We also laughed at the “Police Report,” which we read every week in our local newspaper, the Exeter Town Crier. The reported police business in the town of Exeter was generally not of a highly criminal nature, and the report itself was without attribution. Mr. Barlow and I could only speculate who might have written it: an exceedingly terse police officer or an unusually laconic journalist—in either case, a minimalist. There were wild animals causing trouble, and being captured, in town. “A raccoon, up to no good, was netted on Cass Street,” said the “Police Report.” There were pets in need of rescue, and “domestic disputes”—these were said to occur all over town. “A rowdy household on School Street merited an officer’s visit,” was one deadpan account.

There were often altercations, or similar incidents, in the parking lot at Roland’s. “Young men, behaving like hoodlums,” were more than once reported in the vicinity of Verne’s—less than innocently whiling away their time in the out-of-school hours. Reports of “public indecency” were never sufficiently described—not, at least, to my satisfaction or the snowshoer’s. Reports of “tense relations between town and gown” were downplayed or too vaguely stated; Elliot and I wanted to know more. Academy students were warned not to hang out at Verne’s, where townie toughs picked on the prep-school kids.

And during that time when I was an Exeter student, someone was killing cats—not just killing them but hanging them, in perfectly made hangman’s nooses. The cats were being executed. Not a breath of speculation in the “Police Report” in the Exeter Town Crier about who might be stringing up the cats—the unnamed reporter didn’t venture to guess. Both the town and the academy were rife with rumors. On the Exeter campus, the townies were suspected. In town, the perpetrator was presumed to be one of the prep-school kids. Many of the cats were hanged on or near academy grounds; cats were popular pets among faculty families. Academy housing hadn’t been conceived for cats or dogs, yet no one was slipping the perfectly made nooses around the necks of dogs.

“It must be a bird lover,” Elliot speculated. “Probably a young person,” he added.

“Another cat found hanging, this one on Spring Street,” was the full extent of the coverage in the Town Crier.

“Whoever writes the ‘Police Report’ isn’t a writer,” Mr. Barlow told me repeatedly.

“A townswoman was charged with lewd behavior on the Swasey Parkway,” was all the “Police Report” had to say.

“Lewd behavior where on the Swasey Parkway?” the snowshoer cried. “In a car, on one of the benches, in the grass?”

What sort of lewd behavior? I was dying to know.

“A cat in a noose on Tan Lane, the remains of another on Green Street,” was all the “Police Report” deemed fit to tell us.