The Cat Who Wasn't a Dog

by Marian Babson

  To begin with, I tossed a few peppercorns and a clove of garlic into the largest saucepan, then unwrapped the pair of chicken legs, put them into the pan and filled it with cold water before covering it and putting it on the stove to boil.

  ‘Hmmph!’ Evangeline disdained my efforts. ‘I distinctly remember that when my mother made chicken soup she boiled up the whole leftover carcass.’

  ‘So did mine – and I’ll never forget the thrill when I discovered you didn’t need to eat cold chicken for a week before you got to make soup. It was like that Charles Lamb story when the people discovered that they didn’t have to burn the house down to make roast pork.’

  ‘I know that story.’ Evangeline grinned reminiscently. ‘They burned down most of the village before they finally got the hang of it and invented the barbecue.’

  ‘And I ate a lot of weak soup before I found the best base was two whole legs – thigh and drumstick.’ I had been putting the shopping away while we talked, now I chopped an onion and carrot, ready to tip into the pot at the half-hour mark. Another half-hour after that, and I’d take the legs out, one at a time, and skin and bone them before dicing the meat and returning it to the pot which was still simmering on the stove. Then just ladle it out and eat.

  Through it all, Cho-Cho-San frolicked at my feet, trilling with excitement. She tried to catch the shreds as I scraped the carrots and sniffed blissfully at the chicken scent beginning to permeate the air. It was a learning experience for her: food did not just come out of little round tins. It told me something else about her: she was not accustomed to food preparation and cooking. Perhaps she had belonged to a man – or, remembering Matilda’s fridge, a woman with no great interest in food. From the size of her, one would not put Soroya into that category, but I had the feeling that her interest in food did not extend beyond the eating of it. Someone else could do the work involved.

  The closing day merged almost imperceptibly into an evening of rare domestic tranquillity. The saucepan produced two bowls of soup each, plus one for Cho-Cho. I do like to see my cooking appreciated. Cho-Cho ate everything but a lone peppercorn that had found its way into her bowl. Evangeline crunched her peppercorns with zest. I’d purchased ready-made profiteroles for us and shared a generous dollop of cream with Cho-Cho.

  ‘The Pick of the Day,’ Evangeline announced, scanning the evening paper’s TV listings, ‘is Fools Rush In. It seems to be Matilda Jordan’s first film – starring her father, Gervaise, in his prime.’

  ‘We can’t miss that,’ I agreed. We settled on the sofa in front of the TV, Cho-Cho curled up between us, purring happily, and we all watched the film.

  Matilda had been so young, so beautiful, so vulnerable – and yet there was an intriguing hint of world-weariness about her that caught at her audience. Especially when she looked at her father and his leading lady.

  ‘That was Gervaise’s third wife, I believe,’ Evangeline said ‘Or possibly, his fourth. There were very messy divorce cases on both sides, as I recall. But then, there usually were.’

  Matilda had come by her world-weariness honestly. Gervaise was the sort who would age any woman rapidly.

  But, oh, that woman – any woman except his daughter – might have had a wonderful time. At first.

  No doubt about it, Gervaise Jordan had it all: the lean lithe body, the charm, the grace, the smothering intensity as he concentrated every fibre of his being upon his leading lady. You could understand why shopgirls had swooned in the aisles, while their less prepossessing escorts ground their teeth. And there couldn’t have been many men who were more prepossessing than Gervaise.

  Then the scene shifted and he was in top hat and tails, walking along the river promenade with his lady. No doubt about it, Gervaise Jordan had been the matinée idol’s Matinée Idol.

  ‘Oh,’ I sighed, as the violins struck up. ‘They don’t make them like that any more.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Evangeline said. ‘Look at that roving eye. He can’t keep it still for a moment.’

  Sure enough, Gervaise’s attention had strayed over his co-star’s shoulder to check out some little extra who was selling flowers, in the artless way they did in old films, nowhere near any place where she might find a steady flow of customers. She was just standing obligingly on the path waiting for one pair of starry-eyed lovers. She was never going to make a living in the real world.

  Rather, her character wasn’t. She, as I seemed to recall, had caught the producer’s eye, as well as Gervaise’s, and more fruitfully.

  ‘Didn’t she wind up as – ?’

  ‘A star, a Lady and matriarch of a theatrical dynasty,’ Evangeline supplied. ‘Not necessarily in that order.’

  ‘Oh, look!’ I pointed to a corner of the screen. ‘There he goes again! I saw him wink at the girl walking the dog. I’m sure that wasn’t in the script.’

  ‘Randy old bastard.’ Evangeline frowned. ‘Easily discouraged, though. He even tried to get funny with me once – and I let him have it with the seltzer bottle. He was no trouble after that.’

  ‘A faceful of seltzer water would discourage any man,’ I agreed.

  ‘Who said anything about his face? I aimed it where he’d notice it most – and so would everyone else. He looked as though he’d had an embarrassing accident. He had to rush away and change before anyone saw him. He kept his distance after that – he was afraid of what I might do for an encore.’

  ‘You could almost feel sorry for him,’ I laughed.

  ‘No need. He took off shortly after that on a Triumphal Tour of the Antipodes where, rumour had it, he cut a wider swathe among the local female talent than even the late dear Duke of Windsor. He did so well he returned several times and did a lot of entertaining the troops in that region during the war and afterwards. I’ll wager he didn’t entertain them half so much as he entertained himself with the girls they left behind them.’

  ‘’Twas ever thus,’ I sighed. Star-struck females were ripe for the plucking by an unscrupulous male – and not necessarily the star. Anyone in the entourage would do, if they thought it would get them closer to their goal.

  ‘Oh, look …’ An organ grinder had strolled into the scene, playing the featured theme music. ‘I haven’t seen him in years. I know his face, now what was his name …?’

  Half the fun of these old movies is spotting old friends, adversaries and acquaintances, all viewed now with the luxury of hindsight. Now we knew the anecdotes, scandals, stories and ultimate fates trailing in their wake, things we had not suspected at the time.

  We had a wonderful evening dissecting everyone and everything. Sometimes we even watched the screen. It was the most satisfying and peaceful evening we had enjoyed in weeks.

  Which was just as well. Late the next morning, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Seven

  We were having a leisurely brunch when Evangeline’s mobile phone began ringing. Of course, she’d left it in her bedroom and had to go and find it.

  ‘Wha-a-t?’ The modified shriek brought me to my feet, sending Cho-Cho tumbling to the floor. We both dashed in the direction of the incoherent shrieks.

  ‘Evangeline, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Eddie,’ she said into the phone. ‘We’ll help you. We’ll get you out of this.’

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘What do you mean – ’ her face froze – ‘we’ve done enough?’

  ‘Let me talk to him.’ I wrestled the phone from her.

  ‘I told them I’d been with you all day,’ Eddie’s plaintive voice was saying. ‘Evangeline Sinclair, Trixie Dolan and Dame Cecile Savoy. “Just ask them,” I said, “they’re my alibi.” And they said, “Pull the other one, there’s bells on it.”’

  ‘Alibi? What do you mean, alibi? Eddie, what’s going on?’

  ‘Ron!’ Evangeline abandoned her attempt to get the phone back. ‘Ron Heyhoe! Where’s my address book? Ron will know what to do. He’ll have friends down there – ’


  ‘Down where? Eddie, where are you?’

  ‘Brighton,’ Eddie said lugubriously. ‘Bloody Brighton.’

  ‘Brighton? What are you doing there? You told us yesterday you never wanted to go there again.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘But they came and got me.’

  ‘Got you? Eddie – ’

  ‘Got it!’ Evangeline surfaced from the depths of a drawer, waving her address book triumphantly. ‘Now …’ she began riffling the pages. ‘Ron … Heyhoe, Ron, Superintendent.’

  ‘Some git took my licence number,’ Eddie said. ‘Gave it to the coppers, didn’t ’e? So, ‘ere I am, under arr – No, no, I’m not finished. Let me talk. I – ’ The line went dead.

  ‘Eddie!’ I pushed buttons wildly, trying to get him back, but nothing happened.

  ‘Ah, here it is!’ Evangeline dived for the regular telephone and began stabbing numbers.

  ‘Wait for me!’ I abandoned the attempt to reach Eddie and rushed to the extension. I wasn’t going to miss this.

  ‘Superintendent Heyhoe, please. It’s an emergency … Certainly, this is Evangeline Sinclair.’

  I picked up the extension in time to hear an ominous silence. Then a click and a heavy sigh announced that we had been put through.

  ‘Ron? Superintendent Heyhoe? Ron, is that you?’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Sinclair. What’s the problem?’ His doom-laden tone expected the worst – and he was going to get it.

  ‘Now, Ron, you promised you were going to call me Evangeline, remember?’ That was her idea of softening him up.

  ‘What do you want … Evangeline?’ He wasn’t buying it.

  ‘I was just thinking … it’s been such a long time since we’ve seen each other. Why don’t we get together for a drink? Soon.’

  ‘Evangeline, I have a drug-related shooting, six mobile phone muggings, two burglaries and a missing child on my hands right now. If that’s all you have on your mind, perhaps we could discuss it at a later time.’

  ‘Oh! … Well, there is a teensy-weensy little problem … I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.’

  ‘How teensy-weensy? How urgent? What have you done now?’

  ‘It isn’t us. It’s our friend, Eddie. You know, the taxi driver.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He didn’t sound it, he sounded relieved. ‘I can’t do anything about parking tickets or traffic violations.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing like that! I wouldn’t dream of bothering you about little things like that.’

  ‘No?’ He paused for thought, then asked uneasily: ‘What did you mean by urgent?’

  ‘Umm … well … I’m afraid Eddie has been arrested.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s all a terrible mistake. Some busybody saw his taxi – we hired him to take us down to Brighton for the day – and reported him. He had nothing to do with what happened. None of us did.’

  ‘If it happened in Brighton, it’s way out of my bailiwick.’ Again he sounded relieved. ‘I can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘I know that. I wouldn’t expect you to. I was just hoping you knew someone down there who could help us. One of your police colleagues. You all know each other, don’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ It was clear that he didn’t really want to say anything – except, perhaps, goodbye – but curiosity was getting the better of him. ‘What’s the charge?’

  ‘Charge?’ Evangeline was stalling for time, as though that might make the explanation easier.

  ‘The charge.’ It just made Ron more suspicious. ‘Contrary to certain assumptions on the part of the public, the police do not just arrest people on a whim. They usually have good cause. What is it?’

  ‘Er, actually, I’m afraid there’s more than one,’ Evangeline admitted. ‘The kidnapping part of it is ridiculous. Cecile will tell you that herself – just as soon as she gets over her snit.’

  ‘Cecile? Savoy? You mean Dame Cecile Savoy is involved in this?’ he groaned.

  ‘Cecile is the least of it.’ I could hold back no longer.

  ‘Thank you, Trixie, I needed that.’ His voice was grim. ‘Go on, Evangeline. What else?’

  ‘We really just stumbled into it – ’

  ‘And stumbled out.’ I added moral support.

  ‘Evangeline – ’ It wasn’t appreciated. At least, not by him.

  ‘We had nothing to do with the arson. The fire had obviously been set and smouldering before we arrived. It just happened to break out while we were there.’

  ‘Kidnapping … arson …’ Ron was bemused.

  ‘It had obviously been set to cover up the murder. Eddie discovered the body in the back room just before the fire exploded.’

  I distinctly heard a whimper at the far end of the line.

  ‘Ron …? Ron …?’ Evangeline called anxiously. ‘Are you still there? You are going to help us, aren’t you? You must know somebody down there we can turn to?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Ron …?’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to decide who I hate enough.’

  ‘Oh, Ron!’ Evangeline giggled girlishly with relief. There are moments when even she can tell she may have gone too far. ‘You’re such a tease!’

  ‘Perhaps Thursby,’ he said.

  ‘Not until next Thursday? We need someone now!’

  ‘Not Thursday, Thursby,’ he corrected. ‘When we were rookies there was a rugby game. We were on opposing sides, of course. He wrecked my knee with a dirty tackle. Put me out of action for months. I still get nasty twinges in bad weather. Yes. Definitely Superintendent Hector Thursby I owe him one.’

  My weekend case was nearly packed when I looked up and into a pair of accusing eyes.

  ‘Cho-Cho! I’d almost forgotten you!’ She blinked. That was what she had been afraid of. I was going off and leaving her. But I couldn’t leave her here on her own with no one I would trust to look after her properly.

  ‘You’ll have to come along with us,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry. I know I’ve promised you that you’d never have to get back in that awful carrier again but – ’

  ‘What on earth?’ Evangeline appeared in the doorway. ‘I thought you were on the phone. What are you doing here talking to yourself?’

  ‘I’m talking to Cho-Cho-San.’

  ‘Same thing.’ Evangeline sniffed and regarded the cat coldly. ‘What are you going to do with her while we’re away?’

  ‘We’ll have to take her with us.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Evangeline began, then hesitated. ‘On the other hand, that might not be a bad idea. We can watch people’s reaction to her. Someone may be very surprised to find she’s still alive. Someone who expected her to have perished in that fire.’

  ‘Maybe …’ I shuddered and tried to pull myself back from thinking about that. ‘But we can’t be sure that the person who brought Cho-Cho to the shop, the person who killed the man in the back room and the person who set the fire are all one and the same person.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but it’s too many coincidences otherwise, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Possibly.’ I hated to admit it, but she could be right. ‘Certainly, I’d bet that the killer set the fire, but the person who tried to dispose of Cho-Cho could be someone else entirely.’

  ‘That would mean two cold-blooded merciless people converging on the same shop at the same time. Do you really think that’s likely?’

  ‘Why not? The kind of people who go to that kind of shop have to be pretty cold-blooded in the first place.’ I threw the last few essentials into my case and zipped it shut.

  ‘The immediate problem,’ Evangeline brooded, ‘is: what are we going to do for transportation? We relied on Eddie, but he’s in jail. You didn’t happen to catch the name of his cousin?’

  ‘He didn’t throw it.’ I picked up the case and followed her into the hall. ‘Why don’t we just rough it and use public transport? I understand the trains go frequently.’

  ‘Don�
��t be absurd!’

  ‘Evangeline!’ I stared aghast at the pile of cases beside the front door and saw what she meant. ‘We’re not going to Outer Mongolia! Only to Brighton – and it’s full of shops and boutiques. If you’ve forgotten anything, you can just pop out and buy it. You don’t need all that luggage!’

  I’d once been in a small road company that had barnstormed from Seattle to Padukah with less. And that had included some of the larger chunks of scenery.

  ‘Now … who could recommend a good car hire firm?’ She paid no attention. As usual. ‘Why don’t you ring Martha and ask? Perhaps Hugh would volunteer his car.’

  ‘I don’t know about that …’ I hesitated. As though on cue, the phone rang.

  ‘That may be Ron’s friend!’ Evangeline snatched it up. ‘Hello? … Oh.’ Her face fell, she held the phone out to me. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Mother!’ Martha’s voice was loud and distraught. ‘Mother – we have an emergency on our hands!’

  ‘The children!’ I gasped, my heart sinking. ‘What – ?’

  ‘The children are fine. It’s the book!’

  ‘Is that all? I mean, I’m sorry, dear. What’s gone wrong with the book?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the book – except that it may never be finished. It’s Jocasta! It’s disaster!’

  ‘Calm down, dear. It can’t be that bad.’

  ‘It’s only a miserable cookbook,’ Evangeline muttered crossly. Martha’s voice was ringing out loud and clear. ‘It’s not Gone with the Wind.’

  ‘Please …’ I waved a shushing hand at Evangeline. ‘Now, take a deep breath, dear, and – ’

  ‘Ask her about the car,’ Evangeline prompted.

  ‘Will you please – ’

  ‘Mother, are you there? Are you listening? You’re my only hope!’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Evangeline said.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ I didn’t like it myself. ‘No, not you, darling – ’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to tell me that. It’s Miss Sinclair, isn’t it? Being snide, as usual.’