The Black Cat

by Martha Grimes

  Jury smiled. “Right. That point’s already been settled, Wiggins.”

  34

  Mungo trotted out to the kitchen and trotted back to the music room. She’s out of the kitchen, so let’s eat dinner; we have a lot to do.

  Morris was slow to follow him; Morris did not want to do a lot, especially his, as Mungo’s “lots” were so complicated.

  “Come on, Mrs. Tobias could be back in a minute.”

  Morris moved quicker.

  In the kitchen, across the granite countertop, a profusion of white packages and little white tubs were lined up and open. A stool stood conveniently placed before this cold collation. There were herring, two kinds of cheese, wafer-thin slices of Westphalia ham, smoked salmon, wild Alaskan salmon (or what was left of it), thinly sliced summer sausage.

  Morris picked up her paws, one after the other, set them down, again and again. Where had all this food come from?

  From that stuck-up deli on Sloane Street, where you drop a week’s wages just going through the door. Harry’s rich; he doesn’t care. Come on, don’t just sit there. Get up on the stool. Mungo was earnestly glad for cat-agility. He disliked bounding up to the counter.

  But like a fan unfolding, Morris went from floor to counter in a single shake. Amazing how cats could do things—fold their paws in, spring from floor to table.

  Go on, toss some food down. I’ll have a piece of sausage and some ham and some of that salmon.

  Almost on tiptoe, Morris went down the line, here and there stopping to sniff. Umm! Which? Smoked or plain?

  Either, I’m not fussy. Don’t bother with the white tubs, they’re mostly salads.

  This one’s chopped liver. She slid in her paw and spooned out a bite. Um-um!

  Sausage? My sausage?

  Oh. Sorry. She slid two summer sausage slices from the paper to the counter’s edge.

  Mungo caught both pieces, together, in his mouth.

  That was brilliant!

  He thought so, too. He chewed and thought about his plan for the evening before them. It should work.

  This is really good herring. Here—A piece went over the counter and sailed through the air; Mungo swatted it down.

  They ate in silence for a minute. Then Mungo’s ears perked up. We’d better get out; I think I hear her . . . What’re you doing?

  Straightening up so she won’t suspect—

  Never mind, she’ll blame it on Schrödinger.

  Footsteps sounded on the staircase, and Mungo said, Out! Morris slid from counter to floor like water spilling. Didn’t even bother with the stool, thought Mungo wonderingly.

  They sped from the kitchen and through the dining room just before Mrs. Tobias hove into view.

  And right on her heels was the cat Schrödinger.

  The kitchen door closed behind them.

  “Look what you’ve gone and done!” came shrieking from the other side of the kitchen door.

  Mungo, lying under the living room sofa with Morris, enjoyed the sight of a screeching Schrödinger hurled out of the kitchen. It was almost as much fun as watching Jasper land on his arse.

  Then he got down to business:

  Harry will be back soon. He’ll take the car tonight to go to the Old Wine Shades. The idea is to get you into the car—

  Why?

  You’ll see. The window’s stuck on the passenger side, stuck about halfway up. Once you’re through the window, just climb over into the back and lie down on the floor. When we come to the car, he’ll never notice.

  You haven’t said why we’re going there, said Morris.

  Because the Spotter might be there.

  How am I going to get out of the house without Harry seeing me?

  Simple. When he comes in, I’ll bark and bounce around as if I’m really glad to see him—that’d make a change—and he’ll have all his attention on me. All you need to do is stay close to the wall behind the door, then when he opens it, you slither round the edge and out. Even if he sees you, he’ll think you’re Schrödinger. She’s always running outside.

  They had managed to work the blue collar off by pushing at its Velcro tabs so that Mrs. Tobias couldn’t tell the difference between the two cats. The only way Harry could tell the difference (and Harry didn’t pay much attention, anyway) was when Schrödinger was with her kittens. That meant the extra cat was Morris. Harry put the collar back on, puzzled as to why it didn’t stay.

  Mungo had pulled it off again. No one around here really took a blind bit of notice; Morris could have been sporting the Union Jack and no one would see. That’s what happened when you were too caught up in yourself—Mrs. Tobias with her pies and poached salmon; Harry with, well, Harry.

  For another hour they waited side by side on a window seat behind Harry’s desk in the living room.

  Finally, the Jaguar pulled up at the curb. It was not yet dark, but getting there, the light softer, bluer, diminished.

  Come on! Positions! said Mungo.

  They bounded off the window seat, ran toward the front door with Mungo squarely in front, Morris against the wall. When the door opened, Mungo barked up a storm and Morris flat-bellied herself around the edge of the door. All she saw was a foot shod in cordovan brown calf leather.

  Bark. Bark.

  Harry frowned. “What?”

  Wouldn’t you like to know? Harry couldn’t pick up this message, of course, he being human (although Mungo thought that far from settled). Mungo then rushed to the living room and hopped up on the window seat to watch Morris, who was not yet in the car but trying. One try—Whoa! Cat didn’t make it. Another—Oops! Almost, but not quite. Then he saw Morris gather herself in that way cats do, every little muscle concentrated, focused . . . There! Morris got her paws hitched over the window and she was in. Mungo wanted to applaud.

  Harry was back with the ridiculous lead that Mungo allowed to be snapped onto his collar. Ho-hum. As if he needed one. As if it controlled him. But Mungo tried to “scamper” off the seat, thinking scampering more befitting Harry’s idea of dogdom. He stopped short of tail wagging. He wouldn’t lower himself.

  Off they went out the door, down the white steps to the car. Back door opened, Mungo hopped up to the seat and looked down at Morris lying placidly on the floor, paws tucked in.

  All the work. All the work falls to me, thought Mungo. He sent a message to Morris:

  When we get there, just repeat what you did in reverse—wait for us to get out of the car, ease yourself out the window, and follow.

  No answer came from Morris.

  Was the cat asleep?

  The Old Wine Shades was in the City, but Harry treated it as his local, despite its being a bit of a drive. It took Harry less than fifteen minutes given the hairsbreadth distance he allowed between his car and the rest of the world: hairsbreadth from other cars, people, curbs, cats, and dogs. Mungo was glad just to get there alive. Harry wound between Embankment and the river as if the car were a zipper, then funneled off into King William Street and then into Arthur.

  The Jaguar stopped in a no-parking area right beside the pub, Harry thinking it was his God-given right to park anywhere he chose.

  Mungo sent Morris the message to wait, wait until they were out.

  You already told me that.

  The tone was truculent. Mungo could have done with some appreciation.

  Inside, seated at the bar in his favorite place, Harry engaged in one of his winey talks with Trevor.

  Mungo stared at the door, wondering where Morris was; Morris must have missed the opening of the door and was stuck outside. For heaven’s sakes.

  Trevor had gone off somewhere and returned with a bottle, and the two men spent more valuable minutes talking about it.

  O Boredom, I salute you!

  Where was the Spotter? Mungo knew he was—There! Coming through the door, followed by Morris. The Spotter didn’t see her. My God! Couldn’t even detectives suss out they were being followed by a cat? Mungo hoped his faith wasn’t misplaced.
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  “Hullo, Harry. Mungo.” Jury tossed his coat on a stool and reached down to give Mungo’s head a rub. Then he saw Morris. “What the hell’s your cat doing here, Harry?” Jury laughed.

  Harry looked down. Frowning deeply, he said, “Schrödinger? That’s not Schrödinger.”

  Right! thought Mungo. Right! It’s not.

  Harry turned and looked down, frowning. “At least I don’t think so.”

  Wrong! Trust Harry not to know his own cat.

  “Schrödinger,” Jury said with a laugh. “The cat’s dead; the cat’s alive.”

  No! thought Mungo. NO no no no no no. Don’t go off on that quantum mechanics stuff!

  Harry was nonplussed. “How the devil did you get in here, Shoe?”

  No oh no oh no!

  Morris stuck by Jury’s leg, staring up at him. Staring, sending him all sorts of messages, each tumbling over the one before, hoping by sheer volume to penetrate the dense mass of the human brain. I’m not Schrödinger, I’m not Shoe, I’m Morris, Morris, Morris, from the Black Cat in Chesham ...

  “What is this?” asked Jury, drinking the wine Trevor had just poured. “It’s good.”

  Trevor, wine expert, rolled his eyes. “Surprise, surprise, Superintendent.”

  Mungo sat hard by Morris and joined in: Look, look, this isn’t Schrödinger, this isn’t Shoe, no no, not Shoe, it’s Morris, Mor-risss, MORRIS, M-O-R-R-I-S ...

  Harry, cat completely forgotten, was winding up one of his interminable paeans to the good grape and saying, “So, are you getting anywhere with these two murders?”

  Standing on his hind legs, Mungo placed his front paws on the edge of Jury’s chair. It’s not Shoe—Listen! The Black Cat, the Black Cat, the pub the Black Cat . . .

  Morris joined in: Black Cat Black Cat Dora Dora’s cat . . .

  Jury frowned. “What’s with Mungo? He seems distracted.” He rubbed the dog’s head.

  A woman on the other side of Harry bent down to look at the cat and cooed, “What a pretty kitty. What’s his name?”

  “Schrödinger. It’s a she.”

  Not Schrödinger, she’s Morris. Morris. Mungo kept it up.

  The woman frowned. “That’s a funny name. Whatever does it mean?”

  Jury could hear Harry testing the point of each word before he flung them at her like a handful of darts.

  “It means ‘cat’ in quantum physics,” he said this without looking at her.

  “Well. We’re not very friendly, are we?” She sniffed and moved from the stool to a table.

  Free of her, Harry went back to the subject. “Be careful, or you’ll have another Ripper on your hands. Was she, as they say, ‘interfered with’?”

  “You think I’m going to give you the details?”

  Mungo turned in circles at his feet, while Morris was close to clawing her way up his leg. Mungo thought in a minute he might even bark. Why couldn’t the Spotter sort it?

  “I don’t see why not,” said Harry. “The tabloids will dish up details.”

  Mungo wondered how to spell “Black Cat.” Morris was supposed to be staring, staring at the Spotter. It looked as if she were sleeping on her feet. That better hadn’t be so.

  Jury was looking down at Morris, looking from Morris to Mungo. Mungo watched his face, his expression of real consternation. The dog could almost see the tumblers of the lock clicking: Something about this black cat—and Mungo, Mungo trying to tell me something? ... Click. Wait. The Black Cat, that pub . . . Click. Dora. Dora’s cat . . . Click, click, click. My God! Could this be Dora’s—?

  Yes yes yes yes. The Spotter was thinking hard, even if Mungo had to make up his thoughts. Mungo waited for the words that would get Morris back to Dora—

  Jury said, “Is a dog a lot of trouble?”

  Mungo crawled under the bar stool, went down with his paws over his eyes.

  Is a dog a lot of trouble?

  35

  The bloody traffic light had decided its changing days were over. Jury sat behind the wheel, waiting.

  I’ve ‘ad enough o’ you lot, thinking I’ll go red-yellow green at a moment’s notice just t’ please you. Well, see ’ow you like sittin’ ‘ere for several minutes....

  Jury hit the steering wheel. Was he going insane? Imagining what was rattling through the head of a traffic light? Next it’d be British Telecom over there in that forlorn-looking telephone box, trying to get a message across to him—

  Which made him think of Mungo and Schrödinger ...

  Finally the light changed (reluctantly?), and he turned onto Upper Street. No, there was no doubt in his mind that those two had been trying to tell him something. It didn’t surprise him that Mungo had done this, but the black cat?

  The black cat.

  That cat seemed to be getting along famously with Mungo. They were like conspirators.

  Frowning, he pulled up in front of his building, got out and locked the car, and took the steps two at a time. He didn’t feel up to a conversation with Mrs. Wassermann tonight and hoped she wasn’t looking for him through the window of her basement flat.

  He watched the moon through the window of his flat and thought about it.

  The black cat wasn’t Schrödinger.

  Schrödinger and Mungo didn’t get along, according to Harry, and that black cat and Mungo were getting along so well, they seemed to be on the same wavelength.

  That cat wasn’t Harry’s cat.

  All right, so the cat was a stray. Ridiculous. Harry Johnson taking in a stray cat? And pigs might fly.

  Jury knew where he was going with this. Harry had been in Chesham; Harry had been in the Black Cat. And Harry would steal a blind beggar blinder, if it served his purpose.

  What was his purpose? What in the world would Harry want with Dora’s cat?

  His first impulse was to drive to Belgravia and make Harry turn over the cat. How could he—or why would he refuse to—let the cat go if it wasn’t his cat?

  In the middle of this thought there was a knock. He said, “Come in,” and Carole-anne appeared in his doorway like a vision, red gold hair glowing as if the moon hung behind her. The light actually came from the wall sconce in the hallway. It was hard enough dealing with Carole-anne when the light was off, much less on.

  “Well, come on. We’ve a date, remember?”

  Jury did not, and his expression showed it.

  She sighed deeply, still in the lit-up doorway. She checked the small circlet of a watch on her wrist. “It’s nearly gone ten. It’s not very flattering you forgot.”

  “I agree. If I had forgotten. But I didn’t forget. We don’t have a date.”

  “Yes, we do. Down to the Mucky Duck.”

  “I didn’t forget we had a date to go to the Mucky Duck, either.” He bit back a smile. “You’ve stooped to this, have you? Manufacturing dates. And get out of the doorway, will you? The glow hurts my eyes.” He shaded them.

  Frowning, she moved into the room.

  The view from there was pretty good, too. A sea green or sea blue dress, depending on the way she moved. A mouth of pearly coral lipstick that seemed to have been kissed by that same sea. Long, very thin silver earrings, which darted with shivery little colors as the light hit them.

  “Making it up, honestly.” She sank down on his sofa and drew a little mirror from her purse, looked in it, saw nothing apparently, snapped it shut, and said, “Friend of yours called.” She pointed at Jury’s phone as if the friend were trapped inside.

  “And . . . ?”

  “What?”

  “Who was the friend?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” She had taken a nail file from her bag and sat filing away.

  “Actually, yes. As you were the one who took the message.”

  “Oh. Someone named . . . Fiona? ... No ... Felicia? ...”

  “Phyllis?”

  “Could’ve been. You ready?” File back in purse, she was up and dusting off a self that needed no dusting.

  “Did Phyllis want
me to call her?” Of all the forensic pathologists, medical examiners, or coroners in the British Isles, Dr. Phyllis Nancy was the one Jury would always choose. She was the most able, the most accommodating, the most dependable. If Phyllis said she would have the results of an autopsy back to him at a certain time, it was always there, spot-on. Greenwich could have set the clock by her.

  Jury had unhooked his jacket from a chair and was shoving his arms into it, the Mucky Duck clearly his destination one way or the other.

  “Not really.”

  He collected his keys. “Not really, but then what aspect of unreality was she interested in?”

  “Just something about dinner. Or lunch.” Carole-anne yawned. It was all the same to her. “Maybe you were supposed to have a meal with her? Or not. Anyway, she was just reminding you of whatever it is. I couldn’t make it out.”

  They were on their way downstairs now, Carole-anne wearing, he was almost certain, her party pair of Manolo Blahniks. This heel wasn’t chunky, as was the heel on the pair in Chris Cummins’s collection.

  “She sounded,” added Carole-anne in her assessment of Phyllis’s call, “just as flighty as you do.”

  The Mucky Duck always lived up to its name (though not the “duck” part), sodden with beer and smoke.

  Every man she passed eyeballed Carole-anne, probably hoping Jury was her father. She sat down at a table and asked for a pint of Bass.

  “Half-pint is more ladylike,” he said, secretly applauding her refusal to participate in the gender issue.

  “Half-pint’ll get dumped over your head, too.”

  “You know, you really are crabby tonight,” said Jury.

  “You’d be too if you had to spend most of it reminding someone they had a date with you.” The little mirror came out again and she was inspecting her face for forgotten flaws.

  Might as well inspect Rossetti’s Beatrice, which she greatly resembled. The compact shut. “You still here?”

  “I don’t want to forget what you look like while I’m gone.”

  Her eyebrows squiggled. She had a lively frown.