“Uh –” She wasn’t fast enough. Three little heads were craning over the rim of the coffee table, watching her avidly: Happy the cats with a clumsy and easily unnerved guest. “I’m not really hungry, thanks.”
“Come here, you little bully,” Freddie said, unfairly sweeping But-Known, the least aggressive of the lot, into her lap.
“That goes for you, too.” Lorinda captured Had-I, immediately negating the reprimand by slicing off a sliver of cheese and holding it for her to nibble at.
Roscoe crouched and soared into Macho’s lap the instant he sat down. There was a generous chunk of cheddar waiting for him.
Contented purrs provided background music as the well-trained humans finally got to their own cheese and drinks.
“This is nice,” Karla admitted. “I’ve never seen so many cats all together at the same time. Don’t they get on well together?”
“Had-I and But-Known are females,” Lorinda pointed out. “So Roscoe thinks they’re his harem – and they think he’s there to do their bidding. It works out very well.”
“Yes, but aren’t they all – ?” Karla looked uncomfortable. “Well, fixed?”
“What has that got to do with it?” Freddie asked. “All their instincts are firmly in place. The fact that the apparatus has been removed and they can’t do anything about it is largely immaterial. They’re all quite happy. They enjoy each other’s company and they don’t know anything different.”
“Yes, I’ve heard people say that before. But what if something upsets the balance? I mean,” Karla persisted, “Rhylla was saying that her granddaughter was bringing her own pet along. The kid has only had it a short time and it probably hasn’t had anything done to it yet. Won’t that upset the applecart?”
There was a thoughtful silence. Rhylla hadn’t told any of them about that. Perhaps an entire cat – whether male or female – might indeed upset the delicate balance.
“Anyway, it’s only temporary.” Freddie tried for the silver lining. “Child, plus pet, will only be here two or three weeks until she’s sent off to her parents and new school in the States. Not much can go wrong in that length of time.”
There was another thoughtful silence. A cat could be mortally offended in ten seconds flat – and carry a grudge for years. It would be too bad if the harmony were to be disturbed for the sake of a transient child.
“I’ll ring Rhylla in the morning,” Lorinda said. “Clarice will probably want to keep her little darling indoors for the first few days anyway, while it gets used to new surroundings. It’s only sensible.”
“Of course –” Macho began, then stopped abruptly. “Yes?” Freddie encouraged.
“No, nothing. Just a stray thought.” Macho shook his head and leaned forward to cut off another chunk of cheddar, which he shared with Roscoe. “I’ll save it for the next book,” he said, using the formula they had evolved for evading awkward moments.
“Yes, and what about the next book?” Karla’s glass was empty; she raised it to her lips in a draining motion and Macho leaped to refill it. “Are you still doing that stupid Macho Magee – and how much longer do you think you can get away with it?”
It was the first indication they had had that she had been drinking before she joined them.
“Long enough.” Macho regarded her impassively. “I have enough put by now to see me through comfortably, even if political correctness finishes off Macho Magee.”
“Are you sure that’s good enough?” Karla asked earnestly. “Would that satisfy you? Would that make you happy? Could you bear not writing anymore? Or ...” She paused and regarded him challengingly. “Or are you secretly planning another series ... like so many of us?”
She had hit a nerve. Freddie stirred restively. Lorinda looked off into the distance. It was not only the cats, she thought, who might find a disruptive influence in their midst. And they had thought the danger might come from Gemma and Plantagenet.
“I feel I might be able ...” Macho spoke slowly “... to spread myself further. Perhaps one always wonders whether there might be ... another string to one’s bow.”
“You can say that again!” Freddie leaned forward. “Sometimes I get so fed up with Wraith O’Reilly, I could kill her!” She paused, as though listening to what she had just said, then shrugged. “Not that it would make much difference – the damned creature’s half a ghost already.”
It was so true, they were glad Freddie had said it herself. Wraith O’Reilly, an orphaned flame-haired Irish girl, living in New York City, but with her heart back in Ireland, drifted through the dark canyons of the city only half aware of the perilous shadows around her. Her hobby was exploring old graveyards, collecting epitaphs. Protected only by her innocence and a thoroughly unwarranted belief in the goodness of human nature (the girl never learned!), she encountered the dregs of society and the Four Hundred, treated them equally and solved their murders largely through a fey intuition before drifting on to the next case, still wondering whether the rose bushes she had planted in the garden of the little cottage in Galway Bay were still flourishing.
“Sometimes I think I should go the whole hog,” Freddie said, “and have a real ghost to take on the cases. How would that be for retribution from beyond the grave? Nothing too gory or recent, of course.” Her eyes grew thoughtful. “A revenant from an earlier century – and aristocratic, of course. An English title, that always goes down well. Duke the Spook. He’s been lounging around the ancestral pile a few centuries, getting more and more bored. Then an American heiress rents the castle for the summer and moves in with her not-so-loving family and hangers-on. One of whom is trying to murder her. She doesn’t realize this, but the Duke does.”
Lorinda realized with surprise that Freddie had actually given a great deal of thought to the subject; she was seriously considering a new series.
“Although the heiress doesn’t know it, she’s a bit psychic – and this draws the Duke to her side. What he finds going on around her, keeps him there.” Freddie leaned forward, eyes sparkling, her residual American accent became more pronounced, her hands waved in great swooping gestures. She must have looked like that when she was pitching ideas at the advertising agency.
“You see, the Duke was done in by a relative he’d thought he could trust, so this gives him motivation. He wasn’t able to save himself, but he ought to be able to save her.”
“Especially with the supernatural powers he’ll have at his disposal.” Macho nodded, catching her enthusiasm. “It would work.”
“Naturally, as he grows fonder of her, he has to fight the temptation to say, ‘The hell with it,’ and let her cross over to his side where they can be together in a way they can’t be if she lives. But she’s young and she’s got a long life ahead of her – and he’s got nothing to do but hang around anyway. He can wait and, now that he’s found her, life – or what passes for it with him – isn’t so dull anymore.
“So he saves her life, traps the villain and waves her goodbye as she flies back to New York. But the bond between them is too strong ever to be broken. The next time she needs him, he’s there. And the next, and the next. Neither time nor distance can part them. And the beauty of it is, the Duke provides a continuing love interest while allowing her to have a fresh romance with each book – which comes more or less to grief because the Duke is so jealous that he ruins it for her, which allows her to have a new heart interest in the next book without doing anything so crude as killing off the last one. (Sorry, Macho.)
“So there you are –” Freddie spread her hands in a finale. “How does that sound for a new series?”
“It sounds like The Canterville Ghost meets Blithe Spirit,” Karla said briskly. “With perhaps a touch of Mrs. Muir thrown in.”
“Oh!” Freddie blinked and reared back, like a cat who had just had a bucket of cold water thrown over it.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Macho said quickly. “Everyone knows there’s nothing new under the sun – and it didn’t sound all th
at familiar to me. By the time Freddie has fleshed out the characters and background, it will be completely original. And a lot better than taking over someone else’s character or –”
“So that’s what you think of me!” Karla flushed a dull red.
“No, no!” Macho was aghast. “I wasn’t getting at you. I was just speaking generally. I mean, look at all the Sherlock Holmes books there have been since he went out of copyright. He’s become a minor cottage industry – even more so than in his heyday when only Conan Doyle was writing him.”
“And hating him,” Lorinda could not stop herself from pointing out, even as she decided it would be more tactful to move onto a safer subject. “Then there are all the actual historical figures some authors are turning into detectives; they’re resurrecting anyone they can think of. The poor old Prince of Wales, before he became Edward VII, has been waltzed around so many mysteries, I’ve lost track. And he featured in a stage play about the Baccarat Scandal, too.”
“I’ve considered the Prince of Wales myself,” Karla said thoughtfully. “Not that one, the one who became Duke of Windsor. It’s a great period and he had an American wife. But they’ve been used in several books already – usually wartime thrillers.”
“Yes ...” Macho frowned. “But those are hit-and-run affairs, as it were. If you were to try to settle down to using them as continuing characters, you might run into difficulties.”
“It’s safer to take a peripheral character and push them to the front,” Karla agreed. “And just use the serious historical figures for walk-on parts. That’s why I thought it might be a great idea to –” She stopped and actually looked over her shoulder before continuing. “To use Aunt Bessie as the detective!”
“Who?” Macho looked blank.
“Wallis Simpson’s Aunt Bessie. Just think of it, there she sat in Baltimore while her dear niece pours out her soul to her in all those letters she wrote constantly because Aunt Bessie was the only person she could truly confide in. All that intrigue and plotting going on around her, too much for her to make sense of because she was right in the middle of it and most of the plotting was against her. But Aunt Bessie could read between the lines and recognize the assassination plot forming –”
“What assassination plot?” Macho looked dazed.
“Surely somebody would have had the bright idea that, if they killed Wallis, the King would come back in line and their troubles would be over. But astute Aunt Bessie, the careful reader, foils the plot and the Duke and Duchess sail off happily into the sunset – and Aunt Bessie visits them frequently in their exile. Do you realize they were actually living in Nassau at the time of Sir Harry Oakes’s murder? Why couldn’t Aunt Bessie solve that? – everybody else has. And then they lived in postwar New York and Paris!” Karla sighed happily. “The possibilities are endless.”
“Maybe.” Freddie threw her own bucket of cold water. “But can you get control of the Aunt Bessie character?”
“I’ll have to look into that. But I can’t do anything about it right now.” Karla looked over her shoulder again and then, mistrustfully, back at them.
“This is all highly confidential, you know,” she said earnestly. “You’re not to mention it to a living soul. Especially, Jack. So far as he’s concerned, I’m deep in the Miss Mudd books and haven’t another idea in my head. I don’t want him to know I’m even thinking about a new series.”
“Fine with me.” Freddie shrugged. “So long as you keep your mouth shut about Duke the Spook.”
“Deal!” Karla held out her hand and they shook hands briefly. “And you two?”
“I wouldn’t dream of mentioning anything under discussion this afternoon.” Macho ran his finger down Roscoe’s spine and Roscoe’s answering rumble seemed to agree. But-Known, stretched along the back of Macho’s chair, reached out a paw to toy with the black velvet ribbon tying his ponytail.
“I’m not going to say anything.” Lorinda hugged Had-I a bit tighter. Certainly, she had nothing to say to Jack; they all spent most of their time avoiding him – and his camera.
“When is Jack coming home?” Freddie voiced the question lurking at the back of their minds.
“Soon. Too soon.” Karla’s face shuttered. “Whenever it is, it will be too soon. It’s so nice and peaceful without him.”
Freddie nodded agreement before catching herself. Fortunately, Karla hadn’t noticed. It was obviously more peaceful living next door to Karla on her own, but what would happen when Jack came back again? Jack, in a weakened state, no longer so well able to defend himself against Karla’s violent attacks?
And, thinking of attacks ... had Jack really tripped over Dorian’s abandoned torch? Or had he been pushed?
6
Chapter Twenty
Miss Petunia adjusted her pince-nez and glanced at the fob watch pinned to her lapel. She knew this was a very busy day for them, but surely Lily and Marigold were unusually late in returning home from Saints Etheldreda & Dowsabel Abbey, the foremost Academy for Young Ladies in all the British Isles, where they had the great honour to reign as gym mistress and art mistress, respectively.
If they didn’t hurry, they wouldn’t have time for tea before they had to go down to Peppercorn Meadow, where the start of the Hot Air Balloon Race would mark the opening of the annual and greatly anticipated St. Waldemar’s Fayre. And this year they were all invited to ride in the Saints Etheldreda & Dowsabel Abbey balloon. So exciting!
Then the front door slammed and Miss Petunia smiled fondly as her sisters bounded down the hallway and into the room like overgrown puppies.
“The afternoon post has come! And we’ve each got a letter!” Marigold squealed in girlish excitement, waving the letters. “They must be invitations! Just look at that lovely formal handwriting, sort of a cross between backhand and copperplate. How I wish my pupils could write as artistically as that.”
She tore her envelope open, the others opened theirs more sedately ... then a curious silence filled the room.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Marigold crumpled her missive in both hands and hurled it from her, bursting into tears.
“AAAARRGH!” Lily gave one bellow of rage and went pale. She looked around the room as though seeking something – or someone – to kick. ,
Miss Petunia closed her eyes, her lips tightened, but she remained completely silent. The enormity of the situation was too great for words.
Only the sound of Marigold’s sobs rent the air.
“I take it –” Miss Petunia brought herself to speak at last. “I take it that we have all received the same sort of insult?”
“It says –” Marigold choked. “It says that everybody in town knows that I’m bone-stupid and that I dye my hair!” She burst into a fresh torrent of tears.
“What nonsense!” Miss Petunia comforted. “Everyone knows that you are extremely bright and talented.”
“Your hair colour is natural,” Lily growled. “No one could possibly have any doubt about that. It hasn’t changed a bit since we were children.”
“I don’t dye my hair!” Marigold shook her head vehemently, sending the red-gold curls bouncing. “I don’t need to! My hairdresser gives it only the teeniest brightening rinse – to enhance its natural colour.” Her lower lip quivered piteously. ‘ ‘It isn’t dye. I would never stoop to dyeing my hair!”
“There, there,” Miss Petunia soothed. “It’s just silly spiteful malice. No one could possibly believe a word of it.” She took a deep breath and turned to Lily. “What does your letter say?”
“Spite ... malice ... just like you said.’ ’ Lily shuffled her feet uneasily and looked away. “Calls me a psychopath … brings up that slur about Old Gumboots.” Her hands clenched convulsively.
“How beastly! How horrid!” Marigold forgot her own troubles. “Miss Gumbrell slipped on that treacherous cliff-side path. Everyone knows that. It was the merest coincidence that it happened so soon after your quarrel and that you were standing nearby with your vaulting pole.”
“Indeed!” Miss Petunia said severely. “Only a sick mind could put any other interpretation on the accident. Why, you and the headmistress are on the best of terms. She even gave you the promotion you wanted and so richly deserved as soon as she got out of hospital.”
“No hard feelings. Proves it, doesn’t it?” Lily relaxed somewhat and looked Miss Petunia squarely in the eyes for the first time. “And what does your letter say?” she inquired innocently.
Miss Petunia closed her eyes and shuddered. Although she had taken only one quick look at that scurrilous letter, it seemed that every outrageous word was printed in letters of flame across her mind. She shrank from communicating it, but Lily and Marigold had confided in her – they had a right to know.
“It said that I was an evil, obnoxious, wicked, nosy, interfering old bitch, forever shoving her nose into things that were none of my business.”
“You’re not old!” Marigold cried loyally.
“The idea!” Lily growled. “Look at all the crimes in St. Waldemar Boniface that would have gone unnoticed – and unpunished – if it hadn’t been for you.”
“And,” Miss Petunia continued grimly, “that the world would be a better place without me.”
“That’s right!” Marigold’s eyes widened with recognition. “I forgot. Mine ended that way, too.”
“So did mine.” Lily was still growling. “Do you think it’s a threat? Think we ought to call the police?”
“Oh, no!” Marigold protested, horrified. “We might have to show them the letters. I couldn’t bear it!”
“You’re right, dear,” Miss Petunia said. “We don’t want to bring the police into this.”
“Handle it ourselves, then?” Lily’s eyes gleamed. “Put our heads together and –”
Oh, the hell with it! It was too beautiful a day to kill anyone – even Miss Petunia.
Lorinda pushed back her chair and filed the uncompleted chapter. The cats had disappeared ages ago, obviously out and about their own business. She didn’t blame them. The day was bright and clear, the air crisp and invigorating. They were heading into winter and there might not be many more days like this. It would be a shame to waste it. She collected her wheeled wicker shopping basket and set out for the High Street.
Canapés for the Kitties Page 10
