Judas Cat (29 page)

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.”

O
UTSIDE 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.

T
HERE 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.