The Cat Who Saw Red

14

Qwilleran returned to Maus Haus on the River Road bus, pondering the pieces of the puzzle: two missing persons, a drowned child, a slandered restaurateur, a lost cat, a black eye, a scream in the night. Too many pieces were missing.

Up in Number Six the cats were snoozing on the blue cushion. They had been busy, however, and several pictures were tilted. Qwilleran automatically straightened them, a chore to which he had become accustomed. The cats had to have their fun, he rationalized. Cooped up in a one-room apartment, they had to use ingenuity to amuse themselves, and Koko found a peculiar satisfaction in scraping his jaw on the sharp corners of a picture frame. Qwilleran straightened two engravings of bridges over the Seine, a Cape Cod watercolor, and a small oil painting of a beach scene on the Riviera. In the far corner an Art Nouveau print had been tilted so violently that it was hanging sideways. As he rectified the situation, he noticed a patch on the wall.

It was a metal patch, painted to match the stucco walls. He touched it, and it moved from side to side, pivoting on a tiny screw. Small arcs scratched in the wall paint indicated that the patch had been swung aside before, perhaps recently. Qwilleran swung it all the way around and discovered what it was concealing: a deep hole in the wall.

Leaning across the bookcase, he peered through the opening and looked down into the two-story kiln room behind his own apartment. The lights were tured on, and Qwilleran could see a central table with a collection of vases in brilliant blues, greens, and reds. Shifting his position to the left, he could see two of the kilns. Shifting to the right, he saw Dan Graham sitting at a small side table, copying from a loose-leaf notebook into a large ledger.

Qwilleran closed the peephole and replaced the picture, asking himself questions: What was its purpose? Did William know about it? Mrs. Marron said he had washed the walls recently. Had William been spying on Dan from this vantage point?

The telephone rang, and Odd Bunsen was on the line. "Say, what's the assignment you've got on the board forfive o'clock? It sounds like a sizable job. When do I get to eat?"

"You can have dinner here," Qwilleran said, "and shoot the pictures afterward. The food here is great!"

"The requisition saystwo-five-five-five River Road. What is that place, anyway?"

"It's an old pottery, now a gourmet boarding house."

"Sure, I know the place. There were a couple of murders there. We keep running stories on them. Any special equipment I should bring?"

"Bring everything," Qwilleran advised. He lowered his voice with a glance in the direction of the peephole. 'I want you to put on a good show. Bring lots of lights. I'll explain when you get here."

Qwilleran went downstairs to tell Mrs. Marron there would be and extra guest for dinner. She was in the Great Hall, nervously setting the dinner table, which had been moved under the balcony to make room for the pottery exhibit.

"I don't know what to do," she was whimpering. "They said they'd do a demonstration dinner, but I don't know how they want it set up. Nobody told me. Nobody's here."

"What's a demonstration dinner?" Qwilleran asked.

"Everybody cooks something at the table. Mr. Sorrel, he's making the steak. Mrs. Whiting, she's making the soup. Miss Roop, she's — "

"Have you seen William?"

"NO, sir, and he was supposed to clean the stove — "

"Any news from Mr. Maus?"

"No, sir. Nobody knows when he'll be back . . . You're not going to tell him, are you? You said you wouldn't tell him."

"We're going to forget the whole matter," Qwilleran assured her. "Stop worrying about it, Mrs. Marron."

Tears came to her dull eyes, and she rubbed them away with the back of her hand. "Everybody is so good to me here. I try not to make mistakes, but I can't get little Nicky off my mind, and I don't sleep nights."

"We all understand what you've been through, but you must pull yourself together."

"Yes, sir." The housekeeper stopped her nervous puttering and turned to face him. "Mr. Qwilleran," she said hesitantly, "I heard something else in the night."

"What do you mean?"

"Saturday night, when I couldn't sleep, I was just lying there, worrying, and I heard a noise."

"Outside my window. Somebody coming down the fire escape."

"The one at the back of the house?"

"Yes, sir. My room is on the river side."

"Did you see anything?"

"NO, sir. I got up and peeked out the window, but it was so dark. All I could see was somebody crossing the grass."

"Hmmm," Qwilleran mued. "Did you recognize the person?"

"No, sir. But I think it was a man. He was carrying a heavy load of something."

"What kind of load?"

"Like a big sack."

"How big?"

"This big!" The housekeeper spread her arms wide. "He was carrying it down to the river. When he got beyond the bushes, I couldn't see him anymore. But I heard it."

"What did you hear?"

"A big splash."

"And what happened then?"

"He came back."

"Did you get a look at his face then?"

"No, sir. There wasn't enough light at the back of the building — just the bright lights across the river. But I could see him moving across the grass, and then I heard him going up the fire escape again."

"Is that the one that leads to the Grahams' loft?"

"Yes, sir."

"What time did that happen?"

"It was very late. Maybe four o'clock." The housekeeper looked at him hopefully, waiting for his approval.

Qwilleran studied her face briefly. "If it was Mr. Graham, there was probably some logical explanation. Think nothing of it."

"Yes, sir."

He went upstairs wondering: Did she really see Dan Graham dropping a sack in the river? She made up a story once before, and she could do it again. Perhaps she thinks I'm the kind that drools over mysteries, and she's trying to please me. And why all that yes-sir, no-sir business all of a sudden?

In his apartment Qwilleran's eye went first to the Art Nouveau print over the bookcase, and it gave him an idea. A few months before, he had interviewed a commercial potter who specialized in contemporary figurines, and now he telephoned him.

"This may sound like a crazy question," he told the potter, "but I'm trying my hand at writing a novel — kind of a Gothic thriller about skulduggery in a pottery. Would it be too farfetched to have a peephole in a wall overlooking the kiln room?"

"So the firing operation could be observed?"

"Yes. Something like that."

"Not a bad idea at all. I once suspected an employee of sabotaging my work, and I had to set up an expensive surveillance system. A simple peephole might have saved me a lot of money. Why didn't I think of that? All potters are professional voyeurs, you know. We're always looking through the spyholes in the kilns, and I can't pass a knothole in a board fence without taking a peek."

Odd Bunsen arrived at Maus Haus at five o'clock, and Qwilleran invited him to Number Six for a ; drink.

"Hey, you're getting taller," the photographer said. "It couldn't be thinner."

"I've lost seven pounds," Qwilleran boasted, unaware that three of them had been contributed in the beginning by Koko.

"Where are those crazy cats? Hiding?"

"Asleep on the shelves, behind the books."

Bunsen flopped in the big lounge chair, propped his feet on the ottoman, lit a cigar, and accepted a glass of something ninety-proof. "I wish the boss could see me now. Do you realize the Fluxion is paying me for this?"

"The work will come later." Qwilleran went to the peephole and checked the metal patch.

"What kind of hanky-panky did you have in mind?"

"Keep your voice down," Qwilleran advised. "If possible."

"Are you telling me I'm a loudmouth?"

"To put it tactfully. . . yes."

"What's the assignment all about? Don't keep me in suspense."

The newsman sat down and lit his pipe. "Ostensibly you'll be taking pictures for a layout on Dan Graham, who runs the pottery."

"But without any film in the camera?"

"We might use one or two pictures, but I want you to keep the camera clicking all over the place. I'd also like an excuse to get Koko into the pottery, but I don't want to suggest it myself." He groomed his mustache with his pipe stem.

Bunsen recognized the gesture. "Not another crime! Not again!"

"Lower your voice," Qwilleran said with a frown. "While you're preparing to shoot pictures, I want to browse around the premises, so take a lot of time doing it."

"You got the right man," said Bunsen. "I can set up a tripod slower than any other photographer in the business."

Later, at the dinner table, everyone liked the Fluxion photographer. Bunsen had a way of taking over a social occasion, bursting on the scene with his loud voice and jovial manner and stale jokes, jollying the women, kidding the men. Rosemary smiled at him, Hixie giggled, and even Charlotte Roop was fascinated when he called her a doll-baby. Max Sorrel invited Bunsen to bring his wife to dinner at the Golden Lamb Chop some evening. Dan Graham had not yet arrived.

For the first course Rosemary stood at the head of the table and demonstrated a sixty-second cold soup involving yogurt, cucumbers, dill, and raisins.

"Best soup I ever tasted!" Bunsen announced.

Dan Graham, arriving at the table late, was greeted coolly by the Maus Haus regulars, but the photographer jumped up and pumped his hand, and the potter glowed with suppressed excitement. He had had a haircut, and his shabby clothes were neater than usual.

Sorrel sauteed steak au poivre, which was served with Mrs. Marron's potato puffs and asparagus garnished with pimiento strips.

Then Charlotte Roop demonstrated the tossing of a salad. "Dry the greens carefully on a linen towel," she said. "Be careful not to bruise the leaves. Tear them apart tenderly. . . And now the dressing. I add a little Dijon mustard and thyme. Toss all together. Gently! Gently! Forty times. Less dressing and more tossing — that's the secret."

"Best salad I ever tasted in my whole life!" Bunsen proclaimed.

"A salad has to be made with love," Miss Roop explained to him, beaming and nodding at his compliments.

For dessert Hixie prepared cherries jubilee. "Nothing to it," she said. "Dump the cherries in the chafing dish. Throw in a blob of butter and slosh it around. Then a slurp of cognac. Oops! I slurped too much. And then. . . you light it with a match, Voila!"

The blue flame leaped from the pan, and the company watched the ritual in hypnotized silence. Even Odd Bunsen was speechless.

As the flames started to burn out, Qwilleran thought he heard a crackling sound. He glanced up at Hixie and saw her lofty bouffant hairdo unaccountably shriveling. Jumping up, he tore off his jacket and threw it over her head. The woman shrieked. Chairs were knocked over as Sorrel and Bunsen rushed to help.

It was a stunned and wide-eyed Hixie who emerged from under the jacket, her hands exploring what was left of her hair. "It feels like straw," she said. "I guess I sprayed too much lacquer on it."

"Come on, Bunsen," Qwilleran said. "You and I have got to go to work. Dan, are you ready?"

"Wait a minute," said the potter, walking to the head of the table. "I haven't done anything tonight — I can't cook — so I'll sing you a song."

The diners sat down and listened uncomfortably as Dan sang about the charms of Loch Lomond in a wavering tenor voice. Qwilleran watched the pathetic Adam's apple bobbing up and down and felt almost guilty about the ruse he was planning.

The song ended and the listeners applauded politely, all except Bunsen, who hopped on a chair and shouted "Bravo!" To Qwilleran he muttered: "How'm I doing?"

As the diners wandered away from the table, chattering about Hixie's narrow escape, Qwilleran helped the photographer carry his equipment in from the car.

"You fellows certainly use a lot of gear," said the potter.

"Only for big assignments like this," Bunsen said, bustling about with exaggerated industry.

"Here's what we had in mind," Qwilleran explained to Dan. "We want a series of pictures showing how you make a pot, and then a few shots of you with some of your finished work."

"Wait a minute," the photographer interrupted. "It'll never get in the paper. Who wants to look at a homely old geezer?" He gave Dan a friendly dig in the ribs. "What we need is a gorgeous blonde to jazz it up. Are you hiding any dames upstairs?"

"I know what you mean," the potter said. "You fellows always like cheesecake. But my old lady's out of town."

"How about pets? Got any cats? Dogs? Parakeets? Boa constrictors? Best way to get your picture in the paper is to pose with a boa constrictor."

"We used to have a cat," Dan said apologetically. "Why don't we borrow one of Qwill's spoiled brats?" the photographer said with sudden enthusiasm. "We'll put him in a big jug with his head sticking out — and Dan in the background. Then you'll be sure of making the front page."