Cat and Mouse

by Christianna Brand

  Amista had told her about the cat. Its name was Tybalt. “… Tybalt, Good King of Cats—it’s out of Romeo and Juliet: Carlyon knows all about those things, he told me about it and now I’ve read it. …” The pen slid down the desk with the cat pouncing after it, and she shot out a hand to prevent its rolling to the floor. The first words of Carlyon’s letter caught her eye. She snatched it up and read what was written there.

  “The Superintendent, Swansea Police. Your man Chucky will report to you. He has done a good job. He can tell you about this young woman who has arrived here out of nowhere, calling herself nothing more original than Miss Jones, and making what look rather like deliberate excuses for remaining here. On the whole we think she is probably only a journalist from some feminine magazine, wanting romantic copy about the scenery and I want ho action taken at present. But please note that this situation exists, in case I should have trouble.” It was signed “Carlyon” in inverted commas: apparently he used the single name as some sort of pseudonym, and, equally apparently, the police accepted the fact.

  She remained standing by the desk when Carlyon came in. “I was just reading your letter to the police.”

  He came across swiftly and whipped it up off the desk. But he merely said, stiffly: “I don’t think you can complain.”

  “Especially as I’ve just written one too.”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Carlyon. He gave a little, rather rueful laugh. “We are a trustful couple—aren’t we, Miss Jones?”

  “Speaking for myself,” said Tinka, “I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “I don’t know that it’s anything we need be proud of,” he said, almost reproachfully. She felt a little ashamed. I suppose he’d like me to be a clinging Victorian miss, she thought resentfully; all vapours and big eyes. Though why the hell she should care what Carlyon thought…!

  It seemed a long morning. Mr. Chucky departed with Miss Evans and there was nothing to do now but lie on the sofa with her silly leg stuck up on a cushion, pretending to be reading; and where it was getting her in the search for Amista, she hardly knew. I shall lie here pretending to be an invalid till they finally chuck me out; and then I shall say goodbye politely and a lot of good I shall have done Amista! And yet she could not go hopping about the house like a one-legged kangaroo, clumsily peering into cupboards, barging through closed doors, looking for Amista.

  Amista. What secret was there about this girl, Amista, what hold had Carlyon over even the little milk-woman who called at the house, that they should all deny the existence of Amista? Was she a prisoner? Had she come creeping into the stranger’s room last night to beg for help? Mrs. Love and Carlyon knew by now that she had come; what price had she paid, poor frightened child, for that secret visit? Amista, with her little white hand and scarlet nails, that in the grim shadows had seemed to be dripping blood. …

  Tybalt, the cat, had embarked upon a quarter of an hour of intensive training: five minutes of shadow boxing, five minutes of chasing his tail, five minutes of stalking a ping-pong ball across the linoleum floor. It is exquisite, she thought, and charming and graceful and infinitely amusing—and infinitely horrible. For the ping-pong ball is a mouse and when Tybalt has completed his training he will go forth after real mice and, having caught one, he will torture it. He will let it go and when it thinks it is free he will put out one lazy paw and drag it back again into terror. And maul it a little and let it creep away hoping to end its agony in peace; and bring it back once more. When Carlyon came into the room again, she said something to him of what was in her mind. His blue eyes clouded. He stood in the centre of the room, pushing back his hair with his hand. He said, abruptly, “Siamese cats don’t torture their prey; they kill outright or not at all.” But the very word “prey” was ugly in her ears, and she would not be comforted.

  During lunch, he sat silently, eating very little, staring down into his plate. Dai Jones cleared the table and brought in a tray of coffee things. Carlyon took his cup and went over to the window. He stood with his back to her, looking out across the valley, automatically stirring the coffee round and round and round. The spoon made a maddening little clink-clink against the sides of the cup. He said at last: “Miss Jones…” But he broke off, in search of words. “Well, nothing. Never mind.”

  “But what were you going to say?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged hopelessly. “It’s all a muddle, isn’t it?”

  “But if you don’t want a muddle and I don’t want a muddle. …”

  “It’s nothing to do with you and me,” he said. “It’s a muddle in itself. At least… Oh, lord!” He drank a gulp of coffee and put down the cup and saucer on the window-sill. But suddenly he said, softly: “There’s a rainbow being born. Come over here.”

  She limped over to him. Above the mountain opposite, the sky hung, steely blue; and as they watched an unseen hand dipped into a pool of colour and drew a slow, graceful arch, rose, turquoise, amber, jade, across the leaden sky. They stood side by side, not touching one another; it was almost a sadness when the whole was perfected, when there was nothing more to hope. Katinka said. “It’s over. I wish it wasn’t. It’s over too soon.”

  “Yes,” said Carlyon. “It’s like—it’s like love at first sight—too perfect, too soon.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his old tweed coat, looking out at the great arch of the rainbow glowing palely in the sky. “But there’s nothing to be done about it, is there?” he said; and muttered an excuse about going for a walk across the mountain, and went out of the room.

  It’s like love at first sight—too perfect, too soon.

  Mrs. Love crashed in upon Katinka’s kaleidoscope of thought, smiling, friendly, gay. “Well, dear—there you are!”

  Was there or was there not, something sinister about this woman’s vulgar jollity? Tinka tore her mind from Carlyon. She said, shortly: “Where did you expect me to be?”

  “I know where you ought to be,” said Mrs. Love, eyeing her with a professional air. “And that’s having a lay down on your bed. Got a headache, dear? Ankle paining you?”

  “No, thank you, I’m quite all right.”

  “Now don’t you tell me fibs,” said Mrs. Love robustly. “You’re not all right at all, you look as white as can be, and I’m going to take you right upstairs and tuck you into your beddy-byes, that’s what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not, and pull the curtains and let you have a nice snooze till Mr. Carlyon comes back from his walk.” She advanced upon her with bright determination. “No arguments! Dai’s on his way over with your things, I’ve just seen the boat pulling across the river; and you shall roll yourself up in your own nice dressing-gown and pop under the eiderdown with a hot-water bottle, or my name’s not Marie Lloyd Love which it is, dear, and after the old girl, my mum and dad being in The Profession all their lives and why they ever let me go in for nursing. …” Garrulously gabbling, she propelled Katinka up the stairs and into her room. “Now you get your frock off, and I’ll meet Dai with your things.” She drew the heavy curtains across the window and turned on the bedside lamp in the pleasant semi-dark.

  Katinka had not got a headache; and yet at the bare suggestion, her temples throbbed and all she wanted was to get between cool sheets and lay her head on the cool, hard pillow. (“It’s like love at first sight—too perfect, too soon…”) Had he said, “there’s nothing to be done about it”—or, “there’s nothing we can do about it”? She wandered over to the window and, parting the curtains, leaned her forehead against the chilly glass, staring out across to the opposite mountain. But the rainbow was gone. Nothing to be seen but the thin shaft of sunshine across the hump of the hill, the sullen, silver river, and, at the turn of the path, two tiny specks creeping upwards towards the house. She felt suddenly glad that Dai Jones was bringing her things. It would be comforting to have something of her own about her, to sleep tonight in her own silk nightie instead of Mrs. Love’s dreadful creation of georgette and lace. Dai an
d the milk-woman disappeared again as the path twisted. She turned back to the bed.

  Mrs. Love came in with a bundle of her possessions and a quite unwanted hot water bottle; and went away. She lay very still in the cool semi-darkness. The little sounds of the house eddied about her, men’s voices rumbled in the room below and on the stairs she heard Mrs. Love say sharply: “Hush, Dai, hush! You’ll wake Miss Jones.”

  She gave herself up to her thoughts. Carlyon had said… But she would not think of Carlyon, she dragged her thoughts away from Carlyon and of what he had said, staring out at the rainbow that had flowered to perfection too soon. Amista, then. But the puzzle of Amista’s identity, Amista’s whereabouts was more than her mind, obsessed with Carlyon’s words, could struggle with. And so on to Tybalt, the cat, the exquisite, sleek, pale cat with the slanting sapphire eyes, the Siamese cat which would not torture its prey. … So Carlyon had said, at least. He had frowned his quick frown and said that Siamese cats killed their prey at once; that Tybalt, Good King of Cats, would not torture… Would not torture… She yawned luxuriously, trying to nestle back against the cool, hard pillow. Tybalt would not torture a mouse. … But here was a rainbow-coloured cat playing with a white mouse, a mouse as round and light and white as a ping-pong ball. … And the ping-pong ball was caught in the cruel claws, was caught and crying out with little shrill squealings such as one might expect from a ping-pong ball, little shrill, cut-off squeaks, little gurgling, muffled screams, cut off by the muffling of the soft plush paws; cut off by the tearing of the claws at the celluloid throat, claws that struck out, and released, and caught and tore again. Little muffled, horrible, squealing, gurgling screams… She shot bolt upright in the bed. I was dreaming! But now I’m not dreaming any more, I’m awake, I’m wide awake. … She was wide awake and not dreaming any more about the white, tortured ping-pong mouse and the Siamese cat. …

  But the screams went on.

  She sat absolutely still, the sheets clutched up under her chin as though they alone could protect her heart from that muffled screaming. Little muffled, cut-off, squealings; not animal and yet—not human. Something, not animal, not human, was being tortured in this house and she must drive herself forth from this refuge of her quiet room, and go to its aid, must leave this oasis of white bed, warm blankets, hard, cool, comfortable pillows and cross the desert of the lonely floor and fling open the door and face whatever horror was outside. Half hoping that the door would be locked and give her good reason for flying back to the frail security of the bed, half praying that it be open and leave her free to intervene, she crept across the room. Slowly, slowly she turned the handle. The door inched open. She thought, faint with terror: in a moment I shall know.

  Somewhere in the house a door closed, and abruptly the sobbings and squealings were cut off. She stood for a half moment, staring, transfixed, into the corridor; and then slammed the door shut and rushed back across the room and flung herself down upon the bed, writhing with her face pressed into the pillows in uncontrollable terror.

  So utterly unexpected; so utterly, sickeningly, terrifyingly unexpected. … For in a doorway at the far end of the corridor, standing staring intently at her own slowly opening door, she had seen a man. A man with a round, white face, stupidly staring at her slowly opening door, standing staring at the door, moving his hands over and over one another in a dry, washing movement, over and over and over. A man with a round, white European face—and brown, Indian hands. Hands flecked with blood and foam.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOW THE HOUSE WAS absolutely still. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. She lay shuddering on her bed, watching with beating heart for the slow, stealthy opening of her door; but it did not come. The crying had ceased with the slamming of that other, far-away door, and all was silence.

  Absolute silence. Had he seen her watching him? He had been looking straight at her door, but had he seen her there? By comparison with the corridor, her room was dark—it was not as though a gleam of light could have shone out, giving her away. She found herself praying to the gods of her childhood to make it so, to make her safe from the steady, purposeful advance of the man with the round white English face and the brown, Indian hands, to protect her from the sight of her door once again slowly, slowly opening in.

  Somewhere, sometime she had seen this man before; just as she had seen the woman Mrs. Love before, so she had seen the man; had seen them together, somewhere, and connected them with death. People in courtrooms, people in prison cells, people in morgues, at gravesides, in the waiting-rooms of hospitals. … So many people that a journalist saw in the daily routine. And somewhere, sometime not so very long ago, she had seen these two people, this woman and this man; and in her mind they were inseparable from Death.

  How long had the man been in the house? Had he been there all along—creeping about the bright corridors avoiding her, dodging into doorways, peering out at her, standing hiding while she went by, motionless but for the over and over washing movement of the dreadful thick brown hands. She thought suddenly of the voices she had heard in the house before she fell asleep: men’s voices rumbling in the room below, while Mrs. Love spoke to Dai Trouble on the stairs. Whose had those voices been? Who—if the two servants were halfway up the stairs—was Carlyon speaking to in the room below? She stared ahead of her at the close-drawn curtains. Why, after all, had those curtains been pulled? To ease her non-existent headache? Or to discourage her from looking out of the window, to prevent her seeing who was arriving at the house? But she had looked out; and what, after all, had she seen? No rainbow—the rainbow that had been “like love at first sight” had faded from the sky; only the thin sunshine and the silver river and the two little toiling figures coming up the path to the house. Dai Jones Trouble and Miss Evans, the little woman who brought the milk.

  But Miss Evans had brought the milk to Penderyn earlier in the morning. Why should she come again? Would she not simply have rowed Dai across the river and rowed back again, her job done? Who then had come up the mountain path with Dai? Katinka recollected suddenly that it had not been until Mrs. Love had seen Dai Jones Trouble “on the way over with your things” that she had developed this sudden solicitude, had forced a headache upon her, had hustled her off to the carefully curtained room. Carlyon had started off on his walk up the mountainside and had seen the boat—the boat bringing not only Dai Jones and the milk-woman, but a third figure as well.

  The white man with the brown hands.

  She scrambled out of bed and began feverishly to dress. This is the end. I’m going, I’m getting out. I’ll run down the path and try to attract attention from the other side of the river; or if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll just have to hide on the mountain till Miss Evans comes over in the morning, I’ll hide in those caves that Chucky told me about. It was terrifying, horrible to think of leaving even the uncertain fortress of her room, creeping out through the chocolate hall, into the dank evening air; but go she must. She left the things that had been sent from the hotel, her nightie, dressing-gown, slippers, washing gear; better lose them all and get a new lot than be impeded by brown paper parcels in her flight from the house.

  There was nobody in the corridor; the door at which the piebald man had stood, was closed. She began with infinite caution to creep down the stairs.

  A voice was lifted up in song, ringing forth suddenly from the kitchen; was as suddenly hushed, as though Dai Trouble had abruptly remembered that gentlemen’s gentlemen do not break forth into loud song while they go about their duties. From the sitting-room came a subdued murmur of voices. She crept on.

  The kitchen door opened and Dai Trouble came out into the hall. She flattened herself against the wall and kept very still. He went to a cupboard in the hall, took something from it and returned to the kitchen. For a moment, the shock of so near a discovery almost drove her back to her room, but she forced herself on, creeping softly, silently down the stairs, her gloved hand sliding along the shoddy rail. She must get out and awa
y; must get across the river and to the village and there find the first policeman and tell him everything. The thought of a village policeman was solid and comforting.

  And besides, she had friends in the village of Pentre Trist! Miss Evans the Milk was quite a friend of hers already, and there were the men she had talked to the day before, Dai Ych-y-fi and the rest. It was true that Miss Evans had denied Amista, but Dai Ych-y-fi had seen her, had spoken to her. She recalled now the description in one of Amista’s rambling letters, the excitement because a man had come to do the drains, Dai Ych-y-fi who had “a romantic scar down one side of his face. …”

  But the man had said… Dai Jones Ych-y-fi had said…

  They had all said that they did not know Amista, did not know of any Mrs. Carlyon. And Dai Jones, the plumber, had said that he had seen Mrs. Love and of course Dai Trouble, but, “you never see anyone else from Penderyn.” And he had put up his hand and wiped with his hard palm the scarred cheek that Amista had described. There would be no help from the village.

  She crept on down the creaking stair and, on the bottom step, paused for a moment with her hand on the round wooden ball on the bannister-post. Only half a dozen more paces and she would be out of the house and free; six steps across the hall and she would be rid for ever of its cloying brown menace, out of this place for ever and ever, away from the mystery and the terror and the echo of those cut-off, muffled screams.

  She stepped down into the hall; and the door of the sitting-room quietly opened and the man stood there, two yards from her, with Carlyon and Mrs. Love at his shoulder.

  They stood stock still, facing one another. The man’s round white face was blank with surprise, Mrs. Love’s eyes were two bright buttons of astonishment, Carlyon—Carlyon looked into Katinka’s face with a sick, haggard look as though he could stand not one moment more of drama and fuss and exhausting explanation, and turned his head away. She said to the man: “I want to speak to you.”