Murder on Show (12 page)

‘The police –' I prodded gently.

‘Surely that isn't necessary,' Marcus protested. ‘I mean, it's appalling enough that this terrible tragedy should have occurred, but to drag the police into it –'

Kellington exchanged a sympathetic glance with me. ‘And
how
–' he tried to lead Marcus to the light – ‘do you think it might have “occurred” ?'

‘It must have been an accident. She – She –' He floundered, unable, even in his wildest optimism, to think of any plausible reason for Rose Chesne-Malvern to have entered the tigers' cage.

‘Precisely,' Kellington said. ‘They'll have to know – and they won't appreciate too much delay.'

‘It's all right.' Helena Keswick appeared at the back of the group. ‘The police are on the way. Roger is going to notify them before he leaves the house. I've just called him.' She looked at us, a bit defensively. ‘Well, someone had to.'

‘Quite right,' I said, delighted that, for a change, I had been spared one of the nastier chores.

‘These beasts should be put down,' Betty Lington said. ‘They should be shot – right away. They shouldn't be allowed to live after this!'

‘It wasn't exactly their fault,' I pointed out. ‘They couldn't help it if someone pushed her into their cage.'

There was a nasty silence. I had blurted out the unfortunate truth. I sensed an immediate drop in my popularity. Except in one quarter.

‘There speaks an honest man!' Carlotta Montera strode down the aisle towards us. ‘You would penalize my cats because you have used them as a weapon. And you dare to call yourselves cat-lovers!' She glared around at us, sizing us up as prospects for the wrong side of a firing squad.

‘That can't be true,' Marcus Opal said. ‘We ... we may not all be angels ... but none of us would do a thing like that. She must have gone into that cage of her own accord.'

‘Why should she do a thing like that?' I honestly wanted to know if he had come up with an explanation yet.

‘There are many people,' Carlotta said, consideringly, ‘who refuse to believe that there are any cats that will not love them. Mine are one-woman cats – a challenge to such people. But I do not think this Chesne-Malvern was one of them. She did not care enough about cats. Perhaps she did not care enough about anything.'

Certainly, she hadn't cared much about winning friends and influencing people. In the short time I'd known her, I'd noticed the way she rode roughshod over everyone's feelings. It was hard to miss. And, if I disliked her, these people who had known her for so much longer must have disliked her even more. One of them had hated her.

I looked around at them. They seemed pleasant and inoffensive. For the first time, I missed the camera crew – I'd have been delighted to suspect any one of them. But, while I still thought one of them had nicked the golden statue, I couldn't convince myself that one of them could have murdered Rose Chesne-Malvern. For one thing, they had all left the premises while she was still alive. For another, none of them could have had a motive.

I noticed some of them were glaring at me and Pandora. But there were stronger reasons for suspecting other people. I may have fancied Rose Chesne-Malvern's cat, but Helena Keswick had envied her her husband.

‘Who has done this?' Carlotta drew the question from all our minds and flung it down in front of us.‘
Who has done this?
'

Marcus Opal drew back, quivering, as the tawny eyes turned on him like searchlight beams. Then they moved from one person to another. Such was the hypnotic effect of their intensity, it was a wonder we weren't all babbling confessions. I began to see how people could confess to crimes they hadn't committed.

One by one, we moved uneasily under her gaze. Kellington Dasczo bumped against me, he moved so hastily. I remembered that he had been the last to leave the Special Exhibits Aisle last night. Had he seen anything? Or had he bumped into Rose Chesne-Malvern on his way, perhaps quarrelled with her, and –

‘Who has done this?' Carlotta gave us one last chance. Nobody rushed to reply.

‘No matter.' She shrugged. ‘I will find out. I must go now, and make arrangements.' She started down the aisle, paused and turned back to sweep us with that hypnotic glare. ‘
I
will find
out!
'

I was very glad that I was innocent. I felt that any murderer would do better to tangle with the tigers than with Carlotta, in this mood.

Roger Chesne-Malvern joined our group just then, looking pale and tight-lipped.

‘Roger.' Helena touched his arm gently. ‘I
am
sorry.' He nodded. Together, they went toward the Big Cage. I went with them. In some obscure way, it seemed to be my duty. But as he drew close to the cage, he hesitated and, suddenly, it was an intrusion.

Helena Keswick felt it, too. This time, it was my arm she touched and we both moved away. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Roger Chesne-Malvern had walked up to the bars of the cage alone and was standing there with his head bowed.

‘Have some coffee.' Helena Keswick plugged an electric kettle into a point underneath the table. I sat down in the chair beside Mother Brown's pen. She was playing with her brood, as usual, with a complacent look on her face.

Pandora dropped from my shoulder to the table, looking into the pen with interest. She was quiet now, and not shuddering so much. I thought it might be safe to leave her for an hour or so, while I went back to the office, tidied up, and generally got ready to face a nightmare day. I said as much to Helena Keswick.

‘Of course. She'll be all right here.' Helena opened the pen door and popped Pandora inside.

‘Are you sure that's all right?' Nervously, I watched Pandora lifting her feet, trying to avoid the kittens. ‘They won't fight, or anything?'

Even as I spoke, Pandora gave a low wail. Mother Brown looked up at her, then rose, shaking off the kittens. She walked up to Pandora and began washing her face. Pandora crouched down, eyes closed, accepting the ministrations. Gradually, her shuddering grew less.

‘Isn't that amazing?' I watched bemused.

‘Not at all,' Helena said. ‘Pandora's still just a kitten herself, she's only eight months old, you know. And they know each other very well. I never dared tell Rose – she was such a martinet ... about so many things – but I always kept Pandora in the house with my own cats. She was far too young and sensitive to keep penned up alone.'

I felt an irrational rush of gratitude towards her. She was not only an ornament to society, she had a beautiful soul. They don't always go together.

‘I often think –' she was still watching the two cats – ‘that cats are the most telepathic animals alive. They seem to
know
what anyone close to them is thinking and feeling. Oh, I know there are people who say that monkeys are the next step to man on the scale of evolution, but I don't believe it. I think cats are the last trial stage we pass through before we become human.'

Her voice grew wistful. ‘And then, when we
are
human, we find we've lost something. Some essential element of communication is lacking – and we have to try to make do with words. We can't just
know,
the way we did before ...'

The kettle shrieked that it was boiling, and Helena stooped to unplug it. Then she was busy with cups, the jar of instant coffee, milk – the whole rigmarole, and we had stopped communicating too.

The coffee was hot and strong, and the police hadn't arrived before I finished. It seemed like the ideal time to make a break and get back to the office for a while. I didn't suppose the police would like it, but I can't say I was duly concerned over their opinion of me. I already had the feeling that it couldn't get much lower.

But when I rose to leave, Pandora's telepathy sprang into action again. She leaped away from Mother Brown's soothing, and hurled herself at the mesh of the pen, yowling in anguish. I hesitated, hardly less anguished than she.

‘Take her along.' Helena Keswick opened the pen door and Pandora rushed out. ‘She'll be better away from here for a while.'

‘I'll bring her back,' I promised. Helena Keswick just smiled, a small cat-like smile.

Pandora began to perk up as soon as we entered the office fiat. She leaped from my shoulder (which settled one problem – I'd been wondering how I could shave with a quivering cat curled around my neck) and began an exploratory prowl.

She followed me into the bathroom and watched for a while, but I failed to hold her attention. The whole strange new place she found herself in kept pulling at her and she had to be off to see what else was around. For the first time, I saw how the expression ‘curious as a cat' had originated.

She seemed happy enough, so I let her get on with it while I dressed. She was nowhere in sight when I braced myself and sat down at the desk and reached for the telephone. This was another reason I wanted an hour or so away from the Exhibition. I couldn't neglect my contacts. They often used the PR scraps I fed them. Now that I had a meat-and-potatoes meal of genuine frontpage news, I had to let them in on it. The police wouldn't like it, I was sure, but I'd rather incur their displeasure than that of my contacts. In the long run, it wouldn't harm me quite so much.

I heard a yell and a yowl from Gerry's room. Neither sounded too desperate. I picked up the phone and began dialling.

Gerry charged out of his bedroom, Pandora dangling from one hand. He took a good look at her in the daylight and seemed reassured.

‘It's a very nasty feeling,' he said, ‘to be awakened by a wet nose shoved into your eye-socket. Someone ought to have taught this cat better manners.'

Pandora spoke sharply and squirmed in his grasp. She seemed to feel he could do with a lesson or two himself.

‘Sorry.' He let her drop on to the desk top. She made no effort to get any farther away from him. Shaking her fur back into place, she sat on the desk and regarded him with interest.

‘Doug –' he looked at me worriedly – ‘you didn't nick her from the Exhibition, did you?'

‘Relax,' I told him, ‘she's only on loan.'

‘That's good,' he said. ‘She looks like a very expensive bit of fluff to me.' He ought to know, he was the expert on that subject.

I got through to my contact then, and began talking. Gerry sank down on the desk top beside Pandora, listening.

I finished the first call and hung up. He met my eyes and shook his head wordlessly. I started a second call – there was no point in discussing it with him. By the time he'd listened in on a couple more calls, he'd have the whole gory picture.

After a while, he got up and I heard him filling the kettle and opening the cupboard. That took Pandora off the desk in a flying leap. She'd lived in a house – she knew what those sounds meant.

‘Oh, all right,' I heard him say, and tins clanked. A peremptory little yowl began giving him orders. Pandora was getting more like herself every minute.

Despite the orders, he brought two cups of coffee in first and set them on the desk. She followed, nagging. The next trip he brought in a tin of shrimps and the tin opener. She jumped up on the desk to supervise while he opened the shrimps.

‘One for you –' she took it daintily from his fingertips – ‘and one for me.' She protested immediately.

‘All right, all right,' Gerry said. ‘Two for you, and one for me.' He continued hand-feeding her. It was a technique he had perfected across the breakfast table with innumerable birds, and it seemed to work equally well with Pandora.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs and Penny burst into the office. ‘Oh, good, you're still here. I – I thought I might be able to help you at the Exhibition again – it's the last day –' She spotted Pandora and swooped on her.

‘Ooooh, there you are, my lovely.'

‘Don't get too enthusiastic,' I warned. ‘She's just visiting.'

‘But she's
filthy.
Where have you been, darling?'

Pandora had collected quite a bit of dust somewhere along the way. ‘I saw her investigating behind the filing cabinet,' I said, dialling the last number on my Absolute Priority list.

When I looked up, Penny was brushing Pandora down with my clothes brush. Gerry was continuing to offer her shrimps absently, which she continued to accept. I was aware of a strange throbbing noise. After a moment, I traced it to its source. For the first time in ages, Pandora was purring.

The last telephone call clued Penny in to the situation, too. Her eyes grew wide. ‘Not really,' she said. ‘Not eaten by tigers – not
really
.'

‘Not eaten, actually,' I said, ‘but badly mauled, dismembered.'

‘If it happened to anyone,' Gerry said gloomily, ‘wouldn't you just know it would
have
to happen to a client of Perkins & Tate (Public Relations) Limited?'

It was a rhetorical question, and neither Penny nor I bothered trying to answer it. Pandora simply kept purring.
Her
world was looking up. Two more slaves were being painlessly broken in. Things hadn't been so good since the old days in Egypt. Certainly, it was a great improvement on life with Rose Chesne-Malvern.

I hated to disillusion her, but it was time to start moving again. ‘I'd save those last shrimps for the taxi, if I were you,' I told Gerry. ‘It's time we were on our way.
All
of us.' I nodded to Penny. ‘This has every earmark of a very hectic day – and it's all hands to the pump.'

Pandora was interested and unsuspecting most of the way. I had carried her into a delightful new world, and she was willing to go along with me and see what new goodies I could spread out before her. She sat in my lap, looking out of the window with aplomb. Penny had taken possession of the tin of shrimps and, from her spot in the jump seat opposite me, plied Pandora with a tasty morsel from time to time.