The Metrognome and Other Stories

THE INHERITANCE

I love cats. Always have, always will. I'm not allergic to them, and their hair doesn't make me sneeze. I've slept with cats the past fourteen years. They move around, they get your legs hot, and sometimes they snore. But they're great company. I like real cats, fictional cats like Gummitch, wholly imaginary cats, felines large and small. I liked Garfield better when he was a cat.

However, I have noticed through the years that not every member of the human race feels the same. There are people who like cats even though they're allergic to them: a pitiable situation. There are some folks who are indifferent to their presence. And then there are, astonishingly enough, individuals who outright hate felines.

There are even those who live in fear of the common house cat, whose phobia is a throwback to the Middle Ages and the terrors of the plague: No argument can alter their opinions, no logic dissuade their antifeline vitriol. In the very presence of a cat they will draw away in fear. It is an attitude I find incomprehensible, indefensible, absurd, and unreasoning.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if they turned out to be right?

". . . My home, Trenton, its contents, and the sum of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after other and all taxes have been paid."

Every eye in the pecan-paneled room turned to Mayell. She remained composed in green sleeveless dress and pumps, managing not to grin.

"There are two conditions," the lawyer continued, his tone indicating disapproval of the manner in which the deceased's secretary's skirt had crawled an indecent distance up her thighs. "You must remain in residence at Trenton House for six months to enable the staff there to make a gradual transition to other employment."

"And the other condition?" Mayell spoke with the chiming notes of a gamelan, displaying a voice sweet enough to match her appearance.

The lawyer harrumphed. "There remains the matter of Saugen, the deceased's cat. You will henceforth be responsible for the animal's care. Full transferral of the aforementioned sum occurs six months from today, provided that Trenton remains home to its present staff for that length of time and provided that Saugen appears happy, healthy, well fed, and content at that date."

"That's all?"

"That is all." The lawyer evened the mass of paper by tapping the double handful on the desk. "This reading, ladies and gentlemen, is concluded."

Mutters rose like flies on a hot day from the small group, from disappointed distant relatives and modestly rewarded servants, from hopeful acquaintances, and from somber-faced business associates. Some had received more than they'd hoped for, others considerably less. None had fared nearly so well as the late-Hiram Hanford's "secretary," the delectable Mayell.

Of the servants, none seemed as satisfied as the gardener, Willis. None had his reason to. For while Hanford had left him only a slight sum, Willis was heir to much more than was indicated in the formal will. He had inherited Mayell.

As she rose and turned to exit the lawyer's chambers, their eyes met in silent mutual congratulation. They had each other. In six months they would have the money and Trenton House. Soon they could live the life they'd endured in secret these past miserable five years.

"Nice kitty, kitty. Sweet Saugen-mine." Mayell knelt in the foyer of Trenton and cooed to the yellow tomcat. It slid supplely around her ankles, meowing affectionately.

Willis's gaze was appreciative, but it was not wasted on the cat. Instead, he was luxuriating in the landscape provided by Mayell's provocative posture: kneeling, inclined slightly forward. It highlighted her burnished blond hair, the regular curve of delicate shoulders and hips, the cleavage better described in terms geologic than physiological, resembling as it did other remarkable natural clefts such as the East African Rift.

She stood, cradling the sleek feline in her arms. It purred like a tiny stove set on simmer. "See, he likes me. Saugen-sweet always did like me."

Willis noticed the cat staring at him. It possessed the penetrating, hypnotic gaze of all cats, magnified in this particular instance by overlarge yellow eyes. The black slits in their centers glinted like cuts. He shook himself. All cats stared like that.

"Good thing he does, too. That parasite of a lawyer will be around in May some time to check on the house and his furry nibs there. Keepin' the house and roses lookin' good is going to be my job. Keepin' the cat the same'll be up to you."

Mayell hugged the tom close to the warm shelf of her bosom. "That won't be any trouble, Willis. He doesn't seem to miss Hiram much." She gently let the cat drop to the floor. It made a moving, fuzzy bracelet of itself around her left ankle.

"That's something we have in common." Her perfect face twisted into an unflattering grimace. For an instant Willis had a glimpse of something less attractive hiding behind the beauty-queen mask. "Five years of my life, gone." She nestled into the gardener's arms. "Five years!" She clung tightly to his rangy, sunburned form. "Only you made it bearable, darling."

"We're gettin' fair pay back. One hundred and ten thousand for each year of hell." He glanced around the massive old house, at the garish neo-Victorian-decor and the wealth of antiques. "Plus what this mausoleum will fetch. And no one suspects."

"No." She showed cream-white teeth in an oddly predatory smile. "I didn't think anyone would, not as slowly as I altered his medicine. Ten months, a fraction at a time. Otherwise the old relic might've gone on for another twenty years." She shuddered from a distant cold memory. "I couldn't have stood it, Willis." Her voice and expression were hard. "I earned that half million."

"Six months and we'll leave this place forever. We'll go somewhere sunny and warm, as far from Vermont as we can get."

"Rio," she murmured languorously, savoring the single soft syllable, "or Cannes, or the Aegean."

"Anywhere you want, Mayell. "

They embraced tightly enough to keep a burglar's pick from slipping between them while Saugen slid sensuously around the perfect ankle of his new mistress.

"Willis?"

"Yes, Mayell?"

They were sipping coffee on the heated, enclosed veranda of Trenton, watching bees busy themselves among the spring flowers of the garden. It was Saturday, and the remaining servants were off. They could indulge in each other without gossipy eyes prying.

"Do you think I look any different?"

"Different? Different from what, darling?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I don't know . . . different from usual, I guess."

"More beautiful than ever." Seeing she was serious, he studied her critically for a moment. "You might've lost a little weight."

She half smiled. "Seven pounds, to be exact."

"And it troubles you?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Most women would find that a bit weird, Mayell."

She ran slim fingers through the tawny yellow-brown coat of Saugen, a puffball of fur asleep in her lap. "I haven't changed my eating habits."

He smirked, leaned back in the lounge. "Could be you've been taking more exercise lately."

She laughed with him, seemed relieved. "Of course. I hadn't thought of that."

He looked at her in mock outrage. "Hadn't thought of it?" They both laughed now. "I guess we'll have to work at making it stick in your memory."

A concerned Willis led the scarecrow called Oakley up the curved stairway.

"If she's as ill as you think, man, why didn't you call me sooner!" Grit and Yankee stone, the elderly doctor mounted the steps without panting.

"She didn't call me. I told you, Doc, I've been in New York all week, making arrangements for the sale of the house and land. I didn't know she was this bad until I got back yesterday, and I called you right away."

"Kind of unusual for a gardener to negotiate the sale of an estate, isn't it?" Oakley had a naturally dry tone. "Down this hall?"

Sharp old birds, these country professionals, Willis thought. "Yeah, She trusts me, and she's suspicious of lawyers."

That struck a sympathetic nerve. "Got good reason to be. Sound thinking."

"This is her room." He knocked. A faint voice responded.

"Willis?"

They entered. The expression that formed on Oakley's features when he caught sight of the figure in the old plateau of a bed was instructive. It took something to shake an experienced general practitioner like Oakley, and from his looks now he was badly shaken.

"Good God," he muttered, moving rapidly to the bedside and opening his archaic black bag. "How long has she been like this?"

"It's been going on for several weeks now, at least." Willis looked away from the doctor's accusing stare. How could they explain that they wanted no strangers prowling the house, generating unwelcome publicity and maybe some dangerous second-guessing questions? "It's gotten a lot worse since I've been away. "

He took the chair on the other side of the bed. The hand that moved to grip his was wrinkled and shaky. Mayell's once satin-taut skin was dull and parchmentlike, her eyes bulging in sunken sockets. Even her lips were pale and crepe-crinkled though neither dry nor chapped. She looked ghastly.

Oakley was doing things with the tools of the physician. He was working quickly, like a man without enough time, and his expression was grim, a dangerous difference from its normal dourness.

A fluffy fat shape landed in Willis's lap. "Hello, cat," he said, absently stroking Saugen's ruddy coat. "What's wrong with your mistress, eh?" The tom gazed up at him, bottomless cat eyes piercing him deeply. With a querulous meow, he hopped onto the bed.

"Is he in your way, Doc?" Willis made ready to move the animal if the doctor said yes. Mayell put a hand down to stroke the tom's rump. It meowed delightedly, semaphoring with its striped maroon tail.

"No." Oakley hadn't paid any attention to the cat, was intent on taking the sphygmomanometer reading.

"Good Saugen, sweet Saugen," Mayell whispered. Willis was shocked, frightened to see how broomstick-thin her arm had become. She looked over at him, and he forced himself to meet her hideously protruding eyes. "He's been such a comfort to me while you were away, Willis. He kept me warm every night."

"You should've called the doctor yourself, Mayell. You look terrible, much worse than when I left."

"I do?" She sounded puzzled and oddly unconcerned, as though unable to grasp the seriousness of her condition. "Then I must get better, mustn't I?"

Oakley rose, looked meaningfully at Willis. They moved to a far corner. "I want that woman in the hospital at Montpelier. Immediately. Tonight. It's criminal she's still in this house."

"I told you, I was in New York. I didn't know. The last of the regular servants left three weeks ago, and we were going to do the same at the end of the month. She wasn't nearly this bad when I left." Despite the reasonable excuse, Willis still felt guilty. "What's wrong with her?"

Oakley studied the floor and chewed his upper lip before looking back at the bed and its sleeping skeleton.

"I don't know that I can give a name to any specific disease, or diseases, since I think she's suffering from at least three different ones. She's terribly sick. Can't tell for certain what's wrong until I get her into the hospital and run some tests. Acute anemia, muscular degeneration-of the most severe kind, calcium deficiency probably caused by reabsorption . . . that's what's wrong with her. What's causing it I can't say. She can't have been eating much lately."

"But she has been," Willis protested. "I know. I checked the refrigerator and pantry this morning when I made my own breakfast."

"That so? Then I just don't know where those calories are going. She's burning them up at an incredible rate. Daywalking, mebbee. People don't consume themselves by lying in bed." He checked his watch.

"I'll want to travel with you to the hospital. It's after five. You have her ready by eight. I'll want to prep the ambulance team. We're –going to put her on massive intravenous immediately, squirt all the glucose and dextrose into her that her system will take. Try to get her to eat something solid tonight. A steak would be good if she can keep it down. And a malted with it."

"I'll take care of it, Doc. Eight o'clock. We'll be ready."

It was hard to keep himself busy while he waited for the ambulance to arrive. He checked the window locks and the alarms. If they were going to be away for a while, best to make certain no one broke in and carried off their valuable furniture. He was still worried about Mayell, took some comfort from the fact that Oakley told him on departing that she would probably recover with proper medication and attention. She had to recover. If she died, his own hopes for an easy life would die with her.

Not unnaturally, his overwrought mind turned to thoughts of some sinister plot against them. Could someone, some disgruntled relative left out of the will, be poisoning Mayell in a fashion similar to the way in which they'd polished off Hanford? That was crazy, though. The house had hosted no visitors who might qualify as potential murderers while he'd been there, and Mayell had begun to deteriorate well before he'd departed for New York.

Besides, if he recalled the will correctly, in the event of any recipient's death, that portion of the inheritance was to go not to others but to several of Hanford's favorite charities. He remembered the faces present at the reading of the will, could not consider one capable of killing solely out of spite.

Saugen tried to keep him company, meowing and hovering about his legs as he kept an eye on the steak. He glanced irritably down at those fathomless feline eyes. Gently but firmly, he kicked the sable shape away. It meowed once indignantly and left him to his thoughts.

Some plot of Hanford's, maybe? Had he suspected what was being done to him, there at the last, and hired a vengeful killer to exact a terrible revenge?

There was the dinner to fix. Potatoes were beyond him, but he did right by the meat, and heating the frozen peas was easy enough. Recalling that honey was supposed to give one strength, he dosed her tea liberally.

As he mounted the stairs toward her room, the clock chimed seven times in the hallway below. An hour would give her enough time to eat.

"Mayell? Darlin'?" She didn't respond to his knock, so he balanced the tray carefully in one hand and turned the knob with the other.

It was dim in the room, lit only by early moonlight and the single small bulb of the end-table night-light. She was still asleep. He moved toward the other side of the bed. There was a pole lamp there. As he fumbled for the switch, he noticed a familiar shape on her ribs. It meowed, an odd sort of meow, almost a territorial growl.

Saugen moved, lifting to a sitting position on his mistress's chest. Willis thought he saw something glisten and looked closer, one hand on the light switch.

The carpet muffled the clang of the tray when it hit, but it was still louder than expected. Peas rolled short distances to hide in the low shag, and the juice from the still steaming steak stained the delicate rose pattern as Willis stumbled backward. He fell into the lamp, and it broke into a thousand glass splinters when it struck the floor. Funny, half-verbalized noises were coming from his throat as he tried to give voice to what he was seeing, but he could do no more than gargle his fear.

Eyes bright and burning tracked him as he staggered toward the door. A penetrating meow started his vertebrae clattering like an old woman's teeth. He could still see the fur on Saugen's stomach wriggling of its own accord as dozens of the thin, wormlike tendrils reluctantly withdrew from the drained husk of what had once been Mayell. They reminded Willis of tiny snakes, all curling and writhing as though possessed of some horrible life of their own. The hypodermic-size holes they had left in the wasted skin closed up behind them. Willis thought of the spiders he'd seen so often in the gardens, liquefying the insides of their victims and sucking them empty like so many inflexible bottles. The glistening he'd seen had been caused .by moonlight reflecting off the myriad drops of red liquid still clinging to the tip of each unhair. He retched as he finally found the door and rushed out, thinking of how many nights the cat-thing had spent seemingly asleep on the girl's chest when all the while it had been silently feeding.

"Keep him contented and well fed," the will had stated. Ah, damn the old man, he'd known!

Nothing in the house looked familiar as he half fell, half stumbled down the stairs. His thoughts were jumbled, confused. The full bowls of cat food left untouched in the kitchen these past weeks, the privacy whenever Hanford had fed his pet, the regular visits of poor women from the city who had come expecting to fill one normal desire and who had left, their eyes darting and fearful, never to return a second time.

Somewhere in the gardener's shed there was a gun, a pistol he kept to ward off thieves and trespassers. He sought the front door. Oakley would be there soon with the ambulance and its crew. They wouldn't believe, but that didn't matter, wouldn't matter, because he would get the gun first and . . .

He stopped in midbreath, frozen as he stared forward, paralyzed by a pair of deliberate, mesmerizing yellow orbs confronting him. He tried to move, fought to look elsewhere. He couldn't budge, could only scream silently as those fiery fluorescent eyes held his swaying body transfixed.

Its belly fur flexing expectantly, the plump crimson cat left its place by the door and padded deliberately forward.