Judas Cat Read Free Page A

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
    I N 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