The Cat Who Wasn't There

Four

"How do you feel, lover?" Melinda asked as she stood in the passage outside Qwilleran's room.

"You seemed rather quiet during dinner." "After conversing with the same crowd for five days, I'm running out of things to say and also the patience to listen," he said.

"May I come in? I want to check your pulse and temperature. Sit down over there, please." She entered in a cloud of scent that had enchanted him three years ago; now it seemed too sweet, too musky. She inserted a thermometer in his mouth, counted his pulse, raised his eyelids, and looked at his eyeballs.

"You're still legally alive," she said as she drew a flask from her official black bag.

"Would you like a little nip for medicinal purposes?" "You've forgotten I can't have alcohol, Melinda." "Where's your tea-maker? We'll have a nice cup of tea, as they say over here." She filled the pot with water from the bathroom tap.

"How do you like the tour so far?" "There's too much of everything. Too much food, too much conversation, too much bus travel, too many tourists." Melinda sauntered around the room in familiar fashion.

"Your room looks comfortable. The doubles are better than the singles.

I'm at the end of the hall in Number Nine--for your future reference -comandthe furnishings give me gastro-intestinal burbulence. I have a wonderful view of the loch, though. Perhaps Arch would like to exchange with me," she said with a mischievous glance.

"Does anyone know the name of this loch? They all look alike to me," said Qwilleran, an expert at ignoring hints.

"Well, tell me about you, Qwill. What have you been doing for the last three years?" "Sometimes I wonder. The years speed by." He was in no mood to socialize or particularize.

"Apparently you're not married yet." "It's fairly well accepted in Moose County that I'm not suitable grist for the matrimonial mill." Melinda poured two cups of tea and splashed something from the flask into her own cup.

"I was hoping we could pick up where we left off." "I'll say it again, what I've said before, Melinda. You belong with a man of your own age-your own generation." "I like older men." "And I like older women," he said with brutal candor.

"Ouch!" she said and then added impishly, "Wouldn't you like a second-string girlfriend for your youthful moments?" "This is good tea," he said, although he disliked tea.

"You must have used two tea bags "Are you as... uh.. compatible with your present inamorata as you were with me?" "What is this? The third degree? I think you're exceeding your privilege as a medical practitioner." She was not easily deterred.

"Didn't you ever think you'd like to have sons, Qwill? Polly is a little old for that." "Frankly, no!" he said, irritated at her intrusion into his privacy.

"Nor daughters. I'm a bachelor by chance, choice, and temperament, and offspring are outside my frame of reference." "With all your money you should have heirs." "The Klingenschoen Foundation is my sole beneficiary, and they'll distribute my estate for the benefit of the county, the population of which is 11,279, according to Big Mac. So I have 11,279 heirs--a respectable heirship, I'd say.

" "You're not drinking your tea." "Furthermore, I resent suggestions for the disposition of my financial assets." "Qwill, you're getting to be a grouchy old bachelor. I think marriage would be good for you.

I speak as your medical adviser." She transferred to the arm of his chair.

"Don't move! I want to check the bump on your head." "Excuse me," he said and went into the bathroom, where he counted to ten... and then a hundred and ten before facing her again. She had kicked off her shoes and was now lounging on the bed against a bank of pillows.

"Won't you join me?" she invited playfully.

"I like red pajamas." He made a point of pacing the floor and saying nothing.

"Let me explain something, Qwill," said Melinda in a reasonable tone.

"Three years ago I wanted us to marry because I thought we'd have a lot of fun together. Now I have a couple of other reasons. The Goodwinter clan is dying out, and I want sons to carry on the name.

I'm very proud of the Goodwinter name. So I'll make you a proposition--since one has to be conventional in Moose County. If you will marry me, you can have your freedom at the end of three years, and our children will resume the name of Goodwinter. We might even have a go-o-od time together." "You're out of your mind," he said, suddenly suspecting that the strange look in her eyes was insanity.

"The second reason is... I'm broke!" she said with the impudent frankness that he had once found attractive.

"All I'm inheriting from my dad is obligations and an obsolete mansion." "The K Foundation can help you over the rough spots. They're committed to promoting health care in the community." "I don't want institutional support. I want you!" "To put it bluntly, Melinda, the answer is no!" "Why don't you think about it? Let the idea gel for a while?" Qwilleran walked to the door and, with his hand on the knob, said, "Let me tell you something, and this is final. If I marry anyone, it will be Polly. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need some rest... Don't forget your shoes." If Melinda felt the hellish fury of a woman scorned, the Goodwinter pride prevented her from showing it.

"Take a couple of aspirin and call me in the morning, lover," she said with an insolent wink as she brushed past him, carrying her loafers.

Huffing angrily into his moustache, Qwilleran dictated a few choice words into the tape recorder before snapping it off. He was reading a booklet about the Mackintosh clan when Arch Riker walked into the room at eleven o'clock.

"You're awake, Qwill! Did you get any rest?" "Melinda dropped in to take my pulse, and I couldn't get rid of her.

The girl is getting to be a nuisance." "I guessed that would happen.

You may have to marry Polly in self-defense. If Polly doesn't want you, how about Amanda? I'll let you have the lovely Amanda." "This is no joke, Arch." "Well, I'm ready to hit the sack. How about you?

Polly's with the Lanspeaks and the Comptons, playing Twenty Questions.

Amanda's winning at cards with the MacWhannells and Bushy; no doubt she's cheating. Dwight is out on the terrace practicing the tin whistle; he'll be lucky if someone doesn't shoot him." "Once a reporter, always a reporter," Qwilleran commented.

"I haven't seen Irma. Her voice was very hoarse at the dinner table.

Too much chatter on that blasted microphone! And her evenings in the damp night air can't do anything for her vocal cords... How's the bump on your head, Qwill?" "It's subsiding, but I'd like to know who yelled "Look out" and why!" That was the end of Day Five. Day Six began at dawn when Qwilleran was awakened by screams in the hall and frantic banging on someone's door.

Riker was sitting up in the other bed, saying, "What's that? Are we on fire?" There were sounds of running feet, and Qwilleran looked out in the hall as other heads appeared in other doorways. The innkeeper rushed past them and disappeared into ationumber Eleven, occupied by Polly and Irma.

"Oh, my God!" Qwilleran shouted over his shoulder.

"Something's happened to the girls!" As he started down the passageway, the innkeeper's wife was ahead of him. Her husband shouted to her, "Ring up the constable! One o' the lassies had an attack! Ring up the constable!" Qwilleran hurried to the room at the end of the hall and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Polly standing there in her nightgown.

She was weeping in her hands. Melinda, in pajamas, was bending over the bed. He threw his arms around Polly.

"What happened?" "I think she's dead!" she sobbed.

"I woke up suddenly a few minutes ago and felt that ghastly sense of death. I called Melinda." Polly burst into a fresh torrent of tears.

Still holding her, Qwilleran said to Melinda, "Is there anything I can do?" Others were crowding into the room in their nightclothes.

"Get everyone out of the room--and out of the hall-until the authorities have been here. Out! Out! I'll talk to all of you downstairs, later." The concerned bystanders wandered back to their rooms, whispering: "Is Irma dead?" "What was it? Does anyone know what happened?" "This is terrible! Who'll notify her parents?" "It'll kill them! She's their only child, and they're getting on in years." "She was only forty-two last birthday.

" Lyle Compton nudged Qwilleran.

"Do you think something happened out on the moor?" Quickly they dressed and gathered downstairs in the small parlor, and the innkeeper's wife served hot tea, murmuring sympathetic phrases that no one understood or really heard. In everyone's mind the question was nagging: What do we do now? They were aware of vehicles arriving in the courtyard and then departing, and eventually Melinda walked into the parlor in robe and slippers, with uncombed hair and no makeup. She looked wan and troubled. The group fell silent as she faced them and said in a hollow voice, "Irma was the first patient to walk into my clinic--and the real reason for my coming on this trip. And I've lost her!" When someone asked the cause of death, Qwilleran turned on his tape recorder. At this moment he could feel only compassion for this young doctor; she was so distraught.

"Cardiac arrest," Melinda said wearily.

"With her heart condition she should never have undertaken this project. She had this driving ambition, you know, and she was such a perfectionist." Polly said, "I didn't know she had a bad heart. She never mentioned her symptoms, and we were the best of friends." "She was too proud to admit to any frailty, and too independent to take my advice or even medication. It could have saved her." Carol said, "But, Irma, of all people! Who would think--his She was always so cool and collected. She never hurried or panicked like the rest of us." Melinda explained, "She internalized her emotions--not a healthy thing to do." "What was the time of death?" Qwilleran asked.

"About three A.M." I would say. Does anyone know what time she came in?" Polly said, "I don't know. I never waited up for her. She told me not to." "What happens now?" Larry asked.

"I'm not allowed to sign the death certificate over here," Melinda said.

"A local doctor will have to do that. I'll notify Irma's parents and make whatever arrangements are necessary." Qwilleran offered to call the Hasselriches, since he knew the father well.

"Thanks, but I feel I should do it. I can explain exactly what happened." "We're certainly grateful that you're here, Melinda. Is there anything we can do for you--anything at all?" "You might talk it over among you rvs and decide how to handle the rest of the tour. I'll fly back with the body. There'll be some red tape before they release it, the constable said, but they don't anticipate any problem... So, if you'll excuse me, I'll go up and get dressed.

You can stay here and talk." When Amanda arrived from the other bedroom wing and heard the news, she said, "I move to cancel the tour and fly home. Anybody second it? Let's cut our losses." Polly spoke up with conviction.

"Irma would want us to continue, I'm sure." "But do we know what to do and where to go?" Lisa asked.

"Everything is in her briefcase-itinerary, confirmations, maps, and so forth. I'm sure we can follow her plan to the letter. Since we have an extra day here, we'll have time to work it out." Riker said, "What time is it in Pickax? I want to call Junior and get him started on the obituary. It'll take some digging, because she was a very private person--would never let us do a feature on her volunteer work." Guests from the other wing straggled into the parlor, and Bushy said, "Why so glum, kids? Did somebody die around here?" At the breakfast table the members of the Bonnie Scots Tour halfheartedly discussed their options for the day: Go shopping in the village... Watch the fishing boats come in... Take the ferry to one of the islands... Loll around the inn. Larry said he would wander in the hills and study his lines for the play. Amanda thought she would go back to bed. The MacWhannells announced they were leaving the tour and would hire a car to drive to Edinburgh. They gave no reasons for cutting out, and no one bothered to ask why.

After breakfast, Qwilleran and the school superintendent strolled down the winding road to the village below.

"Don't forget, Lyle.

What goes down must come up," Qwilleran warned.

"We have to climb this hill again." Compton said, "I hope I didn't contribute to Irma's stress by blowing off steam about Scottish history and challenging her statements. Lisa said I should have kept my big mouth shut, but--dammit--Irma drove me up the wall with her sentimental claptrap about the romantic Jacobite Rebellion and her beloved Prince Charlie." "Don't worry. She was a tough one. She didn't earn the name of Sergeant for nothing. They say she ran the volunteer crew at the Senior Facility like an army battalion." They stopped awhile to admire the view: the patchwork of rooftops down below, the curve of the harbor crowded with boats, the islands beyond, floating placidly in a silver sea. Behind them the hills rose like Alpine meadows, dotted with sheep and the ruins of stone buildings.

"Lyle, you promised to tell me how the sheep took over the Highlands," Qwilleran said.

"Don't blame the sheep. Have you heard about the Highland Clearances?" "Only superficially. Okay if I tape this?" "Go ahead... Well, you know," he began, "when the Rebellion failed, the clan system was deliberately destroyed, and Highlanders were forbidden by law to wear kilts or play bagpipes.

Instead of clan chieftains they now had rich landlords renting small bits of land to crofters, who shared their one-room huts with the livestock. Then, with the growing demand for meat, the big landowners found it easier and more profitable to raise sheep than to collect rents from poor crofters. Also, sheep could make money for investors in Edinburgh and London." "Agribusiness, eighteenthcentury style," Qwilleran remarked.

"Exactly! To be fair, though, I should say that not all the landlords were villains; some of the old families tried their best to help their people, but overpopulation and old-fashioned farming methods combined to keep the crofters in a state of near-starvation." "What happened to them when the sheep took over?" "They were driven off the land and forbidden to hunt, fish, or graze livestock. Their pitiful crofts were burned before their eyes." "Where did they go?" "They were sent to live in destitution in big-city slums or in poor coastal villages. Many were transported to North America, and that's another story! They were exploited by ship owners and sent to sea in leaky tubs overcrowded and without sufficient food and water... I shouldn't be telling you this; it shoots up my blood pressure." The two men wandered around the waterfront and watched the fishing boats coming in, surrounded by screaming seagulls. Crewmen in yellow slickers were slinging prawn traps onto the wharf, laughing and joking.

Facing the docks were freshly painted, steep-roofed cottages huddled in a row, with flowers around the doorsteps and seagulls on the chimney pots. Some of the cottage windows had cut-off curtains that allowed cats to sit on the window-sills. Lyle said, "The Scots today are nice people--sociable, hospitable, and slyly witty--but they have a bloody history of cutting throats and pouring molten lead on their enemies.

" They lunched at a pub before returning to the inn. There they learned that Melinda had checked out and was on her way to Glasgow in a hired car, leaving a message: "Don't feel bad about my giving up the rest of the tour. This is my responsibility as Irma's friend and physician." Lisa reported to Qwilleran, "Polly and I packed Irma's belongings to ship home. Polly's all broken up. She's in her room, saying she doesn't want to be disturbed by anyone." "I guess that means me," he said. For him the death of their leader was an excuse to phone Mildred Hanstable and inquire about the Siamese.

They were often on his mind, although he refrained from talking about them to anyone except Polly. Grace Utley showed pictures of her teddy bears to anyone who sat next to her on the bus.

Nevertheless, Qwilleran often looked at his watch, deducted five hours, and visualized the cats having their breakfast or taking an afternoon nap in a certain patch of sun on the rug. He wondered how they were hitting it off with Mildred. He wondered if they were getting fat on her cooking. He wondered if they missed him. When he telephoned Pickax, it was eight o'clock in the morning, their time, and Mildred had heard the news of Irma's death on the radio.

"They didn't give any details on the air," she said.

"There'll be more in the paper when it comes out, I hope." "It was a heart attack. She'd been under a lot of stress. Conducting a tour is a big job for an amateur guide--with a bunch of Moose County individualists in tow.

The obituary will probably be in today's paper. Please save it for me... How are the cats behaving?" "We get along just fine! Yum Yum is adorable. When I'm quilting she sits on the frame and watches the needle go in and out. Koko helps me read the tarot cards." "If the Siamese were humans," Qwilleran explained, "Yum Yum would win prizes at the county fair, and Koko would discover a cure for the common cold... Is he there? Put him on." Mildred could be heard talking to the cats. There was a faint yowl, then some coaxing, and then a louder response.

"Hello, Koko!" Qwilleran shouted.

"How's everything? Are you taking care of Yum Yum?" It took the cat a while to understand that the voice he knew so well was coming out of the instrument held to his ear, but then he wanted to do all the talking, delivering a series of ear-splitting yowls and even biting the receiver. Wincing, Qwilleran shouted, "That's enough! Take him away!" There were sounds of scuffling and arguing, and then Mildred returned to the line.

"There's one unusual thing I'd like to report, " she said.

"Last night while I was quilting, I heard an unearthly howl coming from one of the balconies. Koko was in my bathroom, howling in the shower.

It made my blood run cold. I went up and talked to him, and finally he stopped, but it really gave me a scare.

" "What time did it happen?" "Between nine-thirty and ten, when that crazy DJ was on WPKX. I turned off the radio, thinking Koko objected to the program." "I don't blame him," Qwilleran said.

"That guy makes me howl with pain, too." After hanging up the phone, he realized that Koko had howled between two-thirty and three, Scottish time. That cat knew the moment that Irma died! ... He had a sense of death that spanned the ocean! Only eleven of the original sixteen travelers reported for dinner that evening, and they were quieter than usual. The meal started with cock-a-leekie soup served with small meat-filled pastries called bridies, followed by lamb stew with barley and nee ps as well as a dish of tat ties and onions called stovies.

Lyle Compton asked, "Has anyone seen Bruce today?" No one had seen the bus driver. They all agreed he deserved a day off, and they wondered if he even knew about Irma's death. Lisa said, "According to the Bonnie Scots game plan in Irma's briefcase, Bruce is not to smoke on the job or mix with the passengers, and he must be clean and presentable at all times. For this he's getting $1,000, plus meals and lodging and whatever tips we give him. He was paid $100 up front." "We should tip him generously when the tour ends," Larry said.

"He's an excellent driver. He picks up the luggage unobtrusively while we're at breakfast and has the bus packed for departure on time. He's not friendly, but he's courteous in a businesslike way." Everyone agreed. After dinner, Lisa said to Qwilleran, "Polly and I decided that Larry should manage the tour." "Why? You two are completely capable, and you've studied the contents of the briefcase." "That's the problem," she said.

"If a man is in charge, he'll be considered well informed, well organized, and a good leader. Because Irma was a woman, she was called fussy, bossy and a know-it-all." "That's preposterous, Lisa!" "Of course it's preposterous, but that's the way it is in Moose County, and it'll take a couple of generations to change the attitude. I just wanted you to know why Larry will be calling the plays." The next morning, Amanda was absent from the breakfast table, and Riker explained to Qwilleran, "She has a dental problem. She broke her upper denture, and she's too embarrassed to open her mouth.

Until we reach Edinburgh and get it repaired, she'll have to live on a soft diet, like porridge and Scotch." Arch Riker was wrong. At that moment, Amanda was arranging for transportation to Glasgow; she was canceling the rest of her tour. Carol said, "We're like the Ten Little Indians. Who's next?" After breakfasting on a compote of dried apple slices, prunes, and figs, followed by creamed finnan haddie and oatcakes, the group shook hands with the innkeeper and his wife and prepared to board the bus in the courtyard of the inn.

The baggage was loaded in the bin, but Bruce was not there to help the women aboard. Neither could he be found smoking a cigarette on the grounds, nor passing the time with a cup of coffee in the kitchen. At nine o'clock there was still no driver. In fact, they never saw Bruce again.