Cat Out of Hell (7 page)

But that’s enough of WIGGY’s slow mental processes. The bare facts of what I discovered are these:

1:
Will Caton-Pines (
Wiggy to his friends
) did appear in
See How They Run!
The
Coventry Bugle
review is exactly as he gives it. The play ran at the Belgrade just two months ago.

2:
He is now at the centre of a gruesome investigation into the death of his sister. The noted watercolourist Joanna Caton-Pines, who had been missing for three weeks from her cottage near Littlehampton, was found in the first week of December in the cellar of an adjoining house, with the corpse of a dog whose head had apparently been crushed. Both she and the dog had been partly devoured by rats. She was alive when she entered the cellar but the dog was not. She died, says the preliminary report, of “dehydration, asphyxiation and (possibly) rat-induced dementia.”

Her brother is the chief suspect, mainly because much of his behaviour is inexplicable. For example, he evidently showed signs of “inappropriate amusement” when the mobile
phone belonging to his sister was found to have been disabled. He also withheld from the police the fact that he had heard scratching from beyond the party wall for several days after his sister “went missing.” Those scratchings were, of course, the sound of his sister clawing at the bottom of a heavy cellar trapdoor. After he eventually “found” his sister’s body, it is clear that he did not contact the police for at least three hours. In the interim, he evidently went on a bloody rampage, in which he bludgeoned a cat to death, beheaded it, and incinerated its body in the garden. He is now in custody.

3:
The academic whose obituary Roger had removed from the
Daily Telegraph
was a Professor Peplow. He was eighty-two, and he appeared to have killed himself, using hemlock. In the 1960s he had co-authored a major work on the place of animals in ancient death cults with a Dr G. L. Winterton. Neighbours reported his agitation about repeatedly spotting a large black cat in the area. He left a note saying (these exact words) ‘
I have lost the will to live
.’

End of interpolation

PART TWO

HOME

It was to a sad and comfortless house that I returned after cutting short my wintry sojourn by the sea. A film of dust had settled on everything during my absence; the windows looked smeary; Mary’s favourite fern beside the front door had bent and cracked from thirst; meanwhile various damp items of unimportant post, many of them tactlessly addressed to my dead wife, littered the tiles for quite some distance along the musty hall, as if they had exploded through the letter-box. On what appeared to be a happier note, the dog seemed glad to be home. He scratched at the garden gate, and panted excitedly. This I found rather gratifying, until, as he was straining at the lead coming up the garden path, it dawned on me: was he expecting to see Mary? It was soon distressingly clear that such was indeed the case. Once inside, I’m afraid I grew quite impatient with him as he stupidly ran round and round, romping upstairs and down, barking and wagging his tail, pawing at closed doors.

“Stop it!” I said. “Come here, Watson! Watson, stop it.
Come here!
”

I could not catch him. He raced in circles, scattering rugs,
madly knocking against the furniture. It was only when he had searched the entire house three or four times that he was prepared to admit defeat. He crawled under a chair and glared at me with an accusing expression that was all the more tragic because, in happier times, Mary and I had often imitated it, for each other’s amusement. “Oh,
Bear
,” she would say to me (we had pet names for each other, I’m afraid). “Bear, how
could
you?” And then she would pull the accusing doggie face, and we would both laugh. No wonder I couldn’t bring myself to look at him right now. I deeply envied him, though, in a way. All this time, had he simply forgotten that Mary had gone? What a blessing such oblivion would be. Imagine if I could have forgotten all about the last couple of months, myself – cheerfully bursting back into this house, calling for Mary, “We’re back! You were right not to come, it was freezing!” But imagine, also, the unbearable pain of remembering the truth; of having that happy oblivion freshly shattered. To re-experience the devastating news, overcome the disbelief once more, and crumple yet again under the blow, would be beyond endurance. It would be like dying twice.

I filled the kettle, adjusted the thermostat for the central heating, and considered the unpacking. Mary, of course, had perfected a very efficient system for unpacking, which rendered it quite painless, at least as far as her husband was concerned. The house, with all our possessions restored to it, would be back to normal within just an hour or so. I very much approved of Mary’s system, because what it required of me, principally, was that I just keep out of the way. I would retire to my study with the accumulated letters and bills, and re-emerge at dinner time to discover that the emptied bags and suitcases were already stowed in the back bedroom, the washing machine was half-way through a cycle, all the toiletries were back in their normal places, even the books were ready (in piles) to go back
on to the shelves. Could I face the unpacking by myself? Could I recreate Mary’s system, based on my tiny sideways knowledge of it? I looked at the heap of boxes and suitcases in the hall, and quailed at the sheer scale of the difficulty. In order to make life bearable at the cottage, I had taken with me (in the old Volvo) simply everything I could think of: cooking pots and radios and the laptop and
towels
, and a box of books, and a big blanket, and two phone chargers, a box of stationery, and all the dog bowls and all his balls and toys and his
special towel
. And on top of all the cargo returning to the house, I now had additional freight – acquired on voyage, as it were: the obligatory bag of left-over groceries such as porridge and butter, tea bags and eggs – plus, of course, those time-honoured souvenirs of the outraged self-caterer: some minimally-used washing-up liquid, a minimally-used bottle of olive oil, and a 99 per cent full extra-large container of very ordinary table salt.

Did I have the patience to cope with the organisational demands of all this? Of course not. In that case (I heard Mary ask), would I prefer to unpack piecemeal over the next few weeks? No, Mary. I would not. I would hate that more than anything, as you very well know. Once clothes started spilling out of suitcases in the hall, I would have to move out and live in the car. But for heaven’s sake, why was I even thinking about this? As a fresh wave of sadness broke over me, I had to sit down and swallow the emotion, while Watson – who might have been a real comfort to me at this point, had he made the requisite effort – continued to observe, still accusingly, from under his chair.

It was Mary who’d had the idea of naming him Watson. At first, she’d liked the idea of saying to an enthusiastic puppy, “Come, Watson, come! The game’s afoot!” But it turned out to be a rather clever inspiration, and the name
stuck. We both enjoyed finding “Watson” quotations that fitted perfectly with the dog. My own favourite was: “You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.” Meanwhile, Mary preferred to quote the famous telegram summons: “Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.” She even used to call it out in parks and woods, when Watson was off the lead. Mary never cared much what people thought of her. While others were trying to attract their own dogs by shouting, “Monty! Monty, teatime!” Mary would be calling, “Come at once if convenient, Watson! If inconvenient, come all the same!”

With the dog still watching me, I got up. In the hall, I found the box with his food and bowl. I opened it, extracted just the things I wanted, and (feeling guilty) closed it again. Guessing what was occurring, Watson came out from under the chair – but after wolfing down his dinner, he retreated once more. His grand gift for silence was not
quite
such an asset right now. I sat down again; I got up again. I took off my coat. Finally, with an effort, I put some tinned soup in a saucepan, and began to heat it up; while this was happening, I went to the gloomy study, switched on my computer and started to download (slowly) 216 e-mails. Back in the kitchen, I realised all the wooden spoons were still packed – so I managed without. Sitting down again, I sipped the soup and tried to start a list of things to do. Without thinking, I looked up at the wall, half-expecting to see a board with GET THIS, DO THAT and TAKE CARE OF as the headings. I looked for the peg where next-door’s keys ought to hang. But of course neither of these items was in my own house. Although I could picture them quite clearly in my mind’s eye, I had to accept that I had never, personally, seen them in my life.

I had, as yet, made no decision about Wiggy and Roger,
but my instinct was strong: forget it. Try to forget Dr Winterton’s file and all of its contents. What good could it do to dwell on this story? Was it even true? Why on earth was it sent to me? Was it perhaps sent in error? On the drive home, all the way, I had maintained a running internal dialogue.
Was Dr Winterton in desperate danger?
No, stop thinking about this. Dr Winterton means nothing to you. A smell of cloves, you said. That’s all you remembered about him. A bit tough that poor Peplow had to die – although I have to say it was very classy of him to have chosen hemlock.
Why had Jo put her phone on to charge and
then
gone next door to hide in the cellar? Why hadn’t she taken it with her?
You’re right, this is a detail that makes no sense, but just don’t think about it because there is no way you will ever know the answer.
Why did she think a next-door cellar was a good place to hide, anyway?
I can’t imagine – especially if it had a heavy trap-door that could make it your living tomb.
Imagine the sight Wiggy found when he opened that cellar trap-door
. No, don’t. Don’t ever try to imagine that.
You realise he heard the scratching for several days? If he hadn’t been such an idiot, he might have saved her!
Don’t say that. Please don’t think like that.
Roger said that the pit was the worst of all deaths
. You’re quoting a cat now. An impossible cat, at that. So just desist. All of this story, remember, is based on the completely unacceptable and ludicrous premise of an evil talking cat called Roger that travelled romantically in the footsteps of Lord Byron in the 1930s and now solves cryptic crosswords torn out daily from the
Telegraph
.

At six o’clock the doorbell rang. It was one of the neighbours – Tony Something. He and his wife have lived in the house next door for six years or so, so I suppose I really should know their surname by now, but I’m afraid I left that kind of thing to Mary. I picked up Watson and opened the door with him under my arm. Mary and I both had a horror of Watson
running outside when the front door was open, so we made it a rule to pick him up.

“Alec,” Tony said. “I noticed the lights were on.”

I realise I haven’t mentioned my name before. I do apologise. I suppose it was because this wasn’t my story.

“Everything all right?” Tony asked. He and his wife Eleanor have been very solicitous since Mary died. It was Eleanor who called the ambulance on the fateful day. She looked out of an upstairs window and saw that Mary had collapsed in the back garden. Her heart had just stopped, they said. It just stopped. As I stood there with Tony, I realised I had never thanked his wife for what she did, or even talked to her about it properly. Did she think me very ungrateful and ill-mannered? Or did she understand that, when someone dies, there is so much to do, and facing people is the hardest part?

It was still very difficult talking to people. I certainly didn’t want to face Tony right now. I didn’t know what to say.

“Just having some soup,” I said. “Come in?”

“No, no. That’s OK,” he said, but he remained shuffling on the doorstep – which was annoying, as it meant I had to continue holding the dog, and letting all the newly-generated warmth in the hall go straight out of the house.

“How was the coast?” he asked.

“A trifle bleak,” I said. “Are you sure you won’t – ?”

“I was just checking. You’re back a little earlier than you said.”

“Yes. I’d had enough.”

“Well. You must come round for supper.”

“Thank you.” I looked at the dog in my arms. I was hinting that I should like to shut the door and put Watson down. Tony thought I was hinting at something else.

“Bring Watson.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He turned to go, and then made a decision to say something more. I tensed up. I was afraid he was about to say something nice about Mary. But he wasn’t.

“Someone was looking for you,” he said.

“Really?”

Instinctively, I held Watson more tightly, but otherwise I tried to show no reaction.

“We told him you were away, but he said he’d come back.”