Judas Cat (32 page)

“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.

I
T 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.

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.