I had given up trying to ask questions and was following the guide dumbly.
She was breathing normally now, and she went on with apparent relish:“Dennis was a student of mine when I was teaching elementary, and I knew he would never amount to anything. His father believed children should attend public school like anyone else, but things got so bad that they had to take him out. Later he was expelled fromthree colleges—not even good ones. He got intodespicable kinds of trouble. Finally he was arrested in a … drug bust, I believe it’s called … . Marmalade! Leave the visitor alone!”
The cat was getting chummy now, rubbing against my ankles and taking friendly nips at my nylons.
“Dennis broke his mother’s heart,” Ms. Finney said. “Upstairs you’ll see her personal suite, all done in tones of peach. I’ll not go with you because my knees rebel at those twenty-two stairs, but you’ll find it well worth the climb. Be sure to see the glass cases with Margaret’s collection of Faberg? eggs. She also had priceless jewels that had been in the family for four generations. After they were stolen she went into a decline and died shortly after. Be sure to see her bathroom, all done in black onyx. Philip died quite recently in a plane crash in Europe. All very sad.”
We had reached the paneled dining room that could seat twenty-four, and my guide was extolling theboiserie, when Marmalade suddenly appeared with a dead mouse, which he dropped on my shoe. I shook it off ever so gently to avoid hurting his feelings or throwing him into a rage. He was a very peculiar animal.
“How very sweet!” Ms. Finney exclaimed. “He has brought you a present—to apologize for his rude behavior. Nice kitty!”
At this point there were sounds of activity in the rear of the house, and eventually a lanky old man approached us. He seemed vigorous for his age, but his arms and legs moved in a disjointed way, like a robot’s. Although it was summer he wore a dark business suit, rusty with age and dusty around the knees. Without preliminaries he announced in a high-pitched, reedy voice: “The fingerprint people are coming this afternoon, so we can’t open the museum—maybe not for several days. It depends how the investigation goes.”
Ms. Finney said:“This is Mr. Tibbitt, our beloved custodian. He was my principal when I was teaching elementary … . Now that you’re here, Mr. T, I’d like to run over to the hospital to see how Mrs. Sheffield is doing.”
“She’s all right. She’s in intensive care,” he said in his hooting voice. “But you never know. At her age she could go off likethat.” He looked at Ms. Finney’s left hand. “Better tell them to put something on your scratches, Rhoda. How’s Marmalade? Is he feeling better?”
“He’s getting less antisocial,” I volunteered. “He brought me a mouse a few minutes ago.”
“He was mad as a hornet when I got here this morning,” Mr. Tibbitt said. “Growling and spitting and pacing the floor like a tiger in a cage. Too bad he can’t tell us what happened last night. I’ve just come from the police station. Gave them what information I could. This town used to have a one-man police force. All he had to do was help the children cross Main Street and drive the heavy tipplers home on Saturday night. Then the tourists started coming up here and we had to buy three police cars.”
The garrulous Rhoda Finney departed, leaving me with the garrulous Mr. Tibbitt. Now, I hoped, I could ask questions and receive answers.“Do you think the vandals were vacationers?”
“No, this is one thing we can’t blame on the tourists. There’s something I didn’t mention in front of Rhoda; didn’t want to have to call the ambulance again. Did you hear about the three convicts that escaped yesterday?”
I vaguely remembered an item on a radio newscast.
“One of them was a member of the Lockmaster family,” Mr. Tibbitt said.
“Dennis the Disappointment?”
“I see Rhoda has been telling family secrets. Yes, they caught the other two in a swamp, but Dennis is still at large. He won’t get far. He’s not smart enough.”
“Do you think it was Dennis who wrecked the drawing room?”
“No doubt about it. He knew how to get into the house—through the chute where they used to deliver coal in the old days.”
“Was it retaliation for being disinherited? Why did he concentrate on the drawing room? Why didn’t he just burn the house down?”
“Not smart enough to think of it. The police found a screwdriver on the floor, and they think he intended to mutilate his father’s portrait over the organ. He’s a sick boy. Whatever he was trying to do, the cat evidently stopped him. Those sharp fangs could tap a vein, you know. The way I figure it, Dennis was creeping into the dark room and stepped on Marmalade’s tail, and all of a sudden he’s attacked by seven wildcats, all screeching and biting and clawing.”
“So your official mouser doubles as a security guard?”
“Well, I have a theory,” Mr. Tibbitt said with a glint of excitement in his filmy eyes. “Marmalade spends most of his time watching the back corner of the organ when he isn’t sleeping, and I think there’s an important mousehole behind it. He always gets perturbed when I plug up one of hismouseholes, but I’ve never seen him so mad as he was this morning.”
“No wonder!” I said. “He thought someone was threatening his prime source of supply.”
“Let’s try an experiment to test my theory,” Mr. Tibbitt said, heading for the drawing room with a brisk but jerky gait.
I followed. The cat was there, watching the organ, with his body bunched up and his head thrust forward. He was the essence of concentration.
“Walk toward the organ,” Mr. Tibbitt instructed me, “and let’s see how he reacts.”
“Are you kidding?” I protested. The retired school principal was not kidding, and reluctantly I moved into the room, slowly and quietly. Marmalade’s ears swiveled. He was listening. I moved closer, and he turned his head. Seeing me, he jumped up and glared at me with threatening yellow eyes.
“Keep going,” said Mr. Tibbitt from his safe post in the entranceway.
The cat’s back arched and his tail ballooned and he bared his murderous-looking fangs. This was the animal that had rubbed my ankles affectionately and had brought me a gift! I took one more step, and he turned into a howling, snarling maniac. With a shriek I ran back to safety, knocking over a Meissen plant stand in the process.
“See? I was right,” Mr. Tibbitt announced.
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
In the weeks following the Lockmaster experience I researched ten more small-town museums throughout the state. What they lacked in old masters, African spears, and Faberg? eggs, they made up in serenity. The attendants said only, “Please sign the book,” and “Thank you for coming.” There were no belligerent mousers or bloodied rugs.
In each town I perused local newspapers and listened to the obituaries and bowling scores on local radio; there were no follow-up stories on the Lockmaster breakin or the escaped convict. Only the evidence in the little black box convinced me I had not dreamed the entire episode.
At last I started for home, and on the freeway I came to an exit fifty miles from the Lockmaster Museum. I decided to take a detour. Reaching the museum during visiting hours, I found several cars parked at the curb and not a police car in sight. A sign in the door said: OPEN—WALK IN.
The mild-mannered, white-haired attendants sat at the reception desk, discussing arthritis.“Please sign the guest book,” said one of them. “Catalogs are three dollars,” said the other.
The drawing room was now in perfect order, and visitors tiptoed through the rooms, speaking in whispers. In vain I looked for Rhoda Finney and Marmalade and Mr. Tibbitt … . Ithad been a dream; the little black box lied!