She stood, holding her breath, paralyzed by a sense of urgency which her imagination refused to define. She seemed to be imprisoned within herself, unable to desire escape. The sound of scratching grew thinner until it was so thin that she could doubt whether she heard it at all.
“You are imagining things!” she said to herself.
She smiled and went on her way to the post office. The smile became fixed. One must, she told herself, be circumspect in all things. If she were to start brawling with her neighbors every time she fancied — well, this-that-and-the-other — and without a shred of evidence — people would soon be saying she was an eccentric old maid. She wished she could stop smiling.
She bought the money order, posted it, and returned to her apartment, assuring herself that nothing at all had happened. That being agreed, everything could proceed as usual.
“Not home yet! Very well, I sha’n’t wait for you. I shall cut up your meat now, and if it gets dry you’ve only yourself to blame.” She put on the gloves with which she had held reins 37 years ago. “Just over a year! I must have used them to cut up your meat more than 300 times, and they’re none the worse for wear. You couldn’t buy gloves like this nowadays. I don’t fancy tinned salmon. I think I’ll make myself an omelette. I remember Cook was always a little uncertain with her omelettes.”
She made the omelette carefully, but ate it quickly. When she had finished her coffee, she went to the bookcase above the escritoire. She had not opened the glass doors for more than ten years. She took out Ivanhoe, which her father had given to her mother before they were married.
At a quarter past ten, she closed the book.
“You know I’ve never waited up for you! And I’m not going to begin now.”
The routine was to leave the curtains parted a little — about the width of a cat. Tonight she closed them. When she got into bed, she could soon see moonlight through the chinks by the rings... and then the daylight.
In the morning, she took some trouble to avoid meeting Jenkins. As if he had Iain in wait for her, he popped out from the service cupboard under the staircase.
“Good morning, madam. I haven’t seen your pussy cat this morning.”
Pussy cat! What a nauseating way to speak of her cat!
“I’m not worrying, Jenkins. He often goes off on his own for a couple of days. I’m a little late this morning.”
She was not late — she caught her usual train to London with the usual margin. At the office, her colleagues seemed more animated than usual. A fragment of their chatter penetrated. “If Lone Lass doesn’t win tomorrow, I shall be going to London for my summer holiday.” A racehorse, of course. One of the so-called classic races tomorrow, but she could not remember which. It reminded her of Mr. Rinditch. A very low, coarse man! Her thought shifted to that very nice man who owned the dog. One of nature’s gentlemen! “Get in under and strike UP!”
She did not go out at lunch hour, so did not buy any cat’s-meat.
That evening, at a few minutes to 8, she heard Jenkins’s footstep on the lauding. He knocked at her door.
“Good evening, madam. I hope I’m not disturbing you. There’s something I’d like to show you, if you can spare a couple o’ minutes.”
On the way downstairs there broke upon Miss Paisley the full truth about herself and Jenkins. Madam! She could hear now the contempt in his voice, could even hear the innumerable guffaws that had greeted his anecdotes of the female clerk who gave herself the airs of a lady in temporarily distressed circumstances. Hut her dignity had now passed into her own keeping.
He led her along the corridor, through the door giving onto the yard, to the six ashcans. He lifted a lid. On top of the garbage was the carcass of her cat. Attached to the neck was a length of green blind cord.
“Well, Jenkins?” Her fixed smile was unnerving him.
“He was in Mr. Rinditch’s room again, soon after you came ’ome last night. You can’t really complain, knowin’ what he said he’d do. And hangin’ an animal isn’t torture if it’s done properly, like this was. I don’t suppose your poor little pussy cat felt any pain. Just pulled the string over the top of the coat-hook, and it was all over.”
“That is immaterial.” She knew that her cold indifference was robbing this jackal of the sadistic treat he had promised himself. “How do we know that Mr. Rinditch is responsible? It might have been anybody in the building, Jenkins.”
“I tell you, it was him! Last night, when my missus went in with his evenin’ meal, same as usual, she saw a length o’ that blind cord slickin’ out from under his bed. And there was a bit o’ green fluff on the coat-hook, where the cord had frayed. The missus did a bit more nosing while she was clearing away, an’ she spotted the cat’s collar in the wastepaper basket. You couldn’t hang a cat properly with that collar on, ’cause o’ the metal. She said the strap part had been cut — like as it might be with a razor.”
Miss Paisley gazed a second time into the ashcan. The collar had certainly been removed. Jenkins, watching her, thought she was still unwilling to believe him. Like most habitual liars, he was always excessively anxious to prove his word when he happened to be telling the truth.
“Come to think of it, the collar will still be in that basket,” he said, mainly to himself. “Listen! He keeps it near enough to the front window. Come round to the front and maybe you’ll be able to see it for yourself.”
The basket was of plaited wicker. Through the interstices Miss Paisley could see enough of the collar to banish all doubt.
She could listen to herself talking to Jenkins, just as she had been able to see herself standing at the ashcan, knowing what was under the lid before Jenkins removed it. How easy it was to be calm when you had made up your mind!
When she returned to her room it was only five minutes past 8. Never mind. The calm would last as long as she needed it. In two hours and twenty-five minutes, Mr. Rinditch would come home. She was shivering. She put on the green suede lumber jacket, then she sat in her armchair, erect, her outstretched fingers in the folds of the upholstery.
“Before Mr. Rinditch comes back, I want you to know that I heard you scratching on his wall. You were alive then. We have already faced the fact that if I had hammered on the door and — brawled — you would be alive now. We won’t argue about it. There’s a lot to be said on both sides, so we will not indulge in recriminations.”
Miss Paisley was silent until twenty-five minutes past 10, when she got up and put on the riding gloves, as if she were about to cut meat for her cat. The knife lay on the shelf in its usual place. Her hand snatched at the handle, as if someone were trying to take it away from her.
“ ‘Get in under and stride UP!’ ” she whispered — and then Miss Paisley’s physical movements again became unmanageable. She was gripping the handle of the knife, but she could not raise it from the shelf. She had the illusion of exerting her muscles, of pulling with all the strength of her arm against an impossibly heavy weight. Dimly she could hear Mr. Rinditch come home and slam his door.
“I’ve let myself become excited! I must get back my calm.”
Still wearing the gloves and the lumber jacket, she went back to her chair.
“At my age I can’t alter the habits of a lifetime — and when I try, I am pulled two ways at once. I told you in the first place that you had come too late. You oughtn’t to have gone into Mr. Rinditch’s room. He killed you in malice, and I betrayed you — oh, yes, I did! — and now I can’t even pray.”