It was then that Qwilleran realized he had forgotten to pour the coffee. "How about a cup, Jody? If it isn't too cold."
The tiny young woman curled up on the sofa, cradling the big mug in her small hands. "I feel so sorry for Juney. I told him to go Down Below and get a job at the Daily Fluxion and forget about everything up here."
"No one should act on impulse at a time like this," Qwilleran advised.
"Maybe he could get an injunction to stop her from selling — or postpone it until she's thinking straight."
"Won't work. She'd have to be proved mentally incompetent. It's her own property now, and she can do whatever she wishes."
At that moment Mrs. Cobb, in robe and bedroom slippers, made an abrupt appearance in the doorway. "Look out the window!" she said in alarm. "There's a fire on Main Street! It looks like the lodge hall's on fire!"
Qwilleran and Jody jumped up, and all three of them hurried to the front windows.
"That's Herb's lodge," Mrs. Cobb said. "This is their meeting night. There could be thirty or forty people in the building."
"I'll drive down and see," Qwilleran said, "Come on, Jody, and I'll take you home afterward. Out this way... back door... car's in the garage."
Downtown Main Street was filled with flashing blue and red lights. Traffic was rerouted, and fire trucks were parked in an arc, training their headlights on the center of the block. The pumpers were working, and fire hoses were pouring water on the roof of the three-story lodge hall. Beyond that building there was an orange-red glow with flames leaping upward — then a hiss of steam — then a cloud of smoke.
Qwilleran parked, and he and Jody walked closer.
"It's the Picayune!" he shouted. "The whole building's on fire!"
Jody started to cry. "Poor Juney!" she kept saying. "Poor Juney!"
"They're hosing down the lodge hall to keep it from catching," Qwilleran said. "The post office, too. The news- paper plant is going to be totaled, I'm afraid."
"I think that's what his father was trying to tell him in the dream," she said. "Can you see Juney?"
"Can't recognize anyone in those helmets and rubber coats. Even their faces are black. Dirty job! The white helmet is the fire chief, that's all I can tell."
"I hope Juney doesn't do anything crazy, like running into the building to save something."
"They're trained not to take foolish risks," Qwilleran assured her.
"But he's so impulsive — and sentimental. That's why he's taking it so hard — his mother selling the Pic, I mean." A sudden look of horror crossed her face. "Oh, no! William Allen's in there! They a]ways lock him up for the night. I'm going to be sick..."
"Easy, Jody! He may have escaped. Cats are clever... Come on. We can't stay here. It's icing up, and you're shivering. The men will be on the job for hours, mopping up and looking for hot spots. I'll drive you home. Will you be all right?"
"Yes, I'll wait up till Juney comes home. He's been staying at my place since his father died, you know."
At the K mansion Qwilleran found Mrs. Cobb at the kitchen table, still in her pink robe, drinking cocoa and looking worried. "There's no news on the radio," she said anxiously.
"It wasn't the lodge hall," Qwilleran told her. "It was the Picayune building. It's gutted. More than a century of publishing destroyed in half an hour."
"Did you see Herb?" She poured a cup of cocoa for Qwilleran. It was not his favorite beverage.
"No, but I'm sure he was there, swinging an ax."
"He shouldn't be doing such strenuous work. He's over fifty, you know, and most of the men are much younger."
"You seem unusually concerned about him, Mrs. Cobb." He gave her a searching look.
The housekeeper lowered her eyes and smiled sheepishly. "Well, I admit I'm fond of him. We always have a good time together, and he's beginning to drop hints."
"About marriage?" Qwilleran's dismay showed in his brusque question. As a housekeeper she was a jewel — too valuable to lose. She had spoiled him and the Siamese with her cooking.
"I wouldn't stop working, though," Mrs. Cobb hastened to say. "I've always worked, and this is the most wonderful job I ever had. It's a dream come true. I mean it!"
"And you're perfect for the position. Don't rush into anything, Mrs. Cobb."
"I won't," she promised. "He hasn't come right out and asked me yet, so don't you say anything."
She refilled her cocoa cup and carried it upstairs, saying a weary good-night.
Qwilleran made his nightly house check before setting the burglar alarm and locking up. Then he retired to his own quarters over the garage, carrying a wicker picnic hamper. Indistinct sounds came from inside the hamper and it swung to and fro vigorously as he carried it.
The four-car garage was a former carriage house built of fieldstone — the same masonry that made the main house spectacular. There were four arched doors to the stalls, a cupola with a weather vane on the roof, and a brace of ornate carriage lanterns at each comer of the building.
Upstairs the interior had been refurbished to suit Qwilleran's taste — comfortable contemporary in soothing tones of beige, rust, and brown. It was quiet and simple, an escape from the pomp and preciosity of the K mansion.
In the sitting room there were easy chairs, good reading lamps, a music system, and a small bar where Qwilleran mixed drinks for guests. He himself had not touched alcohol since the time he fell off a subway platform in New York, an experience that had been permanently sobering. Nor had he ever ridden the subway again.
The other rooms were his 'writing studio, his bedroom, and the cats' parlor, which was carpeted and furnished with cushions, baskets, scratching posts, climbing trees, and a turkey roaster that served as their commode. There was also a shelf of secondhand books bought at the hospital bazaar for a dime apiece. There were books on first-year algebra and English grammar simplified. There was a collection of famous sermons. Other titles were The Burning of Rome and Elsie Dinsmore and Vergil's Aeneid. Koko could push them off the shelf to his heart's content.
Qwilleran opened the wicker hamper in the cats' parlor and invited two reluctant Siamese to jump out. Why, he asked himself, did they never want to get into the hamper? And when they were in it, why did they never want to get out? Koko and Yum Yum finally emerged cautiously, a performance they had repeated every night for the last year stalking the premises and sniffing the furnishings as if they suspected the room to be bugged or booby-trapped.
"Cats!" Qwilleran said aloud. "Who can understand them?"
He left the Siamese to their own peculiar occupations — licking each other, wrestling, chasing, biting ears, and sniffing indiscreetly — while he tuned in the midnight news in his sitting room.
"The offices and printing plant of the Pickax Picayune were destroyed by fire tonight. The building is a total loss, according to fire chief Bruce Scott. Twenty-five fire fighters, three tankers, and two pumpers from Pickax and surrounding communities responded to the alarm and are still on the scene. No injuries have been reported. Elsewhere in the county, the Mooseville Village Council voted to spend five hundred dollars on Christmas decorations — "
He snapped off the radio in exasperation. The same fifteen-second news item would be repeated hourly without further details. Listeners would not be told how the fire had started, who reported it, what records and equipment had been destroyed, the age of the building, its construction, the problems encountered in fighting the fire, precautions taken, the estimated value of the loss, the insurance coverage.
Without doubt the county needed a newspaper. As for the fate of the Picayune, it was regrettable, but one had to be realistic. The Pic had been a relic of the horse-and-buggy era. It was Senior's sentimentality and self-indulgence that had bankrupted his newspaper. Typesetting was his obsession, his reason for living, to quote Junior.
Reason for living? Qwilleran jerked to attention and combed his moustache with his fingertips. If the newspaper had truly been on the brink of failure, could Se
nior's accident have been a suicide? The old plank bridge would be a logical place for a fatal "accident." It was well known to be hazardous. Senior was a cautious, sober man — not one of the Friday-night drunks or speeding youths who usually came to grief at the bridge.
Qwilleran felt a tingling sensation on his upper lip, and he knew his suspicion was valid. There was something uncanny about his upper lip. A tingling, a tremor, or simply a vague uneasiness in the roots of his moustache told him — when he was on the right scent. And now he was getting the signal.
If Senior had intended to take his own life, a staged "accident" would avoid the suicide clause, provided the insurance policy had been in effect long enough. Didn't Junior mention that Grandma Gage had been paying the premiums for years?
An "accident" might pay double indemnity to the widow, or even triple indemnity, although that would be a gamble: There would be a thorough investigation. Insurance companies objected to being fooled.
Perhaps Senior feared something worse than losing the newspaper. He had taken desperate measures to keep the Picayune afloat — selling the farmland, mortgaging the farmhouse, begging from his mother-in-law. Did his desperation lead him into something illegal? Did he fear exposure? How about the man in the black raincoat? What was he doing in Pickax? Senior's death had occurred only a few hours before the stranger arrived on the plane. Did Senior know he was coming? And why was the visitor hanging around? Were others implicated?
And now the Picayune offices had been destroyed. It was curious timing for such a disaster. Was there something in the basement of the building besides presses and back-copy files? Was it incriminating evidence that had to be eliminated? Who knew what was there? And who threw the match?
Qwilleran roused himself from his reverie and flexed the leg that was going to sleep. He was getting some weird notions. What had Mrs. Cobb put in that cocoa?
From the cats' parlor down the hall came a muffled but recognizable sound: thlunk! It was followed by another thlunk — then again thlunk thlunk thlunk in rapid succession. It was the sound of books falling on a carpeted floor. Koko was bumping his private collection.
4
Wednesday, November thirteenth. “Continued cold, with overcast skies and snow showers accumulating to three to four inches.
“Overcast!” Qwilleran bellowed at the radio on his desk. “Why don’t you look out the window? The sun’s shining like the Fourth of July!”
He turned his attention back to Tuesday’s Daily Fluxion, which had given good space to the story about the Pickax Picayune. It was not entirely accurate, but small towns were glad of any attention at all in the metropolitan press. Then he tried to read about the disasters, terrorism, crime, and graft Down Below, but his mind kept drifting back to Moose County.
Snow or now snow, he wanted to drive out in the country, look at the old plank bridge, visit the Goodwinter farmhouse, meet the widow. He would take flowers, offer condolences, and ask a few polite questions. It was an approach he had always handled well on the newsbeat. Sad eyes and drooping moustache gave him a mournful demeanor that passed for deep sympathy.
In the county telephone book he found Senior Goodwinter listed on Black Creek Lane in North Middle Hummock. On the county map he could find neither. He found Middle Hummock and West Middle Hummock. He found Mooseville, Smith’s Folly, Squunk Corners, Chipmunk, and Brrr, which was not a misprint; the town was the coldest spot in the county. But North Middle Hummock was not to be found. He took his problem to Mr. O’Dell, who knew all the answers.
Mrs. Fulgrove and Mr. O’Dell were the day help at the K Mansion. The woman scrubbed and polished six days a week with almost religious fervor; the houseman handled the heavy jobs. Mr. O’Dell had been a school janitor for forty years and had shepherded thousands of students through adolescence — answering their questions, solving their problems, and lending them lunch money. “Janitor” was a revered title in Pickax, and if Mr. O’Dell ever decided to run for the office of mayor, he would be elected unanimously. Now, with his silver hair and ruddy complexion and benign expression, he superintended the Klingenschoen estate as naturally as he had supervised the education of Pickax youth.
Qwilleran found the houseman lubricating the hinges on the broom closet door. “Do you know the location of Senior Goodwinter’s farmhouse, Mr. O’Dell? I don’t find North Middle Hummock on the map.”
In a lilting voice the houseman said, “The devil himself couldn’t find the likes o’ that on the map, I’m thinkin’, for it’s a ghost town fifty year since, but yourself can find it, for I’m after tellin’ you how to get there. Go east, now, past the Buckshot Mine, where the wind will be whistlin’ in the mine shaft on a day without wind, and there’ll be moanin' from the lower depths. When you come to the old plank bridge, let you be wary, for the boards rattle like the divil’s own teeth. Keep watch for a lonely tree on a high hill — the hangin’ tree, they’re callin’ it — for then you’re comin’ to the church where me and my colleen got ourselves married by the good Father Ryan forty-five year since, God rest her soul. And when you come to a deal o’ rubble, that’s all that’s left o’ North Middle Hummock.
“I feel we’re getting warm,” Qwilleran said.
“Warm, is it? There’s a ways to go yet — two miles till you set eyes on Captain Fugtree’s farm with the white fence. Beyond the sheep meadow pay no mind to the sign sayin’ Fugtree Sideroad, for it’s Black Creek Lane, and the Goodwinter house you’ll be seein’ at the end of it. Gray, it is, with a yellow door.
As Qwilleran set out for a North Middle Hummock that didn’t exist and a Black CreekLane that was called something else, he marveled at the information programmed in the heads of Moose County natives for instant retrieval. If Mr. O’Dell could recite the directions in such detail, Senior Goodwinter, who had driven the tortuous route every day, would know every jog in the road, every pothole, every patch of loose gravel. It was not likely that Senior had wrecked his car accidentally.
Qwilleran heard no whistling or moaning at the Buckshot Mine, but the old plank bridge did indeed rattle ominously. Although the parapets were built of stone, the roadbed was a loose strip of lateral planks. The “hanging tree” was well named — an ancient gnarled oak making a grotesque silhouette against the sky. Everything else checked out: the church, the rubble, the white fence, the sheep meadow.
The farmhouse at the end of Black CreekLane was a rambling structure of weathered gray shingles, set in a yard covered with the gold and red leaves of maples. Clumps of chrysanthemums were still blooming stubbornly around the doorstep.
Qwilleran lifted a brass door knocker shaped like the Greek letter pi and let it drop on the yellow door. He had taken the risk of dropping in without an appointment, country style, and when the door opened he was greeted without surprise by a pleasant young woman in a western shirt.
“I’m Jim Qwilleran,” he said. “I couldn’t attend the funeral, but I’ve brought some flowers for Mrs. Goodwinter.”
“I know you!” she exclaimed. “I sued to see your picture in the Daily Fluxion before I moved to Montana. Come right in!” She turned and shouted up the staircase. “Mother! You’ve got company!”
The woman who came down the stairs was no distraught widow with eyes red from weeping and sleeplessness; she was a hearty type in a red warm-up suit, with eyes sparkling and cheeks pink as if she had just come in from jogging.
“Mr. Qwilleran!” she cried with outstretched hand. “How good of you to drop in! We’ve all read your column in the Fluxion, and we’re so glad you’re living up here.”
He presented the flowers. “With my compliments and sympathy, Mrs. Goodwinter.”
“Please call me Gritty. Everyone does,” she said. “And thank you for your kindness. Roses! I love roses! Let’s go into the keeping room. Every other place is torn up for inventory ... Pug, honey, put these lovely flowers in a vase, will you? That’s a dear.”
The hundred-year-old farmhouse had many small rooms with wide floorbo
ards and six-over-six windows with some of the original wavy glass. The mismatched furnishings were obviously family heirlooms, but the interior was self-consciously coordinated: blue-and-white tiles, blue-and-white calico curtains, and blue-white china on the plate rail. Antique cooking utensils hung in and around the large fireplace.
Gritty, said, “We’ve been hoping you would join the country club, Mr. Qwilleran.”
“I haven’t done any joining,” he said, “because I‘m concentrating on writing a book.”
“Not about Pickax, I hope,” the widow said with a laugh. “It would be banned in Boston ...Pug, honey, bring us a drink, will you? ... What will you have, Mr. Qwilleran?”
“Ginger ale, club soda, anything like that. And everyone calls me Qwill.”
“How about a Coke with a little rum?” She was tempting him with sidelong glance. “Live it up, Qwill!”
“Thanks, but I’ve been on the wagon for several years.”
“Well, you’re doing something right! You look wonderfully healthy.” She appraised him from head to foot. “Are you happy in Moose County?”
“I’m getting used to it — the fresh air, the relaxed lifestyle, the friendly people,” he said. “It must be a comfort to you, during this sad time, to have so many friends and relatives.”
“The relatives you can have!” she said airily. “But, yes — I am fortunate to have good friends.”
Her daughter brought a tray of beverages, and Qwilleran raised his glass. “With hope for the future!”
“You’re so right!” said his hostess, flourishing a double old-fashioned. “Would you stay for lunch, Qwill? I’ve made a ham-and-spinach quiche with funeral leftovers. Pug, honey, see if it’s ready to come out of the oven. Stick a knife in it.”
The visit was not what Qwilleran had anticipated. He was required to shift abruptly from condolence to social chitchat. “You have a beautiful house,” he remarked.
The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare tcw-7 Page 5
