Footsteps of the Cat — Lorena Ann Olmstead

Lanky, redheaded Jim Henderson had been in the Army when he met and married Nora Howard, and he had never met his bride's family before. Her big, old-fashioned, luxuriously furnished home was a surprise, as was Nora's lawyer father, Dan Howard.

But before Jim could really get to know Dan, the man was murdered. Suspicion pointed to Dan's nephew, Bob, who in a stormy scene the night of Jim's arrival, had demanded that he be given the money left in Dan's charge until he reached the age of twenty-one. Bob, it seemed, thought that he had reached the age of accountability because he had brought a young wife home with him.

The whole setup of the household puzzled Jim Henderson.

Besides the newlyweds, there were Uncle John and Aunt Sara -- not relatives at all -- who had helped raise Bob and Nora.

Then there were the three bitter and impoverished cousins, on their annual visit with the Howards, Vera, Peter, and Rolf Dawson reminded Jim of nothing so much as vultures, waiting for money, instead of food.
And there was the antique collector, Miss Rudd, mannish, middle-aged, and unattached. No one knew why she had arrived for a visit with Dan Howard.

And what place did Dan Howard's young law partner, Jed Evans, have in all this bizarre turn of events? Jed had once been in love with Nora -- and to Jim, it seemed that he still was.

Dan Howard's death was only the beginning in a strange pattern of MURDER. A pattern in which the footprints of a cat vanished into a blank wall, noises seemingly came from nowhere, a half-wit neighbor roamed at large -- and behind it all, the lurking and sinister secretary, a member of the strange household, but holding himself always apart.