Murder — His and Hers

Cat’s-eye Witness

Pierce Hartwell removed the pillow from his wife’s face, relieved to see her expression was not one of agony, but peace. She had not suffered. She had, as Pierce expected her death certificate would verify, passed away in her sleep.

The lanky, darkly handsome, pencil-mustached Pierce, wearing the wine-color silk robe he’d received from Esther on their tenth anniversary not long ago, took one step back, pillow still held delicately in two hands as if he had brought it to his wife’s bedside to present her with comfort, not oblivion. He stood poised there, as if waiting for Esther to wake up, knowing — hoping — she would not. The once beautiful, now withered features of the eighty-year-old woman had a calm cast, the simple white nightgown almost suggesting a hospital garment.

“Goodbye, darling,” he whispered to the dead woman, feeling something almost like sadness. He was breathing hard, as hard as when of late he’d made love to the woman, an act that had increasingly taken his full effort and intense concentration.

When he had married Esther Balmfry ten years ago, she had been an attractive matron, slender and elegant on the cruise-ship dance floor. Pierce, at that time forty-five and wearying of his gigolo existence, had considered Esther a prime candidate for settling down. Prior to this, he had flitted from one fading flower to another, providing love in return for financial favors; but he had never married. Never considered it.

But — on that cruise ship a decade ago — Pierce had noticed several others of his ilk plucking the faded flowers from his field, men younger, newer at the game, fresher. Pierce had begun dyeing his hair, and wearing a stomach-flattening brace (he could never, even mentally, bring himself to say “girdle”) and had sensed that perhaps it was time to settle down. Pick one rich old girl who he could put up with for a few years before that “tragic” day when his beloved went where all rich old widows eventually go.

And Esther was childless, had no close relatives — except for Pierce, of course. Her loving husband.

These ten years with Esther had been increasingly difficult. The remnants of her beauty waned, though her health remained steadfastly sound. Her last physical — a few weeks ago — had elicited a virtual rave review from her doctor, who said she had the body of a woman twenty years younger.

That was easy for the doctor to say: the doctor hadn’t had to sleep with her.

“My mother lived to see one hundred,” Esther had announced over muffins and tea last week in the breakfast nook, her creped neck waving good morning to him. “And father lived to be ninety-eight.”

“Really,” Pierce had said, spreading strawberry jam on his muffin.

“Looks like you’re going to be stuck with me for a while, darling,” she’d said, patting his hand.

He’d always been given a generous allowance, but Pierce knew that Esther’s fortune was a considerable one, and the life he could lead with access to that kind of cash would go a long way toward making up for the indignities of the last ten years. At fifty-five, he had living left to do. If he waited around for Esther to pass away of natural causes, he’d be a geezer, himself.

Or, if her health did finally go, but gradually, that fortune could be decimated by medical bills.

Pierce didn’t dislike Esther, though he certainly didn’t love her. He didn’t feel much of anything for her, really: she was just a means to an end. And now her end could be his means to a new, unencumbered life.

And then there was that goddamned cat: that had been another factor, another catalyst to spark this unpleasant but necessary deed.

Clarence, the mangy brown beast, named for her late husband, had turned up at the door last year and Esther had welcomed it in, grooming it, taking it to the vet to be “fixed,” lavishing attention upon the thing as if were a child. Pierce and the cat kept their distance — once the cat learned that Pierce would kick it or toss something its way, any time its mistress wasn’t about — but just the presence of the animal meant distress to Pierce, who was after all allergic to cats.

His first act, as the master of the house, the sole human inhabitant of the near mansion (they had no live-in household staff), would be to toss that animal back out into the winter night, into the cold world from which it had emerged.

Just thinking about the beast — as Pierce stood at the bedside, taking his wife’s pulse, making sure she was in fact deceased — made his eyes burn, his nose twitch.

No... that was no psychosomatic response: that wretched animal was somewhere nearby!

Pierce turned sharply and there it was: sitting like some Egyptian statue of a feline, the blue-eyed brown beast stared at him, eyes in unblinking accusation.

“Did you witness it, then?” Pierce said to the animal. “Did you see what I did to your mistress?”

It cocked its head at him.

Sniffling, Pierce said, “I liked her... Imagine what I’ll do to you.”

And he hurled the pillow at the creature.

But Clarence leapt nimbly from harm’s way, onto the plush carpet, padding silently but quickly out of the bedroom, a blur of brown.

Pierce ran after the animal, chasing it down the curving stairs, past paintings by American masters, into a vast dark living room where the cat’s tiny claws had damaged precious Duncan Phyfe antiques. The thing scampered behind a davenport and Pierce threw on the lights, pulled out the heavy piece of furniture... but the cat was gone.

For hours he stalked the house, with a rolled-up newspaper in hand, looking behind furniture, searching this nook and that cranny of the expansive, six-bedroom spread, checking in closets and in the basement and the most absurdly unlikely of places... even under the bed where his late wife slept her dreamless sleep.

No sign of Clarence.

By dawn Pierce had given up the chase, figuring the cat had found some way out of the house. Exhausted, he sat in the breakfast nook with a cup of coffee and drinking the bitter brew, wondering if it was too early to phone 911 about the unsettling discovery of his deceased wife next to him in bed. He raised the cup to his lips and the cat jumped up onto the table and stared at him with its deep blue unblinking accusatory eyes.

I saw what you did, the cat seemed to say.

Spilling his coffee, Pierce reached for its throat, but the beast deftly, mockingly, dove to the floor and scampered across the well-waxed tiles and into the living room.

Racing after it, Pierce spent another hour searching high and low, before he finally gave up — and realized the house was in a terrible disarray from his search. It took better than an hour to straighten the furniture, smooth various throw rugs and otherwise make the place look as normal as possible.

At eight o’clock Pierce called 911, working up considerable alarm as he said, “Come quickly! I can’t rouse my wife! She won’t wake up!”

The paramedics came, and Pierce — not even taking time to dress — accompanied them in the ambulance, but Esther was of course D.O.A. at the emergency room. Rigor mortis had begun to sink in. He put on his best distraught act, working up some tears, moaning to the attending physician about his inadequacy as a husband.

“If only I’d been awake!” Pierce said. “To think I was asleep beside her, even as she lay dying!”

This melodrama seemed to convince the doctor, who calmed Pierce, saying, “There’s no need to blame yourself for this, Mr. Hartwell. There’s every indication that your wife slipped away peacefully in her sleep.”

“I... I guess I’ll have to find solace in that, won’t I?”

By eleven a.m., Pierce was back home, driven there by one of the ambulance attendants. He was whistling as he went up the curving stairway, almost racing to the bedroom where he had murdered his wife. He went to the closet to select appropriately somber apparel for the day — there were arrangements to make, starting with the funeral home — and when he reached for his charcoal suit coat, the cat leapt from the shelf above, as if jumping right at him.

But it wasn’t: Clarence scampered up onto the bed and resumed its Egyptian-style posture and again affixed its blankly reproachful blue-eyed gaze at him. Pierce moved slowly toward the animal, which twitched its nose; as if at this bidding, Pierce’s own nose twitched, and began to run, his eyes starting to burn. He leapt at the cat with clawed hands, but the animal adroitly avoided its master’s grasp and again fled the bedroom.

This time Pierce did not follow. He sat on the edge of the bed, at its foot, and caught his breath. Slowly the symptoms of his allergy eased, and he rose and finished dressing.

The cat’s next appearance came when Pierce was seated in his study, at the desk, calling the Ferndale Funeral Home. He was halfway through the conversation with the undertaker when the cat nimbly jumped up onto the desk, just out of his reach, and stared at him as he completed his phone conversation. Gradually the allergy symptoms returned, his eyes watering, burning, puffing up.

The undertaker, hearing Pierce’s sniffling, said, “I know this must be a difficult time for you, Mr. Hartwell.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ballard. It has been difficult.”

And as Pierce hung up the phone, the cat sprang from the desk and scurried out of the room.

Pierce didn’t bother following it.

The police came that afternoon, two of them, plainclothes detectives, a craggy thickset lieutenant named March with eyebrows as wild as cat’s whiskers, and a younger detective named Anderson, ruggedly handsome but also quietly sullen.

Pierce knew Lt. March, a bit, as the onetime Chicago homicide cop had married a wealthy widow several years before, the couple a staple of country club dances, where the detective was viewed as a “character” among the city’s captains of industry and inheritors of wealth.

They sat in the study, with Pierce behind the desk, the two men across from him, as if this were a business appointment. Pierce hadn’t offered to take their topcoats and neither men took them off, as they sat and talked — a good sign. This wouldn’t take long.

“Pierce,” Lt. March said, with a familiarity that wasn’t quite earned, and with a thickness of speech that reflected a stroke the detective had suffered a year before, “I hope you know that you have our deepest sympathy.”

By “our,” Pierce wasn’t sure whether March was referring to Mrs. March or his fellow detective, the younger man whose unblinking gaze seemed to contain at least a hint of suspicion.

“I appreciate that... Bill.”

March smiled; one side of his face seemed mildly affected from that stroke, and his speech had a measured manner, as if every single word had to be cooked in his mind before he served it up. “There is the formality of a statement. We can do that here, if you’d like. Save you a trip to the Public Safety Building.”

“Certainly.”

Anderson withdrew a small tape recorder from his topcoat pocket, clicked it on and set it, upright, on the edge of the desk. The recorder emitted a faint whirring.

“When did you discover that Esther had passed away?” March asked.

“When I woke up,” Pierce said, and his nose began to twitch.

“What time was that, would you say?”

“Well, just minutes, probably moments, before I called 911. I didn’t look at the clock.” His eyes were running now; that cat — that cat was somewhere in this room! “Don’t you record those calls?”

“Yes.”

“So you can verify the time, that way.”

“Yes we can.”

Pierce felt a rustling at his feet; glancing down, he saw the damned thing, sitting under the desk, at his feet, staring up at him with those spooky unblinking blue eyes.

Sniffling, he reached for a tissue from a box on the desktop. Blew his nose, dried his eyes, and said, “Sorry, gentlemen.”

“We know this is difficult for you,” March said.

“Terribly difficult,” Pierce said, and withdrew another tissue.

The statement was brief — what was there to tell? — but once the tape recorder had been clicked off, Anderson said, “We’d like you to authorize an autopsy, Mr. Hartwell.”

“Why is that necessary?”

“I think you know.”

There was something nasty about Anderson’s tone, and Pierce said, huffily, “What are you implying, sir?”

March frowned at his partner, then, smiling at Pierce, sat forward. “Pierce, I’d like to be candid, if I might.”

“Certainly.”

“When a wealthy elderly woman — who has recently married a relatively younger man — dies under circumstances that are even remotely questionable, it’s incumbent upon the police to investigate.”

What did he mean, “relatively younger?”

“An autopsy,” March continued, “should establish your wife’s death by natural causes, and we can all go on with our lives.”

“Bill,” Pierce said, invoking the lieutenant’s first name, “considering the fact that many people in our fair community have accused you of marrying for money, you’re hardly anyone toБ”

“Mrs. March isn’t dead,” Anderson interrupted.

“Gentlemen,” March said, holding out two palms. “Please. This is an unfortunate situation... a tragic situation. Let’s not get into name-calling or personalities.”

Eyes burning, Pierce said, “Of course I’ll authorize an autopsy, distasteful though a debasement of my dear late wife’s remains are to me. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

When Pierce had seen the detectives out, he returned to his study, hoping the cat would still be in the well of the desk. Pierce’s intention was to trap the cat, perhaps cage it up in a wastebasket and hurl the creature into the cold late afternoon air, where it could either fend for itself or freeze itself to death — preferably the latter.

But there was no sign of the cat. He looked everywhere, irritated but relatively calm, not allowing himself the indignity of turning the house topsy-turvy again, which would only require him to set it aright. Clearly the cat had finally sensed the obvious: that Pierce meant Clarence harm.

Sooner or later it would come out, to its water and food dishes.

So Pierce set out fresh water and food for the animal — the cat food liberally laced with rat poison — and, whistling, dressed for dinner.

Since they had no cook (Esther had enjoyed preparing breakfasts and lunches herself), the couple’s habit was to dine out. In a town the size of Ferndale, only a handful of suitable restaurants presented themselves — the country club and the hotel, chiefly. Pierce chose the latter, not wanting to chance running into March and his wife at the former.

He was famished and hoped the staff at the hotel restaurant — who went out of their way to express their sympathy, to stop by and comment about how much they would miss the sweet, kind Esther — did not consider him callous, to eat so heavily and drink so heartily. He hoped they would consider him to be drowning his sorrows, as opposed to what he was really doing, which was celebrating.

At home, mildly tipsy and extremely drowsy, his stomach warm and full, Pierce lumbered up the curving stairs. When he found himself in the bedroom — the bedroom he and Esther had shared — a chill passed through the room, and him. Winter wind rattled frost-decorated windows. Telling himself he wanted to get away from the draft, he stumbled down the hall into one of the guest bedrooms.

Clothed in the Armani suit he’d worn to dinner, taking time only to step out of his Italian loafers, he flopped onto the bed, on his back. Had his conscience sent him into this bedroom? Did he feel guilty about what he’d done to Esther? These thoughts were worthy only of his laughter, with which he filled the room, laughing until his tiredness took over and sent him almost immediately into a deep sleep.

He awoke, not with a start, but gradually, groggily, with the growing sensation of pressure on his chest. He reached for the nightstand lamp, clicked it on, and stared into the blue unblinking eyes of the brown animal sitting on top of him.

Staring at him.

Staring into him.

The accusatory stare of the witness to the murder he’d committed...

Screaming, Pierce sat up, flinging the cat off him. The beast rolled and came up running, scurrying out, claws clicking on the varnished wood of the hallway.

And Pierce was after the animal, chasing it down the winding stairs, darkness relieved only by moonlight filtering in through frosted windows. This time there would be no frantic search of the house. This time he would prevail.

As the cat headed into the living room, Pierce dove, and in a careening tackle that took over an end table and sent a lamp clattering, crashing, to the floor, Pierce scooped the animal in his arms and held it tight. Clarence fought, but its claws were facing outward as Pierce hugged it around the belly.

The nearest door was the front one, and, lugging the squirming beast, Pierce made his way there, holding tight around the cat’s belly with one arm and with the other reaching to open the door, swinging it open, flinging the beast into the deadly cold night.

Slamming the door behind it.

No sounds came from beyond the closed door: that cat didn’t want back inside, no matter how cold it was. For the longest time, Pierce sat on the floor with his back to the door, folding his arms tight, laughing, laughing, laughing, until tears were rolling down his cheeks, never aware exactly when the glee gave way to weeping.

At some point he found his way back to the bedroom, where, exhausted, he quickly fell to sleep. He had nightmares but on waking didn’t remember them — they just clung to his mind the way the taste of sleep coated his mouth. But he was able to brush his teeth and deal with the latter; the taste of the unremembered dreams stuck with him.

Nonetheless, the morning passed uneventfully, without any particular stress. Noting that the poisoned cat food had not been touched, he emptied the bowl into the sink and down the garbage disposal. He washed his hands thoroughly before preparing himself an English muffin and coffee. He showered, shaved, and was feeling fairly refreshed, wearing the same silk robe he’d killed his wife in, when the phone rang.

“Could you come down here, to the Public Safety Building?” Lt. March asked.

“Am I needed?”

“We have the results of your wife’s autopsy, and we’d like to discuss them with you... if it’s not inconvenient.”

At one o’clock, wearing a Pierre Cardin sports jacket and no tie, Pierce Hartwell walked to March’s office on the first floor of the modern Ferndale Public Safety Building. The door to the modest office was open and March was seated behind his desk, with Anderson in a chair by a cement block wall.

And on top of the desk, seated off to the left like an oversize paperweight, was the cat.

Clarence.

Sitting and staring with its terrible blue eyes — right at Pierce.

“Have a seat,” March said.

Swallowing, Pierce pulled a chair up, opposite March and as far away as possible from the brown beast. The goddamn thing looked none the worse for wear: no sign that it had spent a terrible frostbitten night, perfectly groomed, even purring, as it stared accusingly at Pierce.

March said, “Mr. Hartwell, there is a disturbing aspect that’s turned up, in the autopsy.”

“What... what are you talking about?”

The cat seemed to stare right through him. The cat. The witness. Could they somehow know this cat had witnessed the murder? The goddamn thing couldn’t have told them. He was a cat!

March was saying, “Your wife’s eyes...”

The cat’s eyes...

“...had severe hemorrhaging.”

Pierce began sniffling. “Uh... uh, what do you mean?”

Anderson, sitting back, arms folded, said, “Clotting. The whites of your wife’s eyes were so clotted with burst vessels they were damn near completely red.”

From the nearby desktop, Clarence, the cat, stared at Pierce, whose eyes had begun to burn. I saw what you did, he seemed to say.

“A person suffering suffocation tries so hard to breathe,” March said, “the blood vessels burst, in the eyes.”

Eyes.

Cat’s eyes...

His own eyes, burning, burning...

“We’ve been doing a background search on you, Mr. Hartwell,” Anderson said. “You met your wife on a cruise ship, isn’t that correct?”

“How could you know?” Pierce blurted.

“Very simple,” Anderson said.

Pierce lurched forward in his chair. “You found it outside in the cold, didn’t you? What did you do, go into my house and find that poisoned food? Did you have a warrant? Perhaps I should call my attorney.”

The two detectives glanced at each other; but the cat was looking right at Pierce — and the animal seemed to shake its head, no...

“He couldn’t have told you anything,” Pierce said, and laughed as he nodded toward Clarence. “A goddamn cat can’t talk.”

Anderson started to say something, but March waved a hand and the younger detective fell mute.

“Go on, Mr. Hartwell,” March said.

“You’re very clever, lieutenant. How did you do it? How could you know that that cat witnessed what I did?”

“What did you do, Mr. Hartwell?”

“You know damn good and well.” Water was running from his eyes — not tears, just that burning goddamn allergy kicking in. “You just said so yourself. I smothered her — with a pillow. But she didn’t suffer. I would never have done that. Never.”

Nodding slowly, March got on the phone and called for a uniformed cop. Pierce just sat there, avoiding the gaze of the purring cat on the detective’s desk. The damn thing seemed to be smiling, a Cheshire cat, now.

“If you’ll go with this gentleman,” March said, standing, gesturing past the animal to the police officer who was now standing in the doorway, “he’ll escort you to a room where you can make your full statement. We’ll be with you momentarily.”

Pierce could only nod. He needed help to get to his feet and the police officer gave it to him.

“How did you know?” Pierce asked from the doorway, eyes watering, nose running. “How in God’s name could you know about the cat?”

The two detectives said nothing.

Then Pierce was gone, and Anderson said, “That’s one for the books. We could never have made our case on those clotted eyes alone. His gigolo background woulda helped, but...”

“Maybe he had a conscience.”

“That guy?” Anderson snorted and waved at the air. “No way in hell.”

Shrugging, March got on the phone and arranged for a technician to meet them at the interrogation room.

Then, hanging up, March shook his head and asked Anderson, “What do you suppose he was going on about?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know — that business about a cat?”

The two men widened their eyes, shrugged at each other and left the empty office, to take the confession.