The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare Read online

  “Next Saturday if it’s all right with you. Herb just wanted us to go to the courthouse, but I told him I wanted to be married here. Susan Exbridge is standing up for me. Would you be willing to be best man?”

  He controlled a gulp. “Be glad to, Mrs. Cobb. Do you have a guest list? We’ll have a champagne reception.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think Herb would care for a reception, Mr. Q.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind. I want you to have a memorable wedding. You’ve been a valuable asset here.”

  “There’s one favor I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Would you speak to Koko about the herb garden? He keeps moving it around.”

  “Did you ever try speaking to a cat about anything?” Qwilleran asked. “He crosses his eyes and scratches his ear and goes right on doing what he was doing.”

  “I wouldn’t mention it, but . . . after I’ve moved the garden into a sunny spot, he moves it into a dark corner. I’ve seen him do it. He stands on his hind legs, puts his paws on the lower shelf, and pushes.”

  The corners of Qwilleran’s mouth twitched as he pictured Koko wheeling the herbs across the stone floor of the solarium like a baby carriage. Sunlight was not plentiful in November, and that cat wanted the best patches of sun for himself.

  “Why don’t you ask Hackpole to devise some kind of brake for the wheels?” he suggested.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh dear! I forgot to tell you,” Mrs. Cobb said. “I guess I’m all discombobulated. Hixie Rice is stopping on her way to work. That’s probably her at the front door.” She jumped up.

  “Sit still. I’ll get it.”

  Hixie had parked her little car in the circular drive, and she was ogling the front door with its quantity of brass fittings polished to a dazzling brilliance by Mr. O’Dell.

  “Everything is so grand, Qwill! You should have a butler,” she said as her heels clicked across the white marble vestibule. “Here, I’ve brought you the latest delicacy in our frozen catfood line: lobster nuggets in Nantua sauce with anchovy garnish.”

  Koko made an immediate appearance in the foyer and stood staring at Hixie without expression, except for a fish-hook curve in his tail.

  “I think he remembers me,” Hixie said. “Comment ça va, Monsieur Koko?”

  “Eeque, eeque,” he replied. As Qwilleran gave Hixie a tour of the house, Koko followed like an overzealous security guard.

  “Gorgeous rugs!” she said as they entered the drawing room.

  The two large antique Aubussons were creamy in color, with borders and center medallions of faded pink roses.

  “Watch Koko,” Qwilleran said. “He always avoids stepping on the rose pattern.”

  “Weren’t the old red dyes made from some kind of bug? Maybe he can smell it.”

  “After a hundred years? Don’t try to explain it, Hixie. How about a cup of coffee?”

  When they were settled comfortably in the library she gazed at the four thousand leather-bound books. “Did you find it traumatic, Qwill, to inherit a lot of money? Do you feel vulnerable or isolated or guilty?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Don’t you find people envious or resentful or hostile?”

  “You’ve been reading a book, Hixie. Actually, it’s just a nuisance to have a lot of money, so I turn it over to a philanthropic trust, and they get rid of it quietly.”

  She started to light a cigarette, and he stopped her. “City ordinance. No smoking in museums. . . . How’s your friend’s mother?”

  “Who?”

  “You said Tony’s mother had a stroke and he had to fly to Philadelphia.”

  “Oh, she’s getting better, and he’s back here, working on his cookbook,” Hixie said airily. “I’m going to write a book myself, on the rest rooms in country restaurants. They’re not to be believed!”

  “Don’t complain. You’re lucky the facilities are indoors. What’s your objection?”

  “Well, let me tell you about the North Pole Cafe in Brrr. They have only one rest room, and you have to dodge a very busy cook and a three-hundred-pound female dishwasher to get there. When I found it, between a garbage can and a sour mop, the room was dark, and I couldn’t find the light switch. So the cook came and pulled a greasy string hanging from the ceiling, and voilà! the rest room was flooded with light from a fifteen-watt bulb.

  “My next problem: how to close the door. It was wide open—and apparently stuck. When I tried forcing it, a toilet brush and a bleach bottle fell down on my head. You see, they kept the door open by hooking it to a high shelf where they kept the cleaning stuff. I got the thing closed and started groping for the john. I could hear a gurgling sound underfoot, from some kind of drain in the floor. Every once in a while it choked and gurgled and bubbled. I worried about that.

  “The john seat was anchored by one bolt, and it was riding sort of sidesaddle. The floor drain kept gurgling and bubbling. The rusty washbowl started gasping and erupting, so I got out of there fast and made a bush stop on the way home.”

  “Hixie, you always exaggerate,” Qwilleran said. “How was the food?”

  “Fabulous! I mean it! And now there’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Would Koko endorse our line of frozen catfoods? We’d design a ‘Koko’s Choice’ label and have Koko T-shirts and other premiums. Maybe free bumper stickers saying, ‘My Cat Loves Koko.’ How does that go down?”

  “I don’t think he’d take kindly to exploitation. He doesn’t go for anything unless it’s his own idea.”

  “He could do TV commercials,” she persisted. “Next week I’ll bring a video camera and give him a screen test.”

  “That I’ve got to see,” Qwilleran said. “How’s everything at the Old Stone Mill?”

  “My boss came in to dinner last night and said he’s rewriting our contract, giving us a better deal.”

  “Congratulations!”

  “He was feeling pretty good. He had some woman with him—not his wife—and they went through two bottles of our best champagne.”

  “I hear his divorce is now final.”

  “He’s not wasting any time. The two of them were planning a southern cruise and hoping they could get away before snow flies.”

  “What did she look like?” Qwilleran asked.

  “The hearty athletic type with a loud laugh—the kind I can’t stand! Mr. X has an apartment in our complex, and I think she’s moved in. Why is everyone around here so concerned about snow flying?”

  * * *

  Snow did not fly on Saturday, although it was still being predicted on the hourly weathercasts. Qwilleran was listening to the six o’clock news in the library when Mrs. Cobb peeked into the room.

  “He’s here,” she said nervously.

  Qwilleran followed her to the kitchen to greet the man who was stealing his housekeeper. He gave Hackpole a handshake intended to be hearty and sincere and found his fingers crushed in a powerful grip.

  “They say we can expect some snow tonight,” Qwilleran said, employing Moose County’s standard conversation opener.

  “It won’t snow for a few days yet,” Hackpole said. “I’ve been out in the woods all day, and I can tell by the way the whitetails are acting.”

  “I hear you’re an expert woodsman, and I’d like to hear more about that, but first . . . how about a drink? Mrs. Cobb, what is your pleasure?”

  “Do you think I could have a whiskey sour?” she asked coyly.

  “Shot and a beer for me,” her date said. He was wearing his date-night attire: a corduroy sports coat with plaid flannel shirt. Koko had been circling him and finally ventured to sniff his shoes.

  “Scat!” yelled Hackpole, stamping his foot.

  Koko did not even blink.

  “What’s the matter with that cat? Is it deaf?” he asked. “I can make most cats jump two feet off the floor.”

  “Koko considers himself licensed to sniff shoes,” Qwilleran said. “He knows you have dogs
at home.”

  The three of them pulled up chairs around the ancient kitchen table imported from a Spanish monastery.

  “Looks like you could use a new table,” said the guest, surveying three centuries of carefully preserved distress marks. He tossed off the shot and then poked three fingers in the breast pocket of his sports coat.

  Mrs. Cobb tapped his hand in an affectionate rebuke. “No smoking, dear. It’s bad for the antiques, and it’s forbidden by law in museums.”

  He left the cigarettes in his pocket and looked warily at Koko. “Why does it sit there staring at me?” he demanded with the irritability of a smoker who has been told not to smoke.

  “Koko is evaluating you,” Qwilleran said. “The data will be programmed in the minicomputer in his brain.”

  “We always used to have a pack of barn cats around,” said the guest. “We’d tie a tin can to a cat’s tail and have a swell moving target for a .22.” He laughed, but he was the only one who did.

  Qwilleran said, “If you tied a can to Koko’s tail, he’d sit and stare at a point between your eyes until you began to feel dizzy. Soon there would be a dull ache under your left shoulder blade, then a stabbing abdominal pain. Your feet would get numb, and you’d find it hard to breathe. Then your blood would start to itch. Do you know what it feels like to have itching blood?”

  Mrs. Cobb patted her friend’s hand. “He’s only kidding, dear. He’s always kidding.” She saw him fingering the cigarette pack again. “Oops! Musn’t do!”

  Hackpole threw the pack on the table.

  “I hear you’re pretty good with a deer rifle,” Qwilleran said amiably.

  “Yeah, I’m a pretty good shooter. I’ve hunted elk, moose, grizzlies—everything. The whitetail’s my favorite, though. I’ve got some eight-point trophy bucks mounted, but the forkhorn gives the best meat. That’s what I brought in yesterday. I always get my buck the first day.”

  Qwilleran thought, I’ll bet he does some poaching the rest of the year.

  “I made a clean kill and made sure it was well bled out. Then I gutted it, slung it over my back, and carried it to my pickup. I was home by noon. It weighed in at one ninety-eight.”

  Qwilleran mentally subtracted fifty pounds.

  With a hint of pride Mrs. Cobb said, “Herb is a still-hunter.”

  “Yeah. You don’t know about still-hunting, I bet.”

  Qwilleran had to admit his ignorance.

  “Still-hunters, we don’t sit behind a bush and wait for something to come down the trail. You hafta move around, looking for game—very slow, very careful, very quiet. When you sight your buck, you stalk it and wait for the best shot. You hafta move like a deer and make noise like a deer would. Like, no zippers, no cigarette lighters. You hafta have good eyes and a good running shot. Lotta satisfaction in still-hunting.”

  “I’m impressed,” Qwilleran said as he poured another shot for his guest. “I understand you’re also a volunteer fire fighter.”

  “I’m quittin’,” Hackpole said, looking disgruntled. “A lotta women are joining up. I don’t mind them running a canteen when it’s an all-night fire, but they got no business driving a truck and hanging around the fire hall.”

  The bride-to-be said, “I’m glad he’s giving it up. It’s terribly dangerous.”

  “Yeah, smoke inhalation, for one thing. Or you’re trying to vent a fire and the roof caves in. Once I saw a hose get away from the nozzleman and go whipping around, cracking heads and breaking bones. You don’t know the power of water going through a hose! There’s a lotta stuff people don’t know.”

  “I’ve always wondered why firemen go crazy with the ax,” Qwilleran said.

  “We gotta vent the fire, so the smoke and heat can get out and we can go into the building and knock down the blaze.”

  “Any idea what caused the Picayune fire?”

  “Started in the basement. That’s all anybody knows. My shop did some repair work on those old presses. They had a drip pan underneath to catch the solvent when they cleaned off the ink. There was a lotta rags, a lotta paper. Bad business! The stairs acted like a flue, and the fire went right up to the roof.”

  “Well, dear,” Mrs. Cobb said, “we ought to be going, but first I want you to see the pub in the basement.”

  The original builders of the mansion had imported an English pub from London, complete with bar, tavern tables and chairs, even wall paneling.

  It was something Hackpole could appreciate. “Hey, you could get a liquor license and open a tavern down here,” he said.

  As they rode the elevator back to the main floor, Qwilleran asked where they were going to dinner.

  “Otto’s Tasty Eats. One price—all you can eat.” He fingered his breast pocket. “Where’s my cigarettes?”

  “You left them on the kitchen table, dear,” said Mrs. Cobb.

  “I don’t see the damn things,” he called from the kitchen.

  “Did you look in all your pockets?”

  “It don’t matter. I got another pack in the glove compartment.”

  Qwilleran extended his hand. “I’m glad we could finally meet, and let me congratulate you on finding a wonderful—”

  He was interrupted by a loud crash. It came from the rear of the house. He and the housekeeper rushed into the solarium, followed slowly by their guest. The place was in darkness, but a pale, ghostly shape streaked out of the room as they entered.

  When the lights were switched on, the catastrophe was revealed. In the middle of the floor stood the mobile herb garden, and nearby was a clay pot, smashed, with soil and foliage scattered in every direction. Other plants had been uprooted from their pots and flung about the room, and the floor was a gritty mess of soil and leaves.

  “Oh dear! Oh dear!” said Mrs. Cobb in shock and dismay.

  “It’s our resident ghost,” Qwilleran explained to Hackpole. “Did Mrs. Cobb tell you we have a ghost?”

  Nobly she said, “Every old house should have a ghost,” but there was a tremor in her voice, and she glanced around uneasily for a glimpse of the guilty cat.

  “We’ll replace everything,” Qwilleran reassured her. “Don’t worry. You two go to dinner, and I’ll clean up the mess. Have a nice evening.”

  As soon as the couple had left, he went in search of the Siamese. As he expected, they were in the library, looking innocent and satisfied. He stepped on a small bump and found a cigarette under the Bokhara rug. That was Yum Yum’s contribution to the occasion. Koko had his chin on his paw and his paw on the cover of a pigskin-bound book. He raised his head and turned bright expectant eyes on the man.

  “I’m not going to read to you. You don’t deserve it,” Qwilleran said quietly but firmly. “That was a wicked thing to do. You know how much Mrs. Cobb loves her herb garden, and our food tastes better because of the things she grows. So don’t expect any kind words from me! You lie there and contemplate your sins, and try to be a better cat in the future. . . . I’m going out to dinner.”

  He wrested the book away from Koko. It was Hamlet again. Before returning it to the shelf he sniffed it. Qwilleran had a keen sense of smell, but all he could detect was the odor of old book. He sniffed Macbeth and the other titles Koko had dislodged. They all smelled like old book. Then he compared the odor with titles that Koko had so far ignored: Othello, As You Like It, and Antony and Cleopatra. He had to admit they all smelled exactly the same—like old book. He went out to dinner.

  Sunday, November seventeeth. “Light snow turning to freezing rain,” was the prediction. Actually, the sun was shining, and Qwilleran looked forward to taking a long walk.

  Over the breakfast pancakes he apologized profusely to the housekeeper. “I’m really sorry about your herb garden, Mrs. Cobb. The pot he broke contained mint, which is related to catnip, I believe. Why he uprooted the others is a mystery. We’ll replace them all.”

  “It won’t be that easy,” she said. “Four of them were started from seed in a cold frame at Herb’s place. The others w
ere plants, and we can’t buy them at this time of year.”

  “There was no point in scolding him. Unless you catch a cat in the act and rap him on the nose, he doesn’t connect the reprimand with the misdemeanor. That’s what Lori Bamba said, and she knows all about cats. No doubt it was Yum Yum who stole the cigarettes. I found one under a rug and another behind a seat cushion.”

  “And I found the empty pack under a rug in the upstairs hall,” Mrs. Cobb said.

  “I’m afraid your evening got off to a bad start. Did you enjoy dinner?”

  She pursed her lips, then admitted, “Well, we had a little argument. When he found out that cigarette smoke is injurious to antiques, he said I can’t use them in the farmhouse. He’s practically a chain-smoker.”

  “Could you use reproductions?”

  “I hate copies, Mr. Q. I’ve lived too long with the real thing.”

  “There must be some compromise.”

  “I can think of one good compromise,” she said crisply. “He can give up his smelly habit. You don’t hear the surgeon general issuing any warnings against antiques!”

  Qwilleran made sympathetic noises, then excused himself, saying he wanted to go out and buy a Sunday Fluxion.

  He walked with a light step for two reasons. He sensed a rift between Mrs. Cobb and Hackpole that might forestall the marriage. And . . . he had received an invitation from Polly Duncan.

  “Thursday is my day off,” she had said. “Why don’t you drive out to my cottage, and I’ll do a roast with Yorkshire pudding? Come before dark; the house is easier to find in daylight.”

  He walked briskly. It was four miles around the periphery of Pickax, and on the way he met the fire chief, going into the drugstore for the Sunday Fluxion.

  Qwilleran said, “Where’s the snow that Moose County is famous for?”

  “Couldna say, but this weather will do till the white stuff comes along.”

  “Explain something to me, Scottie. Pickax has a strange arrangement of streets. Nothing makes sense.”

  “It were laid out by two miners and a lumberjack on payday,” said Scottie, “or so the story goes.”

  “How do the fire trucks ever find the right address? The city’s bounded on the south by South Street—nothing wrong with that—but it’s bounded on the north by East Street, on the west by North Street, and on the east by West Street. The ball field is at the corner of South North Street and West South Street. It could drive a logical mind crazy.”