be home until the eight o’clock train, but she was going to put off dinner that long and have steak and butterscotch pie and just about everything he liked.
At five o’clock, the front doorbell took her out of the kitchen with flour on her hands. Dr. John Palet, the veterinarian from next door, was on the porch. Both of the doctor’s hands were occupied with a large sheet of newspaper that looked on the point of bursting beneath the weight of half a dozen or so plants and the dirt that came with their roots.
“Heliotrope,” Dr. Palet said without preamble.
He was a meek little man with a bald head and watery blue eyes. Knowing his wife as she did, Julie felt sorry for him. His passion for flowers and particularly heliotrope was the source of much gentle amused comment among the townspeople.
“For me?” Julie clapped her hands.
“Uh huh.” Dr. Palet gave her an oddly penetrating glance that surprised and bewildered Julie. “Mrs. Palet doesn’t care for heliotrope. Can’t just let them die, can I?”
“Of course not,” Julie said. “And thanks so much.”
She put her hands out for the plants, wondering just what she would do with them now that she had them. Cooking she had learned. but gardening—after spending most of her life in an apartment—was something of a mystery.
Dr. Palet, however, wouldn’t hand her the plants.
“They ought to go in right away. I see you’re busy, so I’ll plant ’em for you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t trouble you.”
“No trouble at all. Like to grub in the earth, just put them here and there along the front, huh?” Dr. Palet nodded his bead to indicate where he wished to plant. “They’ll look nice in front of the shrubbery.”
She thanked him again. Dr. Palet backed from the door, bowing, his eyes clinging strangely to hers.
“It’s a perennial,” he said in a flustered manner.
“How nice!” Julie said.
She hoped that was the right answer. She went back to the kitchen and whistled while she worked. She was well acquainted with that adage about whistling girls and crowing hens, but she didn’t think there was anything to it.
* * * *
An hour or more rolled by before the telegraph company phoned her a message from Harvey:
WILL NOT BE BACK UNTIL END OF WEEK. HAVE FINE OPPORTUNITY FOR GOVERNMENT POSITION.
LOVE, HARVEY.
Julie sank down in the kitchen stool. There was just enough good news in the brief message to buoy up sinking disappointment. It was unfortunate that Harvey couldn’t have let her know earlier. The steak would keep in the freezer compartment, but there was the pie and all those rolls.
She would take most of the rolls and the biggest part of the pie over to Dr. and Mrs. Palet, she decided.
* * * *
Mrs. Palet, large and too obviously permanented, stood on her back steps and peeked under the napkin at Julie’s rolls.
“My, these look real nice,” she said.
Dr. Palet took the pie from Julie’s hands, and smiled at his wife.
“Harvey is a very lucky man, don’t you thing so, my dear?”
“Why, yes,” she answered. “We all know that Julie is a model wife.”
She got in a side glance at Dr. Palet that had a point and two edges on it. Then she smiled at Julie and asked when Harvey would be back. Harvey, Julie told them, would be away until the weekend.
“For goodness sake, what do you do with your time, Julie?” And Mrs. Palet added with malice, “Especially at night. I’d think you’d go crazy with loneliness.”
Julie said that she got along very well and always found small tasks about the house to occupy her attention. She was glad when she finally broke away from the Palets and hurried back to her own kitchen.
* * * *
She slept quite soundly that night and the next. It was on Thursday that the thing happened that really exiled sleep. It was something that had really occurred on Monday, but Thursday’s evening paper told about it in staring headlines:
CHARLES H. PEDLOW FOUND DEAD IN HOME
Julie scowled at that for a moment until she realized that Charles H. Pedlow was Harvey’s Uncle Charley. Then her startled eyes quickly scanned the story, picking out significant details of the report.
The police suspected foul play.… Someone had tinkered with the lock of Mr. Pedlow’s front door.… A bruise on the side of Mr. Pedlow’s head where his assailant had struck him.… Mr. Pedlow had fallen near the front door and a doorstep had penetrated the frontal part of his skull, resulting in his death.… Coroner Michel placed the time of death at sometime Monday night.…
Julie looked away from the paper, her lips parted. Something that was pretty close to a scream ached in her throat. No, it couldn’t be! She hadn’t killed Uncle Charley!
Her frantic eyes returned to the paper. That bruise on the side of Uncle Charley’s head. Why, it was from her purse, of course. But it—it wasn’t murder. Uncle Charley had fallen, but she couldn’t remember seeing a doorstep that he might have fallen against. However, if the doorstep had actually entered Uncle Charley’s forehead, wouldn’t she have seen it?
She hadn’t moved him, hadn’t turned him over. She had simply felt for a pulse in that pressure point on Uncle Charley’s neck, just as her first aid course had instructed her to do. She had taken off her glove—
That was another thing which filled her with sudden terror, left her muscles weak and trembling. She had left the house with one glove off and one on. To save her life, she couldn’t think whether she had handled the doorknob with her gloved hand or bare hand.
Fingerprints! They could trap her, seal her doom as a murderess! Again she consulted the newspaper for any mention of fingerprints, for any incriminating evidence.
Mr. Pedlow was well known as a lover of animals, cats in particular.… He is survived by a nephew, Harvey E. Enders, of this city.
No, nothing about prints. Not that it mattered. The police, suspecting murder, would come here first of all. Harvey was Uncle Charley’s only relative and probably his only heir. And the whole town knew about Harvey needing money.
Immediately she was wishing Harvey was here to tell her what to do. She hadn’t actually murdered Uncle Charley. She had struck in self defense. Julie dropped the paper and pressed both hands to her pounding head.
She’d have to control herself. She’d have to keep everything a secret. No one had seen what had happened except the seven cats. Cats didn’t talk. They stared at you, but they didn’t talk. No one had seen her go to Uncle Charley’s house—
Wait! What about that shadowy figure she had seen standing beside the door?
