Six Cats A Slayin'

“Murder?” I said.

My two informants nodded their heads. Stewart indicated that Azalea should go first.

“You know she’s been married several times,” Azalea said.

“Three times. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Stewart replied.

“Always older men,” Azalea said. “People say she married them for money. Her family’s been around ever since Athena started up. Used to be, they had a lot of money, but her daddy wasn’t too good with holding on to it. By the time she was grown, they were just barely hanging on to that old house she lives in.”

“So, she married money,” I said.

“Yes,” Azalea replied. “Every time. She was kind of pretty when she was young. Some people said she really loved Mr. Thompson, her first husband, but he had to be nearly forty years older than her. She keeps going back to his name, so I reckon there must be something in that.”

“Maybe,” Stewart said. “From what I’ve always heard, he left her about half a million, and she parlayed that into three or four million. She’s pretty shrewd when it comes to investments, supposedly.”

“If she had that kind of money, why did she keep marrying for more?” I asked. “Wasn’t she satisfied with several million?”

“Not our Deirdre,” Stewart said. “You know how notoriously cheap she is, right?”

“Yes, I’ve heard stories,” I replied.

“People like her, seems like they always want more money even if they’ve got a lot,” Azalea said, shaking her head. “She grew up poor, but real proud of who her family was, and I reckon she doesn’t want to be poor again.”

“So, she married twice more, both times to older, rich men,” Stewart said.

“I guess murder comes into it because people think she killed her husbands to make sure she got the money before they could spend it all,” I said.

“That’s pretty much it,” Stewart said.

“Is there any basis to these rumors? Did anything particular happen to set people off talking about her?” I asked.

“Mr. Thompson came down with pneumonia real bad,” Azalea said. “He wasn’t strong to start with—had a few strokes—and that pneumonia, he just couldn’t shake it off. Nobody talked about murder when he died.”

“No, that started when number two died of pneumonia,” Stewart said in a wry tone.

“Don’t tell me number three died of pneumonia, too,” I said.

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Stewart grinned, but Azalea simply looked pained.

“Mrs. Thompson has always been real cheap about hiring people to clean and do things like that. Hardly anyone ever stayed with her more than a few months,” Azalea said. “She finally found her a strong girl that could do the cleaning and some of the cooking. The girl didn’t know enough to realize she wasn’t getting fair pay, but I don’t think she had any family or friends to tell her different.”

“She was slow, as they used to say,” Stewart said. “A euphemism for mental impairment. She was the only other person in the house when husbands two and three came down with pneumonia.”

“And if she was mentally impaired, Deirdre Thompson could get away with murder, and the servant wouldn’t understand what had happened.”

“Yes,” Stewart said. “Pneumonia can be induced, and the old codgers she roped into marrying her weren’t hearty physical specimens to begin with. She picked her pigeons carefully.”

“Did anyone—anyone official, that is—ever look into their deaths to find out whether they’d been helped along?” I asked.

“Not seriously, at any rate,” Stewart said.

“I don’t think so,” Azalea said. “People just started talking, not too long after Mr. Reardon died. He was number two. Mrs. Thompson doesn’t have many friends. Most people don’t like her because she’s so stingy. She goes around like some grand duchess and acts like she’s always giving money to charity.”

Stewart grinned. “I know for a fact she does give money to charities, because I was briefly on the board of one. I saw how much she gave.”

“How much?” I asked, because I knew he wanted me to.

“Twenty dollars,” Stewart said. “Other people in her income bracket were giving twenty thousand or more.”

“That is pretty darn cheap,” I said.

“Word gets around,” Azalea said. “Not much is ever secret, and when you don’t treat people right, well, that just makes people talk more because they don’t like you and want to drag you down.”

I couldn’t argue with that analysis. Since I had moved back to Athena several years ago, I had seen and heard such things.

“What happened to the mentally impaired woman? Is she still working for Deirdre?” I asked.

“No, she died six or seven years ago,” Stewart said. “She was probably close to forty by then. Don’t you think?” he said to Azalea.

She nodded. “She worked for Mrs. Thompson for over twenty years, and she got buried in the cheapest coffin you could imagine.” She sighed. “People say by the time she died, she was thin as a rail. Used to be kind of heavyset.”

I was considerably appalled. Not only had Deirdre gone for the cheapest possible funeral, she had evidently also kept the poor housekeeper on starvation rations. I wondered if that had any connection to her cause of death.