did you figure Mabel to be?”

She thought for a moment. “I’d say seventy-five, at least.”

“That would make Mike eighty-five if he were alive. Darn near a contemporary of Andy Mattson. Was he ever back in Hillside?”

His father shook his head.

“I don’t remember it if he was,” Waterman said. “And I don’t remember when he died. It must have been before the Barnards came out here. He left her that property.”

“There were two children?”

“A boy and a girl,” Waterman said. “The boy was a lot older. I don’t recollect ever having seen him. He was away in school most of the time.”

“I saw him once or twice,” Mrs. Whiting said. “He was a stringy, solemn looking youngster.”

“And Norah?”

“A frightened, unhappy child. I remember saying once she was like a frightened doe. Her mother went away to visit the boy once in a while, and Mabel’d bring the girl to church with her.”

“Whatever Mabel did to her, she’s never forgotten it,” Waterman said. “I wonder if Andy could have met Turnsby in the Spanish War. It could be he met him there. Something sure decided him on Hillside. It wasn’t the company.”

Alex fingered the old-fashioned cozy his mother still used for the tea pot, a doll with voluminous, quilted skirts. Its face was highly painted. “Dad, when we were talking last night, you mentioned Mike’s wife. Said she had the reputation of being a flapper. Was she that much younger than him?”

“No. And I always thought she was a mighty attractive woman—well-spoken. She just seemed a little different.”

“That was Mabel’s doing,” Mrs. Whiting said. “I always liked Anne Turnsby myself. She was a good, kind woman. Just liked nice things.”

Alex looked at her. “What did you say her name was?”

“Anne.”

Chapter 22

AFTER SUPPER WATERMAN RETURNED to the station. Alex went to his room and stretched out on the bed for a few moments. They knew now that Mabel Turnsby was not telling the whole truth. A coincidence in the name of Anne was too much. That brought the Barnards in again, and in a different light. She was reluctant to discuss her Turnsby heritage. Alex wondered if she would not be even more reluctant to discuss her mother. There was always the possibility that she had no idea of her connection with Mattson. But Mabel knew it, or if she had not known it before, she must have done some quick deducting when he had asked her about Anne. He tried to remember if it was from that moment that her attitude toward him had changed. No. The mention of the name had affected her, but she had not really changed until he returned suddenly from Andy’s house. Alex got to his feet. It was a sultry night without even a bit of wind. Throughout the day his mind had strayed now and then from what he was doing to thoughts of Joan Elliot. He went to the extension phone in the hall and called her. His mother and father were on the porch when he went downstairs. “I’m going to pick up Joan and maybe go to a show,” he said. “My mind’s like a Mixmaster.”

“Oh, Alex,” Mrs. Whiting said, “Geraldine Simmons called this afternoon.”

“Oh Lord. I asked her to go to the dance with me tomorrow night. Tomorrow’s Friday, isn’t it?”

“All day,” his father said.

“Maybe she can’t go,” Mrs. Whiting said, somewhat cheerfully.

Alex lifted one eyebrow and looked at her. It suddenly occurred to him that his mother and father were very fond of Joan. On the whole, his mother did not approve his selection of girls, although she said very little about it. But when he was going out a little too often with someone she particularly disapproved of, she would be fussy, a bit irritable. “All right,” he’d say, “what’s wrong with So-and-So?” “She’s an inferior sort of person,” was the only answer he ever got. There was no getting away from it: where he was concerned, his mother was a snob. But she was snobbish about character and mind. Joan probably had less money and came from a larger family than anyone in Hillside. Her father was a carpenter. Two of her brothers had started a cabinet-making shop since they came home from service. Alex wondered, as he often did, if he were not too close to his parents, spoiled, with too many of his decisions made for him. The rebellion boiled up in him once in a while. But the truth of the matter was, he had nothing at home to rebel against. His father stood for everything he thought worthy of standing for. He had never been ashamed of him, even for a moment, and there were darned few kids reached his age without having felt that way sometime.

“I guess I better call Jerry,” he said. When he returned, he stopped at his mother’s chair. “She can’t go,” he said.

“Oh? Why?”

“She can’t go with me, that is. She’s got a cousin visiting from Jackson, a male cousin.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Mrs. Whiting said, sticking a darning heel in a sock.

“Wouldn’t you think she’d fix him up with a date? I must be slipping,” Alex said.

“Simmons,” Mr. Whiting said. “That’s Gerald Simmons’ daughter, isn’t it? Or is it Phil’s? I always get their kids mixed up.”

“Gerald,” Alex said. “She’s named after him.”

“He’s the town treasurer. I don’t think you’re slipping, son. You haven’t been around all day. Things are pretty tense.”

“They’ll be more tense tomorrow, when the Sentinel comes out with nothing except the coroner’s report. Altman’ll be like a mad toad.”

“I’ve thought about that, Alex. I’ve got a lot of confidence in you, in the way your mind works. You don’t make quick judgments like I do, but we generally come out the same door. But I’ll tell you the truth, son, you may not want him that mad. He’s got a lot of power, and he’s got a town council he darned near hand-picked. You may not want things popping all around you. That makes for confusion. And there’s nothing a criminal likes better than that.”

“A criminal,” Mrs. Whiting repeated. “That’s a horrible word.”

By an all too obvious association Alex remembered something. “Mom, Miss Turnsby asked me to remind you of the luncheon tomorrow.”

“I’ve been reminded a dozen times. I’d rather do a week’s wash than go. I don’t like cards, and in this weather … I don’t know what they’re thinking of.”

“Mabel said there’d be bunco,” Alex said, grinning.

Joan’s father and two brothers were pitching horseshoes at the side of the house when he drove up. The lawn had just been mowed, and the grass was piled up to dry out for burning. They kept the place well, he thought. He got out of the car and went over to them.

“Hi, Whitie.”

“Good evening, Mr. Elliot. Bill, Tony.”

Mr. Elliot came a few steps to meet him. “It was too crowded for us up at the fire station tonight,” he said. “They won’t do much pitching. Talk, talk, talk.”

“About Mattson’s death?” Alex said.

“About that. About the old lady next door to him. About that veterinary. Everybody’s dirty wash is hanging on the line, Alex.”

There was the clang of iron on iron, as Bill ringed the stake. “Beat that one, Pop. Hi, Alex. Joan ought to be ready. We did the dishes.”

Joan was the only girl at home now, Alex remembered. One of her sisters was studying nursing at the hospital in Jackson, and another was going to summer school at State. Their mother had died several years ago.

“Hello, stranger,” Joan said, coming down the steps.

“I do feel as though I’d been away,” Alex said. “It seems weeks since I was in the office.”

They walked to the car. “I thought we might go to a movie or something,” he said. “Any suggestions?”

“I don’t want to stay out too late tonight.”

“Let’s take a drive in the country anyway.” They took Highway 64 out of town toward Masontown. There was no escaping thoughts of Andy Mattson. They passed the barbecue stand, the cemetery on Cobbler’s Hill where he was to be buried in the morning. To the south, across the slope was the toy factory, the smoke rising from an engine on the train switch there. The smoke hung in the air like sky-writing. At Three Corners they passed Barnard’s. A car was in the driveway.

“You can’t get away from it, can you, Alex?”

“It’s not easy,” he said. “Want to talk about it?”

Joan nodded. He brought her up to date on what had happened during the day.

“Now you have two possible motives,” she said. “Alex, I can’t help thinking you’ve got to get at the bottom of the relationship between him and Addison.”

“But how? George Addison doesn’t know anything about it. At least he says he doesn’t.”

“I was thinking about it today. I remember seeing an annual report of Addison Industries and it seems to me they had a list of pensioners.”

“They put out house publications,” Alex said. “There’s always something about old timers in them. You think if we could find one or two of them they might remember Addison in his early days, and Mattson if he was connected with him?”

“Yes.”

“You might really have something there, Joan.”

“I’d like that as my project,” she said. “Things are pretty slow on Fridays. Maude might let me off for it.”

“We’ll get Dad to tell her if we have to. Look, honey.” He pointed down the road. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

In the scattered lights of Masontown ahead of them was a revolving circle of whiteness. “A carnival,” Joan said.

A lot of people had come over from Hillside. They saw Gilbert at the shooting gallery. “I’ll lay you a buck I can beat you in two rounds, Alex,” he said.

“I’d lay you a buck you could beat me in one round.”

“Weren’t you in the army?”

“The only thing they let me shoot was potatoes into a bucket.”

At the next concession people were throwing baseballs at a target, a plate-sized gong which sounded with a bull’s-eye and simultaneously released a Negro boy from a perch into a tub of water. The girls watching shrieked every time he went down. “Some fun,” Alex said.

“Hello, Whitie.” It was Al Tompson. They met every once in a while on inter-town ball games. “Give us another quarter’s worth of balls here. I’ll set you up a round, Whitie. A quarter bet on the side.”

Alex shook his head. “No thanks, Al.”

“Or what’s a heaven for?” Joan said as they moved on.

“Huh?”

“‘That a man’s aim should exceed his goal … or what’s a heaven for?’” she repeated. “Far fetched. But it made sense when I thought of it.”

“It still makes sense,” he said. “Milk bottles. Now that’s my speed. Want to try it?”

“Okay.”

Alex whizzed three fast balls, one of which skimmed the top bottle off the pyramid. Joan loped three slow ones over, and managed to knock all the bottles down but only one of them off the stand. “With your aim and my speed we might get some place,” he said. “If you’re going to take anything home from here tonight, we’re going to have to buy it. You know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve begun to suspect it,” she said. “Alex, there’s Doctor Jacobs.”

“Oh-oh. At the race-horse wheel. Watch. There’s a poker face, if you ever saw one.” He lit a cigarette, and they stood a moment or two watching the doctor. They felt the brush of people by them, and the dust rose from the pounding feet of youngsters loose from their families and with extra allowances. Joan remembered how, as a child, she used to scuffle her feet through the dust looking for change. Once she had found fifty cents, and she had never gotten over it. … The clicking of the wheels of chance, the “pops” from the target booths, thin waltzes from the merry-go-round, squeals from the house of terror, pink snow on a stick, hot dogs, bottle caps, the smell of hamburgers, sweat, dust, cigar smoke; giggles, hawking. A crescendo of laughter rose over the other noises.

“Mrs. Baldwin’s here,” Joan said.

“Yep. Think what it would be like to live in the same house with that. Let’s go over and needle Doc for a while.”

“… Win, place or show. Three chances on every number … Play as much as you like. Up to five dollars. Down to a nickel. Keep the pennies for the newspapers.

Alex got a dollar’s worth of dimes and split them with Joan. “Get on Whirlaway, honey. You can’t lose.”

Jacobs grunted, but he did not look up. Whirlaway came in on the turn of the wheel, paying six to one. “Well I’ll be damned,” the doctor said, watching only the attendant’s hand as he counted out six dimes.

“Place your bets, going, going. Keep your hands off after the wheel starts …”

“Do it again, honey,” Alex said. “Put a couple on. It’s going to repeat. I got a feeling …”

Joan left five dimes on Whirlaway, and the wheel turned. “Number-r-r …” Whirlaway climbed up inch by inch, the odds changing with each click. “Number seven. A repeater. Fifteen to one on the nose, four to one to show, and even place money.”

“On the nose,” Alex said.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Jacobs said again.

“Good evening, Doctor,” Alex said.

The doctor looked up at him sharply. “Hah, young Whiting,” he said.

“You ought to get a younger horse,” Alex said, looking up to identify number five on the wheel. “Man o’ War. He’s dead on his feet.”

“When I was in medical school I won twenty dollars on him. I lived on it for two weeks.”

“This is no place to get sentimental, Doc. Come on. Joan’ll buy us a couple of beers.”

Joan was picking up seven dollars and fifty cents. Alex’s eyes met those of another player at the opposite board. He had felt them on him while he was speaking with the doctor—a husky, good looking dark man, whom Alex thought familiar although he could not place him. The man smiled at him when their eyes met, and Alex nodded.

“Did you notice that dark man across the board from us, Doc?” he asked as they moved away.

“Roy Gautier,” Jacobs said. “Lawyer from Riverdale. Ran for State’s attorney last election. Opposition candidate.”

“Wonder where he knows me from.”

“Here, Alex,” Joan said, handing him in the winnings.

“Nope. Fifty-fifty. Count me out three, seventy-five.”

“Four and a quarter,” Joan said. “Your original investment.”

Alex ordered the beer. Jacobs drank half his stein at one trip, the foam clinging to his mustache.

“How’s Mrs. Barnard, Doctor?”

“She’s all right. I was by there tonight.”

“He was telling Waterman she was a sick woman.”

“Between you and me, Alex, I’d say it was nine-tenths temper. It ain’t normal for a skinny little thing like her to have that blood pressure.” The doctor emptied his glass and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “All them Turnsbys have a mean streak in them. I remember my father saying Mike could kill a man if he got mad enough at him, and he’d smile while he was doing it.”

“I wonder whatever happened to Mike and his wife,” Alex said.

Jacobs shrugged. “Before my time.”

“Another beer?”

“No thanks. That hit the spot. I’m going to put another dollar on Man o’ War. Then I got to get home. I’ve got about as much freedom as a pekinese. Goodnight, Miss Joan.”

“You know, he kind of looks like a pekinese,” Alex said. “I don’t think I’ve seen him smile all the years I’ve known him. … What now? Want to try and win a blanket? We can get our fortunes told … How about once around on the ferris wheel?”

“Gosh, I don’t think I’ve been up in one of them since I was in high school.”

Alex led her through the crowd. “Just the thing after a beer,” he said.

As they waited in the seat at each stop for the other seats to fill up, they could see the young heads close together, the legs of kids in the seats opposite them, the whole of Masontown, the stars, the climbing moon, the leaves of the trees catching the carnival lights, the faces looking up at them from the ground. “Do you feel as silly as I do?” Joan asked.

“At least twice as silly. But I don’t care. There’s Mrs. Baldwin pointing us out.”

“Where?”

“You’ll hear her in a minute.”

Sure enough. Even above the rising music, Mrs. Baldwin’s laughter carried to them. “I was just thinking,” Joan said. “Do you know who I was with the last time I went up in one of these things?”

“I’d be interested,” Alex said.

“Freddie Waterman.”

Chapter 23

IT WAS ALMOST ELEVEN when they returned to Hillside. After he left Joan at home he drove by the station. That part of the building was in darkness. Waterman had to sleep some time, he thought. How closely interwoven things were in Hillside: for example, that Joan should have mentioned Freddie Waterman like that. They had all been in school together, of course. Afterwards he and Freddie had played together on the Hillside basketball team. Freddie was a long string of a kid, built like his father. He was shy, with the same slow humor, and never seemed aware of having said anything amusing. Once they had been trailing Masontown 62-14 when Freddie asked for time. He sat down in the middle of the floor to tie his shoelace, and the coach was fuming on the sidelines. “What in hell are you doing, Waterman?” “I’m taking off my snowshoes,” Freddie said. If he had lived he might have been chief of police in Hillside some day.

Alex was tired, but not sleepy. He drove past the house. His folks were upstairs. The night light was burning in the hall for him. He drove back to 64 and turned up Sunrise Avenue. A light was burning above the garage door at Baldwins’. They were just home from the carnival. There was a light in Mabel’s kitchen. His headlights were reflected in the windshields of cars parked along the street. A lot of people left their cars out in this weather. He had put his away after the package was stolen. Had their failure to find what they wanted in it led them directly to Barnard? Who were “they”? Why did he keep thinking that more than one person was involved? He turned left at the end of the block and returned to 64 on Townline Road. He wondered whom the land between it and Sunrise Avenue belonged to. He could never remember having seen anything planted there. He got a whiff of something that reminded him of Joe Hershel and his goats. The barbecue stand was closed; so was Fitzsimmons’ gas station. He parked the car at the Sunrise entrance of the station, and walked up the street. Somewhere a cat was screeching. Two cats, no doubt. If there was anything he’d never have in the house now, it was a cat. He and Maudie and George Addison and Mabel Turnsby. Nobody had yet said they liked cats. Except Mrs. Liston who kept every stray animal she could lay her charity upon.

He stopped for a moment and looked around. Behind him the gas pumps looked naked without the hose attachments. The light had gone out at Baldwins’. Beside him the goldenrod was grey in the moonlight. There was a ripple of movement in the center of it where some little night animal was scurrying. Beyond it, Andy’s house was dark and forlorn, and patched with the boards Waterman had nailed up over the place the glass was missing. Abreast of the house he saw that Mabel’s light was still on, and he was moved with curiosity as to what she was doing up at that hour. She herself had said that she was always in bed at ten-thirty. The rasp of Andy’s gate would have sounded like thunder in the stillness. He went to the goldenrod side of his house and climbed the fence, pushing the sunflowers out of his face. At Andy’s back steps he was opposite Mabel’s. The kitchen blinds were drawn, but the old lady was silhouetted against them like a cartoon character in the movies. And she was talking. Mabel Turnsby had company.

There was a wide expanse of moonlit ground between the two houses, and Alex hesitated getting caught in it, should Mabel look out. Before he had made up his mind what to do, the kitchen light went out. He heard the scraping of a bolt across the door but no one came out. He drew his coat collar up to cover the whiteness of his shirt and crept along the side of Mattson’s house, ready to fall to the grass should anyone look out. He could not go too far, lest the visitor get out the back door without his seeing him. Presently a light went on upstairs, its reflection falling on the grass near Alex. He instinctively dropped to the ground, and at that moment a man hurried down Mabel’s steps and across the lawn to the south, stepping over the forsythia bushes. Before Alex had made it around the fence, he heard the grind of a starter, and the smooth steady acceleration of the motor. He saw the dark sedan pass, its driver lost in the tree-shadowed street, and ran after it, seeing it turn through the station toward Riverdale. He climbed into his own car and whirled it around. The minute or two start was enough. Only when he was near the top of Cobbler’s Hill, did the driver turn on his lights. Alex followed as far as Three Corners catching the tail-light as he reached the crest of each hill. At Three Corners he lost it, for he could concentrate only on the highway, and the light did not re-appear there. The driver had taken one of the two side roads and eluded him. He swung around at the restaurant parking lot, and went home, passing the darkened Barnard house.

Chapter 24

IT WAS TWENTY MINUTES after seven the next morning when Alex left the house. The day was overcast and muggy, but the clouds did not seem heavy enough for rain. Next door, Will Withrow was hauling the garden hose out of the basement. “Out early, aren’t you, Alex?” he called.

“A little. Some rain would sure help, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s why I’m putting up the sprinkler. It rains every time I do it. What’s the latest on Mattson?”

“His funeral, I guess.”

“How come you didn’t put anything about him in the paper? That coroner’s report all by itself looked funny. It gave me the creeps.”

His father was right, Alex thought. It gave him a sinking feeling in his stomach. “That was all I knew for sure,” he said.

“Don’t give me that stuff, kid. You could write two volumes on rumors alone.”

“That’s just what I didn’t want to publish.”

“It’s a queer attitude for a newspaper. Altman’s like a boil. Got me out of bed. Council meeting tomorrow morning. He’s as busy as a lone rooster.”

“He’s always busy,” Alex said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” his neighbor said. “He’s about to be a father again.”

“Don’t you call that busy? See you later, Will.”

He walked down to the post office first. The council meeting was inevitable. Whenever Altman wanted something, he called a council meeting. For a week before it, he would run from one member to the other selling them on his idea. The meeting wasn’t much more than a formality unless someone like his father was on the council. He tried to remember who was serving this term. Business people, all of them. If Altman convinced them that Waterman was pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp, things could be tough.

The post office was the only modern building in town. It was not the newest, but its design was modern, and it had two front entrances. At this hour the farmers were in town to pick up their mail. Most of them did not care to bother with rural delivery. They wanted the latest papers and an excuse to talk with their neighbors. The two super markets on the square opened at eight o’clock, and the men lingered on the post-office steps until then. That morning the flag above the building hung limp in the heavy atmosphere, and the men were constantly wiping the moisture from their faces.

“… I’m telling you, Al. Doc killed that mare as sure as if he’d taken a sledge hammer to her … a butcher …”

The words made Alex stop abruptly as he came abreast the three men talking together on the steps. One of them noticed him then. He nodded. “Morning, Alex.”

“Good morning,” he said, and walked on. Not another word was spoken among them until the door swung closed behind him. It must have been Barnard they were talking about; otherwise the silence would not have been so abrupt, so obvious. No one involved in the investigation now was safe from gossip, from the twisted interpretation of whoever cared to pass along a tale. He wondered if he would ever again feel the same toward the people in Hillside. At the main window he asked if Dan Casey had started on his rounds yet. They were still sorting mail. Presently the carrier came out the door. His grey shirt was already dark with sweat.

“I won’t keep you a minute,” Alex said.

“As long as you like,” Casey said. “They can wait a bit. They got the Sentinel this morning. You disappointed us, Alex. Not even a word on the old man, and everyone talking about him. I says to the missus last night, ‘wait till you see what the Sentinel says. The kid’s been in it from the start.’ And now the devil a word.”

“I’ll make it up to you next week,” Alex said. “I wanted to ask you about Mattson’s mail.”

“There’s nothing to tell. He didn’t get any.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing to speak of. A couple of mailhouse catalogues once in a while.”

“When’s the last time you left him anything?”

“Away early summer. June maybe. It was a letter from the Addison Industries.”

“Did you leave it in the box or give it to him?”

“I handed it to him, and I thought maybe he’d say something, the way he never got any mail. But the devil a word he said, no more than if he hadn’t a tongue in his head. Just sitting there, tickling that cat of his. It scratched him up bad, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did.”

“I always say you can’t trust a cat. They’re like women: one day sidlin’ up to you, as sweet as sugar candy, and the next they’d scratch the eyes out of your head.”

Casey must not have admitted his low opinion of women often, Alex thought. He was the darling of every one of them who had a mail box. “Did Andy ever ask you to mail any letters for him?” he asked.

“Yes,” Casey said thoughtfully. “A couple of weeks back, now that you mention it. Mabel saw him give it to me and she was waiting for me. ‘Who did he write to?’ she says, the brazened face on her. ‘And will you have a cup of coffee and some cinnamon rolls, Dan?’—the way you’d think I was perishing. ‘Thank you, ma’m,’ I says, ‘but I’m on my rounds.’ I don’t be giving out information like that, not to the likes of her, anyway.”

“Naturally,” Alex said patiently. “How about to the likes of me? Do you remember who the letter was addressed to?”

Casey thought for a moment, his lips pursed together as though he were trying to whistle. “It was a funny name and I can’t lay my tongue on it. An attorney-at-law, it was, up in Riverdale.”

Alex’s mind flashed to the one lawyer he had heard mentioned recently, the man who had smiled at him at the carnival the night before. “Roy Gautier?”

“Ay, that’s the name. It’s a queer sort for this part of the country.”

Alex stopped him before he got going on the subject of names. “Dan, have you mentioned this to anyone?”

“No. Is it important?”

Casey’s eagerness made him wish that he had kept still, but it was too late. “It might be, and it might not. It might be very important. You know Waterman’s having a tough time on this.”

“I do that. I says to my wife the minute the name Addison came up, ‘now there’ll be the devil to pay …’”

“Dan, I’d like to ask you not to mention the letter to a soul for now. I’ll tell Waterman, but that’s all. If we get a case, you’ll be called upon then to testify.”

“Mum’s the word,” said Casey. “You’d never believe it, but I’m told more secrets than the parish priest.”

Alex did not wait. He was afraid that he might learn some of the secrets, and right now he wanted to think that he could trust Dan Casey. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes to eight. He had two hours and a few moments before the funeral. He stopped at the cigar store and bought a package of cigarettes and a Jackson paper. Harry Kruger asked him to share a thermos of coffee, but Alex refused. Harry wanted to talk. “Going to the funeral?” he asked.

“I think so,” Alex said.

“Think Addison’ll be down?”

“Probably.”

“I think I’ll run out there myself,” Harry said. “I’d like to see what sixty million bucks looks like.”

“He wears it like an old pair of shoes,” Alex said, starting for the door. He stopped. “Did the old man buy his papers from you?”

“Sure did. Thirty years of ’em. Last couple of years I’d save them for him. He’d come in two or three times a week.”

“Ever have anything to say?”

“Two words. Every Saturday he’d say, ‘how much?’”

“Thanks,” Alex said, going out. Sixty million dollars, he thought. Addison didn’t look like it, but how should he expect him to look? The probate session of county court met today. He let himself into the Sentinel office and shoved the stopper under the door. The office was stuffy. He went through to the plant and threw open the windows. The clouds were breaking and then reforming. All the wind was up there with not a breath of it in Hillside. Returning to his office, he glanced at the Sentinel on his desk. The coroner’s report, with its marginal space, stood out more boldly than if they had bordered it in black. He turned it away from him on the desk and picked up the Jackson paper. It was on the first page: the estate of the late Henry Addison, inventor and industrialist, would be filed in Riverdale county court, probate session, today, August 20. It was estimated at sixty million dollars by the executor, George Addison. There was no word yet on the provisions of the will. Once again he wondered who knew of them. If anyone in Hillside did, he was not letting it out. There had been quite a few words against the Addisons for not doing something for Andy, and not even a rumor about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bequest. Maude Needham was the first of the staff to arrive.

“Hi, Maudie,” Alex called.

“Hi yourself. The phone ringing yet?”

“They’re waiting for you,” Alex said.

“I’ve a good notion to start my vacation today.”

“Maude, what’s your schedule today?”

“We’ve got all the handbills to run off for that dollar day next week. Everybody’s in on it this year. Even the agency stores.”

“That’s what we make our money on,” Alex said. “It certainly doesn’t come from the Sentinel.”

“Don’t try to teach your granny to milk ducks,” Maude said. “I was running handbills when you were in rompers.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Maudie?”

“No. I just had two of them. They didn’t help.”

“I wanted to ask you a favor,” Alex said.

“Ask. I’m not going to eat your head off.”

“If you could manage without her, I’ve got a few things on the Mattson business I’d like Joan to look up for me today.”

“You want to get her into trouble too?”

Alex did not answer that.

“All right,” Maude continued, “if she wants to that’s her business. I can manage without her today. There it goes.”

The telephone had started to ring. “Have the first one on me,” Alex said, picking up the receiver. It was the mayor, and Alex could have held the phone at arm’s length and still heard him. He let him finish before he tried to say a word, and as the mayor’s voice rose, so did Alex’s temper. “Mr. Altman,” he said at last, “the Sentinel is not your propaganda sheet. You put the heat on me to publish that report. Let’s not kid ourselves. You wanted the whole matter of Mattson’s death dropped there. That was too rich for my blood. I ran the thing as I did because it was the only honest protest I knew. If it embarrasses you, I think you’ve got yourself to thank for it.”

“That is enough of your impertinence, young man. And I wouldn’t be solicitous about my embarrassments. You’ll have enough of your own before this matter’s closed.” Alex heard the bang of the receiver at the other end. Maude had been standing at his desk. “Here we go again,” she said.

Joan came in then. She was wearing a yellow linen dress, Alex noticed, fresh and cool looking. “Maude says you can help me today, and we’ve got plenty to do.”

Joan took a booklet from her purse and gave it to him. “I found this last night,” she said. “It’s the catalogue on that Addison art exhibit.”

Alex looked through it. “Here,” he said. There were three Pissarros in the collection. “Andy’s thing didn’t come from their show, anyway. Joan, I’d like you to get a look at that painting of his. If Waterman’ll give us the key, let’s pick it up now and go over there. Damn it, I still feel there’s something in that house we missed, something that holds the whole story, and we’ve got to get it soon.”

Mr. Whiting came in and hung his hat on the hall tree in the office. “Hell’s a-popping,” he said. “The mayor’s rounding up council members.” He threw the keys of the car on Alex’s desk. Alex took them.

“I’ll pick you up in time for the funeral, Dad.”

Joan waited in the car outside the station. Waterman was at his desk, drumming the end of his pencil on the pad. “I was thinking I might as well be playing tick-tack-toe,” he said when he saw Alex. “I’m just as liable to come out with the truth.” He opened the top drawer and took from it a telegram which he handed to Alex. “Add this to your collection.”

It was from the Chicago police department. Alex read:

3467 PAULA AVENUE RESIDENCE HOMER THORESON. PURCHASED 1933 FROM WALTER TURNSBY. ADDRESS THEN GIVEN WALTER TURNSBY 231 WEST AVENUE DENVER COLORADO.

“Is that Mike Turnsby’s son?” he asked, giving the wire back.

Waterman nodded.

“They certainly have a way of selling out and vanishing, don’t they?” Alex said. “At least it definitely links Andy with them beyond coincidence.”

“I thought we were out of coincidences a long time ago,” Waterman said. “The bank’s refused to give me any information without a court order, by the way.”

“I made a mistake crossing Altman like we did on the Sentinel story,” Alex said.

“We’d have crossed him anyway.”

“Chief, I can’t help thinking there’s something in the house still that we’ve missed. There was a reason they came back and broke in that north window. There was a reason I got that call to take me out of there, whether it was Mabel who was responsible or not.”

“I was thinking of that, too, Alex. But if they didn’t get it, why didn’t they come back last night?”

“How do you know they didn’t?”

“I got every window and door there marked so’s I’d know if they were touched. I checked them this morning.”

Alex thought for a moment. “I think they did come back, chief.” He told Waterman about Mabel’s late visitor.

“That a fact?” Waterman said. “It begins to look kind of bad for Mabel, don’t it? I’m about at the point where I’m going to ask some straight questions. So far I’ve been pussy-footing around so’s I wouldn’t step on anybody’s toes. I was out to Allendale—that’s where Doc Barnard was the morning his lab got smashed. They got a sick cow all right. Lost her calf. They don’t think much of Doc as a vet, but I guess they wouldn’t right now. I’ve been wondering, Alex, if Doc ain’t afraid of something. He’s acted strange on this.”

“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 people 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 went 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.

“That’s what I hope to find out from Gautier.”

“Don’t count too much on it, Alex. Addison Industries don’t take chances, and a lawyer don’t get himself in bad with them in this county, especially if he’s got political ambitions, unless he’s a danged fool.”

“And where in the devil would Mabel fit into that picture?”

Waterman opened his desk drawer. “I don’t know. But I got one place she fits. I wired the sheriff’s office at Webber, Massachusetts last night. Read this.”

CHECKED COUNTY FILES ANDREW MATTSON. BORN JANUARY 30, 1856. FATHER JOSEPHUS MATTSON. MOTHER HANNAH RYAN MATTSON. MARRIED ANNE ADDISON JUNE 23, 1888. MALE CHILD BORN APRIL 3, 1893. INSTRUCT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

“Anne Addison,” Alex said. “Holy Christopher.”

“And a son and heir.”

“Wonder why they didn’t record his name.”

“That’s a doctor’s registry of birth,” Waterman said, “kid wasn’t named yet.”

Alex took his notebook from his pocket and opened it to the Who’s Who on Henry Addison. “One of two children,” he said. “She must have been old Addison’s sister. Anne Addison, Anne Mattson, Anne Turnsby. The same person, Chief?”

“That’s the way I figure it,” he said.

“Then she must have divorced Andy and married Mike Turnsby.”

Waterman nodded. “It gives you an idea why Mabel was dead nuts against her.”

Alex remembered the night he and Joan gave Sarah Randalls a ride from the telephone exchange. “Imagine, a divorce in Hillside,” Sarah said. “It accounts for the airs Mrs. Barnard gives herself, too,” Alex said. “But why the secrecy, Chief? Why don’t any of them talk about it?”

Waterman shook his head. “I just don’t know, Alex. I’ve been wondering if the kids would come into anything from old Addison on account of their mother. Would Norah get anything? Twenty-five thousand is peanuts next to what he left.”

“I don’t think so if there’s a will. Nobody knows that relationship. We’d know it if they did.” Alex re-read the telegram. “A male child, 1894. That would make him fifty-four if he was alive. How old would you say Norah Barnard is, Chief?”

“Early forties, I’d say. I was thinking of that, too, Alex. Suppose he was old Andy’s son … just her half-brother. She says she’s got no idea where he is. But if he’s old Andy’s son, I don’t think she’d want to. And she sure wouldn’t want Doc mixed up in it either.” Waterman rubbed the back of his neck. “Funny how the old man must have washed his hands of the boy. It don’t seem like him, somehow.”

“He washed his hands of a lot of things,” Alex said. “And when you come right down to it, how do we know what was like him and what wasn’t?”

Waterman got up and stretched. “I’m going to wait for a couple of things, Alex. See what you turn up with that lawyer, the wire I sent to Colorado, and the afternoon paper on Addison’s will. Then we’re going after everybody involved in this thing and push them against the wall. I don’t like to do it, but if I don’t, that’s where I’m going to end up myself.”

It had stopped raining when Alex went outdoors again. He had a little time before leaving for Riverdale. He had so much miscellaneous information now, a little more wouldn’t hurt. He walked to Durkin’s market from the station.

“Yes,” Mrs. Durkin said, “he’d come by maybe once a week. He bought more food for the cat than for himself. I was saying to Niel, my husband, it’s a wonder the poor man lived as long as he did, the little bit he ate.”

“Did he pay you every time,” Alex said, “or is there something owing now?”

“He paid when he came in to order. Cash. He used to carry things home himself, but the last couple of years, he’s let Chuck drop them up to the house for him.”

“Did the boy take them into the house?”

“I think he’d take them from him on the porch … Here’s Chuck now. Maybe he can tell you something. Chuck, when was the last time you stopped at Mr. Mattson’s?”

“A week, Monday,” the boy said. “Hi, Alex.”

“Did the old man ever talk to you, Chuck?” Alex asked.

“Not much. Once I told him I was raising rabbits. Every time I went up after that he’d ask me ‘how many this week, boy?’ Then once he asked me to bring one over for him to see it. We took it out to that back yard of his, and he was like a regular old kid watching it jump around, the way he’d cock his head and laugh.”

Andy had captured the movement of the rabbit in his toys, Alex thought. “He always had his cat with him, didn’t he?”

“All the time.”

“It was friendly?”

“Sure. It rubbed up against my leg a lot of times.”

“Did it look like it was well taken care of?”

“Sleek as snow. Fat, too. I’ll bet it was the laziest cat in town.”

Alex glanced at Mrs. Durkin. She looked as though she were about to deluge him with questions. “Thanks an awful lot,” he said, and escaped out the door. Chuck followed him a few stores down the street.

“Alex, I didn’t want to say it in front of Mrs. Durkin because I’m not supposed to give anybody a ride in the truck. But one night, I gave him a ride out to Old Lady Liston’s place. I was telling him once about all the animals she kept, and he just asked me outright to take him there. I dropped him there about seven o’clock and picked him up on my last trip to that end of town.”

“Thanks, Chuck,” Alex said.

He had heard Mrs. Liston’s name mentioned once before recently. Maude had said she called. No one paid much attention to Mrs. Liston in Hillside. She was “queer,” and they let it go at that. It was funny Mabel hadn’t noticed Chuck. He would take precautions, of course. If Mabel knew it, it would get back to Mrs. Durkin in a hurry. It was probably on one of Mabel’s nights out. The old man must have learned her club and sewing habits better than he knew the time of day. Alex called Waterman about it when he got back to the office. Then he and Joan left for Riverdale.

Chapter 28

ALEX WAS SURPRISED AT the location of the lawyer’s office. It was in one of a series of rambling, run-down buildings that should have been condemned long ago. Before the war many of the rooms were unoccupied, and Alex remembered them as the center of a gambling rash that broke out after every election. It was almost a tradition for the county to be wide open. That section of Riverdale was referred to as Little Barbary. As he climbed the slanting stairs, Alex thought of what a lark it had been during his college days for the fellows to get in here. The smell of stale beer still clung to the dim passageways.

Gautier had suite number 3. The first door was marked “land office,” and the name and sign of a chiropodist was on the second. Outside the lawyer’s office he could hear the steady rhythm of an experienced typist. Opening the door, he saw that the office was unlike the rest of the building. It was neat and freshly painted. The secretary was working in the outer room which was really part of the first, separated only by rows of filing cabinets. “Mr. Whiting?” the girl asked.

But the lawyer was already out the door to meet him. Alex liked his cordiality. He was a squat dark man in his late forties. His movements were alert, authoritative. He smiled easily, showing beautiful teeth.

“Sorry I was in court when you called,” he said. “Sorry I was in court at all on a day like this. Sticky as flypaper.” He led Alex into the front office. It was bright and comfortable, with two Daumier prints on the wall, and the inevitable certificate of one who had passed the state bar examinations. He motioned Alex into a big leather chair and offered him a cigarette. “You know, you and your girl were the first people I ever saw walk away winners from one of those carnival devices?”

“That a fact?” Alex said, unaware that he had picked up the phrase from Waterman.

“Yes,” the lawyer said. “Well, what can I do for you?”

It seemed to Alex that everyone knew his business these days and the question surprised him. “I was wondering if you were ever retained by a man named Andrew Mattson.”

“Andrew Mattson?” the lawyer repeated. “The name’s familiar.”

Alex was tired of being pumped for information. He waited. Gautier smiled.

“Your father publishes the Hillside Sentinel, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s retired now. I’ve inherited the job.”

“He was quite a battler in his day. Is it a family tradition?”

“I intend to follow his policies.”

“Mattson died last Wednesday, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Old age?”

“That was the coroner’s verdict.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s delicate ground, isn’t it?” the lawyer said.

Alex did not answer. He inhaled his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling.

“Did you know the old boy would have come into twenty-five thousand dollars today if he had lived?” Gautier asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose twenty-five thousand really meant very much to a man his age. You don’t go on any cruises when you hit the nineties. Still, I suppose it was a nice gesture on the part of old Addison. He left a lump to charity. I was up there. Filed a small claim against the estate. I felt like a flea on an elephant’s ear. The bulk of the estate went to his son and grandchildren. But you didn’t come to talk about the Addisons. Or did you?”

“Addison evidently wasn’t in court when the will was filed,” Alex said, ignoring the question. “He was at the funeral this morning.”

“That was nice of him,” Gautier said. “No. His lawyers represented him. His father and Mattson were old buddies, weren’t they?”

“That’s what it says in the papers,” Alex said, regretting it immediately. He wished he could be noncommittal without being a smart aleck.

“To answer your first question,” Gautier said, “no. I was never retained by Andrew Mattson, but if he had lived, I think he might have retained me. He asked me to visit him today.”

Alex leaned forward. “Did he tell you why?”

“No,” the lawyer said, “he did not.”

Alex wondered if he was telling the truth. “Well,” he said, “that’s that.”

“What brought you to me?” Gautier asked.

“The mail carrier that mailed the letter for him. Andy didn’t write many letters. Do you have any idea why he wrote to you?”

“Nothing definite. I speculated to myself a bit.”

“You aren’t a patent lawyer?” Alex asked suddenly.

“No, that’s a specialty I haven’t gone in for. I handle just about anything else, for example, I get the down-and-outers the sheriff’s boys pick up when they feel like exercise.”

“Oh,” Alex said.

“Charming fellows. Vagrants mostly. Happy out of jail. Happy in it, especially when it rains. Suspended sentences. I had one yesterday. I always go down and talk to them before court. He was telling me about someone rummaging out back of the morgue the night before.”

“That’s not much of a secret now,” Alex said.

Gautier tilted back in the swivel chair and leaned his feet against the waste-paper basket. “I’ve been watching this thing like a hawk,” he said. “I wasn’t happy about losing a client. I didn’t know it till I made inquiries about the body at the morgue. Then I got the tramp’s story. Next I heard about that veterinary’s lab being smashed. I really got interested when I was talking with one of the attendants at the morgue. He was sore as hell. Getting fired over the cat’s disappearance. Said Tobin told him to dispose of it. I asked him if he wanted to sue the county. That was a mistake. He shut up like a clam. The next item was the Addison will with the twenty-five thousand in it for Mattson, and the peculiar timing of the old man’s death. It’s quite a package.”

“A beauty,” Alex said. “More strings than a parachute.”

“Any heirs to Mattson?”

“That’s what we’ve been wondering,” Alex said. He decided against telling the lawyer about Andy’s son.

“If it’s any help to you,” Gautier said, “I’ll volunteer my services.”

“Why?”

The lawyer smiled. “You don’t trust anyone, do you? My reasons are simple, and not altogether altruistic. I’m out to be next state’s attorney, and I’m not particular how I get there. If I can discredit the present outfit, I’ll do it. I’d like to clean out the whole damned county.”

“You’ll need a long life and a stout heart,” Alex said.

“Just like Mattson, eh?” the lawyer said. He unlocked one of the side drawers to his desk and took out an envelope which he handed to Alex. “Here’s the letter he wrote me two weeks ago today.”

It was in a white stamped envelope, the kind to be purchased for four cents in the post office. The letter itself was written on a quarter of a sheet of the drafting paper he had seen in Mattson’s workshop. He could feel his heart beating faster as he looked at it. It was the first time he had seen anything written in Mattson’s hand. The writing was quite steady, and as bold as thunder.

My dear sir:

May I congratulate you at this late date on your excellent fight against corruption in the last county election. Having withdrawn myself from affairs of state and county many years ago I scarcely merit an opinion, even an approving one. But I feel impelled to commend you, nonetheless.

I assume that you have courage as well as ambition, and therefore, I am asking that you visit me two weeks from today at eight o’clock in the evening. I do not know that I shall be able to compensate you for your services at your usual rates, but I am sure you will feel yourself amply paid in the importance of the project I have in mind.

Most sincerely,

Andrew Mattson (signed)

August 6, 1948

“You wouldn’t call that a foggy mind by any stretch, would you?” Gautier said when Alex looked up.

“Ah, no. Whatever Andy was, it wasn’t foggy.” He handed the letter back to the lawyer. “Have you done any guessing as to what he wanted you for?”

“I haven’t guessed out loud,” Gautier said. “I’ll tell you that. The most obvious guess would be that it concerned the Addisons. But it could have been almost anything.”

“Old Addison came to see him once a year at least,” Alex said. “Was anybody by the name Turnsby mentioned in the will?”

The lawyer glanced up at the clock on his desk. “It will be in the afternoon paper,” he said. He called to his secretary and asked her to go down for a couple of them. “No. I don’t think there was. But it’s a very old name in the county. Often mentioned in property litigations. Matter of fact, they once owned the property where Addison Industries are now. Did you know that?”

“No,” Alex said. “I didn’t know that.”

Presently Gautier’s secretary returned with the papers.

“Sixty million dollars,” Alex said. “A fair savings.”

“Just a small town boy making good,” Gautier said.

There were several grants to scientific institutions, one to the art museum at Jackson. Andrew Mattson was the only outsider mentioned. The bulk of the estate went to George Addison and his children.

Alex got up and went to the window. Joan was sitting in the car waiting for him across the street. She had walked over from the Riverdale Library.

“Sit down for a minute,” Gautier said. “If you don’t want to answer these questions, say so. I presume you weren’t satisfied with the coroner’s verdict. What made you decide to take the cat from in back of the morgue?”

“I thought something was wrong with it, and the coroner didn’t satisfy us with his explanation.”

“How did you know it would be there?”

“I didn’t. I just took the chance.”

“Why did you decide to take it to Barnard?”

“He’s the only vet I know. And he’s got a good reputation as a research man.”

“Who knew you were seeing him?”

“Nobody.”

“Would you mind telling me what happened from the time Tobin got to Mattson’s place until you found out Barnard’s lab had been smashed up?”

Alex gave Gautier the information he had asked for. He threw in the incident of the second package and its disappearance from the car trunk.

“Somebody was looking for something. No doubt about that,” the lawyer said. “How well do you know Barnard?”

“I’ve known him since I was a kid. And Dad worked with him when we had a typhoid epidemic.”

“I know his record, too,” Gautier said. “Did he give you any information on the cat?”

“Not much.”

“Did you check the call that took him out of the house that morning?”

“It was legitimate.”

“Then somebody was timing it pretty slick. If he didn’t have any information for you, Whiting, it looks kind of strange to me. It doesn’t seem logical he wouldn’t at least have taken a look at his specimens before leaving the house. I’ll tell you what I’m driving at. Suppose somebody told him to keep clean of the whole thing. Maybe threatened his life or his family’s. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Possible,” Alex said. Waterman thought Barnard was afraid of something, too.

“I’m not saying that’s what happened at all,” Gautier said. “I wondered if you’d thought about it.”

“We have,” Alex said, getting up.

“You asked me if I was a patent lawyer. I’ve got a friend in that end of the practice exclusively. He’s up in Jackson if you’d like his name.”

There was not much time, Alex thought. Altman was putting the heat on. There was a patent library in Jackson. “It’s just a hunch,” he said. He took the notes Joan had made for him and showed them to Gautier. “Mattson was evidently interested in these things. I thought maybe the patent story might tell us why.”

“Let me call Willard Renny on them. I might get faster action than you.”

“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 seconds 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.”

“Don’t be too hard on Mabel, Waterman. She’s getting old. You forgive old people a lot of things.”

“Not where a man’s death’s concerned, you don’t, not till you know where she stands on it. There’s nothing you want to tell me on it?”

“Nothing.”

“Doc, I’d like …” He was interrupted by a light tapping on the door, after which Mrs. Barnard came in immediately. She was wearing a blue chiffon evening dress with a silver waistband.

“Oh, I’m sorry, gentlemen. I thought Jeff was alone. How are you, Alex? And how is your young lady?”

“Well, ma’m, thank you,” he said, standing up.

“I wanted your opinion on my dress for the dance this evening, Jeff, but I can wait. I think we should have dinner early though, so that you can rest.” Barnard looked as interested in a dance that night as he might have been in a marble game. “Just so, Norah,” he said.

“We were about to go anyway,” Waterman said. “Doc, I’d appreciate it if you would put in an appearance at that council meeting tomorrow morning. I’m going to need all the friends I got.”

“I’ll be there.”

It was Mrs. Barnard who wisped them to the door.

Chapter 33

MRS. WHITING WAS ON the porch with her shoes off and a glass of lemonade on the railing when Alex and Waterman came up to the house.

“Draw two more,” Alex said.

“Draw them yourself,” she said. “I couldn’t budge from here if somebody turned a hose on me. Sit down, Fred. I want to talk to you.”

Alex went into the house for more lemonade.

Waterman took off his coat and hung it over the back of a chair.

“Ida doesn’t look well, Fred,” Mrs. Whiting said. “She seems to be burning herself out. All that high tension isn’t good for a person.”

Waterman was examining his fingernails. “Sometimes I think that’s what she wants to do, Laura. It’s her way of getting over Freddie.”

“I know that. I know if anything had happened to Alex, well … I don’t know what I’d have done. But I’m just afraid she’s working toward a breakdown.”

“I know. I worry about it. I talked to Doc Jacobs. He says she’ll go on that way till she has a good heartbreaking cry, and then she’ll settle down to living her own life again. I don’t hold much with that. It’s old fashioned. But I’m danged if I know what to do about it.”

“I was thinking I might talk to her about Freddie, about a lot of things—religion, faith and prayer heals many things, Fred.”

“Yes, Laura. But they don’t work alone. They’re like yeast in a cake. You got to have flour, too.”

“I think I’ll talk to her just the same …”

Alex returned then. He gave Waterman a tall glass. “This is good for what ails you, Chief,” he said. “How was the ladies’ bazaar, Mom?”

“All right for them that likes it. I just can’t see the point to playing cards all afternoon on a day like this. Dice either. I kept feeling like I should be down on the floor doing it. And wouldn’t you know, I won a prize?”

“What did you get?”

“Two decks of cards.”

Alex winked at Waterman. “Give ’em to Dad for his birthday.”

“He’s already got them,” she said. “Alex, what’s this I hear about you and Joan in Andy’s house? Every time I came near a group of women this afternoon, there’d be a silence I could cut with a knife. Finally, Mrs. Waterman told me what it was all about.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you,” Alex said.

“Suit yourself. But it isn’t very nice. Joan’s father called a few minutes ago, too.”

“Did he ask my intentions?”

“Don’t be so flip, Alex. Joan’s a nice girl.”

“What in the devil do you think you raised, a monster?”

“I don’t like you speaking like that to me, Alex. Your father says you’ve shown very poor sense in a couple of things here.”

“We all showed poor sense here and there, Laura,” Waterman said. “We just played into the hands of people that want to make trouble.”

Alex took a long drink. “I’m sorry I spoke that way, Mom. There’s no sense in my chewing your head off for my mistakes. Was Mabel there?”

“She was there, poor soul. I felt sorry for her. Fred, she’s aged ten years.”

“She looked bad at the funeral this morning,” Alex said. “I even felt sorry for her.”

“Mark my words,” Mrs. Whiting said. “She’s afraid of something.”

“I wonder if she got a note like Barnard did, Chief,” Alex said. “I think I got a look at the fellow who left his.”

“Would you say it was the same person you saw at Mabel’s last night?” Waterman asked.

“To be honest about it, I just couldn’t say. I didn’t get that close a look either time. I’ve seen fellows on sentry duty in the war that swore stumps in a field at night were people they knew.”

“I guess you’re right. Did Mabel do much talking this afternoon, Laura?”

“She tried. It was kind of pitiful. She’d start off on something and then forget what she was talking about. And you know what a one she is for winning? You’d think her last judgment depended on it. Today she tied for third place in Five Hundred, and they had to cut the cards for the prize. When Nellie Holtz won, Mabel just smiled. She’s always asking for two out of three cuts when she doesn’t win the first time.”

Alex wondered that anyone as transparent as that could be involved in the old man’s death. “Was there any talk?”

“Questions and more questions. Like ‘Take It or Leave It.’ I tell you I got more attention than Elizabeth Arden. She was demonstrating a new cosmetic line. Made Mrs. Pasteriki up to look like Garbo.”

“You really got the works,” Alex said, grinning.

Mrs. Whiting got up and picked up her glass. “Your father wants to go to the dance tonight,” she said. “If I’m going I’ve got to lie down for a while.”

“Strange, the Barnards coming in for that,” Alex said when his mother had gone. “It looks like the Addisons, doesn’t it, Chief, with the old man’s will and everything?”

“We’re just going to have to wait, Alex. We need more than that.”

Joan drove up and parked the car in the driveway. Alex went out to meet her. They had a few words together, and when they came up to the porch, Alex said to Waterman, “Will it help if Joan tells you she found a man who knew Andy Mattson sixty years ago?”

Waterman shrugged. “It won’t hurt none.”

“Addison was an opportunist from the word go,” Joan said.

“How else do you get sixty million?” Alex said. “Can you believe this Bruckner?”

“I think so. The time seems right. Turnsby, Andy and Addison had a shop together in Webber. It was around 1880 or a little later. They perfected some sort of hydraulic machine and Addison filed a request for a patent on it. Someone had just patented a machine along the same lines and they lost out. Addison dropped out of their partnership and pretty soon they found out he’d tied up with a man named Winston, the same man who had filed the patent ahead of them. Addison took with him the complete information on the work Andy, Turnsby and he had done together. Turnsby took it to court. Mr. Bruckner says we could probably find a court record on it if we were to search for it. Andy was married to Addison’s sister, and he had been against the patenting in the first place. He washed his hands of the entire business.”

Alex interrupted. “Did Bruckner know about Turnsby marrying Anne?”

“I don’t think he did,” Joan said. “He’d have mentioned it. He came out here with Addison and Turnsby.”

“I guess Addison put the silencer on that,” Alex said.

“Anyway,” Joan continued, “Turnsby withdrew the suit. Addison was going leaps and bounds with this Winston, and Turnsby went in with them. That’s all there is about Andy in the story.”

“And you felt Bruckner knew what he was talking about,” Waterman said.

“I believed him,” Joan said. “I didn’t coach him or try to put the words in his mouth. And I saw the name Winston before. It’s on one of their products.”

“I wonder what happened to him,” Alex said. “Addison seems to have had quite a turnover in partners.”

“That’s what I meant about his being an opportunist.”

“Round and round and round we go,” Alex said. “What does the county farm look like these days?”

“Like the poorhouse,” Joan said.

Chapter 34

ALEX WAS ABOUT TO leave the house to drive Joan home when the telephone rang. It was the librarian. She had received an answer to her wire on the painting. When he got to the library, Miss Woods looked more cheerful than anyone he had seen in Hillside that day.

“Alex, did you say Mr. Mattson had one of these paintings?”

“I don’t know whether I said he did, but I think so.”

She handed him the paper listing the dates of known works of the artist, their present disposition, and the history of their ownership from the time they were purchased from him. Andy Mattson had bought four of them over a period of seven years. Three of these were listed as in the Addison collection, the record showing that each of them had passed from Mattson to Addison within a year of their purchase. Andrew Mattson had been in Europe from 1905 to 1912 at least, and during that time he had again been associated with Henry Addison.

“Thank you, Miss Woods. How much did it cost to get this?”

“The telegram out of petty cash,” she said.

He stuck a dollar bill in the barrel bank.

Miss Woods was looking at him peculiarly, as though she were measuring him. “Yes?” he said.

“Alex, is there any truth in what I heard about you, ah … carrying on with the Elliot girl?” She looked immediately as though she wished she had not asked it.

“Enough truth to make gossip, Miss Woods. I took Joan to Mattson’s house to see the painting. On an impulse, I kissed her. Miss Turnsby was impulsive about it too.”

Miss Woods flushed at his frankness. “Oh,” she said.

Chapter 35

WATERMAN RETURNED TO THE station after supper. He went over a whole notebook full of notes and questions, theories and counter-theories. He could think of nothing that he had not checked. Mabel’s dishes from the Emporium … she had bought them, all right. It seemed strange for someone of her age to buy dishes. Over the years Ida had collected enough pieces to serve a banquet on … Mattson’s shoes, his glasses, wood and coal man, neighbors … he had checked them all. He was at his desk for a couple of hours. He heard the music start for the dance up by the high school, and the clang of horseshoes outside the fire station. Finally he locked up the station, left the key with the fire chief, and drove over to Mattson’s.

The house was as it had been since he first went into it, except for the two windows, boarded up now. The golden-rod had been mowed, but it lay wilting in the closeness of the night. Mabel’s house, too, was in complete darkness. Her bedroom window was open. The old lady had had a hard day, he thought.

In the workshop, all that had changed was the creeping dust that in time would probably cover everything and weigh it down, and bury it. When, he wondered, had the old man last worked here. There was a half empty bucket of coal at the side of the stove. He went to the stove itself and opened the door. A few crumpled papers had been thrown on top of the uncleaned grate. Waterman took them to the light. They were sketches and scale drawings of toys in the bold lines of Andy’s hand. The paper was sheer, and he held it at varying angles with the light. The reflection caught markings on the paper left from previous sheets used on the tablet. There was only a name, but it had been written several times … Mabel Turnsby.

Chapter 36

NEITHER JOAN NOR ALEX felt like going to the dance, but in view of the events and the tension in the town, they went together, neither of them mentioning their reluctance.

“If we were only as young as the folks,” Alex said, motioning toward his father and mother. Mr. Whiting danced elaborately. Only the outdoor pavilion was big enough for him.

“Or as the Barnards,” Joan said. “She’s like a blue cloud, isn’t she?”

“Even we’re having more fun than they are,” Alex said. “That set smile of hers doesn’t fool me. Look at Doc’s eyebrows.”

“I wonder why they came.”

“Lonely maybe,” Alex said. “I feel a little that way myself, the things that have been happening. Maybe they just want to feel they belong somewhere.”

“Mrs. Pasteriki still has her Garbo look,” Joan whispered. “You know she’s quite lovely, Alex?”

“Tonight I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “I haven’t looked far from home.”

At the end of that dance, they joined Mr. and Mrs. Whiting at the punch table, set up under beach umbrellas a few feet away from the dance platform. Mr. Whiting was patting the perspiration from his forehead and the back of his neck.

“If you didn’t work so hard, Charles, you wouldn’t perspire so,” Mrs. Whiting said. “You’ve got me tuckered out too.”

“It’s healthy to sweat like this,” her husband said. “And that band makes you do it.”

“How about changing partners for the next one?” Alex said.

“Think you can keep up with me, Joanie?” Mr. Whiting asked.

“There’s Nat and Phyllis Watkins,” Mrs. Whiting said. “I’m so glad.”

“Back together again,” Alex said. The Barnards joined them then. “Good evening, Mrs. Barnard.”

“Good evening, Alex. Mrs. Whiting, how are you, my dear? These summer dances are charming things. I don’t know how we’ve managed to miss them so long …”

Alex and Joan drifted toward the Watkins. “It’s good to see you, Nat,” Alex said. “Mrs. Watkins.”

“Hello,” Watkins said. Mrs. Watkins did not even speak. They walked away, and suddenly Joan realized that several people had been watching them. Mrs. Baldwin’s laugh spiraled up. It had never seemed so unpleasant. Joan could feel the color rising in her throat. Her father had been angry. Her two brothers had heard tales of the incident in their shop that day, but they had not said anything beyond mentioning that they had heard it. And still she could not believe that a little incident, a wonderful little incident, could be whipped into such distortions by the tongue of one woman, and she a notorious gossip at that. It had taken more. Everyone who wanted to hurt Alex and Waterman had made the most of it. Without realizing it she threw her head back.

“That’s the spirit,” Alex whispered, leading her back toward where his parents were still talking with the Barnards.

“… Jeff’s had such recriminations,” his wife was saying. “Prejudices rise on such little provocation …”

“Let’s enjoy this evening, at least, Norah,” the veterinary said.

“Of course, Jeffrey. Get me a little more punch, will you, my dear?”

“I’ll get it, Doc,” Alex said. As he went to the table, he noticed someone turning away from him as he came near, someone who turned his head without moving his body. He had his first good look at the man he had seen at Barnard’s that afternoon.

Chapter 37

HE AND JOAN LEFT the dance before it was over. Even their friends had not been cordial. They drove a little way into the country. There was no moonlight, and the heaviness of the afternoon rain was still in the air. It was no heavier than the feeling of defeat about them. “Tomorrow’s meeting will end this,” Alex said, “or if it doesn’t, God help us.”

“Yes, God help us. Alex, I think I’d like to go home now.”

He turned the car around at the next driveway. “Joan, a lot of bad things have come out of this. But for me something wonderful has happened right in the middle of it. You know that, don’t you?”

She did not answer. By an old habit, she watched the beak of the bird on the radiator cap ride into the road marker, seeming to spread the roadway like water before the prow of a ship.

“I’m in love with you, Joan. I think, or at least I hope you are with me. I wanted to ask you tonight if you’ll marry me.”

The bird had magic wings and a silver beak, but it was a prisoner. “No, Alex. If you were to ask me now, I should say no.”

“I guess it is rather stupid timing,” he said. In the rear view mirror, he saw a car that had passed them when they were turning, back into a driveway, and itself turn around and come back toward Hillside behind them. He took Joan home, and went directly home himself. He was in bed when his parents returned and they did not disturb him. But it was a long time before he fell into a restless sleep.

Chapter 38

IN THE MORNING ALEX went to the office early. He went in the side door. Only Maude would be there, it being Saturday. His father was going directly to the town hall. A disheveled looking man was sitting on the bench outside the railing. Alex nodded at him. When he reached the railing the man spoke. “Remember me, buddy?”

Alex whirled around. He would not forget that voice if he lived as long as Andy Mattson. It was the county prisoner who had seen him at the morgue in Riverdale. “I think I do,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The man was unshaven and his cheeks were hollow, but Alex thought he did not look vicious. There was something amused about his eyes, as though he must have found everything a grim sort of joke.

“I think maybe it’s what I can do for you,” the tramp drawled. “You’re in kind of a jam, ain’t you?”

Alex took a cigarette and offered one to the little man. He took it with grimy fingers and lighted it before continuing. “I figured you for a pretty good Joe after that twenty bucks. I says ‘here’s a guy I could do a good turn. Of course, he’s got to see to it I get taken care of …’”

“What do you mean, taken care of?” Alex said.

“Protection, and maybe a little cash on the side.”

“I’ll see that you get the protection,” Alex said.

“No carfare?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I always wanted to see California. That’s why I hit the road in the first place. And every time I hook a ride I think’s taking me there, I end up in Pittsburgh. Ever been in Pittsburgh?”

“Never,” Alex said.

“I been there eighteen times.”

“Look, my friend,” Alex said, “I’ve got plenty of troubles of my own. And I haven’t got money to send you to California. I don’t think I would if I had it. If you have anything you want to tell me, I’ll see that you get all the police protection Hillside can give you.”

“Don’t get excited, buddy. Maybe we can negotiate this. Suppose I was to tell you some guy hired me to help him break into a veterinary’s laboratory a couple of days ago?”

“I’d say I wanted you to go over to the police station with me right now and tell Chief Waterman about it.”

“What do I get out of it?” the man snapped.

“It depends what we get out of it,” Alex said, his patience stretching near the breaking point. “We’re investigating a murder. If your evidence helps us, you should get a clean bill.”

“Thanks for nothing,” the tramp said.

Maude came out of the plant. “Call Roy Gautier at Riverdale, Alex,” she said.

“Is he your lawyer?” the tramp asked. “Mine too.”

Alex went into his office and called Gautier.

“That information I was getting for you from Jackson,” the lawyer said. “It’s pretty complicated. I think you should come up.”

“I’ll be there around noon,” Alex said. “Anything you can give me now on it?”

“Just that the stuff went on the market a hell of a long time after it was patented.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you,” Alex said.

“Look, I’ll do everything I can do for you,” he said to the tramp when he returned. “I can’t promise you more than that. I’m up to my ears.”

The tramp shrugged. “Okay, since you put it that way. I’ll take my chances.”

Alex turned to Maude. “Anything new?”

“Not a call this morning except that. We’re getting the silent treatment now. Alex, I honestly believe if you don’t come out with the confidence of the town after the meeting today, you’ll be out of business.”

“Say your prayers, Maudie. We’re been through tough ones before. Come on, fellow.”

As the two of them reached the street, Alex saw the man he had seen at Barnard’s and at the dance. The tramp saw him too. He was gone instantly, disappearing around the side of the Sentinel building. Across the street, the man whom Alex now felt sure was following him, went into Pete’s restaurant. Maude came out of the office.

“Did you see that guy disappear?” Alex said. “Like he’d seen a ghost.”

“I saw him,” Maude said. “I saw the character who frightened him, too. He was old Henry Addison’s chauffeur.”

Chapter 39

ALEX LOOKED AT THE sidewalk beneath his feet. Words had been scrawled there in chalk. “Turnsby’s nose is as long as a hose …” An obscene phrase followed about Alex and Joan.

“Go on, Alex,” Maude said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be cleaned up by erasing that. God help us. Even the kids are poisoned.”

Chapter 40

A MOIST HEAT WAS already settling over Hillside when Alex left Maude. If he had heard the word “scorcher” once that morning, he had heard it a half dozen times. Along the main street he could see the little clusters of people gathering under the store awnings. White aprons and overalls … the Saturday morning crowd. These had done their shopping, the farmers at least, for those who had it yet to do were hurrying to and from the stores with a haste that defied the heat. He was aware that the chauffeur had made his choice between him and the tramp, and was moving out of the restaurant a block behind him now. The constant presence of this man was beginning to wear on Alex. It was like carrying a guilty conscience … the thought of him crept in upon the processes of his mind every so often and took over. Henry Addison’s chauffeur. Was he still in the Addison employ? Did he have the key to the whole business? Or was he on a specific mission? Probably that. What would be gained by turning back, catching the fellow and threatening to knock the daylights out of him? An assault and battery charge. He needed that on top of everything else. And there was no time now, not even for thinking about him. Humphrey Bogart at the Bijou, as he passed. Matinee today. For a second he enjoyed the suggestion of normalcy. Then the words on the sidewalk came back to him.

“Good luck, Whiting.” It was Tom Pasteriki who called it out.

“Thanks,” he said. The group Tom was with spread like a fan, each to get a look at Alex as he passed. It was the same all the way up the street. Many of the people fell in behind him at a little distance. As he turned across the street to the town square, he could see that the chauffeur was making himself anonymous among them.

The town clock struck a quarter to nine although its hands showed twenty minutes to. Out of habit, Alex looked at his watch. Some fifty people were already around the building. They might work Sunday to make up for it, but news of the emergency council meeting had taken them from their routines. He knew most of them: fanners, tradesmen, toymakers. They were like the crowd at Andy’s gate the day they found the old man, like all crowds drawn to a spectacle—restless, moving apart for better views, swelling together for exchange of rumor.

“Got yourself into something this time, didn’t you, Whitie?” It was Bill Tanberg. He was foreman of the lumber yards and had gone to high school with Alex.

“Up to my neck. They’re going to have to make this an open meeting by the looks of it,” Alex said. “Wonder why they don’t move into the fire station and leave the doors open.”

“Or in the square,” Tanberg said. “Boy, old man Fabry’d give his arm to be in the North woods today. The mayor’s got him over a barrel.”

Frank Fabry owned the lumber yard and was on the council this term.

“How over the barrel?” Alex asked.

Tanberg leaned closer. “He wants to sell lumber, don’t he? A nice building boom wouldn’t hurt him none.”

“I see,” Alex said. He saw a lot of things. Frank Fabry was one of the people he had counted on. He was a friend of his father’s. He was also a regular advertiser in the Sentinel. If they didn’t have friends after this, they were bound to have enemies, and enemies who could hurt them. Fabry would take out his resentment on the Sentinel, not on the mayor.

Alex spotted Eric Swanson heading their way. With him was Jim Brenner, the young math teacher at the high school. They were all his age, all war vets. They played ball together, made up bowling teams in the wintertime. They were good, familiar faces and he felt better. But most of them had voted for Altman the year before. The mayor was no fool. He knew how to get the young vote, and he knew their influence at home. He made big talk about the kids who had been in the services, and bigger talk about the need to provide businesses for all of them. Not jobs, businesses. The years they might have apprenticed they had spent in foreign countries. What they’d lost in practical experience, they’d made up in horse sense. They had the right to take up not where they’d left off, but where they might have been. Whatever his motives, Altman often talked sense …

“Hi, Eric. Jim.”

“Hey,” Swanson said, “the old girl really caught you at it, didn’t she? Ain’t you got no sense, Whitie? There’s a lot of places you can go besides under Turnsby’s nose.”

“Cut it,” Alex said.

“Oh. Sensitive, huh? Well, like my old lady said this morning, a person just doesn’t make up that stuff out of whole cloth. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Eric was kidding, Alex thought, but his mother was not. It was probably on the lips of every woman in town, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

“Have you got anything yet?” Brenner asked. “The whole damned town’s like a boil. Something’s got to cut into it.”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I honestly don’t know. We got a lot of things but they don’t add up yet. All I want is a chance to add them up.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get it, Whitie. They’re doing this up like experts, smear a little here, bully a little there. A little bribery—not out in the open, you know, nothing you could really call ‘bribery,’ but a smooth, slick job that’ll flatten you out like a steam roller went over you.”

“Thanks,” Alex said.

“I’m just telling you, kid. I’m pulling for you, but I’m telling you Waterman and you don’t have a minnow’s chance in a trout stream.”

Three of the six council members had already arrived. They mounted the steps like guests of honor and stood together under the portico talking importantly. Frank Fabry was blustering, as he always did when unsure of the situation. Matt Sanders was there. He was the oldest council member. He’d been in the plumbing and heating business since before Alex’s father had started the Sentinel. Recently he added the word “contractor” on his shop window. Arleen Baldwin was the only woman on the council, and the only woman who had ever served on it. She was cashier in the bank. Just then her laugh rang out over the whole crowd and hushed them for a moment. It started at a gurgle and moved up the whole range of the noon siren.

Will Withrow, the Whiting’s next-door neighbor, edged through the crowd. He owned a building and loan office but made most of his money selling insurance. He poked Alex in the ribs as he passed him.

“Cheer up, kid. It can’t be that bad.”

Alex straightened up. To hell with them, he said to himself, but knowing that was no help. Joe Hershel went up the steps next. How he had changed his tune! He stopped only a second to speak to the other members and then went inside. He wouldn’t be caught dead standing next to Mrs. Baldwin. She was a good five-foot nine and built along the lines of a large carrot. Next to her Joe looked like a radish. Alex glanced back over the crowd. A youngster was trying to get through to return his library books.

“It ain’t open, sonny,” somebody said to him. “See, there’s the librarian.”

Alex followed the gesture. Miss Woods was talking with the Dwight sisters, little old ladies who ran a tea room opposite the theatre. They were friends of Mabel’s. He remembered one of them on her porch the day Andy was found. Miss Woods was probably telling them about the painting, he thought disconsolately. The mayor was looking out at the crowd from the chamber windows. Only Sorenson had not arrived. He ran the Hillside Inn, and would resent the mid-morning meeting more than any of them. Sam was a reasonable man, and in the last election he had opposed Altman in the primaries.

Mr. Whiting drove up then. Barnard was with him, and at the same time, Alex saw Doctor Jacobs park his car across the street. As soon as his father was half way up the walk Alex went around to the station. They would not start the meeting without his knowing it.

Waterman was hunched over his desk when Alex entered. He did not look up. Gilbert was about his morning chore of polishing his automatic. “Hi,” he said.

Alex nodded and sat down on the chair next to the chief’s desk. “You look like I feel,” he said.

Waterman pushed the crumpled paper he had taken from Andy’s place over to him. “I found this in Mattson’s stove,” he said. “Take it to the light, Alex, and then compare it with this writing of Mabel’s.” He watched him until he had examined the papers. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, Chief. It looks like the same writing, but it’s different, too.”

“Mabel writes easy-like,” Waterman said. “Whoever wrote that signature of hers was pressing hard.”

“Andy was practicing Mabel’s signature,” Alex said after a moment. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s how I figure it. On that letter Gautier had, he wrote kind of bold, didn’t you say?”

Alex nodded. “But he could still draw mighty thin lines on some of those toy diagrams.”

“Sure. But if he was practicing, and being farsighted like that, he’d lean hard till he got the hang of it. But don’t ask me why. I just don’t know.” He unlocked his desk drawer and drew a telegram from it. “Here’s the one to gag on.”

CONFIDENTIAL. MICHAEL TURNSBY COMMITTED STATE INSTITUTE FOR CRIMINALLY INSANE 1925. COMPLAINANT HENRY ADDISON. TURNSBY DIED THERE NEXT YEAR. STILL CHECKING WALTER TURNSBY. WILL INFORM.

Alex gave the telegram back to Waterman. “So that’s it,” he said. “Strange, something like that wouldn’t get out, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. It took me by surprise like it would anybody else in Hillside. I was right here in 1925. It just didn’t get out, Alex. It couldn’t have been in the papers any place.”

“The way Mabel has clamped up every time we mention Mike Turnsby, I’d say she knows.”

“Yes,” Waterman said, “and that’s what was eating the Barnards.”

The town clock was striking nine. “That’s it,” Alex said.

“I’m kind of losing heart on this thing,” Waterman said slowly. “I feel real dirty about it, like I’d been digging in a graveyard. We don’t let any of these things out, Alex. It wouldn’t be right.”

The feeling of defeat was pressing tighter about Alex, and his doubts were multiplying. “Do you suppose we’re in the wrong pasture altogether, Chief?”

Waterman eased himself out of the chair, leaning on his desk wearily. “No, not altogether,” he said, “but remember this, Alex. Mattson’s autopsy report. We need a confession of guilt. Guilt to what, I don’t know. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, for being a policeman so long.”

Through the station window, Alex could see the rim of the crowd. Something was going on, for people were straining to see the portico steps. “A couple of things I didn’t mention, Chief. That fellow I saw at Barnard’s yesterday—he was at the dance last night, and across the street watching our office this morning. It turns out he used to be chauffeur and sort of a bodyguard for old Addison. And who should show up in the office this morning but the tramp that saw me take the cat from behind the morgue. He says somebody hired him to assist in the smashup of Barnard’s place.”

“Couldn’t he tell you who?” said Waterman.

“I don’t know if he could or not. He wanted police protection, but just as we were starting for here, he caught sight of the chauffeur and ran like a scared rabbit.”

“That’s in the bucket with all our luck,” the chief said. “The only stuff we get solid we can’t use. Try telling Altman about the tramp and him disappearing. He’d say we dreamed it. Is the chauffeur fellow here now?”

Alex pointed him out. “I’m wondering if he’s still working for the Addisons.”

“So am I,” the chief said.

“I got a call from Gautier this morning. I’m going up there after this. On those items Andy had from the Jackson papers—it looks as though Addison kept the stuff off the market until he was damned good and ready to cash in on them.”

Waterman looked at him keenly. “I’d want legal advice before monkeying around with that story,” he said. “It’ll just have to wait. Come on, boy, the band’s tuned up by this time.”

The crowd was shifting toward the front of the fire department as Alex and the chief went outdoors. The firemen were moving the two trucks to the street and the people parted to let them through. Someone tugged at Alex’s sleeve. “Did you find anything on the letter, Alex?” It was Dan Casey, his letter bag bulging at his side.

“Not yet, Dan.”

“Ah, that’s a dirty shame the way you won’t have a chance now.”

“I’ll have a chance if I hang for it,” Alex said.

“Ha,” said Casey. “I knew it. I knew it. I says to the missus at breakfast, there’ll be a fight for it. That kid’s got the gumption of his old man, says I.”

Alex and Waterman pushed on. The sight of his father on the hall steps spirited Alex. His white head was bobbing in and out among the people he knew, as he made his feelings known. “We brought them into the open anyway,” Mr. Whiting said when Alex reached him. “But oh, dear Lord, we’re in for it. If I was on the council itself. But no, I had to retire this year. I’ll not retire again till they bury me.”

Barnard looked ill, Alex thought. In two days the lines seemed to have deepened all the way from his eyes to the corners of his mouth, as though he had been tightening the muscles of his face against pain. “Doc, we know one of the fellows that smashed your lab. He slipped away from us, but we’ll find him.”

Mayor Altman was banging his gavel on a table that had seen no more serious business than a pinochle game for many years. The council members around the table looked self-conscious, except for Matt Sanders. As the years went by, his face seemed to settle more and more into the mold of a cigar store Indian. He stared straight ahead of him, his arms folded across his chest and his legs spread apart. Mrs. Baldwin was caught at the top of a giggle with the falling of the gavel, and her voice lingered hysterically above the silence for a second. Sorenson, Hershel, Fabry and Withrow, and the mayor’s vote in case of a tie, Alex thought.

“It’s a heart-warming show of civic spirit for all of you to come out on a scorcher like this,” Altman began, “and on a work day. It certainly proves the crisis we have reached here in Hillside. Indeed, I wouldn’t have called this meeting if I did not consider it a crisis myself. We have agreed to hold the meeting where the most of you can hear the issues, but on condition that you don’t interrupt unless in an orderly fashion, as do the members of the council. It is not a wedding we are attending. It is more in the nature of a wake.”

The mayor cleared his throat. The crowd was so quiet that he could be heard by the man at the end of the square if he were listening.

“Last Wednesday Andrew Mattson died in Hillside at the age of ninety-two. I wonder who among us will live that long? …”

Alex’s eyes met his father’s for a moment. This would have been prejudice before a jury. But this was no jury, and these prejudices would not be undone.

“In just three days our small town has become a place of terror and suspicion. With every hour it grows worse. Sins forgotten and forgiven long ago and paraded like a dirty wash in a Rinso ad …”

There was a titter among the crowd. Altman had prepared to the last word. Politics was his business.

“No, I don’t want to seem frivolous about this. It’s no laughing matter. I have seven separate complaints of slander, and last night, because I knew no other way to stop it, I called the state’s attorney for Riverdale county and asked for advice. The upshot of it was that I have here a restraining order which I am empowered to serve on the perpetrators of this dissent. I am putting it before the council whether or not I shall serve the order.

“In all fairness to the people involved, I must say that I don’t think the original intent was dissension in our community. I think they acted in good faith. But I think you will agree with me that their zeal exceeded their discretion …”

Alex could feel what little hope he had drain out of him. Waterman was filling his pipe, not looking at the mayor or anyone else. His shoulders were stooped, but the corners of his mouth were tense with a grim determination. Mr. Whiting’s eyes were focused on Altman’s face, as though he were trying to look through the easy confidence of the man, to see what really motivated him.

“… Mr. Waterman has been chief of police in Hillside for thirty years. During that time he has had no more serious arrests than parking violations for the most part. But he has been a good and faithful servant, as the Bible says. He has applied for a pension, and I suppose it’s only natural that he should want to convince us that he has earned it …”

“That’s dirty,” Alex said aloud. His father caught his arm. Altman had heard him, however, and turned.

“I think we’ll want to hear from you in due time, Alex …”

Sam Sorenson twisted in his chair. “Let’s get to the point, Altman. Our business doesn’t stop with gossip.”

“That’s my point exactly, Sam. It does stop with gossip. But, as you say, let’s get to the point. When Mattson died, at the age of ninety-two, our police chief did what was expected of him. He called in the county coroner and sheriff. An autopsy was duly performed by competent men, and the report of a natural death was given. So that you won’t have to take my word for it, I’ve asked Dr. Jacobs to tell us about it and I don’t think anybody could accuse Dr. Jacobs of prejudice in favor of the coroner’s office. Isn’t that so, Jake?”

Dr. Jacobs took his time getting to the meeting table. He looked as crabbed as an old apple, Alex thought.

“I haven’t just found religion, Mr. Mayor, so don’t treat me to that brethren stuff,” the doctor said curtly. He continued as though he were reading: “As examining physician on the death of Andrew Mattson, I can certify that death was due to the infirmities of age, precipitated by some sort of shock, conjectured to be the unexpected attack of his pet cat.”

“There was no evidence of physical violence?”

“You saw the report,” Jacobs snapped.

“Would you care to venture an opinion beyond the findings of the autopsy?”

“As a physician or as a citizen?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“All right, Mr. Altman. I do have an opinion. I’ve heard the gossip you talk about. I guess it’s the same thing, though I can’t count to seven on it. I think somebody’s kicking up a hell of a lot of dust and I’ll say it to your face, so if it’s gossip you’ll know where it came from. I don’t think this restraining order you’re getting out does one damn bit of good. It doesn’t do anything to get to the bottom of the trouble. Maybe the coroner’s report don’t show it, but there’s real shenanigans somewhere. I don’t think you should use all this oil of yours till you get the whole story before these people.” He looked from one council member to another, rather like a scolding grackle, and then stomped back to the edge of the crowd.

“Thank you, Jake,” Altman said, smiling. “I think the doctor illustrates our whole trouble here. We’ve had every ancient grudge called up to mitigate against an unbiased view. The doctor, for example, holds the coroner’s office in low esteem. He traces his grievance to me, because I nominated him for the office. And I did it because I knew him to be competent …”

Jacobs interrupted. “How I hold the coroner’s office has no business here, Mr. Altman. I didn’t bring it up. Neither should you.”

The council members stirred uneasily. “Let it go, Altman, and let’s get on with the facts,” Sorenson said.

Mr. Whiting shook his head. Dr. Jacobs had good intentions, but he had not helped, not with the benign attitude of the mayor.

“I must be permitted to call for the facts in the most orderly fashion I know,” Altman said. “The coroner’s report was returned. Even Dr. Jacobs admits its thoroughness. And since there is the suggestion that I am prejudicing the meeting, I here and now call upon Chief Waterman himself to describe to you what followed.”

Waterman made his way to the table, taking long, weary strides. He glanced uneasily at the crowd before speaking.

“I guess I’d like to tell you first what happened before,” he said. “Maybe then you’d understand why we did what we did.”

“Louder,” somebody called out. The mayor banged his gavel.

“First off, Mr. Mayor, I agree with that remark of yours. Ninety-two is a long time to most of us … till maybe we got to ninety-one. Then maybe it mightn’t seem so long. Anyway, Mattson’s place was locked up tighter than a drum.” He moistened his lips. Waterman didn’t have the feeling for a crowd the mayor had. “First I’ve got to say some things showed up in our investigation I can’t talk about here. Maybe they fit and maybe they don’t, and it wouldn’t be fair if they didn’t. I think you’d appreciate that especially, Mr. Mayor. Well, like I say, the place was all locked up. The cat was yowling and clawing at the window. He was vicious and we didn’t know what was the matter with him. Cats pick up strange things sometimes. I wasn’t taking any chances, and when he came lunging at us through the window I smashed to get in, I shot him …”

Waterman went on, giving a full description of the circumstances, the house and shop, but not once mentioned the names Turnsby or Addison.

“That’s an interesting set of circumstances,” Altman said, “but the point is, what can you hope to prove, Mr. Waterman?”

“I don’t rightly know that, Mr. Mayor. I’d like to find out why Doc Barnard’s lab was smashed up. I’d like to know who broke into Mattson’s house the day after he died. I know I can’t bring a charge of murder. Not so’s it would stand anyway. I know you can’t prosecute for scaring a man to death, but that’s what I think happened. And sure as shooting, somebody was mighty anxious to see the old man dead. He knew it, too. He had locks put on the inside of that shack of his. The inside. That means he wasn’t worried about getting anything in there stolen. He was just scared.”

“Isn’t it possible that was imagination … a whim, maybe? An old man’s whim?”

“Sure it’s possible,” Waterman said. “I guess it’s possible he died of a whim, too.”

There was a murmur among the crowd. Sam Sorenson raised his hand.

“Yes, Sam?”

“I just want to ask Waterman if he feels all this fuss is necessary?”

“Well, I tell you, Sam,” Waterman said. “I don’t think Alex or me are doing anything we don’t think fits into the picture on Mattson’s death. There’s bound to be things come out that don’t fit, but we aren’t going after them just to stir up trouble, if that’s what you mean. Now, this fuss you speak about. That’s coming from gossip, that’s all, and it’s not gossip we started.”

Joe Hershel indicated he wanted a word. “Something I’d like to get straight for my own information: how did Alex Whiting become involved? Don’t you have a full time assistant, Waterman?”

“Yes …”

Hershel interrupted. “You hired him yourself, Chief. Don’t you think he’s competent?”

Alex hoped fervently at that moment that Waterman would let go his information on Hershel’s dealings with the mayor and Addison. This was sheer distraction from the issue, and Joe Hershel knew it.

“Yes,” Waterman said slowly, “I think Gilbert is competent. He’s light on experience. But so am I, like the mayor pointed out to you. I called Alex in the first place because we got a way of cooperating in this town, and if Andy was dead I thought Alex might be a great help to me making arrangements, and I knew he’d want the story for the Sentinel. As one thing and another showed up, Alex was more and more of a help.”

“He’s also the source of a great deal of your trouble, Chief,” the mayor said. “There’s a lot of difference between the duties of a policeman and a newspaperman.”

“I don’t know as I’d go along with you on that, Mr. Mayor. Not if they’re both honest, and I ain’t ever seen a dishonest thing printed in the Sentinel.”

“We’re getting off the track again,” the mayor said, “although I’m inclined to feel that a newspaperman deals in personalities where a police officer should deal in facts. However, to the actual case: you say Mattson’s house was broken into the night after he died?”

“Yes.”

“I presume you had taken an inventory of his possessions?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything missing?”

Waterman thought of Mabel, and of her tragic secret about her brother, and what it might have been that she had taken from the chair. “No,” he said, “nothing was missing that we could identify.”

“Then isn’t there the possibility of mischief-makers—teenagers for example, who’d think it a lark to get into the old man’s house, especially in light of the secluded life he led?”

“Mayor, I couldn’t put a limit on the possibilities,” Waterman said.

“Now to get to the mysterious business of Mattson’s cat. I think we should hear directly from the people involved. Did you authorize young Whiting to go to the county morgue?”

“That was my idea,” Alex spoke up.

“Come up here, young man, if you want to say something.”

Alex wanted to say a lot of things, but he would be guided by the same caution Waterman had shown. There was no use hanging himself on the rope the mayor was providing. Alex explained slowly and deliberately the reasons why he felt that further examination of the cat was indicated.

“And yet the coroner’s office gave a report on it?” Altman said.

“Yes, sir. But they gave the report two or three hours after they had picked it up. Tobin gave it to Chief Waterman over the phone. The very fact that it was out there for disposal when I got there at ten o’clock that night indicated to me that they weren’t as thorough as you might think.”

“I see,” Altman said. “Maybe we should hear from Doctor Barnard on this since he entered the conspiracy.”

“It was no conspiracy, sir.”

“All right, shall we call it a coalition?”

“Just a minute, mayor.” It was Matt Sanders speaking for the first time at the meeting. “When did you get the coroner’s report, Waterman?”

“The next morning, about ten o’clock. I got the opinion over the phone from Tobin that night, and then I sent Gilbert up for my copy of it.”

“And you picked up the carcass of the cat at ten o’clock the night before, Alex?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was the examination of Mattson’s body complete by then?”

“They were waiting for results on tests from the county hospital,” Waterman said.

“Just supposing it turned up in some of those tests the old man was poisoned?” Sanders said. “You’d think they’d have kept the cat on hand to see if evidence on it was on his claws or something, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe you would,” the mayor said, “but since there was no poison, no indication of anything except a normal death, I don’t see where that involves us now.”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Alex said, “but they’re certainly giving us the once over lightly, just like they did the cat. I don’t know what was wrong with that animal, but I’m dead sure something was.”

“Do you have any theories on it, Alex?” There was sarcasm in the mayor’s voice.

“If I do, sir, I’ll tell them to Chief Waterman.”

“I see. Perhaps now we can have a word with Doctor Barnard. As far as I know he’s suffered the greatest injury from this business.”

Barnard came forward slowly. He had almost reached the table when there was a sudden flurry of activity among the crowd. Someone was pushing through it to the front. “Him!” a woman called out. “Let me by, will you? I’ve got something to say. I’ve got rights in Hillside. I pay taxes.”

Everyone was looking at her. It was Mrs. Liston, keeper of the home for stray animals. She was a fiery old lady with short white hair that was as uncontrolled as her tongue. It was generally thought that she was a bit queer, but harmless enough. Barnard paused only a moment and then went on to the table.

“Sit down if you like Doc,” the mayor said, and the veterinary took the chair offered him. “Now Mrs. Liston, are you sure what you have to say pertains to this meeting?”

“It pertains all right,” she said, sweeping her hair from her eyes with her arm. “This man should have his license taken from him. He’s cruel, mean. Puts away poor helpless little animals what’s got as much right on this green earth as us. Lets them be experimented with and puts them away.”

Barnard took a deep breath. He looked at Mrs. Liston and then to the mayor. “Mrs. Liston is referring to the time I provided the county with a couple of dogs and a cat to try and trace the source of the typhus epidemic. I made the mistake of soliciting her help in obtaining the proper specimens. She’s never forgiven me.”

The mayor was sympathetic, but Sorenson was getting to the end of his patience. “You come up to the office and tell me about it some time, Mrs. Liston,” Altman said, “then maybe we can bring it before a council meeting.”

“I gave Mr. Mattson that cat,” she said, ignoring him. “I never found a better home for an animal …”

“Yes, yes, Mrs. Liston,” Altman interrupted.

But she rode right over him. “And I’ve found homes for eighty-six kittens, twenty-seven dogs, and I even had two opossum once I gave to the Withrow children, but their father made them give them back. Said they killed chickens. No animal kills unless he’s starving …”

The mayor looked beseechingly at his secretary. She laid down her pencil and notebook and went to Mrs. Liston. Before the old lady left, however, she had one last word: “But before I see a creature in that butcher’s hands, I’d drown ’em in the river with my own hands …”

As Alex watched Agnes Baldwin lead the old lady away, he saw Joan and her two brothers standing among the crowd.

“I never knew we had so many crack-pots,” Sorenson muttered. “It takes all kinds.”

“She’s harmless,” Barnard said. “But it’s that kind of blind, stupid prejudice that gets us into trouble. What did you want to ask me, Mr. Altman?”

“Yes. I think we might start with the night young Whiting brought the cat to you. Did he tell you the circumstances under which he obtained it?”

“He did.” Barnard’s face was rigid.

“May I ask why you allowed yourself to get mixed up in it?”

“Because I hold the coroner’s office and the entire county regime in the utmost contempt. They are as corrupt as sin, whatever your interpretation of that is. What are they good for? Fixing traffic tickets, handing out appropriations not where they’ll do any good for the county, but where they’ll line their own pockets, where they’ll roll the plush carpet to the Addison Industries …”

Barnard rose halfway to his feet, the words coming faster and faster, his voice nearly choking. The mayor couldn’t take his eyes from the tense face of the veterinary, and his hand fumbled on the table for his gavel.

“Yes. The Addison Industries. You’ve been avoiding that word, haven’t you, Mr. Altman? In your own way you’ve crawled up the carpet yourself many a time. You’d like it rolled to Hillside, so’s you could have a crowd of people like you’ve got here now, saying ‘Yes, Mr. Mayor,’ not ‘Why, Mr. Mayor?’ And they’ll get it if they sleep through this, Mr. Altman, and they’ll deserve it. People get what they earn by indifference. What’s the use fighting against stupidity? What’s one man, two men standing up and shouting the truth? Lie down with the dogs and to hell with it.”

Barnard dropped back into the chair. Altman poured a glass of water and set it before him, the mayor’s hand trembling. From where he stood, Alex heard Mrs. Baldwin whisper, “Is he drunk?” There was a hush over the crowd.

“Doctor Barnard is overwrought,” the mayor said. “This heat is enough to kill a man.”

Barnard drank the water. “I’ll answer your questions,” he said.

“I’ll be as considerate as I can,” Altman said, “but I think we must know the facts. Just correct me if I’m wrong in this. You prepared the carcass of the animal for extensive tests, I presume looking for poisons, or some illness. Did you leave the specimens overnight?”

“Yes. It makes several hours for the cultures to develop.”

“And you found nothing to indicate any illness in the animal?”

“Nothing. But I had not examined the cultures in the morning when my laboratory was destroyed.”

“Just so,” the mayor said. “Your entire laboratory was ravaged. Not merely the cultures. Were you working on anything else that might have caused enmity?”

“No.”

“Could it have been done by someone like Mrs. Liston, for example?”

“What do you think?”

“No. Not likely. But it is obvious that you have some enemies … You called Waterman as soon as you returned home?”

“Yes.”

“Are you satisfied with his investigation?”

“Quite.”

“Is there anything else you feel would contribute to the council’s understanding of the situation?”

Barnard was breathing more easily. His outburst seemed to have eased the tension in him. “In all fairness,” he said, “I feel I must admit that even if I had found some irregularity in the carcass of the animal, it would not really have mattered as long as death in Mattson’s case was proved natural by the autopsy.”

Sorenson got to his feet. “Then what the hell is this all about?” he said in disgust. “Is this a political campaign? On whose time do you do it, Altman?”

“Thank you, Doctor,” the mayor said. “Please take it easy, Sam. I couldn’t foresee these outbursts. Alex, please step back until we call you again.”

“I’m beginning to wonder what you could foresee,” Sorenson said. But he sat down again. Meanwhile Barnard made his way back to where Mr. Whiting stood.

“I want to remind you,” the mayor said. “All I’m asking is a restraining order. That can be appealed in county court. Now I want to get at the real reason I’ve felt it necessary: the malicious gossip precipitated by Waterman’s investigation, and the defamation of character that has resulted. I’m going to be specific and use names. Mabel Turnsby is not a young woman any more. She has lived in Hillside all her life—participated in all our social doings, attended the church, and conducted herself generally as becomes a good citizen. It was her misfortune, it seems, to have lived next door to Mattson. Since the day of the old man’s death, she has not had a moment’s peace. She has been quizzed and harried on every subject from her grandparents to her patchwork quilts. She’s been pursued with questions on her family and even on her finances. When she was reluctant to yield this information to a newspaperman, the bank was approached. Mrs. Baldwin can back me up on that …”

Mrs. Baldwin nodded.

“For that matter,” he continued, “my own finances have been gone into, as have Mr. Hershel’s, whose sole connection with the old man was his charitable buying of toys Mattson made. I don’t suppose there’s ten people in the town who haven’t been quizzed about Mabel Turnsby, all the Turnsbys. I myself have heard rumors that have been most uncomplimentary to her, and unfair as I know her. All I’m asking, gentlemen and Mrs. Baldwin, is that Chief Waterman be ordered to restrain from an investigation that causes such discomfort, or else show us now, why the order should not be served.”

“That seems reasonable enough,” Sorenson said. “How about it, Mr. Waterman?”

“If I haven’t showed you why I’m investigating in what I told you up to now,” the chief said, “I don’t think I’m going to have anything to convince you.”

“Could I get in a few words?” Mr. Whiting called out.

“Of course, Charlie.”

“I don’t think Waterman’s done himself justice. He hasn’t had the time to put his facts together and I’m damned sure he’s got information that might influence your decision, but which he thinks is unwise to give out here where it might hurt more people than’s already been hurt. Another thing: what investigation officer gives out information that could help a murderer cover up …”

“There’s what I mean,” Altman shouted. “We have absolutely no evidence of murder, and yet you use that word. Sensationalism. Make a case where there is none. Make a story. That’s what I mean by newspaper technique.”

“The word was ill-advised,” Mr. Whiting said quietly. “Suspicion of murder. My point holds—for theft, arson, any crime on the books. It’s the prerogative of any officer to withhold information until the arrest is made. Then he knows what pertains and what doesn’t. Then make your charges if they’re justified. … Now I think it’s about time you brought your real issues into the open, Mr. Mayor. Everybody in town knows old Henry Addison came here regular to see Mattson. You’ve been courting Addison Industries for years like Barnard said. I’ve got no complaint against that. Maybe Hillside would make a nice industrial town. That’s beside the point. What is important is you’re so damned eager to make that coroner’s report stand. Nothing must embarrass the Addisons. You’re so incensed at having your bank transactions questioned. Why? Maybe the town’s forgot your doings with that tractor outfit. I’d like to remind ’em. Mind you, I’m not saying there’s anything in all this should embarrass either you or the Addisons. I don’t know that. But if that’s the issue the council’s voting on, for God’s sake let them know it. Don’t wrap it up in poor old Waterman’s pension application.”

A flurry of hand-clapping broke from the crowd. Altman banged his gavel.

“Thank you, Charlie. We’ve now washed another batch of linen at the town pump. But facts are still facts. There is a coroner’s verdict. Remember that—and I admit my overtures to Addison Industries on behalf of Hillside. In fact, I’m a little proud of them if I may say so. It was done with the consent of the council sitting in session here today, done at our June 15 meeting. I consider the reference to my banking transactions slanderous, and I invite an investigation to prove it. I can understand Mr. Whiting’s attitude however. He must feel compelled to justify his son’s behavior these past few days. His indiscretion with a young lady in his employ has caused her and her family extreme embarrassment. It’s too indelicate a subject to even consider here, but it throws some light on his father’s prejudices …”

“Mr. Altman,” Alex said steadily. “I consider that remark slanderous. My indiscretion amounted to kissing a girl, and it’s done rather frequently, even in Hillside. It was neither premeditated nor calculated for that moment nor that place, although I admit it was foolish of me not to have thought of it before. It’s been Joan Elliot’s and my misfortune that the observer of the incident chose to construe it as indecent behavior, and took great pains to elaborate. The motives you may conclude for yourselves. We’ve seen evidences of vindictiveness here before today.”

“Yes,” Altman said, “I agree with you. We are all becoming vindictive. Who wouldn’t in this atmosphere of distrust?” He turned to the council. “Unless you would like to hear from someone else, gentlemen and Mrs. Baldwin, I think we can proceed to our decision. The case as it now stands is that Chief Waterman has put his causes for pursuing the investigation before you. The results on our people are obvious. And he has failed to indicate one concrete result he expects to obtain. Doctor Barnard and the Whitings insisted we introduce the Addison element. The council members know very well the negotiations under way there. I admit any attempt to discredit them would not aid our negotiations, and that I have to some extent been influenced by that consideration. But, I insist, not at the expense of justice. And justice was done in the coroner’s verdict on Andrew Mattson’s death. I must ask you, too, to think carefully of the old man’s age. Ninety-two. I ask you to weigh the merits of further investigation by Waterman and the implication of innocent people that must follow in its wake. If you agree with my request for a restraining order, our police chief will have the recourse of county court where he will be compelled to divulge information he implies he must keep from us—to show cause for proceeding. I feel such a course is indicated. It serves justice. Not hate and contention.”

He took his watch from his pocket and laid it on the table. The very movement suggested the need for haste and decision.

“Do you wish to vote now?”

“One question, Altman,” Matt Sanders said. “I want to ask Waterman something. Fred, this restraining order the mayor has—if you prove your points before county court, it just means a few days’ peace around here. Would the delay hurt the case as you see it?”

“I don’t know if it would, Matt. But I don’t have much more I’d consider it right to lay before county court than I told you, and the way I see it, I won’t get very far with them either till I’m ready to talk facts. And I ain’t ever going to be able to talk facts if I can’t look for ’em.”

Vote that down, Alex thought.

“We have courts so that we can use them,” Altman said with a confident sort of impatience. “Beyond county court, there’s the district court, state court, Federal court. Surely there’s one of them Mr. Waterman trusts. Or does he trust only God and himself?”

“Mr. Altman,” the chief said, his slow anger pulsing through to his voice, “I’m not even sure I’d trust God if you was to get to Him first.”

A squeak of shock escaped Mrs. Baldwin, and it echoed through the crowd in the Hillside Square. And then came the silence, the lowing of a cow in some distant pasture reaching through it.

“We’ll take the vote,” Altman said quietly. The color in his face had drained away until he looked like a chalk caricature of himself. “Vote ‘yes’ for serving the restraining order. ‘No’ against it. Mrs. Baldwin?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Hershel?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Withrow?”

“No.”

“Mr. Sorenson?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Fabry?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sanders?”

“No.”

“The restraining order will be served. Will someone please make a motion for adjournment?”

Waterman turned his back on the council and started for the station. The people pressed away from him as he passed.

Chapter 41

ONLY A GREAT ACHING emptiness remained with Alex as the crowd dispersed. He watched from the shade of the building as the people went more quietly than from church on Good Friday morning. None of his friends stayed to speak with him, or even nodded as they went. He saw his father and Barnard walk dejectedly out of the Square toward the office, and Miss Woods going quickly up the steps to the library like a frightened bird. Even Joan and her brothers were gone. He stayed until the fire trucks were started, the noise of their motors like a bombardment on the hot stillness of the town. Then he went around the building and brushed the flies from the station door before he opened it. Gilbert was reading Detective again, and Waterman was at his desk. Over the old man’s shoulder Alex read the first lines of the paper he was holding in his shaking hand … “It is hereby ordered by the county court of Riverdale that the parties named hereafter shall desist and refrain …”

Alex sat down, and in a moment the chief handed him the restraining order.

“What’s the offense for violating it?” Alex asked.

“Contempt of court. One to three years if found guilty.”

Alex read the order. He was named, too. He gave it back to Waterman.

“Well, Chief?”

“I don’t know, Alex. I think you better forget about it. Maybe take your vacation now and get away for a while.”

“And you?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I’m an old man. I ought to think about my wife. There’s a few thousand dollars in the bank and the house clear. But I guess I’m going to risk my pension and my reputation.”

“That’s what I figured on doing,” Alex said. “My reputation isn’t worth much now unless we win. And I don’t think the business would be worth much either. Dad will stand by us, and Barnard, if he’s able to stand by anybody.”

“Well, that makes four of us,” Waterman said. “How does it go—‘thank the Lord there is no more of us?’”

“I’m with you too,” Gilbert said, throwing away his book.

“Good.”

“Did you talk to Mrs. Liston yesterday?” Alex asked.

“I was out there. She gave me an act like this morning. Andy just looked at her animals that time Chuck drove him out. She says she could identify Andy’s cat. But I don’t think she could, myself, and if I don’t, no jury would, that’s a cinch.” After a moment he added: “Barnard sort of surprised me.”

“There’s something eating him,” Alex said. “I’d like to know what it is. He’s had it in for the Addisons away back. Do you suppose it could be on account of Mike Turnsby?”

“Maybe. Could you ask him now?”

“I can ask him,” Alex said. “How’s Mabel?”

“Like a bird a cat’s stalking, but she just won’t give in.”

“Well, I’m off to see Gautier, Chief. I’ll keep in touch with you.”

“I’ll appreciate that,” Waterman said, looking again at the restraining order as though he really could not believe it.

Outside the Sentinel building Alex noticed that Maude had washed the sidewalk. When he went in and saw that Joan had come to the office after all, his gratitude to Maude made him feel like weeping.

“I’m awfully sorry, Alex,” Joan said when he stopped at her desk. “They dragged everything out, didn’t they?”

“You and me. Everything. I never knew it was so easy to compromise a girl. What did Dad have to say?”

“Not much. That Waterman clinched it with his last remark.”

“I don’t blame him. It was coming anyway. Joan, we’re not quitting. We’re going right on from where we were before the meeting.”

She looked at him a few seconds, as though searching for what he expected to happen should they fail. “I think I’m glad,” she said. “There just isn’t any other way. Is there?”

“No, honey, there isn’t.” He laid his hand on hers.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Maybe go up and stay with Mom this afternoon.”

In the private office Barnard and his father were talking. Barnard seemed more at ease. Perhaps he had feared what might have come out at the meeting. There was only the one question Alex had to ask him and he had already had several kinds of “no,” but he tried again. “Doc, isn’t there any way you know that we might trace Mike Turnsby’s son?”

“No. Norah hasn’t heard from him since we were married.”

“I know,” Alex said. He took a long drag from his cigarette. “Doc, Mrs. Barnard’s mother was a sister to Henry Addison. You knew that, didn’t you?”

Barnard’s eyes met his evenly. “Yes.”

“Isn’t it kind of funny something like that wouldn’t be generally known?”

“No,” Barnard said. “There were many reasons, none of them pertaining to this case.”

“Maybe not, Doc, but it’s hard to tell when we don’t know them.”

Barnard said nothing. After a few seconds, Alex turned to his father.

“We’ve decided we don’t have any choice but to go right on in contempt of the order, Dad.”

“I figured that,” Whiting said. “I wish Waterman had held his tongue at the end there.”

“We’d have lost anyway.”

“Maybe. But at least we’d have had some of the people with us.”

“Well, it’s done now,” Alex said, “and it’s the devil take the hindmost. I’m going up and see Gautier. Will you stay close to Waterman, Dad? Just about anything can happen.”

Chapter 42

THERE WERE NO MORE or no less people on the street when Alex left the office than usually came to town on Saturday, but it was a strange thing to him to notice that somehow, no one seemed to be looking his way as he drove by. No one waved; no one called, “Hi, Whitie.” He might have been a stranger in the town. It gave him a sense of unreality, as though all these things were something he should awaken from, and laugh about at breakfast. Suddenly he wanted very much to see his mother, and that, he knew, was ridiculous. But he found himself touching things on the car dashboard, the ash tray, the lights which he turned off and on. He even touched the horn to give himself some physical contact with the familiar sounds. The wind in his face was hot, and the smell of it heavy with damp, rotting hay. Even the cemetery was brown where the grass had deadened beneath the summer sun. The few fresh flowers were limp. Why, he wondered, did some people make such a fetish of keeping graves alive, when beneath the ground the dead were more a part of earth than the flowers that grew above them. By now, the old gnarled body of Andy Mattson had begun to disintegrate. What clothes had he been buried in? Why had his clothes, if that’s what was in the other package, been taken from the car that night at Barnard’s? Had they contained some clue to his death? Or, for that matter, to his life? Was there really no one who cared if he lived, when there was someone who cared very much that he died?

Anne. Anne Addison. There was a time when she must have cared, when the fierce black eyes of him must have held all she cared about. And what was Mike Turnsby in comparison to the giant Andy Mattson that she should have found him more desirable? Was she afraid of Mattson? For there was something frightening surely about a man who could separate himself from the world he knew, and never approach it again, or ever warm the new life with new friends. Their son was Walter Turnsby. It was strange, the vision Alex could imagine of him, and the mouse-like reality Norah Barnard was. But the Turnsbys kept their secrets. For one as talkative as Mabel, she kept many things away from the prying curiosity of the friends so like herself. What had Mike done to warrant such confinement? That Henry Addison was a ruthless man no one doubted. He had built Addison Industries and his fortune above many a heartache, seasonal work, migratory labor. Half Riverdale was a testimonial to it. But whatever had happened to Turnsby, Addison still came to visit Mattson, and Mattson accepted him. He remembered Maude’s account of trying to interview him, and Andy’s sardonic amusement at the famous man’s discomfiture. … The chauffeur. Alex glanced into the mirror. The long road behind him only mirrored the sun, and there was not a car on it. He stopped at the intersection in Masontown for the one traffic signal between Hillside and Riverdale. As he shifted gears he again looked into the mirror. A black sedan had turned out of a roadside stand behind him. From there to Riverdale the car stayed the same distance from him, increasing and diminishing its speed as he did.

With the increase in traffic toward the heart of Riverdale, he lost sight of the black sedan. He parked the car a couple of blocks from Gautier’s office, facing a driveway so that he could get away quickly if he wished. Why should he be wanting to get away in a hurry, he asked himself. Nevertheless he got out of the car and hid himself in the crowd of Saturday shoppers. Riverdale was the largest town in the county and the natural marketing center. Alex pushed his way into a drug store, and ordered a milk shake. While he waited he watched for the Addison chauffeur, but he was not in sight.

It was twenty minutes to one when he reached Gautier’s building. At that hour it was more gloomy than ever, all the offices except the lawyer’s having been deserted for the weekend. The heat had penetrated the building and the air seemed thick and stale. It was a real fire-trap he thought, the other exits probably boarded up. In the hallway then he wished that he had not come. If anyone wanted him out of the way, he had obliged him by going up a dead end. Again he told himself that he was being ridiculous, but the little edge of fear kept pricking him. He knocked at the lawyer’s door and stepped into the office. Gautier was at his desk in the front. The brightness made Alex squint after the poorly lit hall.

“Hello,” Alex called.

“Hello, yourself. Come in.” The lawyer got up and shook hands. An electric fan was circulating the hot air in the room, and Gautier wiped the sweat from his forehead. “How’s it going?”

“Not good,” Alex said. “They put through their restraining order. I guess I should tell you I’m here in contempt of county court.”

“Well I’ll be damned. You got a setup down there as regimented as ours.”

“Or as stupid,” Alex said. “I just can’t believe they know what they’re doing. But Waterman isn’t his own best friend. He put up a good fight but a lousy showing. He’s so damned honest he won’t let a piece of information out that might hurt somebody not involved.”

“That’s the way it should be done,” Gautier said, “but sometimes you can’t afford to be that scrupulous. Not against a machine like this.”

“Remember that tramp who told you he saw me take the cat? He showed up at my office this morning.”

“Everybody wants in on the act,” Gautier said.

“He wanted out of it almost as fast,” said Alex. “Somebody hired him to bust up Barnard’s office that morning.”

“Why in hell did he come around to tell you about it?”

“More money, I guess. Anyway, I’m pretty sure somebody’s been following me since last night. I was going to take the tramp to Waterman to tell his story, and he got one look at this fellow and disappeared like magic.”

“You really get the breaks, don’t you?” Gautier said. “Did you get a good look at the fellow you think’s following you?”

“I didn’t know him, but one of the people at the office swears he was Henry Addison’s chauffeur when the old man used to visit Mattson.”

“Addison again,” Gautier said. He got up and walked the length of his office and back. His shirt was sticking to his back. “Have you got anything else that makes sense?”

“We never did have anything that makes sense.”

“How about that vet? Have you tried him again?”

“Again and again,” Alex said. “I don’t know if he has anything or not. I just think he’s scared.”

“If he was scared you’d think he’d get away from the town until it was all over,” the lawyer said.

“He’s got plenty of fight left,” said Alex. “And we need him, God knows. Do you know how many friends we got in Hillside? I can count them on the fingers of my right hand.”

“I can’t give you a complete story on those patents yet,” the lawyer said. “It’s all legal probably, but there’s no doubt they got a corner on the market with their timing. We’ll have a full story in a day or two.”

“I don’t see where it fits just now,” Alex said.

“Maybe it does, maybe not.” Gautier put his foot up on the chair and looked intently at him. “I’ve got one piece of information that might be pertinent. It’s dangerous stuff, and to tell you the truth, with the spot you’re in, I hesitate to give it to you.”

“Suit yourself,” Alex said.

“Now just take it easy, kid. There’s people’s professional reputations at stake here, and I’ve got to be absolutely certain this information won’t escape you if you get desperate, and I think you’re damn near that way now.” Alex just looked at him. “It’s on the Addisons, and I’ve got to have your word that it won’t come out unless, and then until, and I mean until, you’ve proved them involved. If I did and they were to slide out from under the charges, there’s an M.D. in this state whose name wouldn’t be worth spitting at. I’m going to tell you so that you can line up your other findings alongside it and see if it fits.”

“You have my word,” Alex said.

“I don’t want it used in bringing charges,” Gautier repeated.

“I understand.”

“Last February George Addison tried to have his father declared mentally incompetent.”

Alex thought about it for a moment. “Did he take it to court?” he asked.

“No. If it had reached the courts it wouldn’t have to be so hush-hush. The doctor involved refused to certify.”

“I see,” Alex said. He lit a cigarette and threw the package across the desk to the lawyer. “I wonder when old Addison made out his will?”

“He made this one January 2 of this year,” Gautier said.

“He was competent enough then to suit George,” Alex said. “I wonder if he was intending to make out another one.”

“Or possibly a codicil,” said Gautier.

Alex took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the palms of his hands. “Two witnesses are customary on those things, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” the lawyer said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking from what you told me and this other information. See if it adds up. Mattson was in some way in on it. I don’t know why or how. He must have signed a copy of the thing. Maybe that chauffeur also signed it and then took the story to George Addison. That just occurred to me. It’s guess work. Anyway, Mattson must have intended to see that the provisions were carried out. He might have written to George Addison after old Henry died. Maybe he didn’t get any satisfaction and that’s why he wrote to me. Remember the date he set with me was the day the probate court convened. He intended to have the will contested.”

Alex nodded. “It makes sense. But he didn’t live that long.”

“Now all you’ve got to do is prove it,” Gautier said, “and I don’t know how you’re going to do it. That will would never have gone to probate if a copy of the codicil still existed.”

The phone on the lawyer’s desk rang a shrill long ring that set Alex’s nerves jumping.

“Sorry,” Gautier said.

Alex got up and went to the window while the lawyer answered it. Things were beginning to fit, but the enormity of opposition, the poor lame equipment with which he and Waterman were to go out after the giant! Maybe they should obey the restraining order and take the whole story to the state capital. But without Gautier’s information they had nothing. Where had he obtained it? From the doctor involved? … Across the street, from beneath the awning of the Ford Hopkins drug store, the ex-chauffeur was looking up at him.

“… Tell you what,” Gautier was saying, “go on out. I’ll meet you on the tenth hole. Nine’s enough for me in this weather anyway.”

“The guy that’s been following me is in front of the drug store,” Alex said, returning. “He’s got on a light grey suit and a Panama hat. Want to take a look at him?”

Gautier went to the window. “I think I’ve seen him around town. But I’ll tell you something else, Whiting. If he came up here alone after you, he’s not alone now. He’s got a couple of friends.” He came back to the desk and looked at Alex. “Just take it easy a minute, kid. We’ll figure something.”

Alex wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was too late now, too late for anything but to get out of that building. He could taste the fear in his mouth. “I’m no hero,” he said.

“But you’re not quitting?”

“Of course I’m not quitting,” he said viciously. “I can’t help it if I’m scared. What the hell chance have we got against this pack of hounds?” Through the churning of impressions in his mind at that instant, he remembered Barnard’s words at the town meeting: “Lie down with the dogs and to hell with it.” He had yielded to the pressure on him. Barnard had learned something about the cat although he denied it, but with his Turnsby connections and all, he had not dared to reveal it to him or Waterman.

Gautier went to the door and locked it. He began walking back and forth between the rooms. “What chance have you got to prove Mattson was murdered, say you have the motive?”

“I don’t know. Until now I didn’t think there was any. This is farfetched, but if a man was to deliberately push another man into a cage with a wild animal, say, or a starving animal, could he be charged with murder?”

“Only if the victim died as a result of the animal’s attack,” the lawyer said, “from his claws or fangs.”

“Then the coroner’s verdict stands,” Alex said. “I don’t think we’ll ever prove murder, even though we may prove someone was in the house and certain that Mattson was dead before he left it.”

“All right, let’s forget that for now. Whoever was there, presuming he went after a will or codicil, must have gotten it, damn it. Otherwise the Addison estate would never have gone to probate. If that’s so, why in hell are these guys after you?”

“They didn’t get it,” Alex said slowly. “They thought they did, but Mattson must have expected them. It accounts for the precautions he took those last weeks. And even then he knew that it was not enough. He had a dummy codicil waiting for whoever came to kill him.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I think I can. I’m not sure, but I think I can.”

Gautier went to the window again. “Then they think we have the original copy,” he said. “That must be it. They think you’ve led them to me, a custodian appointed by Mattson, maybe. Without that copy you’d have nothing. No case, nothing. That has to be it.” The lawyer turned. “Whiting, do you know where that copy is?”

There was something in his intensity that sent a chill down Alex’s back. Andy Mattson had trusted someone. He had not wanted to, but he had had to do it in the end and he was dead. It might have been Gautier.

“No,” he said, “I don’t.” He tried to remember if he had told the lawyer about Mabel and the chair in Andy’s house. He had told it too often to remember now.

“I don’t think you’re telling me the truth,” the lawyer said. “I don’t blame you, but I think you’ve learned your lesson too late. Just one thing, kid. Remember that promise, whatever happens.”

“I will,” Alex said.

“All right,” said Gautier. “Now to get out of here. I’d just as soon they kept the idea of your having it. I don’t want my office messed up. If they’re coming after us it will be in the hallway. There’s only one of them over there now …” He turned off the fan and put on his coat while he spoke. “I think we can give them the slip if you follow me and move quickly. I’ll tell you the truth, Whiting. I’ve done all I can for you now …”

“I understand,” Alex said. “I appreciate it, and I won’t be back.”

They picked up their hats. There was not a wasted motion in Gautier. He threw the safety lock on the door and closed it behind them. As they reached the stairs Alex saw two men in the doorway. The lawyer turned as though he were going downstairs, holding Alex back with his hand. As soon as the men saw them, Gautier whirled back to the hall and down it in the opposite direction from his office. He was lithe on his feet and quick, and Alex was hard pressed to keep up with him. Their pursuers were coming up the stairs like elephants. Gautier turned at the end of the hallway, where it made an L, the offices here probably fronting on County Street. They slipped into an office to the back of the building, and Gautier closed the door softly and threw the double lock on it.

Alex waited at the door, deciphering the words “Amusements, Inc.” painted on the front. He heard the men run by to the end of the hall. Gautier was moving a desk. Some amusements, Alex thought. The place was lined with gambling devices. Outside the men were working their way back, trying every door. Gautier lifted a trap door and motioned for Alex to come.

“We’ve got a good drop here,” he whispered. “I’ll go first and push a table over for you.” As easy as a forest animal, the lawyer swung himself through the opening and dropped a good six feet to the floor. As Alex lowered himself, he heard the smashing of windows a few doors down the hall. The feeling of nightmare was returning, but he was jarred out of it by the impact with the table.

“This is Molly’s place,” Gautier said. “The home of lost husbands. Good little boys don’t come here.”

Molly’s place. A man had been killed there last spring when his wife followed him. Then the police got around to closing it. Evidently Molly was holding court again. Gautier had opened a window into a passageway lighted by sky-lights. Alex climbed out after him.

“I’m not sure what happens now,” said Gautier. “I think this leads into the alley, but it may be locked up.”

The dirty sky windows were three stories up, and the light was very dim. The air was foul with dust and an acridness Alex thought probably came from rats. Along the wall opposite Molly’s old iron fire escapes clung unsteadily to the crumbling bricks.

“What’s this place?”

“The back of the old Majestic.”

It was a legitimate theatre that had been condemned years ago. His mother had brought him there often when he was a boy. At the end of the theater the passageway angled along its side. An iron fence was all that separated them from the regular alley.

“We’ve got to climb this,” Gautier said. “I’m sure the gate’s locked and there’s no time to monkey with it.” The rust enabled them to get a good grip. When they dropped to the alley, Gautier held Alex a moment. “They’re coming out of Molly’s. Come on, kid.”

They ran the length of the alley and slowed down only to ease into the flow of shoppers on Hunter Avenue. As people brushed against him, and he could smell sweat, and women’s perfume, dime store candy, hair tonic, Alex felt the fear slide away. He looked at his hands. They were red with rust as was the front of his suit. Gautier was grinning.

“Infantry?” he said.

“Quartermaster,” Alex answered.

Alex paused at the corner of Hunter and County Streets. A Salvation Army band was playing there, and the feeling of people about him was good and reassuring. The decision he had to make now, and quickly, was whether to return to Hillside immediately. He was sure now that Mabel had the codicil or whatever it was. Andy had given her a key to the house, somehow anticipating the events as they came. Mabel’s visitor that night had gone to her looking for the other copy. Why had she not given it to him, or else to Fred Waterman? Was she afraid of being implicated in Andy’s death? Or was she really implicated? Gautier had suggested the chauffeur as the other signer. Alex thought not.

And what were the contents of the codicil? Two incidents suggested patents: the newspaper stories and Joe Hershel. Where was the tie-up there? It was reasonable to assume that Joe wanted to make the fortune that had not come his way when Andy was alive. What he had failed to learn about Hershel and Altman’s transactions from them he might learn from George Addison, especially if it had nothing to do with the codicil. It was important to eliminate them, if they were to be eliminated. He was none too anxious to lead the three men back to Hillside after him until he was sure of himself. And he was far from that. He was not even sure of Gautier. The information was too vital, too pat. Either the lawyer’s conjecture was absolutely right or it was a perfect ruse.

He dropped a quarter into the tambourine and moved through the onlookers. He stopped at the first drug store and looked up the Addison number, and gave it to the operator. The phone was answered immediately.

“I want to speak to George Addison,” Alex said.

“Whom shall I say is calling, please?”

“Tell him …” Alex rang off purposely. Addison was at home. And that too he thought was strange. It would seem likely that a man of Addison’s means would have taken weekends at least away from Riverdale.

He ordered a coke at the fountain and lit a cigarette. By this time the chauffeur and his buddies would be watching the car for his return. He took a Sentinel envelope from his pocket and wrote “Pepsi Cola hits the spot” on it because the words were on the fountain mirror. He then folded a paper napkin and sealed it into the envelope. Finishing the coke at one swallow he left a dime on the counter and started for the car, keeping next to the street curb in case anyone got too close to him. He had the ignition key ready and without breaking rhythm he swung into the car and had the motor started before he closed the door. He drove into County Street and double parked in front of the Farmer’s Exchange Bank. Still with measured pace, he got out and pushed the envelope through the night deposit slot. The black sedan with its three passengers passed just as he turned. If they still wanted to follow him, he would lead them home, he thought.

There was no sign of them as he turned into the long Addison driveway. While he was waiting in the hall of the big house he realized that it was little wonder Addison stayed here. It was the coolest place he had been since the last air-conditioned movie. He took out his handkerchief and wiped some of the rust from his clothes and hands. The maid who had announced him returned and said that Mr. Addison would see him in the library. Alex could hear the click of the girl’s heels echoing in the great hall as he followed her, and then before they reached the library door, he heard men’s voices and realized that Addison was not alone.

“Good afternoon, Whiting,” Addison said cordially enough, coming to meet him. But Alex had to force his eyes away from the other man in the room. “May I present Mr. Whiting … Mr. Turnsby.”

Alex felt that he had seen him before although he knew that he had not. He was a handsome man with deep black eyes that missed nothing, and he was over six feet tall. His features were strong looking, and yet somehow delicate. The cheekbones and forehead were brown from the sun. He threw back his head a little as he came forward to shake hands, and Alex realized that this was how Andy must have looked when he came to Hillside. The head of a lion, his father said. Now he knew what he meant, for he was shaking hands with Andrew Mattson’s son.

“Won’t you sit down, gentlemen,” Addison said. “A drink, Whiting? You look as though you’ve had some trouble. A motor accident?”

“No,” Alex said. “No thank you. We’ve run into difficulties in our investigation, and I’d like to talk to you again if you don’t mind, Mr. Addison.”

“I’m very happy to,” Addison said. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Turnsby and I were on the subject now.”

Alex looked from one of them to the other. “We have traced the relationship between Addisons, Turnsbys and Mattson,” he said.

“I see,” Addison said. “Then you can understand why I should prefer to keep them unknown.”

“Maybe.”

“If you prefer, I’ll be happy to wait in another room,” Turnsby said.

Alex wondered why he was there. “I’d like to talk to you, too, Mr. Turnsby.”

“We might as well go through this all together if we’re going to do it at all,” Addison said. “By the way, Whiting, how is it you’re still at it? I thought you were under a restraining order of the court.”

“I am,” Alex said. “If you wanted to, you could probably call the sheriff’s office now, and I could be taken into custody.”

Addison looked at him momentarily. “It’s no affair of mine,” he said. “I only hope you are being discreet enough not to involve me.”

Alex could not tell whether the remark implied a threat or not, but the casualness with which it was spoken irked him. “I’m afraid our extreme discretion has been the cause of our failure thus far,” he said. “I’m getting to the point where I scarcely know how to be discreet any more. So I’ll ask the questions I came to ask and if they seem impertinent, I’m just going to have to suffer the consequences. I’m not a bad person, Mr. Addison. Neither is Chief Waterman, and yet due to the power you wield in this county we’ve been made to look as though we are. The only chance we’ve got of proving our integrity is clearing up Mattson’s death.”

“Just a minute, Whiting. I’ll hear you, but just hold on a minute. The power I wield in this county of which you speak is incidental. Neither I, nor my father before me have ever used it to further our interests. That’s a notion every reformer in the county has. And never once has it been proven.”

“I know,” Alex said. “My father told me that. It’s just that some people like to bow down.”

“And that’s no concern of mine,” Addison said. “Now let’s hear your troubles. If I can help you, I will. But I warn you, my father was a monument in this state. He helped to build it, and I’ll not tolerate any attempt to vilify him … from anybody.”

Alex thought the remark was intended to include Walter Turnsby. “Believe me, sir, I want to vilify no one, but I want no one to vilify me either. We think Mattson died because somebody wanted him dead by a specific time. Two coincidences led me to you, and you didn’t help. I asked you about Mattson’s relatives. Nothing. Now I find his son sitting in your house. Now there’s a restraining order against Waterman and me, and I think that’s due to some negotiation between Altman and you, and maybe Joe Hershel.”

“That is nothing more than an example of the expediency we spoke of before. Altman has given me the impression of being most solicitous of my interests. I have not encouraged it, and I scarcely see where it touches the basic problems here.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t, Mr. Addison, but for twenty or more years Andy Mattson provided Joe Hershel with model toys, beautiful things … and he received a minimum of compensation—as he wanted it—but he put the provision on Hershel that no patents be taken on these models. You would call that poor business. Maybe I would too, but what I want to ask you straight, have Hershel and Altman approached you on some kind of deal based on patents Hershel intends to file now?”

“Young man,” Addison said after a moment, “I think that’s information you must obtain from Mr. Hershel.”

Alex got up from the table. “Then you really don’t intend to help me at all, do you, Mr. Addison?”

“If you can prove Mattson was murdered and come here with legal authorization to obtain your information, I will be happy to cooperate.”

“Can’t you see …” Alex started, and then he knew that Addison could not or would not see. “All right, I have another question. Is the man who was your father’s chauffeur still in your employ?”

“No,” Addison said, “he is not. Why?”

“Because for two days he’s scarcely let me out of his sight, and today he and two other thugs tried to corner me in an old building here in town.”

For the first time Addison’s impassiveness seemed to have left him. He contemplated the ends of his fingers for a few seconds as though he were trying to fit something together. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Very interesting. Excuse me a moment.”

He went to a pull cord by the fireplace, and Alex sat down again.

“How did you happen to know it was my father’s chauffeur, Whiting?”

“One of our Sentinel people recognized him.”

The maid came in then. “Ellen, has my secretary left the grounds yet?”

“Yes, he has, Mr. Addison.”

“Please send Phillip in then.”

While he waited he drew the drapes apart that hung over the long French doors, and looked out while he waited. From where he was Alex could see the terrace, and beyond that the glisten of water from the garden sprinklers.

“You’re learning things about your father, aren’t you, Walter? Had you any idea he was a toymaker?”

“Not the faintest,” Turnsby said. “There were many things I did not know about him. But I should have expected that patent business.”

“Yes, of course,” Addison said. “Apparently he was a rather brilliant man. With his quirks, naturally. All of us have them, I suppose. Father used to say that in all his years he had never met a brain more subtle, more astute, or a man with less to say, or to put it more accurately, a man who could speak volumes in a sentence. …”

Alex got the impression that Addison was talking now to fill the time before Phillip came, edging away from the mention of patents, and he was conciliatory again.

“… We are scarcely the men our fathers were, are we, Walter?”

“No,” the man who called himself Turnsby said, “but we have our inheritance.”

The words had come from him quietly, and, Alex thought, spoke the volumes accredited to his father’s sentences. He knew the reference was not to money.

“Yes, of course,” Addison said again. A tall man wearing a white serving coat came in. “Phillip is my butler, gentlemen. Phillip, you remember when Bracken left our service?”

“Yes sir. About two weeks after the old Mr. Addison’s death.”

“Do you recall if we have had any calls for reference on him since?”

“I think not, sir. We were talking of it at breakfast the other morning. Cook had seen him in town, and Mr. Faulkes said it was queer he hadn’t had any inquiries on him, seeing how long he’d worked for the old Mr. Addison.”

“Faulkes is my secretary,” Addison explained. “Phillip, in the time Bracken was around after he received his notice, did he seem disgruntled about it?”

“He was a bit put out, sir. He felt there ought to be a place for him here. Felt that you should give him some sort of work.”

“I see. But he was not what we might call vindictive about it?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Addison.”

“All right. Thank you very much, Phillip.”

After the butler left Addison returned to his chair. “That doesn’t tell us very much, does it?”

Alex wondered. It would seem proper that Addison should give his father’s chauffeur a job. He still felt that he had, that all this was rehearsed.

“Whiting, did you ever see this man Bracken in the company of your mayor or Mr. Hershel?”

“No.”

“I’ve decided to tell you the story of that deal which actually is no deal, and now it won’t be until this business is cleared up. Altman has been at us for years to open a plant in Hillside. I saw no advantage to it with the main plants here in Riverdale. Then one day in early summer this year he and Hershel came up and suggested that we extend our line of building equipment and household goods to include miniatures, the plans for which he already had. He pointed out where our prestige and his facilities if extended to the proper size would pay off immediately. I presumed the plans to be his, and there was absolutely no mention of Mattson. I agreed to give him an answer by September first. Naturally I’d have my lawyers in on it if we agreed to go ahead. We have not yet arrived at that status.”

“You’ll forgive me if I seem skeptical, Mr. Addison,” Alex said. “But on my last visit you were no help. I’ve traced that Pissarro painting myself. I found out Mattson purchased all of them in the Addison collection when he was in France. I should think you’d have known that. And I can’t help but wonder if your father didn’t know what Andy did for a living, and if it wouldn’t be natural for him to have mentioned it to you.”

There was a trace of a smile about Turnsby’s lips. The color rose to Addison’s face. “That’s enough of your impertinence, young man. If you have so many doubts as to my integrity, I suggest you make your charges and see where they land you.”

“I am quite aware of where they will land me,” Alex said. “And I know how much more you can afford to do than I can. I know there’s something as rotten as hell in this some place. And it goes back further than Hershel and his ideas of expansion. It involves patents, and I’m pretty sure it involves patents already in the possession of Addison Industries. I think it also involves your father’s will, or some sort of codicil to that will. Now you know how far along we are on this investigation and what we expect to come of it.”

“My father’s will is no concern of yours whatever, young man,” Addison said angrily. “It was in the hands of reputable lawyers from the day he made it until it was filed in probate court. There seems to be some idea here that half the world was responsible for his success and for his fortune. There is not a court in the land would allow it, and not a court would allow claims on the estate not provided in that will.”

He delivered the last words directly at Turnsby.

“Don’t take out your wrath on young Whiting and me, George. We’re bystanders.”

Addison got up again and went to the window.

“You see, Whiting,” Turnsby said, “this ill-starred, ill-crossed clan of Addison, Turnsby and Mattson is a peculiar mixture of the ideal and the practical. They have been in and out of love with one another for sixty years. And every once in a while one or another of them has taken upon himself to save the Addison soul, sometimes, unfortunately, at the expense of the Addison dollar. That was my father’s chief fight with him … Mattson, that is. And it was also the fight of my foster father, Michael Turnsby. In his case he got the fanatic’s reward. There were some of us who didn’t think it was quite his due. But that’s a long time past, isn’t it, George?”

Addison did not turn from the window, and Turnsby continued quietly without looking at Alex.

“But Henry Addison, who was never outside the law, as George reminds us, seems to have mellowed a bit in his maturity, and the Turnsby clan grew small and narrow, as the women of them were all that were left. I wonder if your father didn’t leave a codicil to his will, George? The will to please his son, the codicil to please his conscience.”

Addison came back from the window, his heavy footsteps loud in the stillness of the room until he reached the velvet quiet of the rug. “I think you had better leave now, both of you,” he said. “There is no codicil to my father’s will. An attempt to prove one exists is a deliberate attempt to discredit me and him. I will see its perpetrators prosecuted to the letter of the law.”

Alex stood up and waited a long minute while Turnsby arose, his eyes searching Addison’s face. “It must be a wonderful thing, George,” Turnsby said, “to have such confidence in the law.”

Chapter 43

OUTSIDE THERE WAS ONLY Alex’s car in the white gravel driveway. He offered Turnsby a ride into Riverdale. Neither of them spoke until they had passed the stone gates of the Addison estate.

“Have you any idea what the codicil contains, Mr. Turnsby?” Alex asked.

“I don’t even know that one exists. For me it was a figure of speech. Unless you have proof of one, Whiting, I am inclined to believe George. The Addisons were always sure of where they were going before they started.”

“Do you mind my asking why you came here, Mr. Turnsby?”

“To claim and dispose of my inheritance,” he said. “With my father’s death I came into twenty-five thousand dollars from the Addison estate.”

“I know,” Alex said. “We’ve considered that as a possible motive for your father’s death. Obviously he did not intend to leave it to you.”

“Obviously.”

“Addison said the old man wrote him to give it to a displaced persons’ fund. Mattson’s death before the will was probated took that out of his hands.”

“George is very free with some information,” Turnsby said. “But just in case you are still confused by me as a suspect, I’ll tell you I wouldn’t touch Addison money with a ten-foot pole.”

“Why?”

“There are a lot of reasons, Whiting. Most of them belong in the grave with my father … and my mother.”

“I’ve grown to have a great respect for Andy Mattson,” Alex said when the big man beside him seemed reluctant to continue. “I’ve learned that he cared nothing for money, and a great deal for people in general, although he made himself the most solitary man in the world. I’d like to know why. I know that he considered war a curse—and greed the cause of war. I couldn’t prove it, but I have the feeling he loved your mother a great deal. Maybe I’m making that up because I want to believe it—or because I know he went out of seclusion when she died in 1933. But for the life of me, and you’ll excuse me if you’re attached to the family, I can’t figure out why she’d leave him for a Turnsby, from what I know of them.”

“She was afraid of him,” Turnsby said. “It’s that simple: she was afraid of him. Have you any notion what it’s like to be afraid of someone you love? … Or on the other hand, have you any notion what it’s like to know that someone you love is afraid of you?”

“I don’t suppose I have,” Alex said, but he remembered the fear the children had of Andy.

“That was the way between them. And all his life after that I think, my father was afraid of frightening people. I must have absorbed some of my mother’s fear very early, and mine was a physical fear of him. I would lie in bed at night, the door to my room open, the lights on in the other room, and I would watch his shadow on the wall, gigantic and distorted and the fear of him nearly suffocating me. It made me cringe from him. I was forever lost in my mother’s petticoats. And then one night she woke me and dressed me, and took me out past him where he sat in the living room like a man with his eyes open in his sleep. Turnsby was waiting for her with a horse and buggy, and we drove a long time through the night. After that I only saw him three times in all these years … The Addisons disowned my mother when she ran away with Turnsby, even though they were married some years later.”

They had reached the outskirts of Riverdale. “Where do you want me to take you, Mr. Turnsby?” Alex asked.

“You’re going to Hillside?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d be so kind as to stop somewhere that I could make a phone call I’d like to ride with you as far as Three Corners.”

“Barnards’?”

Turnsby nodded. “She’s my half sister, you know.”

“I know,” Alex said. “I asked her about you.”

“And she told you nothing, right?”

“Quite right.”

“You see, Whiting, we’re back to fear again. She’s a good many years younger than I am. She was always a little mite, and afraid of me. In the way of youngsters—who are sadists—I enjoyed that. I suppose it was compensation in some ways for my own early experiences.”

Alex parked the car in front of a drug store.

“No,” Turnsby continued before he got out, “I don’t think Norah is going to be happy to see me today. But I shall see her, nevertheless. It’s only a kindness however, to call her first. I presume her nerves are rather bad over this?”

“Hers and her husband’s,” Alex said.

Turnsby nodded and got out of the car without further comment. Alex watched him draw himself up as he walked into the drug store. He was an extraordinarily tall man. There were too many pieces to this story now. From nothing they had suddenly come to everything. He was reminded of the time on the farm when he had discovered a whole school of baby mice in a feed bin. He had brought the cat from the barn and thrown her in among them, and she had fled as though from a flock of wolves. He glanced into the mirror as had become his habit now. But so far he had not again picked up the black sedan.

Turnsby returned. “I’m not going to be the most welcome guest at the Barnards’ this afternoon,” he said. “But at least she didn’t tell me not to come.”

Alex wanted to ask him why he was going there, but he thought better of it. “I’ve learned the story of the building of Addison Industries,” he said, easing the car out of the parking space. “And I know Mattson was out of it early. But through that painting I know he was connected with them again around 1906 or so, and this time in Europe.”

“I think I can complete the picture for you,” he said. “After the Spanish-American War, Mattson went to the Philippines. He did a great job in sanitation there. Meanwhile Addison had built several plants in Europe. When Mattson returned from the Philippines, Addison got hold of him and convinced him there was a job to be done in Europe, in his plants, naturally. Mattson called no place home then and he went to Europe. He was successful there, too. But about 1912 Addison converted many of the plants to their war potential, as they would say now. Mattson worked for two years trying to break up the project. He went before every government he could get to, but you see, they all seemed to want the war potential developed. He was invited to leave Europe.

“He returned to America obsessed with the idea of breaking Addison. I saw him then. It was the first time since that night my mother had carried me out, and if I had ever wondered the reason my mother feared him, I knew then. He was a wild man, but as eloquent as the devil’s advocate. He infected Turnsby with his zeal … and by the way, Whiting, Turnsby was not an insignificant man. He was erratic, but he had a good brain and he was a good engineer.”

“I know,” Alex said. “He foresaw a lot of our health problems in Hillside.”

“Well, they went after Addison, more or less like mice after elephants. And that was just about the effect they had on him. It was years after their first efforts, and Mattson seemed to have forgotten it, but it preyed on Turnsby. Addison had a place in Colorado then, and Turnsby went up there one night. To this day, nobody really knows what took place, but in the morning Addison swore out a warrant for poor Mike, charging criminal assault. He made it stick, and he made it quiet, presumably for the sake of Turnsby’s family.”

“Where was Mattson then?” Alex asked.

“Sitting in Hillside, contemplating the broader aspects of the situation. I came to see him. He said that Turnsby was a fool to have permitted himself the luxury of irrevocable defeat. He was no longer interested. I thought then that he had gone over to Addison’s side.”

“Do you have reason to think otherwise now?”

“Yes. In 1933 my mother was very ill and I was desperate. I’m an architect and I’d been unemployed for three years. I wrote to him and I wrote to Henry Addison, I was that desperate. Mattson came and brought five hundred dollars two days later. It was enough for the funeral. I knew then that he had loved her. And I knew that he had not and would not forgive Henry Addison.”

How much closer to a solution of Andy’s death he was getting, Alex did not know, but certainly he was getting closer to his life. “Isn’t it strange,” he asked presently, “that Addison would continue to visit him year after year under those conditions?”

“I’ve thought about that a great deal,” Turnsby said. “I think perhaps Mattson was like his conscience, something he never quite escaped, even though he knew it would cost him something in the end.”

“I wonder what it did cost him,” Alex said.

“If there’s a codicil to his will as you say, you ought to be able to find out.”

“Yes,” Alex said, “and if there is a codicil, it probably cost Andy his life. How much of this story does Mabel Turnsby know?”

“Most of it, I think. I don’t know about the early part. When we came to live in that house next to hers …” He stopped for a second. “That’s where Mattson died, isn’t it?”

Alex nodded.

Turnsby continued: “When we came there, she didn’t like it at all. That was because she knew my mother was divorced and remarried to her brother. She made it miserable for her, and Mike Turnsby had been away from Hillside too long to be happy there himself.”

“Did she know your mother was Addison’s sister?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t know it myself until Turnsby’s trial. Mabel had always considered Mike something of a disgrace to the family. He’d sold practically all their property and spent the money. And by then Addison was a big name in the county.”

“Was she informed at the time of your mother’s death?” Alex asked, remembering Mabel’s recollection of Andy’s trip at that time.

“No. Unless Mattson told her. And I doubt that very much.”

“It’s strange,” Alex said, “that not even a rumor of this escaped in Hillside. How about Norah Barnard? How did she find her way back to Hillside?”

“Turnsby land. When she was married to Barnard, her father gave it to her. He was looking for a country place to set up as a veterinary. Hillside quite suited their purposes.”

“Where was she when Turnsby was indicted?”

“In Hillside. Like Mabel, they wanted no part of him. They didn’t even inquire after my mother. And Norah had never seen Mattson to my knowledge until she came to live in Hillside. It must have been a shock to her, for the resemblance between my father and me was very marked.”

“It must have been an even greater shock to them the night I brought them Mattson’s cat,” Alex said. “After all the years of secrecy, of avoidance of Mattson … isn’t it ironic that I should go to him with it?”

Turnsby did not answer, and Alex realized presently that he had not made a single inquiry about his father’s death. That he too was at odds with George Addison was obvious, and that he was more familiar with him, and at ease with him than after a first meeting, was also obvious. There was too much hate among these families, and too much marriage of the minds for the sake of expediency. Barnard might have told him much of this, and yet he told him nothing, and the closer Alex came to the truth, the more violent Barnard became in the pursuit of justice. He could picture Norah Barnard now as a girl, a plain, unloved and frightened child, for he was sure that Walter was his mother’s darling.

He straightened up from where he had slouched over the steering wheel. The tension had tightened the muscles between his shoulders. With everything he discovered the possibilities grew instead of diminishing. He looked at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. He wondered what had happened to Waterman since he had been gone.

“Did you say three men tried to attack you today, Whiting?”

Alex was already looking in the same direction as Turnsby, the shoulder of the road at the intersection in Masontown. They passed the black sedan, and when the light changed the car turned onto the highway behind them, keeping the same distance even when he stopped to let Turnsby out at Barnard’s. When he turned up Deerpath Avenue and parked in front of the house, the sedan drew to a stop at the head of the street.

Chapter 44

THERE WAS NOT A soul on Deerpath Avenue although it was Saturday afternoon, and the usual time for gardening, and kids playing ball in the corner lot. Next door the blinds were drawn in the Withrow house, and on the lawn a little spout of water rose where the sprinkler had fallen over and no one had come out to straighten it. Alex set it upright himself and then went indoors. Joan and his mother clung to him the moment he stepped into the hall.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Nothing’s happened to me.”

“I’ll call your father and tell him you’re home,” Mrs. Whiting said. She went into the den immediately.

“For one who said she wouldn’t marry me last night, you look kind of concerned, darling,” he said to Joan.

“Don’t tease, Alex. It’s been an awful day.”

“Has anything happened here?”

“No, except you’d think a plague was running through the town. Where is it going to end, Alex?”

“I don’t know, honey. I don’t know at all. I hope we can bring it to a head this afternoon.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Stay here with Mom and wait for me. Is your family worried about you?”

“No. I call them once in a while. Dad says if there’s anything he can do I’m to let him know.”

Alex changed his clothes quickly. He took his service revolver from a box on the closet shelf. It was something he had hoped never to use again. Downstairs he drank half the tea his mother insisted that he take.

“Say a prayer, Mom,” he said, leaving the house.

As he turned off Deerpath Avenue he saw the sedan start after him. It parked in view of the station. Waterman opened the screen door and held it for him. Barnard and his father were there, and Gilbert, all of them showing the tension of waiting for his return. No one said a word until he sat down at the round table. Then they pulled their chairs about him. Alex sat where he could keep the black sedan in view.

“I see you got traveling companions,” Waterman said.

“Yes. I picked up the extra two in Riverdale.”

“Did you see Gautier?” his father asked.

“Gautier and Addison,” Alex said. “Not together, however.” He looked at Barnard. “And I met Walter Turnsby and gave him a ride down to your house, Doc.”

Barnard said nothing. His only change of expression was a little frown. His fingers moved uneasily along the desk.

“You could have saved us a lot of grief, Doc, by telling us all the things you know.”

“He told them to us this afternoon,” Waterman said. “He told us how Mattson got Mike Turnsby after old Addison, and how him and Norah found out Mattson was Walter Turnsby’s father when they got one look at the old man. I don’t know’s I blame them for wanting to keep clean of it.”

Alex leaned forward. “I didn’t mean that. Doc, I want to know one thing. I don’t like to be suspicious of the people I’m working with, and I want to know the real reason your lab was smashed up.”

Barnard’s mouth was working before he made a sound. “All right,” he said finally. “I discovered the cat had not been fed for at least forty-eight hours. It had been given an injection, something to quiet it, probably, to keep it from scratching whoever handled it.”

“But just enough dope to wear off when Mattson was alone with it. Was that it?” Waterman said.

“Just about,” said Barnard. “I couldn’t be sure. The animal was dead too long, but that’s what it looked like to me.”

“And all this time you wouldn’t tell us although you knew the county had ignored evidence like that,” Alex said. “You saw us put under a restraining order and still wouldn’t help us till now?”

“Do you think you’re the only one persecuted in this business?” Barnard said fiercely. “You were not gone from the house twenty minutes the night you brought me the accursed animal, when I got a call to remind me of what happened to Norah’s poor demented father. And still I was determined to help you … and with a hysterical wife beseeching me to let it alone. Then in the morning when I made an early call and took Norah with me to keep her safe, my laboratory was smashed to smithereens.”

“It gave you a good reason for not being able to help us,” Alex said.

“Of course. That’s what it was intended to do.”

“Seems too bad, Doc,” Waterman said, his easy voice in contrast to Barnard’s tenseness, “that cow and calf you attended at Allendale both dying.”

“All right,” Barnard said more quietly, “I bungled the delivery. I’d been up most of the night.”

“They were awful put out about it at Allendale, a prize animal like that coming early, and you attending her all summer. It didn’t do your reputation much good.”

“I’ve no reputation left. I know that. Do you think I’d be here now if I didn’t know my salvation depends on yours?”

“I suppose not,” Alex said.

“I think you better tell us now what happened to you this afternoon, Alex,” Waterman said.

“I’m certain now, Chief, that Andy Mattson and Mabel Turnsby were witnesses to a revision to the Addison will, or a codicil to that will. Andy kept one copy, and he must have made up a dummy on which he forged Mabel’s handwriting and maybe Addison’s. The attacker got the dummy. Andy had left the key with Mabel and instructions on where to find the real copy if he died suddenly.”

“What makes you so sure, Alex?”

“I’ve given my word not to disclose that information—not at this time anyway.”

“If that’s what it is, it’s going to take all our wit and persuasion to get it from her,” Waterman said, “and that’s probably just what those thugs out there are waiting for.”

“That’s what I figured,” Alex said.

“Let’s hear what happened up there,” Waterman said.

Alex told them, omitting only the confidential information provided by Gautier. Waterman made an occasional note on the big tablet while he listened. “What was your feeling about Turnsby?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Chief. I felt there was something between him and Addison that didn’t come across to me while I was there or afterwards. I got the feeling they knew each other pretty well, although they didn’t see eye to eye.”

“Can you tell us anything about him, Doc?”

“Very little. He was a strange man. I only saw him once, and what Norah’s told me about him. She was scared to death of him as a youngster, and he was always the mother’s favorite … I can’t help feeling uneasy about his being at our house now. He never cared about us, not even enough to inform Norah of her mother’s death.”

“I was wondering about that,” Waterman said. He turned to Alex. “Do you feel Hershel fits into the picture any place?”

“I don’t know. Until we get the codicil we can’t discount him. He was getting pretty anxious to put that deal over with Addison. But I think that’s as far as him and Altman fit. Where’s the mayor this afternoon?”

“I’m not sure. Gilbert picked up word he was having a baby today on top of everything else.”

“It’s good to know something normal’s happening in the town,” Mr. Whiting said.

Waterman was making notes. He looked up to catch Alex glancing out of the window at the car. “Patient, ain’t they?” he said. “What about this lawyer fellow? How do you feel about him?”

“Either he was dead right in figuring this story, or he set a perfect trap for us, and I don’t know how we’re going to tell until we walk into it. In a way he’s just about guided my whole thinking on it.”

“What’s his name again?” Barnard asked.

“Gautier. Roy Gautier.”

“The name’s familiar. He ran for office once, didn’t he?”

“State’s attorney.”

Waterman got up from the table. “I found that little vagrant you was talking about, Alex. Jim Pasteriki flushed him out of his haystack. He’s entertaining him till I get around to picking him up. I got nothing to hold him on, and not much to hold him with so I’ve been taking my time about it. Alex, you’ve dug out more miscellaneous information than a porcupine’s got quills. I think we ought to concentrate on just two things now and add the rest up later: Mattson locked himself in tight whenever he was indoors, and if he was taking those precautions, I don’t think he opened the door that night to any stranger. I’m not sure he’d open it to anybody he knew, feeling the way he did.” He picked up the sheaf of notes and took them to his desk. He pulled the roll-top down over them and locked it. “And now, Alex, I guess we can go call on Mabel. We’ll be about as welcome as a family of skunks. You coming, Charlie?”

Mr. Whiting nodded.

“And you still want to come, Doc?”

“Yes. I’ve gone this far, I’ll stay to the end.”

“Well, it’s going to be the end of something I guess,” Waterman said. “And maybe you can help shake her loose of that family ghost that’s been haunting her.” He took his revolver from its holster, unloaded and reloaded it. “I hope I don’t have to use this but I don’t aim to lose anything we get from Mabel. I think we’ll walk from here. I feel safer with my feet on the ground. When we get there, Gilbert, you’ll go back of Mattson’s place and cover the house. Don’t let anybody come in while we’re there.”

Gilbert ran his tongue over his lips. His eyes were watery with fear. Alex was conscious of the weight of his revolver in his pocket. As they left the station, Waterman turned and locked the door. They waited while he went around and left the key with the fire chief, much as a businessman might when he was going out to lunch.

It was four blocks from the station to Mabel’s house, and Alex thought as they started of the many times he had traveled it these last four days. Waterman and his father were ahead, Mr. Whiting’s blue shirt dark with perspiration, his neck red, and his shoulders broad and still very straight. Waterman’s coat hung on him as though it were pasted on the thin stooped shoulders. These were the things Alex thought about. His mind would go no further on the subject of Andy Mattson’s death. There were the sounds of doors closing, and only rarely, far ahead of them, were there people in sight, and when they came to where these people had been, they were gone. A train whistle sounded in the distance, a freight train, Alex thought, knowing the time of day. The streets they crossed smelled of tar and were soft beneath their feet. He fell to watching Waterman’s feet, the slow determined pace of them. He could hear Barnard’s heavy breathing as the veterinary walked beside him, and on his other side, Gilbert was counting the cracks in the pavement. When they came to Sunrise Avenue, Alex saw the black sedan a block behind them, and as they turned up Mabel’s walk and went around her house to the back door, the car passed them, and stopped opposite the vacant lot next to Mattson’s house.

For a second Alex wondered if they could be sheriff’s deputies. Surely they could not operate so boldly outside the law. But he had forgotten, Hillside was without the law. It was like a town that somehow had been cut off from the rest of the world and become a law unto itself. Gilbert left them reluctantly and went to take up his solitary vigil from among Andy’s overgrown bushes.

For just an instant Alex saw Mabel’s white top over the kitchen curtains, but Waterman’s knock went unanswered. There was only the clucking of chickens in the back yards along the street, and the heavy breathing of the men as they waited. At last Waterman took his pen knife from his pocket and began to cut away the screening on the door. Mabel came then, opening the door only wide enough to show her face. Waterman had unlatched the screen door and opened it.

“Please go away,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t feel good.” Her eyes, the fear wild in them, went from one face to another.

“Just for a little bit, Mabel,” Waterman said gently. “We aren’t going to hurt you at all.”

Her eyes dropped to his hand on the door knob. His knuckles showed white beneath the skin with the firmness of his grip. The door fell open then as she let it go. Waterman went in first, and Alex after him. Barnard and Whiting came up the steps and into the house, closing the door behind them.

“We’ll stay in the kitchen and not track up the house,” Waterman said.

The old woman’s lips were almost white and her skin hung as loose about her face as the clothes upon her back. All the primness, the nattiness and the pride were gone. Even her hair was straggling out of the bun. She sat at the porcelain-topped table, her hands yellow on its whiteness. Waterman sat down beside her. Alex stood by the window. Barnard and Mr. Whiting pulled chairs a bit away from the table and sat down.

“Mabel,” Waterman started, “there ain’t nothing in this world worth the pain you’re going through, and what you’ve been keeping from us is coming out bit by bit in spite of you and the Addisons, Altman … All of you put together can’t stop us from getting at the truth now. Give your conscience a rest, dear lady, and give us a chance to have some peace and respect in the town we’ve lived in all our lives, like you …”

Mabel’s lower lip began to tremble and she caught it between her teeth.

“You should have known we’d find out about your brother Mike, if you made us go looking for it. We didn’t talk about that. We didn’t tell anybody in the town, even when you started that nasty talk about Alex here. That wasn’t like you, Mabel. I don’t know what it was made you do it. I just don’t know. Knowing you all these years, and seeing you around church and visiting with the missus, making things for poor people … it just kind of hurts deep down inside me, seeing you go bad like that.”

She began to cry then, quiet sobs that seemed to choke out of her frail body. Alex turned his back on them. If this was the only way, there should have been a more merciful one.

“Won’t you tell us the truth now?” Waterman persisted.

“I can’t. Don’t you see there’s nobody I can trust?”

“Not even me, now?” Waterman said.

“No,” she wailed. “I don’t want a cat like Andy got.”

“God in heaven, let’s get out of here,” Barnard said. The sweat was streaming down his face. He rubbed a drop from his nose with the back of his hand.

Waterman looked at him, a fierce, silencing look. “Mabel,” he continued in his easy manner, “I’m going to give you a chance to let all your troubles go out the door with us when we leave here. Let me have what you took from Andy’s house the night after he died.”

“I never took anything,” she said.

“Yes you did,” Waterman said patiently. “You took it because he told you to. He gave you a key to his house. He wanted you to have it if he died. He trusted you, Mabel. You were the only person in the world he trusted. We know what it was he left you—a codicil to Henry Addison’s will, and we know they want it awful bad. You can’t stand up against them, Mabel. If you’d been in his house when they came back that night, I don’t think you’d have the chance to tell us now. We’ve tried to fight them, and if we don’t win out Alex and me go to jail for contempt of court. Jails weren’t meant for the likes of us, Mabel, or the likes of you …”

The old lady continued to cry. “You don’t understand at all,” she said. “You just don’t understand … I wish I was dead.”

Waterman wiped the sweat from his chin onto his shoulder. What now, Alex thought. He could not, or would not lay hands on her and try to force the papers from her. The chief started from the beginning once more, this time telling her the story of what had happened at Mattson’s house, the look on the old man’s face, the signs of loneliness in the house, the good he had hoped to do, the bad to undo, the toys he made and refused to have patented. “They were the doggonedest things you ever saw. Just like real little animals and kids. There wasn’t anything mean in a man like that, Mabel. Maybe he didn’t do things we think good people ought to do, like going to church regular. But I ain’t seen Mayor Altman miss a Sunday, and he’d rather see us go to jail than lose a chance of bringing Addison business into Hillside.”

“Stop it, Fred,” she cried. “You got no right torturing me like this.”

“Mabel, I’d give my right arm not to have to say another word.”

Barnard reached his hand across the table and touched Waterman. “Mabel,” the veterinary said, “Norah and I have never been in this house in all the years we’ve lived here. That was foolish now, letting old grudges do that to us. But we’ve been keeping the same secret. And one way or another we’ve tried to hit back at the Addisons for what they did. It’s no use fighting them alone any more. Maybe Waterman and the Whitings can do what nobody else was able to. But if they can’t, there’s no hope for any of us. Give them the papers, and let’s have an end to this suffering.”

Mabel’s eyes never left him while Barnard spoke.

“We’ll try and help you whatever you’ve done,” Mr. Whiting said. “If we get proof of Addison’s concealment of his father’s will we can take him to any court in the land and get justice done to all of us.”

The fear in the old woman’s eyes was draining away, and something came into them that was almost mirth. A hardened, vicious mirth, Alex thought, that was more sickening than her terror, for he wondered if it was not touched with madness.

“You simpletons,” she said with a sudden contempt. “You poor Simple Simons.” She pushed herself from the table and got up, her legs less steady than her voice now. She turned away from them and drew a key from her bosom. Alex heard the tiny clink of a pin on the table as she laid it there. She went to the cupboard, unlocked a drawer and drew a white envelope from beneath the linens. It was sealed still with red candle wax.

She threw the envelope to them, bits of the wax chipping off like specks of blood on the table. It was addressed to Charles Whiting, Hillside Sentinel, in the writing Alex recognized as Andrew Mattson’s.

“Take it,” she said, and when all of them hesitated, she shouted the words, “Take it! What does anybody care for a Turnsby in Hillside? Who cared for poor Mike, for any of us? And why should it make any difference to me now? I’m an old woman. Cobbler’s Hill is full of Turnsbys. Why should I stay here alone, forlorn, laughed at and pitied?”

Her whole body quivered in the final emotion of self pity. Waterman picked up the envelope and put it in his pocket.

“We’ll go now,” he said quietly. “We’ll go the front way, Mabel, if you don’t mind.” He motioned the others ahead of him.

Alex paused, intending to offer his arm to Mabel that he might help her to a chair. She shrank back as though he had struck her.

“Come on, boy,” Waterman said. “She’ll be all right.”

In the living room, while his father unlocked the front door, Alex looked up again at all the Turnsbys, faded pictures of a faded clan. Waterman brushed by him.

“You go first, Charlie,” the chief said, “then you, Barnard, with me and Alex behind.”

They stood on the porch a moment, the men in the sedan watching them. “Act like we don’t expect nothing to happen,” Waterman said. “Just walk by ’em.”

Every step they took seemed measured, and the distance between them and the car narrowed as slowly as the clouds pass in a summer sky. Barnard and Mr. Whiting walked ahead as tense as automatons, and neither of them looked toward the car as they passed. A stifling smell came from the goldenrod where it lay rotting in the open field beside them. They heard the car doors open, and Barnard reached for his handkerchief.

“I wouldn’t give any signal, Doc, if I was you,” Waterman said. “I got my revolver leveled at your spine.”

Alex saw the veterinary’s hand fall limp at his side, and they walked on two by two, past the corner of Sunrise Avenue and Highway 64, with the others following close behind. Then from the distance they had put between them and Mabel’s house, three shots crashed into the stillness of the town.

Chapter 45

THE FOUR TOWNSMEN STOPPED. Alex, whirling in the direction of the shots, saw that only two men had been following them, and they now were running for the car.

“Gilbert,” Waterman said. “I forgot the boy. Go back fast, Alex, and let them two go. I got all I need on them.”

Alex broke through the Baldwin bushes and leaped across the flower beds. Before he came even with the car it plunged forward and cut the corner through the Fitzsimmons station. In Mabel’s back yard he found Gilbert kneeling over the other thug. The gun lay beside them, and Gilbert was crying and shivering like a wet youngster. “I told him to stop, Alex. I told him twice and he wouldn’t, and I didn’t know what else to do. I kept shooting and he wouldn’t stop.”

“Take it easy, kid. You did the only thing you could.” He reached beneath the man’s coat and felt for a heartbeat. Wherever Gilbert’s other two shots had gone, one of them had killed the man. “Just stay here a minute, till I get to a phone. Don’t keep looking at him.”

He ran up Mabel’s steps and tried the door without knocking. When it didn’t give, he put his fist through the glass and then let himself in. Mabel was sitting in the rocker unable to move with fear. “I want a sheet or a blanket,” he said. She only nodded. He went on through the house and took one from the sofa in the living room. “Waterman’s taken Barnard into custody,” he said to her on his way back. “Do you understand?” He shook her by the shoulder. “Miss Turnsby, Barnard can’t hurt you.”

She nodded at him foolishly. Alex went into the yard and threw the blanket over the dead man. Gilbert had gone into the long grass and was retching horribly. Alex waited until he returned and then took him into the house and told him to wash his face at Mabel’s sink. He brought Mabel a glass of water and held it to her lips. “He’s dead?” she said presently.

“You’ve got nothing more to be afraid of,” Alex said. “Just stay with her, Gilbert,” he told the boy.

“I’m all right now,” Gilbert said.

Alex went to the phone and put through a call to the station. “Please keep trying till you get an answer,” he said. “There’ll be someone there in a minute.” He could hear the steady buzzing of the phone, and while he waited, he tried to go over again in his mind the events concerning Andy’s death. Andy didn’t know Barnard, certainly not well enough to have opened the door to him that night … Walter Turnsby, Addison, Norah Barnard, Gautier, Altman, Hershel, Mabel, the names ran through his mind like cards from a deck in his hand. Then he heard the click of the receiver and his father’s voice.

“Gilbert killed one of those men when he tried to come into Mabel’s,” Alex said. “Both Gilbert and her are in a bad way.”

“Hold on a minute, Alex.”

Waterman came to the phone. “You’re sure he’s dead, Alex?”

“Yes. The bullet went through his head.”

“All right. Stay there till your Dad comes. He’ll bring somebody. Then come right back here, Alex. See that nobody moves the body, and you’d better call Doc Jacobs up there for Mabel.”

When Alex reached the station, Waterman was in his shirt sleeves. Barnard was slumped in the car beside him, his face drawn and worn, looking like a man twenty years his age.

“Altman’s giving us some help now he’s got the light of heaven on him,” Waterman said. “We got a lot of things to put together, boy, and Doc doesn’t seem to want to help us much. We were right on the codicil but we missed the boat on a couple of things. Read this first.”

Alex took the opened envelope to the table. He read first Mattson’s note to his father:

Dear Mr. Whiting:

If this reaches your hands it will be because I have died before I have accomplished the most important intention of my life. I should consider it a service to me and to many, if you will see that Henry Addison’s will is not probated without an important codicil, a copy of which I give you herewith. Perhaps, with as many years as I have been allowed, I should have learned that men alive are as corruptible as their bodies dead. I have hoped, and still hope that it is not so, and I therefore hope most fervently that this will rot without your ever having seen it. But should it come to you and therefore be incumbent upon you for fulfillment, I pray you are the least corruptible of all men.

Andrew Mattson (signed)

August 1, 1948

Alex laid the letter on the table and read the codicil to Henry Addison’s will:

It is my intention that certain patents enumerated below, now under the direct or indirect control of Addison Industries, patents, the control of which, I believe, deprive consumers of benefits to which they are entitled by need, and by right of their continuing purchase of Addison products, be declared in the public domain within a year of this date.

Since it is possible that I may not live to see this directive carried out, I wish these instructions attached as a codicil to my last will and testament, that will to remain unsettled until this directive is fulfilled.

Below the registration numbers of six patents were listed. The paper was signed by Henry Addison, witnessed by Mabel Turnsby and Andrew Mattson. The word “copy” was marked on the top of the page, and it was dated March 12, 1948.

Waterman came over to the table when he saw him put the papers back in the envelope. “Alex, I want you to put everything else out of your mind except Riverdale this afternoon. Tell me everything you can remember about what happened at Addison’s.”

Alex started over it, and Waterman interrupted him now and then with a question.

“He knew you were under a restraining order?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you how he knew?”

“No. But I imagine Altman might have taken the trouble to tell him.”

“I don’t want you imagining anything, Alex. I just want to know what was said. When you mentioned that chauffeur, did his attitude change?”

“Yes. It seemed as though he believed me then for the first time.”

“And he had no way of talking to his butler before asking him them questions in front of you?”

“No. Unless it was all set before I got there.”

“All right, go on.” Presently he stopped him again. “He seemed to want to edge away from talk about patents?”

“Yes. He changed the subject when Turnsby said he might have expected the patent business.”

“All right,” Waterman said. “Let’s get to him and Turnsby. You say they didn’t act like strangers, but you felt there was something wrong between them?”

“That’s as close as I can come to it, Chief.”

“I think you can get closer, but you don’t know it yet, Alex. This part I want you to be real careful on. Just exactly what did Walter Turnsby say about the families in front of Addison?”

Alex went over it again.

Waterman nodded. He looked at Barnard, sitting with his hands limp now, and his eyes upon his hands, the only movement about him the rise and fall of his shoulders with the heavy breathing. “Doc, I hope you’re listening to this. The time’s coming when you’ll want to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong with it … Now, Alex, I want to go over the Gautier business with you. This time everything. I think it’s me decides what gets out and what doesn’t. What did he tell you that made you so sure George Addison knew his father intended to change his will?”

“Gautier learned that George Addison tried to have his father declared mentally incompetent last February.”

“Did he tell you where he got the information?”

“He implied it was from the doctor who refused to certify. That’s why he doesn’t want it out.”

“That’s real considerate of him,” Waterman said. He went to his desk and brought back the big tablet with him. “Let’s line up some dates and see what happens.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Those fellows should be near Riverdale if that’s where they headed.” He laid out the sheets of the tablet. “The Addison will probated yesterday was dated January 2, right? February, George tried to get the old man out of circulation. The codicil was signed March 12, meaning the old man got around George some way. And that was the date Addison last visited Mattson. The will went to probate yesterday without the codicil. That was August 20. Andy wrote your Dad August 1 and hid it with the copy of the codicil.” He rummaged through the tablet sheets for the one marked “Gautier.” “Andy wrote Gautier dated August 6, right?”

He pushed the sheet on which he had noted the six dates and events across to Alex. “There’s one date there don’t jibe with the stories. And the way Mattson dated things at the bottom like that, I wouldn’t be surprised but what it was changed and you wouldn’t pay much attention. Got any idea where we could get in touch with that lawyer now?”

“I think he was going to play golf,” Alex said. “But that was two o’clock.”

Waterman turned. “Maybe you’d tell us now, Doc, seeing we’re going to put the two of you together in this thing in the end anyway?”

Barnard met Waterman’s eyes then, and from him he looked at Alex, and then at the clock. “He was to wait for a call from me until six at the country club,” he said.

It was twelve minutes to six. Waterman went to the phone and called the sheriff’s office. Still they were reluctant to cooperate. “Damnation,” Waterman said, “we’ve killed a man down here. Now will you listen to me?”

Chapter 46

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER ALTAIAN arrived with Jim Brenner and Joan’s two brothers. Waterman sent one of them to stay at Mabel’s with Gilbert until the coroner arrived. Mr. Whiting and Doctor Jacobs had taken Mabel to the Whiting house. Alex and the chief left the station for Barnard’s place, Waterman carrying his tablet of notes and the envelope Andy had left.

“Do you think it’s safe to carry those papers around with you?” Alex asked.

“If anybody gets them, it’ll be because I’m dead, and that’ll be one murder you won’t have trouble bringing charges for.”

It was grim reasoning, Alex thought, but then, only the grimmest reasoning could have brought Waterman to the truth.

“It all fits,” Waterman said more to himself than to Alex. “It fits. It’s got to fit.”

There was a light in the living room in the Barnard home, and as they turned into the driveway another light came on in the hall, and the door opened.

“I wonder if they’re expecting us or him,” Waterman said.

It was Turnsby who had come to the door to meet them. “I’m afraid Norah is not well. But won’t you come in, gentlemen.”

They went into the living room past the door to the study and the laboratory. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Barnard,” Waterman said.

“I’ll call her presently if you don’t mind,” Turnsby said. “I’ve persuaded her to lie down. Her nerves are very bad.”

“You don’t have any trouble with yours, do you?” Waterman said.

“Very little.”

“You aren’t much interested in your father’s death, are you, sir?”

“I could answer that by saying that my father was not much interested in my life, Mr. Waterman,” Turnsby said, “but the fact is that I am here because I am interested.”

“Just how interested?”

“I wanted to know if he had died because I was so much like him. That is self-flattery, but I think in part it is the truth.”

“I’d like to hear the other part of the truth,” Waterman said. “Let me do the putting together. You just tell me what you know about it.”

Turnsby hesitated. He asked, “Is Norah’s husband with you?” Then he added, “Obviously he’s not. But he was to spend the day with you, Norah said.”

“I took him into custody about an hour ago,” Waterman said.

“May I ask the charges?”

“Cruelty to animals right now. It’ll hold temporarily. We’ll have something better for him.”

There was trace of a smile about Turnsby’s mouth. “Wouldn’t it be ironic if that were the only charge you could bring?” he said. “Excuse me a moment, I will call Norah.”

“He’s a queer duck,” Waterman said when Turnsby had left the room. “He’s a dead ringer for the old man.”

“It gave me a queer feeling the first time I saw him,” Alex said.

“You know, boy, he may not be so far wrong on that charge business. I don’t know what we can make stick, excepting maybe Addison’ll bring charges against them.”

Turnsby returned. “She’ll be down presently,” he said. “Have you eliminated your mayor and the toymaker?”

“Not if I had my way,” Waterman said, “but as far as the old man’s death goes I don’t think they were involved.”

Waterman and Alex stood up when Mrs. Barnard came in. She looked small and ill, but her eyes were defiant. She drew away from Walter Turnsby when he went to help her, but it was in hatred more than fear, Alex thought.

“We have not had a pleasant afternoon, Norah and I,” Turnsby said.

“I wouldn’t call what we’ve been through a picnic,” Waterman said.

“Where’s my husband?” she asked.

“In the Hillside police station right now, ma’m, and I expect we’ll move him to Riverdale as soon as the county men get down here. I thought maybe you’d like to get in touch with your lawyer.”

Her small blue eyes darted from one face to another like those of a cornered animal, but she did not speak or move her head. Her dignity was all she really cared about, Alex thought.

“I guess that wasn’t fair,” Waterman said presently, “because the county men are getting in touch with him in Riverdale right now, and they figure to get the codicil to Addison’s will from him. But I think you better come with us, ma’m.” He looked at Turnsby then. “Now I want to know where you figure in this.”

“I’ll get my things,” Mrs. Barnard said as casually as if she were about to prepare tea. “I want you to take me to Jeffrey. He is quite helpless without me.” She glided out of the room.

“I don’t really figure in it at all,” Turnsby said, “except that George Addison discovered several thousand dollars missing from his father’s account, all withdrawn and unaccounted for last January. Being George, he went through his father’s papers. He found the notation ‘Anne’s daughter.’ He got in touch with me and demanded that I look into it. That coincidence with Mattson’s death, and knowing that Norah had always identified me with her low estate, and Mattson with me, I knew there was something very rotten going on.”

“As rotten as dung,” Waterman said, getting up. “I expect you’ll stay around Riverdale in case the county wants to talk to you, Turnsby?”

“I think I’ll stay in Hillside for a few days,” the big man said. “I think I should see my father’s affairs put into order, and not necessarily to the advantage of your mayor and toymaker.”

Waterman grinned for the first time that day.

Chapter 47

IT WAS AFTER NINE O’CLOCK when Alex and Waterman got out of the car in front of the Whiting house. The windows along the street were open again, and the blinds up. Here and there a porch light shone above the heads of the people gathered there. The babble of familiar voices carried through the night.

Mr. Whiting opened the door.

“They’re gone,” Waterman said, “the whole kit and caboodle of them.”

“Including the tramp?” Whiting asked.

“Including him.”

“Laura’s got coffee and sandwiches.”

“I ought to get home and see if the missus is speaking to me now,” Waterman said. “She didn’t have much to say at lunch time.”

“She’s got a houseful of company. Laura talked to her a few minutes ago.”

Joan and Maude were helping Mrs. Whiting prepare the dining-room table.

“How’s Mabel?” Waterman asked.

“Resting,” Mrs. Whiting said. “Doctor Jacobs says she must stay in bed a week. My, but she’s upset.”

“She’d be more upset if it wasn’t for Gilbert,” Waterman said. “You know, Charlie, it’s funny what a kid can do if he has to. There was Gilbert standing out there watching us, thinking maybe we was going to get killed, and he was too scared to come after us and help us. Then he sees this big fellow going up Mabel’s steps and he knew he was the only one who could stop him …”

Alex followed Joan into the kitchen. Maude, seeing them, wiped her hands on her apron. “I got the best knack of being where I do the least good the oftenest,” she said.

“Wait a minute, Maudie,” Alex said. “This isn’t private. I tried that once and you know what happened.”

“Try it again,” Maude said, “and see what happens.” She went out pulling the swinging door behind her.

“So it’s all over,” Joan said.

“The rough part anyway. Waterman’s going over it for us. This is no time for us to talk, Joan. I appreciate the way you’ve stayed with Mom today, and the way you’ve taken everything. I know it’s because you’re the kind of person you are …”

“That’s silly, Alex. All of us are the kind of people we have to be.”

“Then there’s another answer, and it doesn’t come out the way you said it last night.”

“Last night was another time,” she said. “A long time ago. Let’s wait, Alex. I don’t like to talk, expecting the door to swing open.”

“I can wait. But I wanted to get the first word in.”

In the dining room, Mrs. Whiting was pouring coffee.

“I guess it comes of putting the best set of circumstances together and bluffing our way through,” Waterman was saying. “Alex kept bringing stuff in like a scavenger. That Gautier fellow never did set right with me, and I felt funny about Barnard from the time he started being helpful. But the doggone strings kept slipping out of my fingers.

“I figured the only person Mattson would let in that night was Gautier, since he hand-picked him, you might say. But that way you had to figure Gautier in on it a long time ago, and Alex said the letter he saw from Andy was dated two weeks ago Friday. It jibed with Casey mailing the letter. That meant the date was changed to make it look like the first letter he ever got from Andy. Why? To get into Alex’s confidence was the only way I saw it …”

Alex could still hear the lawyer saying “a letter he wrote me two weeks to the day.” Waterman was right. He had scarcely noticed the date.

“… Then that other information he gave to Alex. George Addison trying to get his father declared non compos mentis. A doctor don’t give that information to anybody, particularly about an Addison, but it did explain one thing. That was in February. From then on Henry Addison couldn’t trust the family lawyers. They’d be going along with George. Andy must of talked about Gautier and written to him, and from his record of bucking the machine up there he looked good. Outside that, it don’t look so good, by the way. He came to Riverdale from bucking the state’s attorney’s office in Jackson. Nothing crooked. But sharp, awful sharp. That’s where he got the two strong-armed mugs working with the chauffeur. He’d got them off a racket charge. I didn’t find that out till this afternoon, Alex, and with Barnard sitting in our laps I couldn’t tell you.

“I’m going to have to double-back on some of these things. It sounds like I knew them all the time. I didn’t. I couldn’t figure out how Barnard and Gautier got together. Then Alex got to bringing in the Turnsby story, and we found out about Mike, and the way he was shut up, and about old Mattson and his son, and the way Norah hated him. I got to thinking about the elegance of her house, and the way she went around like the Queen of Sheba, and the only reason I could think of for her taking on that way was her feeling about her Addison ancestry. As it turns out, that’s about right. It must of been mighty hard on her not to let it out. She or Barnard put the touch on the old man, and he probably arranged it through Gautier. I don’t know where she broke Doc down. Maybe he was that way all the time and we just didn’t know it. Old lady Liston swears he’s a cruel man, and she’s got a feeling for that sort of thing. And the people up at Allendale are ready to take him to court. I won’t be surprised if it turns out he bungled that cow of theirs deliberately so’s to have an alibi. He’s done some good things. But so’d Dillinger. And I got the idea when he was blowing off at the council meeting, he was telling his own story. If you can’t win, to hell with it. Get what you can out of it.”

Waterman paused to take a sip of coffee.

“Eat your sandwich, Fred,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“I ain’t very hungry, Laura, but I sure expect to sleep tonight. That’s just about the background of the story. Alex can give you more details than there’s ways to Sunday. But the way I figure it, here’s what happened. Gautier knew he had two old men on the edge of their graves trying to fix up their lives before passing on. I don’t know when him and Barnard got together, but it don’t matter much. They figured to get George Addison over a barrel, and old Henry dying a few days after the codicil was signed made them as bold as traffic lights. Just three people knew about that codicil, besides themselves: two for sure, three maybe: Andy, Mabel and possibly the Addison chauffeur. He wasn’t hard to bring in when George fired him the minute his father died. He had no idea there was murder in it.

“They stalled as long as they could, waiting for Andy to die naturally, but he had a stubborn streak in him hell itself wouldn’t melt. Barnard probably got Mabel just to keep still about signing it. There wasn’t much harm in that until after Mattson died. She figured he died naturally. Barnard worked on her family pride like as not, and what they’d done to Mike. But poor Andy kept waiting for word from Gautier that he’d attached the codicil to the will, and he probably got told to hold his horses. The right time was just before probate. Anyway, Andy was cautious. He expected what was coming and prepared for it, but he couldn’t protect himself. Maybe Gautier and Barnard came together. It seems more like it that Gautier came first. Maybe he tried to persuade Andy to give him the copy. But he saw to it Barnard could get into the house. It must have been Barnard took what he thought was the real thing. Gautier would have known the difference. I think Doc was there a long time that night watching and waiting. It was awful late when he left for that slip of a moon to give enough light so’s the kid at the barbecue stand saw him.

“That’s about all. It must have hit Doc where he lived when Alex brought the cat back to him, and Gautier was probably there in the house right then. Maybe him or Norah took the other package. They must have known by then they didn’t get the real copy of the codicil. And one of them went back to Andy’s looking for it that night. From then on everything was covering up or trying to get the real thing. If nothing else did it, Doc gave himself away saying today he got a threatening call after you left that night, Alex. I was keeping tabs on Nat Watkins, and just by accident got Barnard’s calls too. The only one after ten was yours, about twelve-thirty.”

“What about the tramp?” Mr. Whiting asked.

“He pointed to Gautier,” Waterman said. “Gautier had the chauffeur pick him up when he got out of the county jail to help him make the job on Barnard’s place look professional. And it did. I’ll give him credit for that. But he didn’t know the tramp got twenty bucks from Alex and would come around for another touch when he sized up the connection. When they used him, I don’t think they counted on needing the boys from Jackson … the poor little devil, hiding all day in a haystack like that. Did you ever get a barley beard down your shirt?”

Waterman sighed wearily. “I guess I never should of been a policeman,” he added.

“If I could have one wish for the country,” Alex said, “I’d wish that every cop in it was like you, Chief. And I’d start with the sheriff’s office up in Riverdale.”

Waterman grinned. “That a fact?” he said.

About the Author

Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1949 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

978-1-4804-6047-8

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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