rest at the bottom, the old bones shattered, the eyes glaring, the
nose and ears trickling blood. And the purring cat begins to work
its way down the stairs, contentedly munching Little Friskies ...
'What did the coroner say?' he asked Drogan. 'Death by accident,
of course. But I knew.'
'Why didn't you get rid of the cat then? With Amanda gone?'
Because Carolyn Broadmoor had threatened to leave if he did,
apparently. She was hysterical, obsessed with the subject. She was
a sick woman, and she was nutty on the subject of spiritualism. A
Hartford medium had told her (for a mere twenty dollars) that
Amanda's soul had entered Sam's feline body. Sam had been
Amanda's, she told Drogan, and if Sam went, she went.
Halston, who had become something of an expert at reading
between the lines of human lives, suspected that Drogan and the
old Broadmoor bird had been lovers long ago, and the old dude
was reluctant to let her go over a cat.
'It would have been the same as suicide,' Drogan said. 'In her
mind she was still a wealthy woman, perfectly capable of packing
up that cat and going to New York or London or even Monte Carlo
with it. In fact she was the last of a great family, living on a
pittance as a result of a number of bad investments in the sixties.
She lived on the second floor here in a specially controlled,
superhumidified room. The woman was seventy, Mr. Halston. She
was a heavy smoker until the last two years of her life, and the
emphysema was very bad. I wanted her here, and if the cat had to
stay ...'
Halston nodded and then glanced meaningfully at his watch.
'Near the end of June, she died in the night. The doctor seemed to
take it as a matter of course ... just came and wrote out the death
certificate and that was the end of it. But the cat was in the room.
Gage told me.'
'We all have to go sometime, man,' Halston said.
'Of course. That's what the doctor said. But I knew. I remembered.
Cats like to get babies and old people when they're asleep. And
steal their breath.'
'An old wives' tale.'
'Based on fact, like most so-called old wives' tales,' Drogan
replied.
'Cats like to knead soft things with their paws, you see. A pillow, a
thick shag rug... or a blanket. A crib blanket or an old person's
blanket. The extra weight on a person who's weak to start with ...'
Drogan trailed off, and Halston thought about it. Carolyn
Broadmoor asleep in her bedroom, the breath rasping in and out of
her damaged lungs, the sound nearly lost in the whisper of special
humidifiers and air conditioners. The cat with the queer black-and-
white markings leaps silently onto her spinster's bed and stares at
her old and wrinkle-grooved face with those lambent, black-and-
green eyes. It creeps onto her thin chest and settles its weight there,
purring.., and the breathing slows ... slows ... and the cat purrs as
