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THE FAT CAT
A Father Dowling Mystery
by Ralph McInerny
1
Father Dowling thought, as he often had before, how nice it would be if
he could identify the flowers and trees and birds that made the walk from the church to
the rectory so pleasant on a summer day.
“All you need is a book,” Marie Murkin said. “Match the picture with a bush or bird, and that’s all there is to it.”
“That sounds easy enough.”
“But what’s the point of it? Would the birds sound better or the flowers smell sweeter just because you know their names?”
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?”
“I hate roses.” Marie looked over her shoulder as if this heresy might be overheard by old Saunders who spent the day puttering around the flower beds, leaving the mowing to Gerry Hospers. Not that Marie thought a lot of Saunders. She did not approve of Father Dowling’s hiring an ex-convict to work on the parish grounds. But he had come with the highest recommendation from Father Klima, the prison chaplain. “He grew orchids in coffee cans, Roger.”
“He has a green thumb?”
“In several senses.” Saunders spent years in Joliet because as a bank teller he had thumbed too many dollars into his own pocket.
Father Dowling did talk to Saunders, and found him a fount of information on flora and fauna. “What’s that plant, Bob?”
“Ah, that’s an old friend. I’ve had him for years.”
“When you were in Joliet?”
Saunders nodded. His expression suggested that Father Dowling had mentioned some far off place he hardly remembered.
“It looks almost edible.”
Saunders looked sharply at the pastor. “I wouldn’t advise that.”
“I realize it isn’t a vegetable.”
“Oh, there are lots of flowers and plants you can eat. A pretty good salad could be made up of the things in this bed.”
“But not your old friend?”
Bob Saunders moved on to another bed and Father Dowling followed along. How satisfying work with living things must be when you had such skill.
“Bob says you could make a salad of the flowers out there.”
Marie took umbrage at this. “I won’t tell him how to
garden if he doesn’t tell me how to cook.”
2
Father Dowling made a monthly day of recollection, preferring a
religious house in which to do so. Dominicans, Jesuits, even the Franciscans, though he
found it best not to tell Marie this. There was an enmity between her and the Franciscans
that antedated Father Dowling’s assignment to St. Hilary’s parish in Fox River,
Illinois. On the day he went to the former Franciscan house of studies where a few ancient
priests lived, he was surprised and delighted to find that Klima was also there.
“How’s Saunders doing?”
“He’s exactly what I needed.”
“How long you here for?”
“Through the afternoon.”
“Care to have dinner?”
“Why don’t we go to my rectory? You’ll never have better cooking than Marie Murkin’s.”
That arranged, the two priests settled down to a day of meditation and devotions. The state of the grounds was a distraction – lawn in need of mowing, weeds and flowers fighting for primacy in the flowerbeds, hedges grown shapeless. Strange that Klima hadn’t sent Saunders here to the house of the order to which he belonged. But Father Dowling drove out such thoughts and turned to the Imitation of Christ.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hire Klima to take care of your house of studies,” he said when they were on their way to the St. Hilary’s rectory in Father Dowling’s car. He had phoned Marie to tell her there would be a guest and she had responded with enthusiasm. She regarded the pastor as anorexic and the prospect of a priest with an appetite cheered her. Father Dowling saw no reason to tell Marie that Father Klima was a Franciscan.
“We couldn’t afford him, Roger. Besides, we’re thinking of selling the place.”
“No!”
“A few more deaths, and there won’t be any excuse for keeping it.”
They observed a minute of silence. Many good things were happening in the Church again, but priests their age had seen the withering away of once mighty orders and institutions. For decades properties once devoted to the housing of nuns or seminarians had gone on the block and places that were the repositories of youthful dreams fell into alien hands. Now new seminaries were being built and the number of seminarians slowly rising, at least in some locales.
“The penitentiary reminds me of the old days.”
From any one else than Klima this would have been a damning criticism of the past. But all he meant was the regularity, the schedule, the absence of worldly concerns.
After Father Dowling parked the car and he and Klima approached the rectory, the aroma of dinner came to meet them. “Is that goulash?”
Goulash it was, as succulent as it can be. There was a green salad as well as fruit salad, but it was a simple meal, the main dish the main attraction.
“I remembered Father Dowling mentioning you were Hungarian.”
This delighted Klima even more. He praised the salads as well.
“Does this one come from our garden?” Father Dowling asked, but Marie ignored him.
“It must be very difficult, living in a prison?” Marie said to Klima toward the end of the meal.
“Not while I’m there. Right now I’m thinking how pleasant it would be to have a little parish of my own.”
“Is Bob Saunders around, Marie?”
“He should be.”
She went out the kitchen door and was gone ten minutes before reappearing, shaking her head. “That’s funny. He’s gone off to a movie. I told him you were coming, Father Klima.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded of the past.”
The two priests repaired to the study and fell into the kind of clerical gossip that forms a strong fraternal bond among priests. The trouble was that Klima’s stories mostly concerned members of his order and thus were of limited interest to the pastor of St. Hilary’s. So the conversation drifted to the scene of Klima’s priestly work.
He spoke with great affection of the lifers. Theirs was a death sentence as sure as those who were on death row, enjoying the moratorium on capital punishment the governor of Illinois had introduced. Klima had his own views on whether a life sentence was preferable to execution. “Some become reconciled and gentle. There is a kind of holiness even, I think. Others become evil. Saunders’s cellmate was a lifer.”
“He’s still there?”
“No, he died before Saunders was released.” Klima frowned. “An odd death.”
“How so?”
“He poisoned himself. One of Saunders’s plants was poisonous and when Ed Factor heard that he had his ticket out of Joliet.”
3
The world is divided into those who love cats and those who can’t
stand them. Marie Murkin fell into the latter category. Her current bęte noire was a
large black cat with insolent eyes that had laid claim to a ledge on the back porch where
sun was filtered through gently moving leaves and prolonged feline leisure could be
enjoyed. The cat was brought each day to the parish center by Chester Fields, whom some
called Smokes. Fields dismissed the idea that he should leave Felix at home.
“He gets lonely.”
“He spends all day lurking around the rectory.”
“It’s the food.”
“But I don’t feed him.”
Chester Fields smiled. “You will.”
“I know what I’d like to feed him,” Marie grumbled, but Fields was a prophet after all. Father Dowling noticed the housekeeper’s attitude to the large cat drowsing on the ledge outside her kitchen slowly change. There was something flattering in the need Felix felt to spend his day in the proximity of Marie Murkin.
“I think he listens to the radio,“ Marie said, when Father Dowling asked if she had put catnip on the porch ledge to keep Felix there.
Shortly after that, Marie began to set aside tidbits for Felix. “It would just be thrown out anyway.”
“Maybe Chester would let you keep him.”
“I hate cats!” But her tone was not as apodictic as before.
Marie concealed her change of attitude from all others, however much the pastor guessed her altered regard for Felix. On occasion, when Marie saw a need to deflect suspicion, Bob Saunders became the grateful recipient of morsels that might have gone to the cat. It was an odd thought, that the gardener and the cat were rivals for Marie’s largesse. And Chester continued to be told what a nuisance his pet was.
“He knows when people like him,” Chester said smugly.
“I hate cats!”
Chester winked at Saunders and strolled off to the center, leaving Felix to arrange his own day. Within a minute, Felix had arranged himself on the warm ledge of the rectory’s back porch.
It was going on four in the afternoon when Chester knocked on the kitchen door, then shaded the screen with his hand as he peered in at Marie Murkin.
“Felix in there?”
“In my kitchen! Certainly not.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Chester, if you think I am going to babysit your animal you are mistaken.”
“Ever since you started feeding him, you made a lifelong friend.”
Marie came out onto the porch. “Feed him? Who said I feed him?”
“He’s gained four pounds in as many weeks.”
“How often do you weigh him?”
“Every morning. After my exercise.”
“Why?”
“Actually I’m usually holding him when I get on the scale, so I have to subtract. I thought I was gaining weight. But it was Felix. And how would he gain weight if you didn’t feed him?”
“What nonsense.”
But she helped him look around the yard for the cat. Chester wondered if Felix was hiding. “So he could stay here with you.”
“Ha.”
Marie started back to the house and was halfway there when a wail went up behind her. She turned to see Chester backing away from the fence, a look of horror on his face. He turned to Marie. His expression changed.
“You!” Chester cried, and then he pushed through the gate and disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” Bob Saunders said.
“I think something has happened to Chester Field’s cat.”
She kept a pace or two behind Saunders as he shuffled toward the back fence. Felix lay as if asleep behind a stand of hollyhocks. But his eyes were open and his body was still. Marie fled to the house.
4
In the study, Father Dowling picked up the ringing phone to find Edna
Hospers on the line.
“What happened to Chester Fields’ cat?”
“Felix?”
“Chester is almost hysterical. He claims Marie Murkin killed his cat.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“He’s in no condition, Father.”
“I’ll talk to Marie.”
When he hung up the phone and turned, Marie stood in the doorway, her face a mask of puzzled pain. She drifted into the room and sat, staring at Father Dowling.
“That was Edna, Marie.”
Marie nodded. Father Dowling had never seen her so subdued.
“Has something happened to Chester’s cat?”
A nod. “He’s dead.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know! Father, Chester thinks I harmed that animal.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ll go talk to him.”
In the parish school, now used as a parish center where senior citizens could spend their day at bridge, shuffleboard, checkers, chess or conversation, Father Dowling found Chester Fields ringed by the sympathetic and curious. The old man was literally sobbing. When he saw Father Dowling, he rose like Lazarus and came through the parted crowd to the pastor.
“Do cats have souls, Father Dowling?”
“Of course they do.”
Chester stopped weeping and rubbed his eyes. There was a sigh of relief from the others. No need to explain that according to Aristotle every living thing had a soul, from weeds to your mother-in-law, but of course there are kinds of soul. The human soul is utterly different from those of plants and animals and is our ticket to immortality.
“Let’s go upstairs, Chester.”
“Call me Smokes, Father.”
In Edna’s office, they continued the theological discussion begun below, with Edna an interested onlooker. “He could understand me, Father. Sometimes I thought he knew how to talk but refrained for fear of embarrassing me.”
“How so?”
“I think he was smarter than me.”
“We’ll never know.”
“Is the cat dead?” Edna asked.
Father Dowling waited for Chester to answer. “She killed it.”
“Chester, that’s foolish. Marie was very good to that cat.”
“She threatened to kill Felix! I heard her. You must have heard her.”
How defend Marie against the threatening remarks that increasingly had masked her affection for the cat?
“Chester, come back to the rectory with me.”
The old man shuddered. “I couldn’t look at him again.” Chester had buried two wives and lived to tell of it, but the death of his cat had unmanned him. Finally, with cajoling and sternness, Father Dowling got Chester onto the walk leading to the rectory. Standing in the doorway of the school were a dozen old people, hesitant whether or not to follow the pastor and the bereaved Chester for possible further emotional fireworks.
Marie sat at the kitchen table, her hands twisted in her apron. She looked abjectly at Father Dowling when he came in but when she saw that Chester was with him, she sprang to her feet.
“I did not harm that cat, Chester Fields. I watched over him. I fed him.”
“The question is,” Chester squeaked, “what did you feed him?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You did what you said you’d do. You poisoned him!”
“Chester Fields, if you say that again I will sue you for libel. I will get on that phone and talk to Mr. Amos Cadbury and he will teach you a lesson about libeling people. I am sorry about your cat. Much sorrier than you know.”
“Do they do autopsies on cats?” Father Dowling wondered aloud.
“That’s the ticket!” Marie said.
She went to the back door and held the screen open so that Father Dowling and Chester would follow her. Then she marched out to the fence and the stand of hollyhocks. The distance between her and Father Dowling and Chester grew as her pace quickened. At the fence, she stopped. She parted the long stalked hollyhocks, bending to study the ground. She turned and looked open-mouthed at the two men.
“It’s not here.”
5
Confusion followed the discovery that the dead cat was gone. Chester
began once more his strident accusations of Marie. Marie stalked off to the house to call
Amos Cadbury. While she was talking to the lawyer, Phil Keegan and Cy Horvath drove up.
Keegan frowned at the sobbing Chester.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“His cat’s dead.”
“Tough.”
“He was killed! And now the body’s been stolen. Marie Murkin killed my cat and now she’s hidden the body.”
“Marie?” Phil could not keep a malicious little smile from dimpling the corners of his mouth.
“I buried it.”
They all turned to Bob Saunders, who stood there, spade in hand. “You don’t want a dead animal lying around like that. So I buried it.”
“You had no right!”
Cy took Chester’s arm and led him across the lawn to a bench beneath an apple tree. The two men settled on the bench and Cy, like a father confessor, listened impassively through Chester’s tale of woe. Marie came out of the house to announce that Amos Cadbury was on his way to protect her from libelous accusations.
“It’s my punishment for feeding that beast.”
“Bob Saunders buried the body.”
“Well, he’ll have to dig it up again. Mr. Cadbury insists that there be an autopsy.”
“An autopsy!” Phil headed for the kitchen. “You got any beer, Marie?”
Bob Saunders dug up the body of Felix the cat, Amos arrived with the veterinarian that looked after his Irish Setters, the body of Felix was taken away. Chester Fields, subdued by the consolation he had derived from Cy’s mute and patient listening, had finally gotten a grip on himself. The imposing presence of Amos Cadbury was a check upon his tongue. Marie kept close to the lawyer. Phil leaned against the porch ledge, drinking a beer. Some yards away, the contingent from the center looked on from where they had come to a stop, just short of the rectory, at a point where they had been able to follow events.
“Why don’t you join the others, Chester?” Father Dowling suggested.
Cy led the stricken Chester to the others, who surrounded him and convoyed him back to the school.
6
The autopsy was inconclusive. There were traces of what might have been
poison in Felix, but the report was unable to identify it. The more likely cause of death
was a heart attack.
“His cholesterol was at a deadly level.”
“Why don’t we just leave it at a heart attack?” Father Dowling suggested.
Chester listened calmly when told that Felix had been betrayed by his heart. His wives had died of heart attacks. This was a role he could handle. He nodded with dignity and then turned silently away. And that was that.
Father Dowling went for a walk, stopping by one of the flowerbeds. He studied it for some time. Bob Saunders’ old friend seemed to be missing, replaced with an innocuous looking pinkish flower. He could have looked it up in a book, but there seemed no point.
In the rectory, Marie Murkin walked with the burden of guilt. Had she fed Felix to death, giving him tasty and unhealthy foods that had stopped up his arteries and killed him?
“It just goes to show,” she said.
“Show what?”
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Now Marie.”
Chester Fields, after talking with Amos, decided to replace Felix with a magnificent Irish Setter. But this animal could not be accommodated at the parish center during the day and Chester became an infrequent visitor.
“What happened to your old friend?” Father Dowling asked Bob Saunders some days later. He pointed to the flowerbed.
“I got rid of it, Father. I think it was bad luck.”
“How so?”
“My cellmate committed suicide by eating its leaves.”
“It’s that lethal?”
“He was dead in the morning.”
“I wonder if Felix could have...”
Bob Saunders waited for Father Dowling to finish the sentence. But the pastor let it go. There was a strange vacancy in Bob Saunders’ eyes, the look of a man who had seen, and done, more than he cared to remember. Had Bob been simply a spectator of the deaths associated with his old friend?
“Roger,” Father Klima said when he telephoned the following week. “I want to talk to Bob Saunders, but not before I get your reaction. We’re suddenly getting vocations again. How about if we take Bob off your hands and put him to work on the grounds of the old house of studies?”
This was arranged. Edna’s son Gerry would expand his duties beyond mowing the lawns. One day Bob Saunders was driven away by Father Klima, to beautify the grounds of the Franciscan house of studies.
“Franciscan!” Marie cried.
“Father Klima is a Franciscan.”
“But you said he was a Hungarian.”
“The two are not incompatible, Marie.”
There were times during the following weeks when Father Dowling would be distracted from what he was doing, would look up from his book and stare across his study. Danger is all around us. Any of the four elements, fire, air, earth or water, can be an instrument of death. Food can kill you, if not because it’s poisonous, because it fills the blood with obstacles to circulation. But such speculation soon gave way to the enigmatic countenance of Bob Saunders. Killing a cat may not be murder, but it is an injustice to its owner. As for a cellmate...But there are mysteries that are never solved.
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