Judas Cat by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

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
    W ATERMAN 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