Canapés for the Kitties

by Marian Babson

  “Brilliant!” Lily agreed.

  “To your stations, girls. They’re about to open the doors and let the public in. We’ll have a proper Council of War over tea this evening.”

  As Miss Petunia walked past Mrs. Christian on her way to stand beneath the stage, she noticed that the vicar’s wife was wincing again.

  “Jolly good, this.” Lily spread more rosehip jelly on her toasted muffin. “Different, but good.”

  “Delicious.” Marigold helped herself to more. “Such a subtle flavour. I believe there’s a hint of almonds in it. Where did you get it, Lily? I didn’t see anything like this on the preserves stand.”

  “Vicar’s wife gave it to me herself. A new recipe she’s trying out for next year. Wanted us to try it. Said she’d value our opinions.”

  “How kind of her. Do try some, Pet.”

  “No, thank you.” Miss Petunia yawned. It had been an exhausting day, with only a few more suspicions to show for it. “It sounds more like something for spreading on your face than eating. I’ll stick with this lovely bramble jam. Is this from the vicar’s wife, too?”

  “Right you are.” Lily’s mouth twitched suddenly. “Another experimental recipe – in case we didn’t fancy the rosehips.”

  “Yes ... there is something different in it.” Miss Petunia yawned again. “I can’t quite place it ...”

  “And there’s such a dear little drawing of bramble leaves on the label –” Marigold grimaced suddenly. “But they don’t quite look like bramble leaves, do they?”

  “Not ... quite ...” Miss Petunia blinked and tried to focus on the label. The drawing reminded her of something ... but she was so tired. She felt that she could fall asleep ... right here in this chair ...

  Strangely, both Marigold and Lily appeared to have suddenly become hyperactive. Miss Petunia peered at them muzzily, thinking that they seemed quite revived after their exertions of the afternoon. Even as she watched, Lily leaped to her feet, knocking her chair over, and proceeded to bend over backwards. So athletic, dear Lily!

  At the same time, Marigold shrieked and hurled her jellyladen muffin from her, seeming to go into some form of St. Vitus dance. “The jam!” she shrieked. “The almonds! It wasn’t almonds, it was – aaargh!” She pitched to the floor and, after a bit more twitching, lay still.

  Lily now appeared to be doing a Conga on all fours, but was gamely attempting to get to the telephone. She was making strange noises, apparently under the impression that she was communicating something to her sisters.

  Miss Petunia watched her progress with interest, gradually realizing that Marigold and Lily had been poisoned by the rosehip jelly. How very fortunate that she had chosen the bramble jam herself.

  Just as soon as she could overcome this strange lethargy, she must rise and go to the telephone and summon the doctor. But she could not seem to force herself to move. How odd!

  Her vision cleared momentarily and she found that she was staring at the label on the bramble jam. Marigold was right – it was not a drawing of bramble leaves and berries. Miss Petunia frowned at it. It looked familiar ... it was surely ...

  Yes ... it was. Deadly nightshade!

  But why? And the vicar’s wife! Who could have imagined it? Then ... possibly ... that mushroom last year had been meant for her, Miss Petunia, and not for Mr. Mallory at all. But why? Why should the vicar’s wife ... want to kill her? And Lily? And Marigold?

  In her dying moments, Miss Petunia Pettifogg had discovered a new mystery. It was one she carried with her to...

  THE END

  Lorinda straightened and flexed her tightened muscles. Had-I, stretched across her shoulders, mewled a protest and scrambled to a sitting position. But-Known, sprawled across her feet, slid to the floor and stretched.

  Lorinda gathered up the pages without her usual feeling of satisfaction. The uneasiness of last night had not quite left her. The gold-rimmed pince-nez, wrapped in a tissue, were filed in the FINAL CHAPTERS folder; she could not wait to bury them under more chapters and forget them.

  The phone tweetled abruptly, startling them all. Had-I leaped to the desk and watched the phone intently; she had long suspected that there was a bird in there somewhere. Only the obvious fact that it was completely inedible had kept her from killing and dismembering it. But-Known regarded her sister’s posturings with a jaundiced eye; even if there had been a bird in there, it was safe from But-Known.

  “Hello?” Lorinda fended Had-I away from the cradle before she disconnected the call.

  “Sanctuary,” Freddie croaked piteously. “I crave sanctuary.”

  “Poor Freddie,” Lorinda said automatically. “Come around and have a drink.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ll be right over.”

  The cats raced each other into the kitchen where they took up positions in front of the fridge. Two tiny pink tongues flicked out and moved from left to right in unison. They watched Lorinda with greedy anticipation. There was still plenty of booty left from last night’s party and they knew it.

  “Oh, all right.” She had to open the fridge to get the ice cubes, anyway. The carton of goodies was still embarrassingly heavy. She hoped Plantagenet Sutton never learned how thoroughly his canapés had been plundered. It would not endear his new neighbours to him.

  Had-I and But-Known threw themselves enthusiastically into disposing of the evidence, crooning with delight. Lorinda put the carton back into the fridge just as Freddie tapped at the back door.

  “Stop me if I’m becoming a bore on the subject,” Freddie said, “but I think it’s getting to be an obsession. I’ve always heard that there are people who can get along on only three or four hours’ sleep a night – isn’t it just my luck that a pair of them have moved into the other half of my semi?”

  Lorinda thrust a large gin and tonic into Freddie’s hand. It was the most sympathetic rejoinder she could think of at the moment.

  “Thanks.” Freddie took a deep pull at it and barely paused to swallow before going on with her complaints. “I’ve stopped worrying about them killing each other – now I’m afraid they won’t. It may be my only hope for a peaceful life again.”

  “Perhaps they’ll split up and both go away.” Lorinda led the way into the living room. The cats were down to polishing their dishes now and casting hopeful glances; they needed a clear signal that they’d had their lot for the time being.

  “That will never happen.” Freddie settled into an armchair. “They’re together until death do them part. Believe me, I’ve heard enough to know.”

  “Oh, well.” Lorinda curled up in one corner of the sofa. “If that’s so, it will certainly provide all of us with a lot of fresh material.”

  “All useless,” Freddie said dismissively. “Most murders are domestic, one spouse killing the other in real life. We all know that. Nothing more boring. No suspense, no questions about whodunit. Open-and-shut case. Straight police procedural and they’re yawning all the way to the jail. Nothing in it for us at all.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lorinda said. “The way Jack was carrying on last night, I think suspicion might be spread around half a dozen or more people. By the time I left, everyone was going out of their way to avoid him and/or spoil his picture, which was just as good. I thought Macho might brain him with a blunt instrument after he caught him unawares and actually got a full-face shot. He’ll give poor Macho a nervous breakdown, if he keeps on like that.”

  “That’s what the fight was all about when they got home,” Freddie said. “Karla was furious about the way he’d been behaving and threatened to expose the films he’d taken. Told him it was an invasion of privacy and betrayal of hospitality – which it was – as though he knew about such niceties. Or cared.

  “He flew off the handle and accused her of trying to blight his promising career. His promising career – hah!” Freddie snorted. “He buys a camera and he thinks he’s Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon rolled into one. Does he imagine anyone would care
about his amateur shots if Karla weren’t supplying the words?”

  “Someone is going to have to have a word with him,” Lorinda said. “Apart from his wife, that is. She appears to have no effect at all.”

  “She maddens him – that’s her effect.” Freddie grimaced. “And vice versa, I’d say.”

  “Who’ll bell the cat?” Lorinda absently watched Had-I and But-Known stroll into the room, sit down and begin to wash their faces. “I’d say Dorian – he’s their friend, he’s the one who brought them into our midst. It’s up to him to sort them out. We can’t go on like this all winter.”

  “Dorian, yes. He got us into this,” Freddie brooded. “I could strangle him for it.”

  “He does seem to have a lot to answer for,” Lorinda agreed.

  “More every day. I hope he doesn’t have anything else up his sleeve. Anyway” – Freddie brightened – “I don’t think there are any more properties to be sold or let in the village. No more strangers in our midst –”

  The sharp peal of the doorbell cut her off. The cats looked up and raced to leap on to the windowsill, jostling the curtain aside as they looked out to see who was at the door.

  Someone stepped closer to the window and peered in at the cats, then looked beyond them into the room and waved. “Only me,” she called.

  “Speak of the devil!” Freddie said. “And she’s seen us. There’s no escape.”

  Lorinda got up and went to open the door to Karla Jackley, who followed her back into the living room, happily unaware that she was not the most welcome of guests.

  “I knew you were over here,” she greeted Freddie. “I saw you cutting across the back gardens. I wanted to talk to you, both of you, so –”

  “Gin and tonic all right?” Lorinda asked. “That’s what we’re drinking.”

  “Just fine, thanks.” She gave Lorinda a grateful smile before continuing. “I rang Macho, but he had his answering machine on and I don’t know whether he was there or not. Or if he was busy working. Oh, thanks.” She accepted her drink and took the other armchair.

  “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in like this, but I wanted to apologize. For Jack. He was pretty impossible last night. I know he got everybody mad at him.”

  There was an awkward silence while they tried to think of something polite and vaguely comforting to say to her, but not so polite or comforting that she would think it was permissible for her husband to continue in that way.

  “It’s all right,” Karla said. “I know. I told him so. I –” She stopped and took an unsteady breath, perhaps dangerously close to tears.

  Thank heavens for the cats. With more tact than the humans, they advanced on Karla. Had-I jumped into her lap, But-Known rubbed, against her ankles.

  “Aren’t they darlings?” As Karla bent to stroke the cats, her hair slid forward, masking her expression, but revealing a long horizontal bruise on her neck.

  Lorinda and Freddie just had time to exchange a significant look before Karla straightened and faced them again. “Anyway, just because Jack took the pictures doesn’t mean we’re going to use them. He’ll probably be taking hundreds this winter.”

  “Oh, God!” Freddie moaned.

  “I know. He’s taking them of me, too. I daren’t even go down to breakfast without full make-up and not a hair out of place. I’m getting sick of it already. I wish I’d never given him the idea, but he’s got the bit in his teeth now and I can’t stop him. Believe me, I’ve been trying to.”

  “I believe you,” Freddie said grimly.

  “Oh!” Karla wasn’t dumb. “Have we been disturbing you? I’ve wondered how thick the walls really are.”

  “Not thick enough.” Caught, Freddie admitted it. “Not that I hear much,” she lied hastily. “Just the occasional thud or crash.”

  “I try to keep the noise level down, honestly, I do,” Karla said earnestly. “But when he gets into one of his aggressive moods ...” She let the thought trail off, unconsciously raising her hand to rub at the bruise on her neck, now hidden again by her hair.

  How did a nice woman like you ever link up with a boor and a brute like that? But it was not a question that could be asked, even though Karla might be willing to try to answer it in one of those exhaustive and comprehensive soul-searchings some Americans indulged in. A more neutral question was safer.

  “Where did you meet Dorian?” Lorinda asked instead.

  “Oh!” From the, way Karla jumped, she might just as well have asked the original question. “In New York last year, when he came over to do that signing tour. We have the same publisher and we were at a few book stores together. We sort of got to know each other.” She appeared flustered and – was that a blush? She dipped her head again, swinging her hair forward to shield her face.

  But-Known allowed one more stroke then obviously decided that her hostess duty was done and strolled over to leap up on the sofa beside Lorinda. Had-I settled down comfortably in Karla’s lap, pinning her to the chair.

  “He made England sound so ... so attractive. I’d always wanted to come over and spend some time here and really get to know it. Then, when he wrote and told us about this place, a whole group of mystery writers living together –” She blushed again. “I mean, in the same community, like the Pre-Raphaelites or the Bloomsbury Set, all like-minded people, friends and colleagues, being creative ... Oh, I’m not explaining it well.”

  “Well enough!” Freddie said dryly. “Don’t forget, we were taken in, too.”

  “Anyway, Jack had just lost his job ... again.” She half swallowed the word. “So he was free to travel and looking for something to do. I’d just been offered the assignment to complete the book Aimee Dorrow had been working on when she died so suddenly and do another one to see if we couldn’t keep the Miss Mudd series going without her, as it was so successful. Jack put the idea of a Literary Winter/Year in England to them and they were interested – provided that I was spending that winter working on My Name Is Mudd. To tell the truth, I’m not sure they would have taken Jack’s idea on its own, but lumping the three books together in a package, he had a deal.”

  “How are you getting on with it?” Freddie asked curiously. “I mean, someone else’s idea, someone else’s characters. Doesn’t it bother you at all?”

  “No ...” Karla paused and considered the question. “It’s rather refreshing, in a way ... perhaps liberating is what I mean. It’s a challenge to keep a popular series alive, despite the death of the originating author. And it’s giving me a chance to try things that would not have been possible within the structure of my own series. Tell me” – she looked at them artlessly – “don’t you ever get tired of your own characters?”

  “Do I ever!” Freddie rolled her eyes heavenwards. “There are days when I could strangle the dear girl with my own hands if she were to appear before me in the flesh. That remark is off the record, of course.” Belatedly, she appeared to remember that Karla might be taking notes for her projected nonfiction book.

  “I think everyone must feel that way at some time,” Lorinda said carefully. She shot Freddie a look of complicity. Jack’s activities would be relatively easy to monitor, Karla’s were going to be a lot trickier. “There’s the classic story of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers comparing notes on a railway journey and agreeing that they were heartily sick of Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey.”

  “It goes with the territory, I suppose.” Karla shrugged. “I’m lucky to have a chance to escape the mould for a bit, even though I don’t break out of it.”

  “Have you ever thought of creating a new series?” Freddie’s caution was no match for her curiosity. “A completely new and different character, as opposite as possible to the old one?”

  “Perhaps even living in a different country,” Karla agreed eagerly. “Or even a different century, historicals are big now. Of course I have. Hasn’t everyone? The trouble is, one gets so dreadfully locked in. Agents and publishers are convinced the public is too infantile to cop
e with anything new or different.”

  “Unless you use a different name, too,” Lorinda said.

  “Then you’re faced with building up a new audience all over again,” Freddie pointed out. “Unless they use one of those weasel lines saying, ‘Lorinda Lucas writing as ...’ Which rather negates the object of the exercise, I would think.”

  “You always hope they know what they’re doing,” Karla sighed. “But I sometimes wonder ... Oh!”

  The telephone rang suddenly and Karla jumped, nearly dislodging Had-I from her lap. Had-I gave her an offended look, jumped to the floor and started for Lorinda, who was rising to answer the telephone. Very unsatisfactory. Had-I settled for leaping to the arm of Freddie’s chair, as though that had been her intended destination all along.

  “I’m sorry,” Karla apologized, as much to Had-I as to anyone else. “My nerves are shot to hell these days. I mean” – she gave a wan smile – “I’m so exhausted from all the packing and travelling and settling in to new surroundings. I’m just not the person I used to be at all. I’m hoping a quiet winter here will soothe me down and recharge my batteries.”

  “Hello, Dorian.” Lorinda turned her back to the others, mostly to block off the meaning glances from Freddie. Karla was going to notice, if Freddie wasn’t more discreet.

  “Dorian?” Karla wasn’t noticing anything else at the moment. “I’ve been trying to get through to him. I want to talk to him.”

  “Yes, it was a lovely party,” Lorinda agreed. “Just a minute, Dorian, Karla’s here and she wants to talk to you.” Karla was already snatching at the phone.

  “Oh, God!” Dorian groaned. “I haven’t time right now to –”

  “Dore?” Karla had possession of the phone. Lorinda stepped back. “Do you keep that damned answering machine on twenty-four hours a day? I’ve been trying to get through to you ...”

  “Freshen your drink?” Lorinda bowed to the inevitable and left the phone to Karla, going over to take the glass Freddie extended. Had-I moved into Freddie’s lap and demanded attention, which Freddie duly supplied. Behind them, the conversation – or argument – continued.