Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1964

To Skin a Cat by Elijah Ellis

It may be true, as the bard would have us believe, that “truth is the trial of itself”. But most human predicaments require a more practical solution.

The jury didn’t leave the box. They huddled around the foreman, whispering among themselves. It wouldn’t take them long to reach a verdict — since there was only one verdict they could possibly give.

I leaned back in my chair at the prosecution table, and looked up at the ancient ceiling fans that did little to cool off the sweltering, jampacked courtroom. I lowered my gaze, glanced briefly across the aisle at the defense table.

The defendant himself was putting on a show of complete indifference, but I noticed that he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. He was a pretty-boy, with masses of black curls and a girl’s full-lipped mouth. He was around twenty-five. He was also a murderer. I knew it. Everyone in the courtroom knew it. Jack Vendise had taken a shotgun away from old Bob Blaisedell and blown out the old man’s brains. Nice fellow, Jack Vendise.

I turned in my chair until I could look back over the rail that divided the courtroom. Every seat was taken. Farmers in overalls and hickory shirts sat with women in print dresses and sunbonnets. Just beyond the rail, in the first row of seats, sat Betty Blaisedell, the murdered man’s daughter.

Betty was sixteen. She had on a shapeless black dress and her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she was enjoying the whole thing. She sat between her mother, who was also in black, and her uncle, Roy Blaisedell.

My gaze lingered on Roy. He was a big, beefy, sunburned man. He looked awkward and sweaty in an ill-fitting suit. He never took his eyes away from the defendant. Roy had loved his older brother, Bob.

I just hoped Roy wouldn’t start anything here in court.

I looked on around the big, low-ceilinged room. Beyond the defense table, Sheriff Ed Carson sat with his back to the wall. Our eyes met, and Ed gave me a somber wink.

Then the foreman of the jury rose. “Yer honor, we’ve reached a verdict.”

Judge Chalmers rapped for order. “Very well, Mr. Foreman. Defendant, rise and face your jury. Mr. Foreman, what is your verdict?”

The foreman grimaced, bit his lips, and burst out, “Yer honor, we find this defendant — not guilty.”

And that was that. The only way it could be.

Judge Chalmers dismissed the jury, and the case. For a moment it was very quiet. Then the spectators began to leave amid a soft mumble of conversation. Roy Blaisedell came to the rail, his suntanned face split in a humorless grin. He said quietly, “I’ll be seeing you, Vendise. Count on it.”

Jack Vendise jumped up. “Drop dead, rube,” he said, and started laughing. He shook his head wonderingly. “I beat it.”

Blaisedell turned away and followed the crowd out of the courtroom. Vendise yelled, “I beat it, man. I beat it!”

The big, grizzled, rawboned sheriff of Pokochobee County stalked over to join me. “Glad Roy didn’t start any trouble,” Ed Carson said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

I stepped across the aisle to congratulate the defense attorney, old P. J. Kimmons. He didn’t look at all happy. He had taken the case because the court had appointed him to it. That didn’t make him like it. Now he was putting papers into his briefcase, pointedly ignoring his erstwhile client.

We shook hands. P. J. smiled wryly.

Then Vendise shoved between us. “What you doing, shaking hands with this guy?” he demanded. He turned on me. “Tried to send me to the chair, you did. But you didn’t make it, did you, Mr. County Attorney Gates?”

I stepped back. I had a strong urge to belt him one.

“Shut your filthy mouth,” P. J. broke in, glaring at Vendise.

Before Vendise could reply, the old lawyer had grabbed up his briefcase and was on his way out of the courtroom.

“Get him,” Vendise said. “Geez. What a bunch of rubes.”

Ed Carson said, “Come along, son. Come along with me now.”

“Huh? Where to? For what?”

“Over to the jail. You want to get your things, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Let’s go. Quicker I’m away from this lousy burg, the better I’ll like it.”

I said, “The feeling’s mutual, believe me.”

Vendise swaggered out. At the door he turned and called back to me, “Better luck next time, Gates.”

Then he left, followed by the sheriff.

I was alone in the muggy, hot courtroom, I lit a cigarette and went over to the windows. I looked down on the parched lawn that surrounded the ancient courthouse. I could hear a few birds singing dispiritedly among the trees on the lawn, all withering in the summer afternoon heat.

I thought about the case just concluded, wondered if there’d been anything I could have done that I didn’t do. But I knew there wasn’t. Knowing a man has committed murder, and proving it to the satisfaction of the law are two different things. I’d found that out, along with a lot of other unpleasant facts of life, during the four years I’d been Pokochobee County Attorney.

Take this case. Jack Vendise had drifted into town about a month ago, one of a traveling group of salesmen. This particular bunch had stayed in Monroe only two days.

On the first evening, Jack Vendise had wandered into a drugstore in downtown Monroe. There he’d seen a flock of local high-school girls — among them, Betty Blaisedell. She had responded with giggles and fluttering eyelashes to Vendise’s overtures. It wasn’t every day that she got to meet a boy from a city far away from Pokochobee County.

But Betty was only interested in flirting in front of an audience. When she left the drugstore for home, she wasn’t at all interested in Vendise following her, which he did. Then he hung around on the sidewalk in front of the house, until finally Bob Blaisedell had come out and told him to get away from there.

Vendise did, but not for long. He went to the nearest bar and had a couple of shots. Then he returned to the Blaisedell place.

Like most people in Monroe, the Blaisedell’s didn’t pull their window shades until bedtime. So it was no problem for Vendise to discover which room was Betty’s.

At eleven o’clock Betty went to bed. An hour or so later she woke up to find a man standing beside her bed. She screamed, and kept on screaming. The man rushed across the room and out the open window.

Later, we found footprints in the flower bed under Betty’s window. They Were worthless for identification, but they did help to establish what had happened. The intruder had stood around there until Betty turned her light off and went to sleep. Then he had used a pocket knife or something similar to slit the window-screen, reach in and turn back the hook.

He pulled back the screen and slid inside. Betty awoke, saw him, and started yelling. As he hurried back out of the window, she saw him for a brief second silhouetted against the moonlight.

But she couldn’t swear that it was Jack Vendise.

By that time old Bob Blaisedell was up and ran into Betty’s room, his shotgun in his hands. Betty stammered out what she’d seen. Bob rushed out, leaving Betty with her mother. What happened then, only Jack Vendise could have told us for sure, though it wasn’t hard to guess.

Moments later the two women heard a shot from the alley behind the house. They waited awhile, but when Bob didn’t return, they stole out of the house to the alley. There they found Bob Blaisedell with the top of his head blown off. Beside the body lay the shotgun.

Within the hour, the night deputy had picked up Vendise in a downtown bar. Vendise had no alibi, but he needed none. He simply denied any knowledge whatsoever of the killing. Nothing could shake him.

Ed Carson threw him in jail, and I indicted him for second degree murder. Without a confession it was pointless, and Ed and I both knew it.

There was just no physical evidence. No fingerprints, no nothing. The girl’s testimony was worthless. She was so obviously concerned with getting her picture in the papers as a femme fatale that the first appeal court would have reversed any decision made on her evidence. This being true, it was better that Jack Vendise be acquitted here, in Monroe, where the crime had taken place.

He’d spent his month in jail waiting for the trial and, as he kept yelling, he’d beaten the rap.

I sighed, stubbed out my cigarette on the window-sill and flicked the stub away. I wanted to see Vendise just once more.

Leaving the courtroom, I went down the two flights of marble stairs and along the corridor to the back door. The red-brick jail was separated from the courthouse by a parking lot. By the time I got to the jail, my shirt was plastered fast to my back with perspiration.

I found Carson, a deputy, and Vendise in the jail office. Vendise was signing a release form as I entered. He glanced up, laughed, “Here comes Mr. County Attorney.”

“I’d like a word with you, Jack,” I said.

Carson and his deputy left the office, Ed saying, “I figure it’s about time for a coke break.”

I looked at Vendise. “You know you can never be tried again for killing old man Blaisedell?”

He shrugged, grinning widely with his toothpaste smile. “You tell ’em, man. This cat has beat the rap.”

“Uh huh. But just for my own satisfaction — and no witnesses to bug you — did it happen about the way I said in court?”

Vendise hesitated. “Yeah, more or less. This old jerk, he came running out in the alley, see, with his shotgun. Well, what am I supposed to do? I pretended to go along with him, see. He kind of lowered the gun, and I jumped him. I got the gun away from him, and I...”

His voice trailed off into silence. He glanced uneasily around the office.

“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “You can’t be tried twice for the same crime.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I don’t like this place. Anyplace else — New York, or Boston, or any civilized place — there’d be reporters and photographers around, and there’d be a crowd of people to cheer for me. But this place is way out, you know? Like creepy.”

“Uh huh. But then nobody asked you to come down here, did they?” I clamped my lips together on the temper rising inside me. “Let’s get this over with,” I added.

I went to the door and let out a call. Ed Carson came back, nursing a coke. I nodded to Ed. He plodded into the office and said, “Well, now. Jack, you got all your belongings there? Your billfold and all?”

Vendise said, “Well, my good buddies took off the morning after you rubes hauled me in on this bum rap. When they left town, they took my bag with them, so all the belongings I got is what I’m standing here in. This is it.”

Carson shook his head sadly. “Too bad. Anyway, you do have your billfold and watch and so on... How about money? Accordin’ to my list, you came in with five dollars.”

“Ah, I spent that a’ready. A pig couldn’t eat the stuff you serve here. I sent out for food once in awhile.”

I pretended to prick up my ears. “What’s that? You don’t have any money?”

“Not a dime,” Vendise said. He shrugged. “Who cares?”

“Pokochobee County cares,” I said sternly. I turned to the sheriff. “Here’s a man with no baggage, no residential address in Monroe, and no money.”

Carson nodded. “Yar. Afraid we’ll have to charge you with vagrancy, son. No visible means of support...”

“What’re you trying to give me?” Vendise yelled. His girlish face contorted with anger. “You lousy rubes!”

With a good deal of satisfaction I said, “What we’re going to give you is thirty days in jail. Or... you can work it out on the county farm. Fifteen days there, and you get a dollar a day plus your meals. What’s it going to be?”

You could almost see the wheels turning in Vendise’s sleek head. Work farm, poor security, many chances for a smart man to escape, whenever he felt like it...

“I tell you what it’s going to be, Gates. Once I get back to civilization, I’m going to blow your stinking county off the map. You know? This whole lousy state! Just you wait, cat. Just you wait.” Ed Carson pursued his lips. “Well, you just do that. But for now, how about Mr. Gates’ question? You want to lay out your time in jail, or work it out on the farm?”

“Ah, I’ll go to your stinking farm. What a bunch of yokels!” Carson and I exchanged a glance. Then Ed told his deputy to put Vendise in a cell, and to wait for the manager of the county farm to arrive for his prisoner in a couple of hours.

When the men had left the office, Vendise cursing at the top of his voice, the sheriff said, “I’ll have the farm boss come in for that ‘cat’ about supper-time... Funny, ain’t it? the way these old corny sayings have a way of comin’ true, time and again. Like the one that goes, ‘There’s more ways than one to skin a cat.’ ”

“Mmmm,” I agreed. I grimaced. “I wonder how long that particular cat will last? Out there on the farm, in this heat, fourteen hours a day of hard work...”

“Yeah. And Roy Blaisedell the farm boss.”

“Bet you coffee money Vendise don’t last a week, before he tries to take off, and Roy — well.”

“Roy blows his head off — just like Vendise done to Roy’s brother,” Carson finished. “I tell you, I don’t think it’ll be more’n two days.”

“It’s a bet,” I said.

I lost.