The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (17 page)

Julian was smiling broadly as he came on crutches towards the terrace fire, which Betty still tended. The workmen had departed. “That’ll give ’em something to think about!” he said, as he surveyed his land. “Larry, go and collect the sticks that’ve gone out, would you, boy?”

“I’ll do it, Julian,” Betty said. “Go in and rest, dear. I’m sure you shouldn’t be hobbling around with your ankle. The doctor would have a fit if he knew.”

“Ha-ha,” said Julian.

Larry avoided looking at his father. His father’s grin seemed insane under the circumstances. Larry stood at a corner of the terrace, straining his eyes to see if any hamsters had come to ground level. But their babies! They were born blind, and some of the poor little things wouldn’t even be able to see where to go to escape.

Betty came back with three stakes that had completely gone out, and stuck them on the charcoal.

“A little more paraffin!” Julian said. “I think we’re getting somewhere!”

“It’s not good for the roses, all this heat and smoke, Julian,” Betty said.

Julian poured the paraffin himself, dropped the tin, and both he and Betty had to jump back as the flames leapt briefly. There hadn’t been much in the tin. Julian laughed again. Betty became more nervous, and a little angry.

“These’ll surely be enough, Julian,” she said. “Let’s let this be the end of it. Larry and I can take them out. It’s almost too dark to see.”

“I’ll put on the terrace light,” said Julian, and hobbled into the house and did so, but the lighted terrace only made the lawn seem darker. Julian found a flashlight. It was difficult for him to hold the flashlight and his crutches too, but it was his idea to hold the flashlight for Betty and Larry so they could find the hamster holes which still needed smoking stakes put into them.

The three of them went out to do this. Larry set his teeth trying to hold his anger and his tears back. He could hardly breathe. Partly it was because of the smoke, and partly because he was holding his breath. He saw a hamster, an adult that he didn’t recognize, look at him with terrified eyes, then flee into some bushes. Larry, in a burst of rage, flung his burning sticks flat down on the lawn. The tips broke off, their flames went out.

“What’re you doing there, Larry?” yelled his father. “Pick those up!”

“
No!
” Larry said.

“It’s because of
you
we’re in this mess!” Julian shouted, moving towards Larry. “You do as I say or you’ll get the worst whipping of your life!”

“Julian,
please
, darling!” Betty said. “We’re finished now! Let’s go in the house!”

“Will you pick up—” Julian toppled. One crutch had sunk deep.

Larry was quite near him, but stepped back in the darkness and dodged a smoking stick that stuck up from the grass.

“Oh, Lord!” Betty cried, and ran—in a curve because of the pool excavation—towards Julian whose white ankle bandage was the most visible part of him in the darkness. She got a nasty whiff of smoke from somewhere, and coughed.

Larry heard the shriek of a fire engine siren, or maybe it was a police car. Under the cover of dark now, Larry removed every projecting stick he could see, and dropped them on the lawn. The rather dry grass was smoldering in some spots. Larry held his breath in smoky areas, and breathed only where it was a bit clearer. He saw that Julian was on his feet again. His father was yelling at him.

Larry didn’t care. Now there were fire bells, rapid
clangs
. Good! A coal got into one of Larry’s sneakers, and he had to remove his sneaker, knock it out, untie the lace and pull it on again.

Now the firemen were coming around the side of the house! With a hose! Larry could see them in the light of the terrace. Two or three firemen were getting the hose in position.

Hooray!
Larry thought, but he didn’t want the hamsters to be drowned either. He’d tell the firemen not to turn too much water on, he thought, and trotted towards the terrace.

Betty screamed from the lawn. “The hamsters! They’re
biting
!” Three or four were attacking her ankles.

Julian stabbed at a hamster with his crutch tip. “
Damn
them!” They were all around him and Betty. He lunged again, lost his balance and fell. One rushed at his face and nipped. Another sank its incisors into his forearm. Julian struggled up again, despite the fact that a hamster clung to his wrist. “Betty!—
Tell the firemen
—”

At this point a spew of water like a battering ram caught Julian in the abdomen, and suddenly he was flat on his back with his breath knocked out. At once a half-dozen hamsters were attacking him.

“Julian, where are you?” Betty called. She debated trying to find Julian versus going to speak to the firemen—who must be thinking the whole lawn was on fire! She decided to run to the firemen. “Careful!” she yelled at them. “Be careful, my husband’s on the lawn!”

“What?” came a man’s voice from behind the horizontal torrent.

Betty got closer and shouted, nearly breathless. “It’s not a fire! We’re trying to smoke out some hamsters!”

“Smoke out
what
?”

“
Hamsters!
Cut the hose off! It isn’t necessary!”

Larry watched, standing in the dark near the terrace. The water from the hose had created more smoke.

The great canvas hose abated slowly, as if reluctant, and became limp.

“What’s going on, ma’am? That’s an awful lot of smoke!” said a huge fireman wearing a black rubber coat and a splendid red helmet.

In the few seconds of silence, they all heard Julian scream, a pained scream yet an exhausted one, as if it were not his first.

A dozen or more hamsters, crazed by smoke, shocked by the bursts of hose water, were attacking Julian as if he were the cause of their woes. Julian fended some off with his hands and fists and one crutch, which he wielded clumsily, holding it in the middle. He had wrenched his bad ankle again, the pain was awful, and he’d given up trying to stand up. His main task was to get the hamsters’ teeth out of his own flesh, out of his calves, his forearm which braced him in a half-recumbent position on the smoking grass.

“Help!” Julian cried. “Help
me
!”

And a fireman was coming, thank God! The fireman had a flashlight.

“Hey, what the hell is this?” the fireman said, kicking off a couple of hamsters with a thick boot.

Larry trotted towards the glow of the fireman’s flashlight. Now Larry could see plenty of hamsters, scores of them, and his heart gave a jump as if he beheld a myriad fighters on his side. They were alive! They were lively and well! Larry stopped short. The fireman had dropped his father, having lifted him a little from the ground. What was happening?

The fireman had loosened his grip when a hamster bit him severely in the hand. The little beasts were running up his boots, falling, coming back. “Hey, Pete! Give us a hand! Bring an
axe
!” the fireman yelled towards the terrace. Then he began to stomp about, trying to protect the man on the ground from the hamsters that were coming from all sides. The fireman uttered some round Irish curses. Nobody was going to believe this story when he told it!

“Get them off—off!” Julian murmured with one hand over his face. He had been bitten in the nose.

Larry observed it all from the darkness. And he realized he didn’t care. He didn’t care what happened to his father! It was a little like watching something on the TV screen. Yes, he
did
care. He wanted the hamsters to win. He wanted his father to get defeated, to lose, and he wouldn’t have cared if his father fell into the pool pit—but he was a fair distance away from it. The hamsters had a right to their land, their homes, had a right to protect their offspring. Larry trotted in place and punched his fists in the air like a silent cheering squad. Then he found his voice. “Come on,
hamsters
!” Larry yelled, and it crossed his mind to release Pirate and Gloria so they could join in—and yet they weren’t even needed, there were so many hamsters!

Now a second fireman was trotting out with an axe. The two firemen got Julian up by putting one of Julian’s arms around each of their necks. Julian’s head sagged forward.

As the trio came into the terrace light, Larry saw hamsters at their feet flee back into the darkness of the lawn. His father’s pale trousers, his shirt, were all splotched with blood.

And Larry’s mother’s face was absolutely white. An instant after Larry noticed this, his mother sank to the terrace tiles. She had fainted. One of the firemen picked her up and carried her into the living room, which was brightly lit now, because the firemen had turned on all the lights.

“We’ve got to get this one to the hospital,” said the biggest fireman. “He’s losing blood.”

There was a pool of blood on the red tiles under Julian’s half-supported feet.

Larry hovered and chewed a fingernail.

“We’ll take him in the wagon.”

“Think that’s best?”

“Anything we can do for him now?”

“He’s bleeding from too many places!”

“Put him on the wagon! The stretcher, Pete!”

“No time for that! Carry him and get going!”

Betty came to as Julian was being borne towards the driveway where the fire trucks were. A few neighbors stood there, and now they asked questions, questions about the fire. And what had happened to Julian?

“Hamsters!” said one of the firemen. “Hamsters in the lawn!”

The neighbors were amazed.

Betty wanted to go with Julian to the hospital, but one of the firemen advised her not to. A couple of the women neighbors stayed with her.

Julian’s jugular vein had been pierced in two places, and he had lost a lot of blood by the time he arrived at the hospital. The doctors applied tourniquets and stitched. Transfusions were given. The process was slow. In came the blood and out it flowed. Julian died within an hour.

Betty, under sedation that night, was not notified until the following morning. With the resources of an adult, Betty mentally gave herself two days to recover from the shock, knowing all the while that she would sell the house and move somewhere else. Larry, realizing factually what had happened, did not take it in at once emotionally, his father’s demise. He knew his mother would never want to see another hamster, so he set about releasing those he could capture into territory where they might have a chance of survival. He made three or four expeditions on his bicycle, carrying his cardboard box loaded with adults and baby hamsters. There was a wood not far away with plenty of trees, underbrush, and not a house for half a mile.

So, his father was dead, Larry realized, finally. Dead because of hamsters which had simply bitten him. But in a way hadn’t his father asked for it? Couldn’t they have taken the time to save the hamsters in the boomerang area, and still gone on with the swimming pool construction? Much as Larry loved his father, and knew he should love his father—who had been a pretty good father as fathers went, Larry realized—Larry was still somehow on the side of the hamsters. Because of his mother’s feelings, Larry knew he had to part with Pirate and Gloria too. These with a few babies were the last to go one morning on Larry’s bicycle in the cardboard box. Once more Larry fought against tears as he released this pair that he loved the best. But he did hold back the tears, and he felt he was at last becoming a man.

Harry: A Ferret

H
arry, a ferret of uncertain age, perhaps one or two, was the prize possession of Roland Lemoinnier, a boy of fifteen. There was no doubt Roland was fifteen. He was pleased to tell anyone, because he considered fifteen a great step forward over fourteen. To be fourteen was to be a child, but to be fifteen was to enter manhood. Roland took pleasure in his new deep voice, and looked into the mirror every morning before brushing his teeth to see if more hair had sprouted where a mustache might have been or under his sideburns. He shaved elaborately with his own razor, but only once a week, because seeing the hair on his face gave him more pleasure than shaving.

Roland’s new adulthood had got him into trouble in Paris, at least in his mother’s opinion. He had begun going out with boys and girls several years older than he, and the police had hauled him in among six other young people, all around eighteen, to caution them about possession of marijuana. Being tall, Roland could pass for eighteen and often did. His mother had been so shocked by the police episode, she had acted on the advice of her mother, with whom in this case she was in complete accord, and moved to her house in the country near Orléans. Roland’s father and mother had been divorced since he was five. With Roland and his mother went the two servants Brigitte, maid and cook, and Antoine, the elderly chauffeur and factotum who had been with the family since before Roland was born. Brigitte and Antoine were not married to each other, and both were single. Antoine was so aged as to be a joke to Roland, something left over from another century and mysteriously still alive, frowning disapproval on Roland’s blue jeans at the lunch table and his bare feet on the carpets and the waxed floors of La Source. It was summer, and Roland was free of the Lycée Lamartine, eight kilometers away, where he had gone for most of the preceding term after their move from Paris.

In fact Roland had been bored with country life in general until the day in late June when he had accompanied his mother to a nursery to buy plants for the garden. The nurseryman, a friendly old fellow with a sense of humor, had a ferret which he told Roland he had captured on the weekend while out hunting rabbits. Roland had been fascinated by the caged ferret which could hunch itself into a very short length as if its body were made like an accordion, then flash into its hole in the straw, looking three times that length. The ferret was black, light brown and cream, and to Roland looked part rat, part squirrel, and exceedingly mischievous.

“Careful! He bites!” the nurseryman said, when Roland put his finger against the wire of the cage.

The ferret had bitten Roland with a needle-like tooth, but Roland hid his bleeding finger in a handkerchief in his pocket. “Would you sell him? With the cage too?”

“Why? Do you hunt rabbits?” the nurseryman asked, smiling.

“A hundred new francs. A hundred and fifty,” Roland said. He had that much in his pocket.

Roland’s mother was bending over camellias yards away.

“Well—”

“You’ll have to tell me what he eats.”

“A little grass, of course. And blood,” he added, bending close to Roland. “Give him some raw meat now and then, because he’s got the taste for it now. And mind you don’t let him loose in the house, because you’ll never catch him. Hay to keep him warm, like this. He made that tunnel himself.”

The ferret had darted into the little tunnel in the straw and turned around so that only his lively face peered out with low-set, mouse-like ears and black eyes that slanted downward at the outer corners, making him look thoughtful and a bit melancholic. Roland had the feeling the ferret was listening to the conversation and hoping he would be able to go away with Roland.

Roland pulled out a hundred note and a fifty. “How about it—with the cage?”

The nurseryman glanced over his shoulder, as if Roland’s mother might interfere. “If he bites, stick an onion at him. He won’t bite you after he bites into an onion.”

Margaret Lemoinnier was surprised and annoyed that Roland had bought a ferret. “You’ll have to keep the cage in the garden. You mustn’t take it in the house.”

Antoine said nothing, but his pink-white face took on a more sour expression than usual. He put lots of newspaper on the back seat of the Jaguar so that the cage would not touch the leather upholstery.

At home, Roland got an onion from the kitchen and went out on the lawn behind the house where he had set the cage. He opened the door of the cage slightly, onion at the ready, but the ferret, after hesitating an instant, darted through the door into freedom. He made for the woods at one side of the estate and disappeared. Roland warned himself to keep cool. He brought the cage, its door open, to the edge of the woods, then ran into the house via the back door. On a wooden board in the kitchen lay just what he wanted, a large raw steak. Roland cut off a piece and hurried back to the woods.

Slowly Roland entered the woods, intending to make a circle and drive the ferret back towards his cage. A ferret could probably climb a tree too. Roland had seen his sharp claws when the ferret had stood up in his cage at the nursery. The ferret had tiny pink-palmed hands that were rather like human hands, with miniature pads at the end of the fingers, and a freely moving thumb. Then Roland’s heart gave a leap as he saw the ferret just a few yards away from him, sitting upright in the grasses, sniffing. The breeze blew towards the ferret, and Roland realized that he had smelled blood. Roland stooped and extended the raw meat.

Cautiously, rearing himself, then advancing a little, the ferret approached, eyes darting everywhere as if guarding against possible enemies. Roland was startled at the suddenness with which the ferret seized the meat in his teeth and jerked it away. The ferret chewed with bolting movements of head and neck, the brown and black hair on his back standing on end as he telescoped his lithe body. The steak was all gone, and the ferret looked at Roland, little pink tongue licking his face appreciatively.

Roland’s impulse was to run back to the kitchen for more. But he thought it best to move slowly so the ferret would not become alarmed. “Wait! Or come with me,” he said softly, because he wanted the ferret back in the cage. It would be dark soon, and Roland didn’t want to lose him.

The ferret followed to the edge of the lawn and waited. Roland went to the kitchen and cut some more meat, then gently poured from the paper below the steak a tablespoon of blood into a saucer. He carried this out. The ferret was still in the same place, one paw raised, gazing expectantly. The ferret approached the saucer, where the meat was also, but he chose the blood first, and lapped it up like a kitten lapping milk. Roland smiled. Then the ferret looked at Roland, licked his face again, seized the meat in his teeth and carried it in an uncertain route on to the grass, then seeing his cage, he made a straight line for it.

Roland was very pleased. The onion, still in Roland’s pocket, might not be necessary. And the ferret was safely back in his cage on his own initiative. Roland closed the cage door. “I think I’ll call you Harry. How do you like that name?
Harry
.” Roland was studying English, and he knew that Harry was informal for Henry, and there was also an English word “hairy” pronounced the same way, so the name seemed appropriate. “Come up and see my room.” Roland picked up the cage.

In the house, Roland encountered Antoine who was coming down the stairway.

“M. Roland, your mother said she did not want the animal in the house,” said Antoine.

Roland drew himself up a little. He was no longer a child to be told what to do by a servant. “Yes, Antoine. But I’ll speak to my mother on the subject,” Roland said in his deepest voice.

Roland put the cage in the middle of the floor in his room, and went to the telephone in the hall. He dialed the number of his best friend, Stefan, in Paris, had to speak with Stefan’s mother first, then Stefan came on.

“I have a new friend,” Roland said, putting on a voice with a foreign accent. “He has claws and drinks blood. Guess what he is?”

“A—a vampire?” said Stefan.

“You are warm.—My mother’s coming and I can’t talk long,” Roland said quickly. “He’s a
ferret
. His name is Harry. Bloodthirsty! A killer! Maybe I can bring him to Paris! Bye-bye, Stefan!”

Mme. Lemoinnier had come up the stairs and was walking towards Roland down the hall. “Roland, Antoine says you have brought that animal into the house. I said you could keep it only if it stays in the garden.”

“But—the nurseryman told me to watch out that he doesn’t get cold. It’s cold at night, Mama.”

His mother went a few steps into Roland’s room. Roland followed her.

“Look! He’s gone to sleep in his burrow. He’s perfectly clean, Mama. He’ll stay in his cage. What’s the matter with that?”

“You’ll probably take him out. I know you, Roland.”

“But I promise, I won’t.” Roland didn’t mean that promise, and knew his mother knew it.

A minute later, Roland was reluctantly carrying Harry, now out of sight in the hay, down the stairway and into the garden. Harry was probably sleeping like a log, Roland thought, remembering what the nurseryman had said about ferrets falling asleep, often close to their victims for warmth, after they had drunk the blood of their prey. The primitiveness of it excited Roland. When his mother had gone back into the house (she had been watching him from the kitchen door), Roland opened the cage and lifted some of the hay, exposing Harry who raised his head drowsily. Roland smiled.

“Come on, you can sleep up in my room. Then we’ll have some fun tonight,” Roland whispered.

Roland picked Harry up and put the hay back in place. Harry lay limp and innocent in Roland’s hand. Roland opened a button of his shirt, stuck Harry in and fastened the button. He closed the cage door and latched it.

Up in his room, Roland got his empty suitcase from a wardrobe top, put a couple of his sweaters into it, and put Harry in, propping the suitcase lid open a little with the sleeve of one sweater. Then Roland got a clean ashtray from the hall table, filled it with water from the bathroom tap and put it in the suitcase.

Roland then flopped on his bed, lit one of the cigarettes which he kept hidden in a bookshelf, and opened a James Bond which he had already read two or three times. He was thinking of things he might teach Harry. Harry should learn to travel around in a jacket pocket, certainly, and come out on command. He should also have a collar and lead, and the collar, or maybe a harness, would have to be custom-made because Harry was so small. Roland imagined commissioning a leather craftsman in Paris and paying a good price for it. Fine! It would be amusing in Paris—even in Orléans—if Harry could emerge from his pocket on his lead and eat meat from Roland’s plate in a restaurant, for instance.

At dinner, Roland and his mother and a man friend of hers, who was an antique dealer of the neighborhood and very boring, were interrupted by Brigitte, who whispered to Mme. Lemoinnier:

“Madame, I beg to excuse myself, but Antoine has just been bitten. He is quite upset.”

“Bitten?” said Mme. Lemoinnier.

“He says it is the ferret—in M. Roland’s room.”

Roland controlled his smile. Antoine had gone in to turn the bed down, and Harry had attacked.

“A
ferret
?” said the antique dealer.

Roland’s mother looked at him. “Will you excuse yourself, Roland, and put the animal back in the garden?” She was angry and would have said more if they had been alone.

“Excuse me, please,” Roland said. He went into the hall and saw Antoine’s tall figure in the little lavatory by the front door. Antoine stooped to hold a wet towel against his ankle. Blood, Roland thought, fascinated to think that Harry had drawn blood from that old creature Antoine, who in fact looked as if he hadn’t any blood in him.

Roland ran up the stairs two at a time, and found his room in disorder. Antoine had obviously abandoned the bed-turning-down midway, an armchair was askew where Antoine must have dragged it looking for Harry, or maybe trying to protect himself. But the bed in disorder meant more to Roland than an explosion: Antoine would not have left a bed in that state unless he was ready for extreme unction. Roland looked around for Harry.

“Harry?—Where are you?” He looked up at the long curtains, which Harry would certainly be able to climb, in the wardrobe, under the bed.

The door of his room had been closed. Evidently Antoine had wanted to guard against Harry escaping. Then Roland looked at the folds in the bedcovers where nothing, however, twitched.

“Harry?”

Roland lifted the top sheet. Then he saw the counterpane move. Harry was between counterpane and blanket, and he sat up and regarded Roland with a desperate anxiety. Roland noticed another beautiful thing about Harry: his whole torso was beige and soft looking, from his little black chin down to the counterpane on which he stood, and a fine line of brown fur perhaps caused by the fur pressing together down the center of his body, gave the effect of a stripe, turned Harry into a bifurcated piece of beige fluff, quite concealing where his hind legs began and ended. Harry’s dainty hands sought either side of the counterpane’s folds, not to keep his balance which he had perfectly, but nervously, as the hands of a highly strung person might do. And perhaps Harry was asking, “Who was that giant who tried to shoo me, scare me, catch me?” But as Roland looked at Harry, Harry’s face seemed to lose some of its terror. Harry lowered himself and advanced a little. Now he might be saying, “I’m delighted to see you! What’s happening?”

Roland extended a hand without thinking, and Harry went up his arm and down his shirtfront—the collar of his shirt was open—and nestled with scratchy little claws against Roland’s waist. Roland found his eyes full of tears which he could not explain. Was it pride because Harry had come to him? Or anger because Harry had to stay in the garden tonight? Tears, explained or not, had a poetic value, Roland thought. They signified importance of some kind.

Roland took Harry out of his shirt and put him on a curtain. Harry ran up the yellow curtain to the ceiling, Roland took the bottom of the curtain in his hands, and Harry ran down the slope. Roland laughed, lowered the curtain, and Harry ran up again. Harry seemed to enjoy it. Roland caught Harry at the bottom of the curtain and stuck him into the suitcase. “I’ll be back in a minute!” This time Roland fixed the lid down with a straight chair turned sideways.