Murder on Show (14 page)

I looked at Dave with fresh interest. Gerry and I generally considered that we kept our ears to any available ground – yet neither of us had picked up that particular rumour. If true, it confirmed Dave as someone to be seriously registered for the future.

‘So, there's not only the film money at stake,' Dave went on, ‘there's all the honour of the appointment – and it would probably mean a foot in the door at getting back into her own country, if she wants to. There's enough wild life there to worry about.'

‘You're
all
mad,' Hugo Verrier said. ‘Mad – and callous ! My God – you're callous!'

Dave and I shrugged at each other. Obviously the lady never had – and never could have – meant as much to us as to Hugo. It occurred to me that, from what I had noticed, he seemed to be taking the whole thing harder than the widower. Still, it was no business of mine.

A great blaze of cheerfulness descended upon me as I realized that this assignment was nearly over. The Exhibition ended officially at six p.m. Give them perhaps another couple of hours to pack all their clobber and be gone – with luck, I could get away and be home by nine. Without luck, I'd still be free of it all by midnight.

Now there was a silver lining worth contemplating. The clouds – and the police – might hover for a few days longer, clearing up their part of the mess. But I wouldn't have to see any of these characters again – unless I really wanted to. At the moment, with the possible exception of Dave Prendergast, there was no one I ever cared to see again. Most of all, I would be delighted never to have to look at Hugo Verrier's pale green face again.

Something shivered on my shoulder and soft fur rippled around my neck. Pandora. For a few moments, I had forgotten her. She gave a soft plaintive mew, as though she felt something ending too.

My elation vanished. Poor, bloody, forlorn little cat.
Still a kitten herself,
Helena Keswick had said, but already knowing too much of abandonment and neglect. And now she was fool enough to cling to me, while I was already happily planning to slough off the whole Exhibition and all its participants just as fast as possible.

I stood abruptly. Hugo and Dave looked at me in surprise. ‘I've got to make my rounds,' I said. ‘See that everything is going well – everything else, I mean.'

They nodded and I strode off, Pandora riding on my shoulder like the conscience I abandoned when I first went into public relations work. I walked fast, as though I could outdistance her too.

Judging had started in the Pet Cats Section, and earnest men and women were moving slowly along the aisles, followed by attendants carrying portable tables, plastic bowls of warm water with disinfectant added, and hand towels. Now and again – almost at random, it seemed to me – one of them would stop at a pen and examine the occupant. Then the assistants set down the table, put the bowl on top and waited at the ready with the towel. After examining the cat, the Judge replaced it in the pen and turned to scoop hands through the water and reach for the towel. It was, I understand, like the ‘Do Not Touch The Exhibit' signs, for the protection of the cats, to prevent any unnoticed infection from spreading.

The crowds were fairly thick now, and I got caught behind the Judges several limes. When I could, I side-stepped; when I couldn't, I stood and watched the judging. I had no idea of the finer points of any of the cats, or just what they were being judged by. Some of the movements of the Judges were mysterious, some were pretty obvious.

That business of running the pencil back and forth across the wire mesh of the cage, for instance, was obviously to make the cat look up – either to check the eye colour, or to test the responses of the cat and see how alert it was. Some of the cats looked up the instant the pencil touched the wire, some leaped for it, some yawned in boredom or didn't bother to look up. I didn't know which attitude got the best marks. Perhaps I was developing into the nervous type, but I preferred the cats who looked up, but didn't dive at you.

If a cat appeared too upset, the Judge didn't try to examine it too closely, but returned it to its pen to come back and try again later. They seemed to have interminable patience – which was more than I had.

Finally, we were in another aisle, the judging behind us, and the Pedigree Shorthairs on either side. Quickly past the Siamese, I needed no reminding. Then a double row of Burmese, the reddish-brown ones somehow all resembling Mother Brown, and even the blue-grey ones having their points of similarity.

The next aisle: the Devon Rex and the Cornish Rex. Strange, friendly, fantasy creatures, with curly astrakhan coats and great butterfly ears.

Abyssinians next – something about them too reminiscent of Pyramus and Thisbe. Odd – perhaps their lynxlike quality reminded one of tigers – I moved quickly away from that aisle, charming though they were.

The British Blue were next. Great, sturdy, steel-blue-furred creatures, with absurd, perfectly round eyes, glowing like fresh-polished copper. I smiled with amusement as I walked down their aisle. Then I stopped smiling.

One pen was empty. Rosettes – First and Second Prizes – were pinned to the bars from bygone Shows. But inside the pen there was just a photograph. A sweet-faced, placid queen, surrounded by a litter of kittens. ‘TINTINNABULA,' a hand-lettered sign said, ‘died in May. Greatly mourned by her many friends.'

I moved on quickly, grateful that a lump in the throat doesn't show. That was the trouble with them all – they were so sweet, so small, and so vulnerable. Perhaps that could be said of the whole damned human race, too. It didn't bear thinking about – it could break your heart.

The next aisle was an improvement – Manx. Although, inevitably, they brought Marcus Opal to mind. I wandered along, wondering which of the young queens he had earmarked for Precious – she'd have to be pretty tough to hold her own with that roughneck – when I was aware of a presence beside me.

I turned to face a police constable. ‘Are you Mr Perkins?' he asked.

‘That's right,' I admitted.

‘And you were here last night?'

‘That's right,' I admitted again.

‘Then could you come along, sir? They'd like to speak to you now.'

I followed the constable up the narrow spiral staircase. As I had expected, it was the dark, saturnine one who was waiting in the Press Gallery.

‘Good morning, Inspector,' I greeted him cheerily.

He nodded, stone-faced, giving me no clue as to whether I had demoted him, promoted him, or hit it bang on. (What the hell, I had enough to do trying to remember who was who in Fleet Street, and which way the traffic was flowing. I couldn't take on Scotland Yard too.)

‘Good morning, sir. I understand you spent last night here ... too.'

I sank into the chair he had vaguely indicated with a wave of his hand. I didn't like that opening. It was extremely probable that there wasn't going to be much about this interview that I
would
like.

‘That's right,' I croaked, still trying for a cheery, helpful note.

‘Yes.' He looked down at a sheet of notes. ‘And I presume you saw or heard nothing out of the ordinary ... again?'

He'd certainly never read anything about how to win friends and influence people – or maybe he just didn't care. ‘That's right,' I said, feeling condemned out of my own mouth.

‘Yes,' he said again.

‘Actually,' I babbled, ‘I wasn't down on the floor. I was sleeping up here last night. I couldn't possibly have heard anything pertinent – or seen anything, either. Just look out of that window. You can't see the Big Cage at all – it's right under the overhanging bit.'

‘Yes.' He glanced briefly at the window, as though to reassure himself that it was still in the same position. ‘I understand you had a violent quarrel with the deceased yesterday afternoon?'

‘Na – no!' I protested. ‘Not a quarrel. Barely even a disagreement. Just a – a difference of opinion, I suppose.'

‘Over a ... cat,' he said disdainfully. I got the impression that he was a dog man – or perhaps budgies.

Pandora shifted restlessly on my shoulder. I hoped she wouldn't choose this moment to leap down and get chummy with the newcomers. I had the distinct impression that whoever-he-was wouldn't really appreciate the honour.

‘Mrs Chesne-Malvern,' I said hurriedly, ‘simply felt that she wanted to spend last night with her pet. I had been using her room. She simply let me know that she intended to use it herself last night. That was all. It was all quite amicable.'

Having said which, I immediately wondered how many conflicting and highly lurid stories he had already heard from the others in the Special Exhibits Aisle.

‘I see, sir.' His face and voice gave nothing away. ‘And so you spent the pertinent hours up here in the Press Gallery?'

‘It was the only spare bed,' I said. And then, perhaps explaining too much, I added, ‘I – I felt it was my duty, rather. To be on call, in case I was needed.'

‘Yes, sir. You're not a veterinary surgeon, are you, sir?'

‘No – no, I'm the Public Relations Officer.' I immediately felt the fool he had intended me to feel.

‘I see.' He made another note on the sheet in front of him. ‘And your rest was not disturbed at all?'

‘Well, actually,' I said, ‘I did wake up. Once. Pandora –' I gestured toward her – ‘came bursting through the door and leaped into bed with me. She was shivering violently. She'd been downstairs. She was badly frightened – terrified. She must have seen whatever happened.'

‘Yes, sir.' He lifted his head to stare at me. His face, his voice, were dangerously without expression. ‘Are you telling me to ask the cat ... sir?'

Put like that, I saw what he meant, and backtracked hastily. ‘Not at all, I just –' I stopped, unsure of what I just wanted to comment on.

‘Quite. Did you know the Security Guard?'

‘No. No, I never met him.' Dave Prendergast would be glad to hear that they had been thinking along those lines. But it didn't cheer me up any. I was too uncomfortably aware that he had used the past tense. ‘I'm sorry about that. I understand he was a nice fellow. When ... did he die? This morning?'

‘Die?' He looked at me oddly. ‘What gave you that idea?'

‘You – you – er – used the past tense –'

‘I see,' he said flatly. ‘Sorry. It was a slip of the tongue. I was thinking about the lady's death – not the rules of grammar.'

‘No, no,
I'm
sorry,' I said. He hated me. It was written all over him. I was a damned Public School snob who was going to try to teach English to his social inferiors. I considered apologizing further, but abandoned the idea. It wouldn't go any good.

‘Then he'll be able to tell you how he came to fall,' I said brightly, hoping to start a fresh hare.

‘He can't remember.'

‘Not at all? You mean he has amnesia?'

‘A simple concussion.' Again his cold grey eyes damned me for a melodramatic imbecile. ‘It takes people that way often, sir. He'll remember – but it will take time.'

‘Oh, of course. I'm glad – I mean, it's too bad – I mean –' Pandora stirred restlessly on my shoulder again, as though she too thought I wasn't exactly putting my best foot forward and would like to dissociate herself from me.

‘Yes, sir.' He lifted his eyes to Pandora and studied her for a minute. ‘I understand that's quite a valuable animal?'

‘She's a champion,' I said. ‘Taken all sorts of medals – and she's still practically a kitten. Only eight months old.'

‘Is that so?' He looked at her with more interest. ‘There's a lot of mileage in it, then. Good for years and years, I should imagine.'

‘At least ten good years,' I hazarded. ‘At full steam, that is. After that, she'll probably have to take it a bit easier, but she'll have had a good run.'

‘Lots of prize money to be collected over ten years.' He assessed her prospects. Then, there's the sale of kittens – she
will
be bred, I presume –?'

‘It would be foolish not to,' I said. ‘You can't let good championship stock like that go to waste.' I'd been learning something from all my conversations on the Floor

‘And then there's the money to be picked up from endorsements, commercials, that sort of thing.' He too had been doing his homework. ‘Properly directed, I'd say there was a small fortune in the animal.'

I began to get uneasy. I didn't like the way he kept calling Pandora ‘the animal', nor did I like all this emphasis on her monetary value. ‘Properly directed, yes.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘With the right Public Relations, she could go far.'

There we were. He was a budgie man, all right. Probably a bird-watcher, too. People who were cat-lovers would do anything. Killing each other over possession of a cat was, after all, only one step above – or below – cheering their animals on to slaughter Our Feathered Friends.

‘Now, see here,' I said. ‘I did
not
–'

‘A very valuable animal.' He paid no attention to my interruption. ‘There was only one other here
more
valuable. Was it insured for much?'

‘I don't know if she's insured at all,' I said. ‘I've barely met her – I mean, until a week ago –'

‘The Whittington Cat,' he snapped. ‘Gold, with emerald eyes. How much insurance did it carry?'

‘I'm not sure –' I was called to order, and tried to think. (So they were still worried about
that,
were they? Did they consider it part of the same case, or was it two separate investigations?)

‘It was a gag,' I said. ‘Like insuring some film star's legs, or what have you. I didn't approve, but it was all arranged before Perkins & Tate took over this Exhibition. For the right premium, Lloyds of London or some other insurance company will insure practically anything – especially short-term. The Public doesn't know that it's only for twenty-four hours or so. But they're catching on. It hasn't been used in a long time now. I would have tried to talk them out of it, if I'd known in time. It's pretty corny.'