Wiggins put away his notebook and rose, too, lifting his teacup one last time and finishing off the tea. “Thanks for this, Mrs. B.” He gestured toward the tray.
“Well, you fixed it, Mr. Wiggins. Come back sometime when you have a minute to spare.” She trailed them to the door.
“I might do that. I might just look in sometime.” He smiled at her.
The old Wiggins, thought Jury, was back.
37
Mungo wanted to know why Harry had brought out the cat carrier-or dog, he supposed, but forget that; he wasn’t going anywhere. The carrier was sitting on the piano bench. He eyed it with suspicion. He realized Harry knew there were two cats in the house; he’d put the blue collar on one of them. And that, Mungo supposed, was to tell the cats apart. All of this puzzled him.
He pulled Elf out of the bottom drawer and carried him around the living room, looking for a drop-off. Maybe he could lift up the top of the window seat bench and drop him in, except Morris was lying on it, like a loaf.
Why are you doing that? said Morris.
It helps me think, Mungo said. It didn’t. Mungo was doing it just for the laugh. Elf was hissing and flailing his tiny paws. He’d just started this only in the last week or two.
This isn’t getting me back home, Morris said.
Mungo stared at the cat and shook his head (and Elf with it). Nothing but complain, complain since last night at the Old Wine Shades. He gave up trying to find a new place and just dropped Elf in the coal scuttle. The kitten was as black as the lumps around him. That was funny. He said, I don’t get it. The Spotter should have sorted it out. He’s smart; at least, he once was.
If you think about it, it would take a mind reader to work out what we were doing. Stare, stare, stare, you said. How could the Spotter tell from that? Morris put her head down on her outstretched paws (a posture she’d picked up from Mungo). I just want to go home.
Whine. Whine. Mungo paced, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, stopping when he heard a scuffle in the kitchen and Mrs. Tobias’s raised voice. Probably Schrödinger jumping up on the counter and nicking food. More noise.
Quick! he said to Morris. Hide!
Morris jumped from the window seat and slid slick as a whistle beneath the desk. That’s the way with cats, thought Mungo, quicker than time; they made time shrink and clocks run backward.
His bit of philosophizing was broken by Shoe erupting through the kitchen door with a kipper like a knife in her mouth.
Mrs. Tobias was fast on the cat’s trail and waving a skillet.
Schrödinger streaked through the living room and then into the great nowhere.
Mungo enjoyed the little chase; it was such a cliché. He’d seen it over and over again in The Beano.
“Where’s that cat?” came from the hallway. “I’ll kill that cat one day.” Mrs. Tobias shouted up the stairs: “You’ll be out of house and home faster’n you can pinch a kipper, my girl!” She stormed back into the living room, saw Mungo sitting by the kitchen door (to which he’d rushed in order to distance himself and, thus, Mrs. Tobias from the desk). She waved the pan. “Took one of my kippers, Shoe did, stole your master’s dinner!”
Master? Who did she think she was kidding?
“And where is he, I’d like to know? It’s gone half-seven and him not here yet when he said he wanted to eat then?” Back to the kitchen she marched, muttering.
Mungo knew something was up with that cat carrier, something unpleasant for someone. Oh, not him. Although he wondered sometimes how he’d lasted so long around Harry without getting cuffed or kicked or worse, then told himself not to be modest. But the point was that Harry would no more take a cat to the cat hospital than he’d adopt a disabled orangutan. And much less would he transport Schrödinger himself. So what was going on?
Mungo looked up and saw Shoe coming down the stairs, looking pleased as punch, then giving Mungo an evil look and going into the music room to inspect the kittens. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. One missing. She dashed into the living room, went from one hiding spot to another, found Elfin the coal scuttle, and dragged him out. She then carried him into the music room, dropped him in the drawer, and swayed over to her favorite spot beneath the little sofa near the bureau, where she promptly went into one of her comas.
Mungo stared from Schrödinger back to the carrier, back and forth, back and forth, working it out. Then he loped back to the desk and told Morris to come out.
Something’s going on.
What? said Morris.
I think-He looked at Morris’s blue collar, and the penny dropped. Take that off! Morris looked puzzled, so Mungo hit at it, then bit the end and pulled it free from the Velcro tab. Then he rushed into the music room, stealthily made his way to the sofa, stopped to see that Schrödinger was indeed asleep, and dropped the collar near the cat’s head. Schrödinger wouldn’t wake if it were a hand grenade, pin pulled. Mungo turned and hurried to the bureau, grabbed up Elf again, and trotted across the hall and into the living room just as the door opened.
Mrs. Tobias apparently heard Harry’s approach too and came like a little warhorse from the kitchen, talking all the while. “So there you are, Mr. Johnson, just let me tell you what that cat…” Her voice dropped to a quieter wrangle out in the hall.
Mungo dropped Elf. Act really mad, he whispered to Morris. Why?
Just do it, just do it!
As Elf ran off, passing Harry and Mrs. Tobias, Morris hissed and clawed at the air around Mungo’s head.
Mungo could hear him telling Mrs. Tobias he’d be having dinner out anyway, so it hardly mattered. Here was Harry saying to Morris, “So you ate my dinner, did you?” He said to Mungo, “For God’s sakes, can’t you leave that damned kitten alone?”
But he didn’t seem really bothered by it all. He grinned wolfishly.
Oh, how Mungo longed to grin back. Wolfishly.
Mrs. Tobias, in her brown wool coat-too hot for this weather, but she wore it year in and year out-sailed through the living room. She didn’t glance at Morris, not minding and not knowing there was another black cat sprawled beneath the sofa in the music room.
“I’ll be off, then, Mr. Johnson.”
Oh, do be, thought Mungo. All he was waiting for was the next act.
When that act came, it involved a good bit of effing and blinding. Harry was having a hard time of it.
Eventually Harry left, cat carrier in tow. Mungo hopped up to the window seat beside Morris. They watched Harry in the arc of light cast by the sconce beside the door as he descended the stair, and then in the blurry light of the streetlamp. He opened the car door and stowed the carrier before getting in the car himself.
They watched.
Then, pleased, they looked at each other with what would have been smiles had God seen fit to give them to dogs and cats.
Never mind, their minds hummed along as one.
38
The glossy-haired, raven-haired young woman in short skirt and high heels stood outside the Snow Hill police station (almost just around the corner from the spot where Kate Banks was murdered, and didn’t that ever give a chill!). She was chewing gum (which she would toss out before she met her client, who hated chewing gum) and wondered why she should volunteer her information to police. What had the Bill ever done for her or her friends, except as good as call them whores? Looking up at the black word “Police” painted on the soft lantern light, she debated the wisdom of going in.
She wouldn’t even have thought of coming except it had been Kate, and she’d quite liked Kate. She was a good person, always ready to do you a lunch or a loan or whatever help you needed. Yes, you could count on Kate.