The Cat Who Lived High

8

JUST AS THE woman from 14-B screamed "Fire!" Qwilleran smelled smoke and heard the sirens.

"Don't take the elevator!" she cried as she dashed for the stairwell in a terrycloth robe.

He jammed the cats unceremoniously into their carrier, grabbed his pajama top, and started down the stairs, assuming that the boilers had over- heated in their battle with the bitter east wind. Other tenants joined the downward trek at every floor, most of them grumbling and whining.

"Why are we doing this? The building's fireproof," one protested.

"My husband's watching football on TV, and he won't budge," said a woman. "1 say: Let him burn!" "Smells like burning chicken to me," said another.

"Did they ring the firebell? I didn't hear it. My neighbor banged on my door. They're supposed to ring the firebell." "Betcha ten bucks the Countess ain't walkin' down." By the time the disgruntled refugees reached the main floor, the lobby was filled with a hubbub of voices raised in alarm or indignation, while Mrs. Tuttle tried to calm them. They were a motley assemblage in various states of undress: women with hair curlers and no makeup; hairy-legged men in nightshirts; old tenants without their dentures; bald tenants without their hairpieces. Qwilleran was conspicuous in his red pajamas. A few persons were clutching treasured possessions or squawling cats, and the Siamese in their carrier yowled and shrieked in the spirit of the occasion. Among the refugees was a man in a washed-out seersucker robe that might have been purloined from a hospital. He had thinning hair, a pale face, and a white patch where his right ear should be; Qwilleran recognized his fellow diner from the hibachi table.

Fortunately for the underclad residents, the lobby was on the warm side of the building. Those from the cold side were threatening to bring their mattresses and sleep on the lobby floor. Mrs. Tuttle was doing a heroic job of controlling the crowd.

Then an elevator door opened, and firemen in black rubber coats and boots, carrying red- handled axes, stepped out. "Go back to bed, folks," they said, grinning. "Only a chicken burning." The tenants would have been happier if it had been a real fire.

"What! I walked down six flights for a chicken?" "I knew it was a chicken. I know burning chicken when I smell it." "Somebody put it in the oven to thaw and went out to the bar and forgot it." "Whoever done it, they should kick 'em out." "They're gonna kick us all out pretty soon." The crowd began to disperse, some boarding the elevators and some heading for the stairwells, while others hung around the lobby, welcoming the opportunity for social fellowship.

The Siamese, following their rude experience among angry tenants and complaining cats, were understandably upset. Qwilleran, too, was restless and perhaps slightly lonesome, although he would not have admitted it. He considered it too late to call Polly but took a chance on phoning Arch Riker. "How's everything in Pickax?" he asked his old friend.

"I wondered when you were going to report in," said the editor. "Everything's just the way you left it - no snow yet." "Any world-shaking news?" "We had some excitement today. One of the conservation officers spotted a bald eagle near Wildcat Junction." "What did you do? Put out an extra?" "I'll blue-pencil that cynical remark. You talk like city folks." "Have you seen Polly?" "Yes - at a library meeting tonight. She showed slides of her trip to England. She told me she'd heard from you." "What's happening at the paper?" "Hixie sold a full-page ad to Iris Cobb's son: He's going into business up here." "Watch her! He's happily married," Qwilleran said.

"And we ran a notice in the sick column that old man Dingleberry is in the hospital for observation." "Of the nurses, no doubt. That old rou‚ is ninety-five and thinks he's twenty-five." "What about you?" asked Riker. "What have you been doing?" "Nothing much. Dropped into the Flux office today... Had lunch twice at the Press Club... Bumped into Lieutenant Hames. There's a whole string of new restaurants on Zwinger that you'd like, Arch. So far I've tried North Italian and Japanese. Why don't you fly down for a few days?" "Can't right now. There's a special edition coming out for deer season, and we're sponsoring a contest for hunters.

What do you think of the Casablanca?" "Not bad for an old building, and the sunsets from the fourteenth floor are spectacular." "That's one thing the city does well," said Riker. "Sunsets! That's because of the dirt in the atmosphere." "My apartment has a skylighted living room, a terrace, a waterbed, gold faucets, and a library of art books that you wouldn't believe." "How do you do it, Qwill? You always luck out. How do the cats react to the altitude?" "No complaints, although I think Koko is disappointed by the scarcity of pigeons." "Have you decided about the restoration?" "I've done some research and had a couple of conferences. Today I met with the architect, and next I'm going to meet the owner of the building, so it's coming right along. You know, Arch, what we have here is King Tut's tomb, waiting to be excavated." "Well, stay out of trouble, chum," said Riker, "and don't forget to send us some copy." After delivering this upbeat report, Qwilleran felt better, and he retired, allowing the Siamese to share the waterbed because of their disturbed state of mind. Yum Yum particularly liked the sensation.

On Wednesday morning he telephoned Mary Duckworth. He said, "I've read the Grinchman report and I'm ready to meet the Countess. When can you arrange it?" "How about this afternoon at four?" "How do I dress?" "I'd suggest a suit and tie. And she doesn't permit smoking." "No problem. I've given up my pipe," Qwilleran said. "I found out the smoke is bad for the Siamese." "I've given up cigarettes," she said. "My doctor finally convinced me the smoke is bad for antique furniture. Have you talked to Jefferson Lowell?" "We had lunch. Nice guy." "Are you convinced, Qwill?" "I don't know as yet. Where shall we meet?" "At the front door a few minutes before four. One is always prompt when calling on the Countess." Before having his hair cut, his moustache trimmed, his good gray suit pressed, and his shoes shined, Qwilleran checked the weather on the radio and learned that a woman shopper had been abducted from a supermarket parking lot; a jogger had been beaten by hoodlums in Penni- man Park; and rain was predicted, clearing in midafternoon. He taxied around town to do his errands, had a quick lunch at the Junktown deli, and returned to 14-A early enough to spend a lit- tle quality time with the Siamese. He proposed another chapter of Eothen, and the cats followed him into the library, but Koko had other ideas. He jumped to the library table and started pawing furiously.

Koko was known to be a bibliophile, and on the six-foot library table there were large-format art books reproducing the work of Michelangelo, Renoir, Van Gogh, Wyeth, and others, although the cat usually preferred small volumes that he could easily knock off a bookshelf.

"What are you doing, you crazy animal?" Qwilleran said.

Koko had found a long flat box among the art books. It looked like leather, and it was labeled "Scrabble." The blank tile found by Yum Yum had obviously strayed from this box. Opening it, Qwilleran found a hundred or so small tiles, each with a single letter of the alphabet. The sight was like a B-12 shot to one who had won all the spelling bees in grade school and had been an orthographic snob ever since. He sat down at the desk, opened the game board, and read the rules out of sheer curiosity.

"This is easy," he said. Scooping up a handful of tiles at random he spelled words like QADI and JAGIR. Years of playing a dictionary game with Koko had given him a vocabulary of esoteric words that he had little opportunity to use.

Soon he was building a crossword arrangement on the board. It began with CAD, grew to CADMIUM, and intercepted with SLUMP. This connected with EGRETS and OLPE.

The Siamese watched, patiently waiting for their quality time, but Qwilleran was fascinated by the lettered tiles and the small numerals that gave the value of each letter. All too soon it was time to put on his gray suit and meet Mary Duckworth on the main floor. Before leaving the apartment, he slipped a piece of fruit in his suitcoat pocket.

"You look splendid!" she said when they met, although she gave a brief qualifying glance at the bulge in his pocket.

They rang for the private elevator at the bronze door and rode up to Twelve in a carpeted car with rosewood walls and a velvet-covered bench. The ride was no faster than Old Red or Old Green, but it was smoother and quieter.

On the way up, Qwilleran mentioned, "You knew that Di Bessinger was going to inherit the Casablanca?" Mary nodded regretfully. "Who gets it now?" "Various charities. Qwill, I don't know what you're expecting, but the Plumb apartment may come as a surprise.

It's done in vintage Art Deco." They stepped off the elevator into a large foyer banded in horizontal panels of coral, burgundy, and bottle green, defined by thin strips of copper, and the floor was ceramic tile in a metallic copper glaze. Everything was slightly dulled with age. A pair of angular chairs flanked an angular console on which were two dozen tea roses reflected in a large round mirror.

Mary pressed a doorbell disguised as a miniature Egyptian head, and they waited before double doors sheathed in tooled copper. When the doors opened, they were confronted by a formidable man in a coral-colored coat.

"Good afternoon, Ferdinand," said Mary. "Miss Adelaide is expecting us. This is Mr. Qwilleran." "Sure. You know where to go." The houseman waved a hamlike hand toward the drawing room. He had the build of a linebacker, with beefy shoulders, a bull neck, and a bald head. The Countess's live-in bodyguard, Qwilleran guessed, doubled as butler. "She was late gettin' up from her nap," the man said, "and then she had to have her hair fixed. She fired the old girl that fixed it, and the new girl is kinda slow." "Interesting," said Mary stiffly. The drawing room was more than Qwilleran could assimilate at a glance. What registered was a peach-colored marble floor scattered with geometric-patterned rugs, and peach walls banded in copper and hung with large round mirrors.

Mary motioned him to sit in a tub-shaped chair composed of plump rolls of overstuffed black leather stacked on chrome legs. "You're sitting in an original Bibendum chair from the 1920s," she said.

His gaze went from item to item: The tea table was tortoiseshell; all lamps had bulbous bases; the windows were frosted glass crisscrossed with copper grillwork. Everything was somewhat faded, and there was a sepulchral silence.

Ferdinand followed them into the drawing room. "You never been here before," he said to Qwilleran.

"This is my first visit." "You play bridge?" "I'm afraid not." "She likes to play bridge." "So I have heard," said Qwilleran with a glance at Mary. She was sitting tight-lipped and haughty.

"She likes all kinds of games," said the houseman. "Is it still raining?" "It stopped about an hour ago." "We had some good weather this week." "Very true." "I used to wrestle on TV," said the big man.

"Is that so?" Qwilleran wished he had brought his pocket tape recorder.

"I was Ferdie Le Bull. That's what they called me." The houseman unbuttoned his coral coat and exhibited a T- shirt stenciled with the name. "You never saw me wrestle?" "I never had that pleasure." "Here she comes now," Ferdinand announced.

Adelaide St. John Plumb was a small unprepossessing woman who carried her head cocked graciously to one side and spoke in a breathy little-girl voice. "So good of you to come." Brown hair plastered flat against her head in uniform waves contrasted absurdly with her pale aging skin, a network of fine wrinkles. So did the penciled eyebrows and red Cupid's-bow mouth. She was wearing a peach chiffon tea gown and long strands of gold beads.

Her guests rose. Mary said, "Miss Plumb, may I present James Qwilleran." "So happy to meet you," said their hostess.

"Enchant‚!" said Qwilleran, bending low over her hand in a courtly gesture. Then he drew from his pocket a perfect Bosc pear with bronze skin and long, curved stem, offering it in the palm of his hand like a jewel-encrusted Faberge bauble. "The perfect complement for your beautiful apartment, Mademoiselle." The Countess was a trifle slow in responding. "How charming... Please be seated... Ferdinand, you may bring the tea tray." She seated herself gracefully on an overstuffed sofa in front of the tortoiseshell tea table. "I trust you are well, Mary?" "Quite well, thank you. And you, Miss Adelaide?" "Very well. Did it rain today?" "Yes, rather briskly." The hostess turned to Qwilleran, inclining her head winningly. "You have recently arrived from the east?" "From the north," he corrected her. "Four hundred miles north." "How cold it must be!" Mary said, , 'Mr. Qwilleran is spending the winter here to escape the snow and ice." "How lovely! I hope you will enjoy your stay, Mr..." "Qwilleran." "Do you play bridge?" "I regret to say that bridge is not one of my accomplishments," he said, "but I have a considerable aptitude for Scrabble." Mary expressed surprise, and the Countess expressed delight. "How nice! You must join me in a game some evening." Ferdinand, wearing white cotton gloves, placed a silver tea tray before her-cubistic in design with ebony trim - and the hostess performed the tea ritual with well-practiced gestures.

"Mr. Qwilleran is a writer," said Mary.

"How wonderful! What do you write?" "I plan to write a book on the history of the Casablanca," he said, astonishing Mary once more. "The public library has a large collection of photos, including many of yourself, Miss Plumb." "Do they have pictures of my dear father?" "Quite a few." "I would adore seeing them." She tilted her head prettily.

"Do you have many recollections of the early Casablanca?" "Yes indeed! I was born here - in this very suite - with a midwife, a nurse, and two doctors in attendance. My father was Harrison Wills Plumb - a wonderful man! I hardly remember my mother. She was related to the Pennimans.

She died when I was only four. There was an influenza epidemic, and my mother and two brothers were stricken. All three of them died in one week, leaving me as my father's only consolation. I was four years old." Mary said, "Tell Mr. Qwilleran how you happened to escape the epidemic." "It was a miracle! My nurse - I think her name was Hedda - asked permission to take me to the mountains where it would be healthier. We stayed there - the two of us - in a small cabin, living on onions and molasses and tea... I shudder to think of it. But neither of us became ill. I returned to my home to find only my father alive - a shattered man! I was four years old." Ferdinand's clumsy hands, in white gloves the size of an outfielder's mitt, passed a silver salver of pound cake studded with caraway seeds.

The Countess went on. "1 was all my father had left in the world, and he lavished me with attention and lovely things. I adored him!" "Did he send you away to school?" Qwilleran asked.

"I was schooled at home by private tutors, because my father refused to allow me out of his sight. We went everywhere together - to the symphony and opera and charity balls. When we traveled abroad each year we were entertained royally in Paris and always dined at the captain's table aboard ship. I called Father my best beau, and he sent me tea roses and cherry cordials... Ferdinand, you may pass the bonbons." The big hands passed a tiny footed candy dish in which three chocolate-covered cherries rested on a linen doily.

Qwilleran took the opportunity to say, "You have a handsomely designed apartment, Miss Plumb." "Thank you, Mr..." "Qwilleran." "Yes, my dear father designed it following one of our visits to Paris. A charming Frenchman with a little moustache spent a year in rebuilding the entire suite. I quite fell in love with him," she said, cocking her head coquettishly. "Artisans came from the Continent to do the work. It was an exciting time for a young girl." "Do you remember any of the people who lived here at that time? Do you recall any names?" "Oh, yes! There were the Pennimans, of course. My mother was related to them... and the Duxbury family; they were bankers... and the Teahandles and Wilburtons and Greystones. All the important families had complete suites or pieds-…-terre." "How about visiting celebrities? President Coolidge? Caruso? The Barrymores?" "I'm sure they stayed here, but... life was such a whirl in those days, and I was only a young girl. Forgive me if I don't remember." "I suppose you dined in the rooftop restaurant." "The Palm Pavilion. Yes indeed! My father and I had our own table with a lovely view, and all the serving men knew our favorite dishes. I adored bananas Foster! The captain always prepared it at our table. On nice days we would have tea on the terrace. I made my debut in the Palm Pavilion, wearing an adorable white beaded dress." "I enjoy that same view from my apartment," Qwilleran said. "I'm staying where Dianne Bessinger used to live. I understand you knew her well." The Countess lowered her eyes sadly. "I miss her a great deal. We used to play Scrabble twice a week. Such a pity she was struck down so early in life. She simply passed away in her sleep. Her heart failed." Qwilleran shot a glance at Mary and found her frowning at him. Furthermore, Ferdinand was standing by with arms folded, looking grim.

Mary rose. "Thank you so much, Miss Adelaide, for inviting us." "It was a pleasure, my dear. And Mr. Qwillen, I hope you will join me at the bridge table soon." "Not bridge," he said. "Scrabble." "Yes, of course. I shall look forward to seeing you again." Ferdinand followed the two guests to the foyer and whipped out a dog-eared pad and the stub of a pencil. "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is full up," he said. "Nobody's comin' tomorrow. She needs somebody for tomorrow." He looked menacingly at Qwilleran. "Tomorrow? Eight o'clock?" It sounded less like an invitation and more like a royal command.

"Eight o'clock will be fine," Qwilleran said as they stepped into the waiting elevator. Once in its rosewood and velvet privacy they both talked at once.

He said, "Where did she find that three-hundred-pound butler?" Mary said, "I thought you didn't play games, Qwill." "Her hair is like Eleanor Roosevelt's in the Thirties." "I almost choked when you handed her that pear." "She doesn't even know that Dianne was murdered!" As they stepped out of the rosewood elevator on the main floor, the workaday crowd was pouring through the front door. They stared at the privileged pair.

Qwilleran said, "I'll walk out of the building with you, Mary. I want to check the parking lot. I've been here since Sunday, and five different cars have been parked in my space." As they approached the lot he asked, "May I ask you a question?" "Of course." "What do you think was the artist's motive for killing his patron?" "Jealousy," she said with finality. "You mean he had a rival?" "Not just one," she replied with a knowing grimace. "Di liked variety." "Were you friendly with her?" "I admired what she was trying to accomplish, and I admit she had charisma, or people would never have rallied around SOCK the way they did." Qwilleran stroked his moustache. "Could there have been anything political about her murder?" "What do you mean?" They had arrived at the entrance to the parking lot, and Mary was looking at her wristwatch.

"We'll talk about it another time. Perhaps we could have dinner some evening," he suggested.

"If we arrange it for a Sunday or Monday," she said, adopting her usual businesslike delivery, "I'm sure Roberto would like to join us." Qwilleran said it would be a good idea. He had lost his personal interest in Mary. Yet, it was a remarkable fact that she was the only woman Koko had ever actively approved. The cat discouraged Melinda, antagonized Cokey, and feuded openly with Rosemary. As for Polly, he tolerated her because she had a soothing voice, but he endorsed Mary Duckworth because she was an opportunist, and so was he! Koko knew a kindred spirit when he sniffed one. Also in her favor was the entire case of canned lobster she had given the Siamese three years before. That's the way it was with cats!

While Mary returned to the Blue Dragon, Qwilleran zigzagged his way through the parking lot, avoiding potholes filled with rainwater. To his surprise, slot #28 was finally vacant. Now he could move the Purple Plum into its rightful space. He pulled out his car keys, but there was something wrong with the purplish-blue metallic four-door parked in #27.

It appeared to have sunk into the ground! Actually, it had four flat tires.