The Black Cat (6 page)

They took both cars, and Melrose insisted that Jury follow him.

“Why?”

“In case my car breaks down.”

“Your car is a Rolls-Royce. My car is a Vauxhall of questionable provenance with a million miles clocked. Now, which car is more likely to break down?”

“Mine.” Melrose turned on the engine. It thrummed like Yo-Yo Ma’s cello.

“Oh, my, yes. The rattle and clang’s enough to deafen you.”

“I’ll wait for you,” called Melrose to Jury’s departing back. And again: “Don’t forget we’re stopping if we see a Little Chef.”

Twenty miles on, well past Leighton Buzzard, they came to one, and Melrose pulled off the road and into the car park.

The Little Chef was crisp and bright as if the whole place had just been polished. It looked pleased with its black-checkered self.

Melrose studied the menu.

Jury didn’t bother. “I can tell you what’s on it; I’ve seen it often enough.”

“I like looking.”

“While you’re doing that, let me tell you about the Rexroths’ party, where, I’m pretty sure, the murdered woman was going.” Jury did so, including the guest list.

“You’re kidding. Harry Johnson was at that party?”

“He was on the list. Whether he was actually there is in question.”

“The house isn’t far from the Black Cat?”

“I’m not jumping to the conclusion that he knew her.”

“No, you’re merely jumping to the conclusion that he murdered her.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Daft? You’re absolutely delighted you have some reason to go after Harry Johnson again. Ah, here’s our waitress.”

The waitress, whose name tag said “Sonia,” came over on squeaky rubber soles and with a huge, not-meaning-it smile. “Ready, are we?”

“No.”

“Yes.” Jury pointed to the paint-bright picture of the plate he wanted.

Melrose said, “I’ll have pancakes with sausages.” The waitress left and he said, “As you are now confronted with a murder and a vanished, perhaps murdered, cat, why are we going to Bletchley Park?”

“Because of Sir Oswald Maples.”

“He asked you to go?”

“No. Because the mysterious workings of code breaking in World War Two interest me, and he’s an expert on the subject, and I’d just like to be able to talk about it.”

Jury watched a family of at least a dozen people enter and secure three tables pushed together. They were all fat. “If you didn’t want to see Bletchley Park, why did you come?”

“Simple. Because it’s near Milton Keynes, and that’s only fifty miles from home, and I thought we’d be spending most of the day at Ardry End swilling my single malt whiskey, after which we’d go to the Jack and Hammer and swill some more.”

“Sorry, but I can’t take you up on that invitation. I’ve got to get back to London.”

Melrose was disappointed. “It’s a long time since you’ve been to my place.”

“Yes, a whole month.”

Sonia was back setting down their plates.

Jury started in on his eggs.

“Um, um,” murmured Melrose, mouth full of syrupy pancakes. He ate a few bites and said, “I’m intrigued by your murder victim’s clothes.”

“So am I.” Jury picked up a triangle of buttered toast and wondered which point to start on. Sonia, he noticed, was watching them as if they’d both walked in with tire irons and nasty intentions.

“Well, if our unidentified victim could afford that dress and those shoes…,” Melrose began.

“Jimmy Choo. How can women wear heels four inches high? These shoes, according to Detective Sergeant Cummins, would have cost around six or seven hundred quid.”

“And that’s a sandal?”

“All straps.” Jury smiled. “Strappy, you say.”

“I don’t say it. How does Detective Sergeant Cummins come by such arcane knowledge?”

“It’s hardly arcane. Jimmy’s popular. It’s Mrs. Cummins, our sergeant’s wife, who knows this stuff; she’s a woman who’s really into designer shoes. The dress cost-get this-around three thousand quid. That’s Yves Saint Laurent. The handbag by Alexander McQueen cost another thousand. It’s mind-boggling.”

“Astonishing. What item of clothing could possibly be worth it?”

Jury looked at him. “What did that jacket you’re wearing set you back?”

Melrose looked down as if surprised to see he wasn’t wearing sackcloth and ashes. “This rag?” He shrugged.

“Bespoke. Your old tailor. Don’t tell me it didn’t cost as much as her dress.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The point is: is prostitution so well paid a woman can buy that stuff?”

“Who says she’s that?” Jury bit down on his toast, nearly cold and slightly burnt.

“Come on. Woman leading a ‘second life’ in London, goes from Chesham librarian to London Saint Laurent?”

Jury reached across the table and speared one of Melrose ’s sausages.

“Hey! Get your own! You should have a look in this woman’s cupboard to see the rest of her wardrobe. Is she filthy rich? Even so, what does it say about her that she’d spend that kind of money on shoes? Self-indulgent, spoiled, egocentric…”

Jury chewed slowly and looked at him.

“What?… What?”

“Well, there you go, working up a stereotype.”

“I’m not stereotyping; I’m… profiling.”

“Then you’re one sorry profiler. Typical of the male ego, he would find such extravagance joined either to prostitution or to a spoiled, shallow, self-indulgent woman, when there are certainly other viable interpretations, the least of which would explain this behavior. We’re making too much of the lady’s extravagance. After all, some women spend money like they’re minting it. If they didn’t, the entire fashion industry would go down.”

“Then you don’t think these Jimmy Choo shoes are important?”

“Of course I do. The shoes and the dress are very important. But I wouldn’t think twice if I saw them at the Albert Hall. It’s finding them in the grounds of the Black Cat that’s interesting.”

“And everything points to her having been killed where she was found? I mean, that she wasn’t transported there?”

“Everything: beginning with lividity, to the arterialblood-splatter, to the onset of rigor mortis, to an examination of the ground beneath the body to determine the amount of blood that soaked into it-everything.”

“Oh, you’re just guessing.”

In Bletchley Park, they stood looking down at this machine that was no bigger than a typewriter, the genius machine that had broken the German Navy’s Enigma code.

“Imagine,” said Jury, “billions of possibilities-”

“I’d rather not, I’m having a hard enough time imagining dinner. So this could encipher messages?”

Jury nodded. “Scramble plaintext into ciphertext.” He bent his head closer to it. “This machine had been commercial, you know, I mean used for other purposes. It was just that the Germans realized its potential for encrypting messages.”

“So this was what Oswald Maples worked on.”

“This or those.” Jury turned to look at the other machines housed here in what used to be the huts occupied by experts in codes and ciphers. “That’s what this arm of the War Ministry was called: GC &CS, Government Code and Cypher School. Cribs were largely guesses, guessing a word would appear in a message because past messages had used it so much. Say you sent a lot of messages to Agatha where the word ‘idiot’ popped up all the time.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Anyone then reading a new message from you to Agatha would figure that the word ‘idiot’ would appear in the message. Thereby making it easy to decipher the message.”

“It sounds extremely complex.”

“It is. The Enigma machine had the capacity to make billions of combinations.”

“You’re really into this code and cipher stuff; you and Sir Oswald must get along like a house on fire.”

“We do.” Jury was by the large machine called the bombe, bending down to read the explanatory material. “This is interesting; this one didn’t prove a particular Enigma setting; it disproved every incorrect one.”

Hands behind him, Melrose leaned back on his heels and thought about it. “But wouldn’t it amount to the same thing? Wouldn’t you be doing that anyway?”

“What?”

“Proving. To prove a thing is, you’d be disproving what it’s not.”

“No. If that were the case, this bombe wouldn’t be disproving other possibilities.”

“Hold it.” Melrose pushed out his hand like a traffic cop. “You’re begging the question. You’re saying the bombe disproves because it disproves. That’s no argument.”

“It isn’t the way you’re putting it.”

“Okay, forget that. I don’t see how you can disprove something without assuming a proof. Take the black cat, for instance-”

“Which one?”

“Ah! That’s my point. Right now, to our knowledge there are two black cats.”

“Oh, I believe that, but-”

“Let me finish.”

Jury folded his arms across his chest. “Are you going to wipe out two years of Alan Turing’s work here?”

“The cats are Morris One, Dora’s cat; Morris Two, the pretender cat. To our knowledge, there are two because we’ve been told there are. Anything else is deduction. In order to prove Morris One is Dora’s cat, we have to disprove number two is not.”

“Can we continue this argument later? I’ve got to get back to London.”

Melrose threw up his hands. “A detective superintendent and you don’t get it!”

They were walking toward the door. “I don’t get a lot of things. I particularly don’t get how it is you know more than Alan Turing.”

“It’s a cross I bear. So, in your greater wisdom, was Morris murdered or kidnapped?”

“Kidnapped.”

“Just how do you work that out?”

“How would I have worked my way up to detective superintendent if I couldn’t?”

Mungo, sitting several feet from a kitchen door in a house in Belgravia, listened to the voice of Mrs. Tobias coming from the kitchen. Yelling from the kitchen was more like it.

“Look what you’ve done, my lad! Ruined my good cake! Haven’t I told you-”

Here, “my lad” came running from the kitchen, giggling, chocolate cake still in his hand and on his mouth.

This was the ignominious Jasper, who was the most loathsome child Mungo had ever known. He was twelve, and if Mungo had anything to do with it, he’d never see thirteen. Jasper had been visiting for a week while his mum and new stepfather were on their honeymoon-a romantic getaway to Blackpool-and now it was to be another week relaxing at home in Bayswater before collecting Jasper. So the boy was destined to stay here another week, but a new destiny could always be arranged, thought Mungo darkly.

The kitchen door swung open again, and Mrs. Tobias came into the dining room, one of his little Matchbox cars in her hand. “And get these things out of my kitchen!” She stood in the dining room, calling into empty air, “One more of your tricks and you’ll be out of here, my lad, honeymoon or no honeymoon!” The silver car, like a gauntlet, was thrown down. “Why, if Mr. Harry ever slid on one of these, you’d be out of this house quick as a wink.”

Jasper had a dozen of these Corgi cars. They were always underfoot, and Mrs. Tobias, walking upstairs, had stepped on one and nearly landed downstairs on her head but just managed to grab at the banister in time. Jasper liked to roll them at Mungo and the cat Schrödinger when they slept. Mungo was sick of cars hitting him on the nose.

Jasper Seines. The name was like a sneeze or a hiss. Yes, he was going to have to do something about Jasper Seines.

He sloped off to have a dekko at Schrödinger’s kittens, still sleeping in the bottom drawer of the bureau in the music room. They were all sprawled out, including Elf, who was Mungo’s favorite, but now almost too big to be carried around by the skin of his neck, although Schrödinger managed to do it.

It was time Jasper Seines went. What surprised Mungo was that Harry hadn’t bumped him off. He had seen Harry cast truly malevolent looks at the boy, but Harry was taking the gentlemanly approach (and Harry was always that) by merely suggesting to Mrs. Tobias, his housekeeper and sometime cook, that Jasper Seines must be missing school. Hint, hint, nod, nod, wink, wink. But Mrs. Tobias wasn’t one to pick up a hint and a nod, so Harry might hand her a broader message by kicking Jasper Seines down the cellar stairs.

Mungo looked over the kittens as if they were licorice allsorts. He saw one was even smaller than Elf and was about to pick it up when Schrödinger padded over to scotch that particular bit of fun. Schrödinger was as black as squid’s ink and with almost as many appendages, or so it seemed, when she started routing Mungo.

He sent her the message Don’t be daft. I’m not doing anything. She stared at him round-eyed, refusing to return a message, probably feeling it beneath her.

So into this voiceless habitation came Jasper Seines. “Well, well, well, wot’s all this, then?” doing his imitation of some beat copper. Then suddenly, like a magician grabbing an object out of the air, he yanked up one of the kittens by its tail. The little thing screeched, and this earned Jasper Seines an attack from both sides: Schrödinger clawing his leg and Mungo sinking his teeth into the boy’s ankle.

“You little fuckers! Get offa me!”

The kitten dropped back into the drawer, and Jasper Seines yelled and, unable to shake off Mungo, yelled some more. Finally released, he ran crying to Mrs. Tobias; tears went flying from his doughy face as if even they wanted to get as far away from Master Seines as they could.

Neither Schrödinger nor Mungo subscribed to that old saw about my enemy’s enemy. Nonetheless, Mungo thought, if they worked together (for once), they might be able to get rid of Jasper Seines.

Schrödinger jumped into the drawer to see that no other devilment befell her brood; Mungo left the music room and went clicking across the gorgeously polished hardwood floor to sit near the kitchen and take in what was going on.

Tearily, Jasper Seines was denying any action on his part. “No, I never done nuttin’…”

“My patience is wearing thin, my lad.”

Mungo sighed. Mrs. Tobias was nobody’s fool.

“Aw right, I’d as soon go home! I don’t like it here!”

What a nasty nephew. But what a promising bit of conversation. Now all Mungo had to do was give this beastly child a little nudge out the front door.

Afternoon was drawing in and Mungo had his eye on his favorite spot, underneath a small wrought-iron bench in the rear garden. There was a doghouse, too, but he wouldn’t bother himself.

Trotting toward the bench, he could already feel the cool grass against his stomach, the feathery shade made by the thin and delicate fronds of a willow, moving in the breeze.

That’s why he was brought up smartly by finding his spot occupied by a black cat calmly snoozing there, not bothered by the traffic blaring its way along Upper Sloane Street. The cat lay with its front paws hooked around its chest, in that deft way of cats. It looked like a loaf of pumpernickel.

Carefully, Mungo crept closer to the bench and sat down far enough away that the cat would miss him if he woke suddenly and took a swipe at Mungo. The cat slept on, sensing nothing. For one crazy moment, he thought it might be Schrödinger. It was just as black, certainly, and looked just like her, except for the bright blue collar round the stranger’s neck.

Mungo pulled a pebble from beneath a tree and aimed it toward the cat. The pebble rolled against a paw, but the cat only twitched its nose before it resettled itself even more deeply into pumpernickel posture. This was irritating. If someone hit him, Mungo, with a pebble, he’d be off the ground and flailing. He jumped onto the bench, from which position he could watch the cat through the wrought-iron interstices of the seat. There were large openings in the fussy scroll-work through which he could reach his paw, but he couldn’t reach the cat.

He could bark to wake the cat up, but he didn’t like to bark; barking was a last-ditch effort. Mungo hopped down from the bench and moved around to where he was before. He lay down, his head on his paws, his gaze level with the cat’s closed eyes. When the cat woke, he would be startled; it would be fun.

The cat’s eyes opened so slowly, they seemed not to move. Mungo raised himself to a sitting position, leaned on one paw, then the other, back and forth as if getting ready to make a dash.

The cat yawned.

That annoyed him. Mungo was, after all, a dog. He pricked up his ears: the cat was sending him a message:

I hope I’m not dead and you’re not heaven.

Mungo took a startled step back. He wasn’t at all sure that message was complimentary. He sent a message back: No, it’s not heaven; it’s Belgravia, though some here would argue there’s a difference. Who are you?

Morris.

The cat shoveled its rear end back and assumed one of those sloping Zen-like stretches that cats were so good at. Even Schrödinger looked agile in that butt-to-sky pose.

Do you live around here? asked Mungo. I mean in one of these other houses? Because this is my garden.

Morris lay back down in the paws-to-chest position that Mungo envied.

No, I live off somewhere.

That’s not going to get you far. You don’t even know the name of the place?

Never thought I’d have to know. I never thought I’d be kidnapped before. The slow-blinking eyes blinked again.

Kidnapped! Wow! That was supposed to have happened to Mungo once, but it hadn’t. That story was Harry’s invention. If there was one thing Harry was good at, it was making up stories and otherwise lying.

You mean honest-to-God kidnapping? Or do you know Harry?

Harry who?

Never mind. (Less said the better.) You don’t know where you were kidnapped from? Or to?

It’ll come back to me. I know it’s a pub. One minute I was on my table in the pub gardens, having a kip. There I lay until someone jerked me up and started roughing me around. Then I was in a car. Then I don’t remember.

What pub is it?

I think it’s called the Black Cat. Once in a while a customer would remark on me being the pub’s cat and wasn’t that clever? Clever. I ask you. Anyway, I’m not. My owner’s name is Dora.

Go on.

Well, I’m wandering about outside looking for field mice, and I come across a person lying on the patio where the tables are.

Mungo sat straight up, big-eyed.

It didn’t move, this person. I sniffed all around and smelled something like blood, I think.

Blood! Mungo could feel the small stiff hairs rise along his spine. He would like to be a bloodhound.

It must’ve been a dead body.

I expect so. Then I saw an old woman coming along with a fat dog and ran back inside the pub. Do you have anything to eat? I’m really hungry. A nice piece of fish would go down a treat. Of course, I’d take anything.

Mungo was thinking furiously. I’m going in for a bit.

Back to the house? Will you come back?

Yes. I’ll bring some food. You stay here. I won’t be long.

The rear door was open, as it often was off the latch in good weather. Mungo hated the dog door because he was afraid of getting stuck in it. All he needed to do here was get a paw in between door and doorjamb and pull.

Mrs. Tobias was busy arranging thin cucumber slices on a cold salmon. “Mungo! Where have you been?”

Mrs. Tobias always sounded surprised to see Mungo was still living here. “This is for your master’s dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?”

My what? Was she kidding?

“He does like his bit of salmon.”

I’d like my bit, too.

Mrs. Tobias went twittering on about cooking this and that and sounded settled in forever with the cucumber decoration. She was opening ajar of pimiento when the telephone rang from somewhere deep in the house.

The blessed telephone! That should keep her busy, she was such a talker.

He raced out to the dining room, knowing exactly where that Corgi car had fallen when Mrs. Tobias had flung it. He picked it up in his teeth and made his way back to the kitchen. From the hallway came the sound of Mrs. Tobias on the phone: talk, talk, talk, talk.

Back to the kitchen he went. He was up to the chair, then to the stool, and then to the kitchen counter. Mrs. Tobias’s cold salmon lay on a long china plate on the counter. Its eye was a circle of black olive; its scales, the overlapped cucumber slices.

He deposited the little silver car with its nose to the pepper grinder, then knocked over the grinder for good measure. Delicately, he put his teeth around the lower part of the salmon with its cucumber garnish. Carefully, he slid down to the floor and carefully held his head high so as to keep the salmon intact. Then, just as carefully, he was out the back door.

He dropped the salmon and a cucumber slice in front of Morris. They were in a little clearing within the bushes defined by a box hedge. Morris had been eyeing two wrens having a clamorous talk. When Morris saw the fish, she nearly fell on it, eating as if she were inhaling it. Including the cucumber.

Mrs. Tobias had, of course, returned to the kitchen and half a salmon and was yelling for Jasper, calling out, “This is it, my lad! You go in the morning!”

Who’s Jasper? asked Morris between bites.

A thing of the past, answered Mungo. He was mightily pleased. Hello, Morris. Good-bye, Jasper.

When she’d finished the salmon, Morris thanked Mungo with great enthusiasm and began washing her face. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, which was the best he’d heard since Harry tried to convince the Spotter-Oh, but that was for another time.

Now, tell me the rest. You stopped when this old woman came along. Mungo settled in to listen. He tried to fold his paws into his chest and couldn’t. So he just stretched his legs out.

Morris lay down, easily curving her paws. Well, she didn’t scream, exactly, but she made some kind of noise. Her dog was yapping; it was enough to wake the dead. Then she put a leaf against her ear and-

A leaf? What do you mean?

Everybody has them. You’ve seen people with leaves; they’re always talking to them. People just can’t let leaves alone. Sometimes I’d be on my window seat, napping, when customers would sit down and right away pull out a leaf and talk, talk, talk-

I get the idea.

– talk, talk, talk. Do you think there’s anybody on the other end?

I think maybe it doesn’t make any difference to them. Mungo stretched out, feeling quite philosophical. Back to the pub: what did the old woman say to the leaf?

She said for someone to come quick. There was a body.

Was she talking to the Spotters? You know, the ones who go nosing around whenever there’s a dead body. Some of them are Uniforms and some of them are something else. I call them Spotters.

I guess that’s who came, finally. There was a big commotion around the body. They took a lot of pictures. Why anyone would want pictures of a dead body, I don’t know.

Then what happened?

Nothing until the cars came. People messed about.

How did you get here, then?

In a car, I guess, but that was days later. I think I was gassed.

Mungo would have said it was the strangest tale he’d ever heard, except for what had happened to him, or at least what was supposed to have.

Now, the only person who really notices Schrödinger is Mrs. Tobias. Harry is too bogged down in his own mind to pay any attention. So there’s no reason why you couldn’t live here and pretend you’re Shoe. After all, one black cat looks pretty much like another.

Morris wasn’t sure she liked that. But what if we appear together at the same time? And I have this collar, too. Does your cat wear one?

No. We’ll be on the lookout, won’t we? Anyway, Mrs. Tobias is old and she’d just think she was seeing double. You can make anyone think they’re bonkers except for the ones who really are.

Morris sat up, paws placed neatly on the grass. Mungo sat up too and tried to get his paws that way, but he couldn’t. Come on.