She patted the sofa cushions. “Why don’t you sit over here and be comfy?”
“With this cranky knee I’m better off on a straight chair,” Qwilleran said, and it was more or less true.
Cluthra regarded him with fond accusation. “You’ve been kidding us,” she said. “You’re not really a newspaper reporter. But we like you just the same.”
“If your kid sister has been spreading stories, forget it,” he said. “I’m just an underpaid, overworked feature writer for the Fluxion, with a private curiosity about sudden deaths. Ivy has a wild imagination.”
“It’s just a phase she’s going through.”
“By the way, did you know Andy was writing a novel about Junktown?”
“When Andy came over here,” she said, relishing the memory, “we did very little talking about literature.”
“Do you know Hollis Prantz very well?”
Cluthra rolled her eyes. “Preserve me from men who wear gray button-front sweaters!”
Qwilleran gulped his iced drink. The apartment was warm, and Koko was like a fur lap robe. But as they talked, the cat relaxed and eventually slid to the floor, much to the man’s relief. Soon Koko disappeared against the protective coloration of the beige and brown paisley. Qwilleran mopped his brow. He was beginning to suffocate. The temperature seemed to be in the nineties, and the polliwogs dazzled his eyes. He could look down at the plain beige carpet and see polliwogs; he could look up at the white ceiling and see polliwogs. He closed his eyes.
“Do you feel all right, honey?”
“Yes, I feel fine. My eyes are tired, that’s all. And it’s a trifle warm in here.”
“Would you like to lie down? You look kind of groggy. Come and lie down on the sofa.”
Qwilleran contemplated the inviting picture before him—the deep-cushioned sofa, the soft pillows. He also caught a glimpse of movement behind Cluthra’s halo of red hair. Koko had risen silently and almost invisibly to the back of the sofa.
“Take off your coat and lie down and make yourself comfy,” his hostess was urging. “You don’t have to mind your manners with Cousin Cluthra.” She gave his moustache and shoulders an appreciative appraisal and batted her lashes.
Qwilleran wished he had not come. He liked women who were more subtle. He hated paisley. His eyes had been bothering him lately (maybe he needed glasses) and the allover pattern was making him dizzy. Or was it the drink? He wondered about that cherry syrup. Juniper, mullein, lovage. What the devil was lovage?
Then without warning Cluthra sneezed. “Oh! Excuse me!”
Qwilleran took the opportunity to change the subject. “They’ll be burying old C.C. tomorrow,” he said with an attempt at animation, although he had an overwhelming desire to close his eyes.
“He was a real man,” Cluthra said with narrowed eyes. “You don’t find many of them any more, believe me!” She sneezed again. “Excuse me! I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
Qwilleran could guess. Koko had his nose buried in her ostrich feathers. “Iris is taking it very hard,” he said.
Cluthra pulled a chiffon handkerchief from some hidden place and touched her eyes, which were reddening and beginning to stream. “Iris wod’t have ady bore ghostly problebs with her glasses,” she said. “C.C. used to get up id the dight to play tricks with theb.”
“That’s what I call devotion,” Qwilleran said. “Look here! Are you by any chance allergic to cat hair?”
The visit ended abruptly, and it was with a great sense of escape that Qwilleran got out in the cold air and shook the polliwogs from his vision.
Cluthra had called after him, “You bust visit be without your buddy dext tibe.”
He took Koko home and got into his scrounging clothes for his next appointment. But first he looked up a word in the dictionary. “Lovage—a domestic remedy.” For what ailment or deficiency, the book did not say. Qwilleran also opened a can of shrimp and gave Koko a treat, and he spent a certain amount of time thinking about Cluthra’s voice. Whiskey voice, they used to call it.
At the appointed hour he found Ben waiting at the curb in a gray station wagon that was a masterpiece of rust, with a wire coat hanger serving as a radio antenna and with the curbside headlight, anchored by a single screw, staring glumly at the gutter. The driver was bundled up in a mackinaw, early aviator’s helmet, and long striped muffler.
The motor coughed a few times, the car shuddered and lurched away from the curb, sucking up blasts of icy cold and dampness through a gaping hole under the dashboard. Fortunately it was a short drive to the Garrick Theatre in the demolition area. It stood proudly among other abandoned buildings, looking like a relic of fifteenth century Venice.
“Alas, poor Garrick! We knew it well,” said Ben morosely. “The great and glorious names of the theatre once played here. Then . . . vaudeville. Then silent pictures. Then talkies. Then double features. Then Italian films. Then horror movies. Then nothing. And now—only Benjamin X. Nicholas, playing to a ghostly audience and applauded by pigeons.”
Qwilleran carried the crowbar. They both carried flashlights, and Ben directed the newsman in wrenching the boarding from the stage door. The boards came away easily, as if accustomed to cooperating, and the two men entered the dark, silent, empty building.
Ben led the way down a narrow hall, past the doorkeeper’s cubicle, past the skeleton of an iron staircase, and onto the stage. The auditorium was a hollow shell, dangling with dead wires, coated with dust, and raw in patches where decorations had been pried from the sidewalls and the two tiers of boxes. Qwilleran beamed his light at the ceiling; all that remained of the Garrick’s grandeur were the frescoes in the dome—floating images of Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra. If there was nothing left to scrounge, why had Ben brought him here? Soon Qwilleran guessed the answer. The old actor had taken center stage, and an eerie performance began.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen—” Ben declaimed in passionate tones.
“Friends, Romans—” came a distant reverberating voice.
“Lend me your ears!” said Ben.
“Countrymen—friends, Romans—lend me—countrymen—ears—lend me,” whispered the ghosts of old actors.
“Alas,” said Ben when he had spoken the speech and Qwilleran had applauded with gloved thumps and a bravo or two. “Alas, we were born too late . . . . But let us to work! What does our heart desire? A bit of carving? A crumb of marble! Not much choice; the wretches have raped the place. But here!” He kicked a heating grille. “A bronze bauble for your pleasure!”
The moldings crumbled, and the newsman easily pried the blackened grillwork loose. The dust rose. Both men coughed and choked. There was a whirring of wings in the darkness overhead, and Qwilleran thought of bats.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“But stay! One more treasure!” said Ben, flashing his light around the tiers of boxes. All but one of them had been denuded of embellishment. The first box on the left still bore its sculptured crest supported by cherubs blowing trumpets and wearing garlands of flowers. “It would bring a pretty penny.”
“How much?”
“A hundred dollars from any dealer. Two hundred from a smart collector. Three hundred from some bloody fool.”
“How would we get it off?”
“Others have succeeded. Let us be bold!”
Ben led the way to the mezzanine level and into the box.
“You hold both lights,” Qwilleran told him, “and I’ll see what I can do with the crowbar.”
The newsman leaned over the railing and pried at the carving. The floor of the box creaked.
“Lay on, Macduff!” cried Ben.
“Shine the light over the railing,” Qwilleran instructed. “I’m working in shadow.” Then he paused with crowbar in midair. He had seen something in the dust on the floor. He turned to look at Ben and was blinded by the two flashlights. A shudder in his moustache made him plunge to the rear of the box. There was a wrenching of tim
bers and a crash and a cloud of choking dust rising from the floor below. Two beams of light danced crazily on the walls and ceiling.
“What the hell happened?” gasped Qwilleran. “The railing let loose!”
The railing was gone, and the sagging floor of the box sloped off into blackness.
“The saints were with us!” cried Ben, choked with emotion or dust.
“Give me a light and let’s get out of here,” said the newsman.
They drove back to Junktown with the brass grille in the back seat, Qwilleran silent as he recalled his narrow escape and what he had seen in the dust.
“Our performance lacked fire this evening,” Ben apologized. An icicle glistened on the tip of his nose. “We were frozen to the bone. But come to the pub and witness a performance that will gladden your heart. Come join us in a brandy.”
The Lion’s Tail had been a neighborhood bank in the 1920s—a miniature Roman temple, now desecrated by a neon sign and panels of glass blocks in the arched windows. Inside, it was lofty, undecorated, smoke-filled, and noisy. An assortment of patrons stood at the bar and filled half the tables—men in work clothes, and raggle-taggle members of Junktown’s after-dark set.
As Ben made his entrance, he was greeted by cheering, stamping of feet, and pounding of tables. He acknowledged the acclaim graciously and held up his hand for silence.
“Tonight,” he said, “a brief scene from King Richard III, and then drinks for the entire house!”
With magnificent poise he moved through the crowd, his muffler hanging down to his heels, and disappeared. A moment later he emerged on a small balcony.
“Now is the winter of our discontent . . .” he began.
The man had a ringing delivery, and the audience was quiet if not wholly attentive.
“He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,” came the voice from the balcony, and there was riotous laughter down below.
Ben concluded with a melodramatic leer: “I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days!”
The applause was deafening, the actor bowed humbly, and the bartender went to work filling glasses.
When Ben came down from the balcony, he threw a wad of folded bills on the bar—bills folded lengthwise. “King Richard or Charley’s aunt, what matter?” he said to Qwilleran with a gloomy countenance. “The day of the true artist is gone forever. The baggy-pants comic is an ‘artist.’ So is the bullfighter, tightrope walker and long-haired guitar player. Next it will be baseball players and bricklayers! Sir, the time is out of joint.”
The thirsty audience soon demanded an encore.
“Pardon us,” Ben said to Qwilleran. “We must oblige,” and he moved once more toward the balcony.
The newsman quietly left The Lion’s Tail, wondering where Ben acquired the cash to buy the applause that he craved—and whether he had known that the box at the Garrick was a booby trap.
Qwilleran went home. He found the cats asleep on their cushions, which bent their whiskers into half-smiles, and he retired to his own bed, his mind swimming with questions. What was Ben’s racket? Was the actor as nutty as he appeared? Was his sudden affluence connected with the Ellsworth house? Ben had been there, Qwilleran was sure. He had seen the evidence in the dust—feathery arabesques made by the tassels of his muffler. Still, Ben’s reception at The Lion’s Tail indicated that his audience was accustomed to his largess.
The newsman remembered something Cobb had said. “The nearest Ben ever got to Broadway was Macy’s toy department.” Then a few minutes later Cobb had contradicted himself. “Ben’s got a bundle. He used to make big money.” And at this remark Iris had glanced at her husband in surprise.
Did Ben have a shady sideline that supplied him with the money to bribe his audience into attention and applause? Did Cobb know about it? Qwilleran’s answers were only guesses, as unprovable as they were improbable, and the questions kept him awake.
Deliberately he turned his mind to a more agreeable subject: Christmas Eve at the Press Club. He could picture the society writers—and Jack Jaunti—doing a double take when he walked in with Mary, and he could see the newshounds being outwardly casual but secretly impressed by the magic name of Duxbury. Qwilleran realized he ought to cap the evening with a Christmas gift for Mary, but what could he buy for the daughter of a millionaire?
Before he fell asleep, the answer spread over his consciousness like a warm blanket. It was a brilliant idea—so brilliant that he sat up in bed. And if the Daily Fluxion would cooperate, it would save Junktown.
Qwilleran made a mental note to call the managing editor the first thing in the morning, and then he slept, the pillow turning up one end of his moustache in a half-smile.
NINETEEN
Waking on Wednesday morning, Qwilleran was vaguely aware of a lump in his armpit. It was Yum Yum, hiding under the blankets in the safest spot she could find. But while she had run for cover, Koko was investigating the shattering noise that alarmed her. With his hind feet on a chair and his forepaws on the window sill, he was watching the pellets of ice that bounced off the panes of glass.
“Hailstorm!” Qwilleran groaned. “That’s all we need to ruin the Block Party!”
Koko left the window and routed Yum Yum out of bed.
The hail sheathed the city in ice, but by eleven o’clock that morning, the weather developed a conscience and the sun broke through. Junktown sparkled like a jewel. Buildings became crystal palaces. Utility wires, street signs, and traffic lights wore a glistening fringe of icicles, and even the trash cans were beautiful. It was the only decent gesture the weather had made all winter.
By noon the junkers were flocking into Zwinger Street. Angels flew from the lampposts, carolers were caroling, and Ben Nicholas in white beard and Santa Claus pantaloons held audience on the stoop in front of his shop. Tiny Spooner was there, taking pictures, and even the Morning Rampage had sent a photographer.
Qwilleran mixed with the crowd and eavesdropped in the shops, until it was time to return to the Junkery and take his turn at tending the shop. He found Cluthra on duty.
“This chair is very old,” she was telling a customer. “It has the original milk paint. You’d better grab it. At twenty-seven fifty Mrs. Cobb isn’t making a penny on it, I can guarantee. Why, on Cape Cod you’d have to pay sixty-five dollars!”
The customer capitulated, wrote a check, and left the shop in high glee, carrying a potty chair with sawed-off legs.
Cluthra turned the cashbox over to Qwilleran and explained the price tags. “Do you understand the code, hon?” she asked. “You read the numbers backwards to get the asking price, and then you can go up or down a few dollars, depending on the customer. Be careful of that banister-back chair; it has a loose leg. And don’t forget, you’re entitled to strangle every third customer who tells you about her grandmother.”
The traffic in and out of the shop was heavy, but the buyers were less plentiful than the lookers and askers. Qwilleran decided to keep a log for Mrs. Cobb’s benefit:
—Sold two blue glass things out of window, $18.50.
—Woman asked for Sheffield candlesticks.
—Man asked for horse brasses.
—Sold spool chest, $30.
—Kissed female customer and sold tin knife box, $35.
The customer in question had rushed at Qwilleran with a gay little shriek. “Qwill! What are you doing here?”
“Rosie Riker! How are you? You’re looking great!” Actually she was looking matronly and somewhat ludicrous in her antiquing clothes.
“How’ve you been, Qwill? I keep telling Arch to bring you home to dinner. Mind if I sit down? I’ve been walking around for three hours.”
“Not in the banister-back, Rosie. The leg’s loose.”
“I wish they’d turn those carol singers off for five minutes. How’ve you been, Qwill? What are you doing here?”
“Keeping shop while Mrs. Cobb’s at her husband’s funeral.”
“You’re looking fi
ne. I’m glad you’ve still got that romantic moustache! Do you ever hear from Miriam?”
“Not directly, but my ex-mother-in-law puts the bite on me once in a while. Miriam’s in that Connecticut sanitarium again.”
“Don’t let those vultures take advantage of you, Qwill. They’re plenty well off.”
“Well, how’ve you been, Rosie? Are you buying anything?”
“I’m looking for a Christmas present for Arch. How are your cats?”
“They’re great! Koko’s getting smarter all the time. He opens doors, turns light on and off, and he’s learning to type.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He rubs his jaw against the levers and flips the carriage or resets margins—not always at the most opportune time.”
“He’s cleaning his teeth,” Rosie explained. “Our vet says that’s how cats try to clean their teeth. You should take Koko to the dentist. Our gray tabby just had a dental prophylaxis . . . . Say, have you got any tin? I want to buy something for Arch.”
She found a tin knife box, and Qwilleran—torn between two loyalties—guiltily knocked two dollars off Mrs. Cobb’s asking price.
Rosie said, “I thought your story on the auction was great!”
“The story behind the story is better.”
“What’s that? Arch didn’t tell me. He never tells me anything.”
Qwilleran reconstructed the night of Andy’s accident. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that Andy simply missed his footing and fell. He’d have to have been an acrobat to land on the finial the way he did. There were customers coming to look at a chandelier that night. If he was in the process of getting it down off the ceiling, it would mean they had already okayed it; in other words, they were there when he fell! . . . It doesn’t click. I don’t think they ever got in the store. I think the whole accident was staged, and Andy was dead when the customers arrived.”
As he talked, Rosie’s eyes had been growing wider and wider. “Qwill, I think Arch and I . . . I think we might have been the customers! When did it happen?”
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, Ate Danish Modern, Turned on and Off Page 16
