The Cat Vanishes

by Louise Carson

  “Cormac McCormack. Cormac and Sheila McCormack from County Shannon, Ireland.”

  Gerry scribbled down the information. “You’ve been a great help, Father. Thank you so much.” She hung up.

  On the piece of paper where Cormac and Sheila were noted, she added John, Sybil and Thomas and drew a big circle around them all. Then she began drawing subsets, smaller circles that enclosed just two or more names.

  Sybil and Thomas were easy — daughter and father. John and Sheila were circled — employer and servant. She circled Thomas and Cormac — a similar relation. When she had a multiplicity of circles, she put down her pencil.

  All the people could be related one to another through their various relationships. If Cormac McCormack had been Thomas’s servant, he would have known Sybil and would have frequently seen his employer’s partner, John.

  “If it was him, how did he wind up under the floor of the woodshed?” she asked Mother, who was stretched out on the hearth rug while the kittens played nearby. If Mother knew, she wasn’t telling.

  17

  Gerry crept silently upstairs and paused outside Prudence’s room. A steady snoring convinced her all was well. She went into her own room and tidied, putting the treasures from inside the doll on the mantel. Coughing from next door sent her rushing into the room.

  Prudence lay back weakly. “It’s just phlegm,” she explained. Gerry emptied and rinsed the bowl, wrung out a clean washcloth and brought it to her friend.

  “Here, let’s give your face and hands a wipe. Could you drink some weak tea?” Prudence nodded. “Are the cats bothering you?” The Honour Guard — Blackie, Whitey, Mouse and Runt — all looked gravely at Gerry. The Honour Guard, so named by Gerry, as they had always slept with Aunt Maggie on this bed and kept up the habit even though she was dead. Prudence shook her head and closed her eyes. She was pale. “So much for moving your drawing table,” she mumbled.

  Gerry patted her arm. “You sleep for a bit and when you wake up, I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea.”

  Downstairs, she noticed it was nearly noon. Though she’d rather be working on her cake-jumping cats, she turned her attention to updating her daily comic strip — Mug the Bug. To her horror, she saw she was only six days away from running out of strips. What if she caught Prudence’s flu and was sick for a week?

  Before she began, she opened the mail, which had been piling up on the mantelpiece. Another deadline, this one at the bank. She had a certificate due to mature. She’d have to get there soon and sort it out.

  She worked hard for an hour, then put on the kettle. Christmas long gone for Mug — he was usually two weeks ahead of the real time of year — she decided to send him on a Caribbean vacation. She played around with how Mug, an infinitesimally small speck on the page, would deal with packing all his stuff in a full-size suitcase, how he would get a passport photo and passport, and how he’d deal with security at the airport. She’d got him to the point of being “frisked” by a baffled security guard (because of course Mug had set off the metal detector), when she made the tea and took two cups upstairs.

  Prudence woke as she entered the room and Gerry helped her sit up in bed. “How do you feel?”

  Prudence sipped the tea. “That tastes just wonderful. I feel weak.”

  “It’s the house,” Gerry stated. “Your house, I mean. And Christmas. And finding Betty Parsley. You were strong when I fell apart. And staying with Charlie and Rita.” Gerry grinned. “Hopefully, staying here will prove more relaxing.”

  Prudence smiled faintly. “Hopefully.”

  Gerry chatted away. “So Father Lackey phoned. Wait till you hear what he had to tell me.” She filled Prudence in about the McCormacks and about the box of papers pertaining to John Coneybear. “Oh, that reminds me.” She put down her cup and retrieved one paper from the box in her room. “This puzzled me,” she said, holding it out to Prudence. “Clay? At a jeweller’s?”

  “Don’t they teach you French in Ontario?” Prudence queried. “The jeweller is French — Léonard Piché — so the receipt is in French. ‘Clef d’or.’ That’s an ‘f’ not a ‘y.’ An old spelling of clé. A golden key.”

  “Oh. My. God. I missed the little ‘d’ and the apostrophe. And, yes,” she sniffed, “they do teach French in Ontario, just not much or,” she finished, lamely, “for long enough, I guess.”

  She ran downstairs and looked frantically amidst the odds and ends on the living room mantelpiece. Catnip mice, crumpled bills, a pine cone and cedar bough decoration that came apart in her hands when she lifted it. “Aha!” she exclaimed, holding up the little box that Andrew had given her at Christmas. She hardly noticed the finger bone nearby.

  She ran back upstairs with the box. She opened it and was just about to say, “Look, Prudence!” as she entered the room. But Prudence had gone back to sleep.

  It was hard not to be distracted, but Gerry spent the rest of the day organizing Mug the Bug and checking Prudence. Mid-afternoon she dashed out for some supplies — ginger ale and crackers for Prudence — and a quick visit to Lovering’s antique shop, where the owner mostly made his money from decorative objects and the odd piece of furniture, but where Gerry knew he also had a tiny jewellery counter.

  He verified the key was gold and old and wouldn’t have been used for anything other than an ornament. “See the loop at this end? A chain could have been threaded through that, if the recipient wanted to wear it. Did you find a chain?” Gerry shook her head. “Pity. Sometimes an old gold chain is quite valuable. This is nice, but so small, it’s not worth much.” Gerry thanked him. By the time they were finished, the bank was closed. She went home.

  She gave Prudence her snack, took care of the cats and put some leftovers in the oven for herself. Then she sat by the fire with the kitten Jay on her lap and thought.

  Yesterday she’d found intertwining connections between a small group of long-dead people. She held them in her mind for a while. Thomas and Sybil. John. Cormac and Sheila. Then she let them go.

  Next she thought about all the objects that seemed relevant: the bones, first and foremost; the key Andrew had given her; even the contents of the doll — a green stone, a black feather, a wooden heart.

  The bones she associated with Cormac — at John Coneybear’s house. The key came from John as well, had been passed down from Coneybear to Coneybear. She went to the phone and dialled. “Pick up. Pick up.” She opened the oven door and was prodding her meat pie when Andrew answered. “Andrew!”

  “Gerry. You sound excited.”

  “Well, you know. Leftovers for supper.”

  “Yum!” He sounded puzzled.

  “About that key you gave me for Christmas —”

  “Oh, don’t you like it?”

  “No. I like it. I like it fine. It’s just — what exactly did Aunt Maggie say to you when she gave it to you?”

  “Oh. Jeez. I was just a teenager, a moody teenager.”

  “Is there any other kind?” asked Gerry, thinking back to her miserable high school years.

  He gave a short laugh. “She said it would unlock my heart’s desire.”

  “And did it?”

  “I guess it did,” he said in a somewhat surprised voice. “I’ve reached a good place in my life. I know who I am. Yes, it did.”

  “And did she say anything about the key’s origin?”

  “I think she said it came from her father, Matthew.”

  Gerry, who was beginning to think she should just permanently carry around her family tree, or maybe have it tattooed upside down on her stomach, stretched the phone cord as far as the living room table and rummaged.

  “Here it is. Sorry, Andrew. Just checking something. So Grampa Matthew was the grandson of John, the first Coneybear. That works.”

  “Does it? I’m glad.”

  “Listen, Andrew, I’m having a party this Saturday night
. Are you free? Potluck, I think. Prudence has the flu but she should be better by then.”

  “Just the thing. Chase away the post-Christmas blues. What shall I bring?”

  “Can I get back to you? I haven’t done a menu yet.”

  “Sure. Look forward to it.”

  She put down the phone thoughtfully. Heart’s desire. A wooden heart. A key. Just then the oven timer pinged. She ate her supper, finished the comic strips and phoned some of the people she wanted to invite to her party. Before she went upstairs to check Prudence, she did a tour of the house, visiting with the cats.

  Ronald, a small white with a thin black moustache, was part of a heap that included the boys — Winnie, Frank and Joe — and Bob, all snoozing on the rug near Mother and the kittens. As Gerry knelt by the dying fire and used both hands to pet everybody goodnight, Bob detached himself from the group, stretched and gave his side a few quick licks.

  “Going to accompany me, Bob?” He followed her down the hallway past the cupboards where the family’s fine old china and crystal was stored. Gerry was struck by a thought and went back, opening the cupboards and handling the dishes. “We’ll have a fancy sit-down dinner for a change, with candles and flowers.” She walked through into the large dining room. Eight chairs stood around the massive table and eight sets of eyes followed her as she ranged from chair to chair, patting each one’s occupant.

  “Hello, Harley. Hello, Kitty-Cat, who should have been called Davidson.” The two enormous cats — cow-cats as Gerry described them for their rectangular torsos and irregular black and white markings — were perhaps not quite as big as motorcycles, but each easily filled the padded chair it occupied.

  “Hello, Max. Lightning. Hello, Jinx. Who’s a good girl, Cocoon?” Gerry straightened and looked at the table. She’d remembered it being larger when she was a little girl. Leaves! It must have inserts to lengthen it. So I could fit another four, possibly six. She imagined laying a white cloth and using the silver salt and pepper shakers and candlesticks, and hugged herself with glee at the imagined picture she’d conjured up.

  “Good night, Min-Min,” she said to the white deaf cat, and “Good night, Monkey,” to the grey tiger stripe, who was sister to the boys, but preferred the calmer company of other cats to the harum-scarumness of her brothers. “Good night, everybody,” Gerry said in a soft tone, and switched off the light.

  Wearily, she climbed the stairs and paused on the landing, looked out at the lake. Frozen now from shore to shore, it presented an unbroken white plane that began on the back lawn and finished at the pine forest far away across the lake.

  She thought of her ancestors, bundled up in furs, walking on the frozen lake, possibly driving carts or carriages across. With a wave of nostalgia that caught in her throat, she thought, how wonderful to be alive, to have been alive as they had been, to walk and wonder, eat, work, enjoy. “We are the dead and they are us,” she muttered. Now where had that come from?

  Prudence was sleeping. An exhausted Gerry slid between her own covers, was dimly aware of her two cat companions, and dreamt of cats jumping over enormous boxes filled with family papers and family bones.

  Next morning Gerry felt inspired. After bringing Prudence a cup of tea and a little bell to ring for assistance, she made a coffee and rushed to work on her book.

  Max replied, “You know. Cakes on tables. Cats jump over them. Lots of fun. Woof! Woof!”

  “But I’ve lived here for years,” said Latooth, turning to the Queen, “and I’ve never seen any cats jumping over cakes on tables or anywhere else!”

  “It’s an old custom,” replied Atholfass, “and one no longer much practised.” Her eyes gleamed. “But in my day, the cats of Dibble were the most expert cake jumpers in all of Fasswassenbasset.”

  Lady Ponscomb timidly interjected, “What more can you tell us, Max?”

  “Yes, tell us, Max.”

  All of them — Queen Atholfass, Latooth Élonga, Lady Ponscomb and Count Scarfnhatznmitz — turned to look at young Languida Fatiguée. This was the first she’d spoken in a very long time. They had become used to her silences punctuated only by sighs and to her slow perambulations through the rooms of Castle Dibble, a pre-adolescent apparition that would drift in whenever a fresh cake appeared, eat a slice or two, and drift out.

  The friends stared, noting her ever so slightly brighter eyes, then everyone turned their attention to Max and waited for more information. Max eyed the glistening chocolate sponge, wondered about seconds, and absently told what he knew.

  “They have this young cat in Crumpet, see? Name of Ernesto. Ernesto ‘Crazylegs’ Cucina. He’s their best jumper. Supposed to be very fast, very high, very accurate. And so all the other cats of Crumpet, especially the young ones, are just crazy for cake jumping. They’re all doing it. They have clubs and competitions. The ladies of Crumpet compete to see who can create the most fantastic

  The phone rang. Gerry made a small sound of frustration, then jumped to answer it. A weak morning light illuminated her work on the living room table. And she’d just been about to consider the subject of the book’s next drawing. Would it be Ernesto Cucina in mid-jump, high over a Gâteau Saint-Honoré, or no, even better, a croquembouche, a tower of creampuffs? Bob would be her model, of course. She foresaw a romance between Crazylegs and the Queen.

  “Hello?” she said, without much interest, then focused as the word “police” made fantasies of cakes and cats disappear.

  It was her contact from finding the bones. They had dated them roughly. Between 100 and 200 years old. They were male. Did she know any more about who they might have belonged to? She mentioned Cormac McCormack and Father Lackey. Did she want the bones? What was involved? They’d arrange to send them for cremation, which she would pay for, and then she could have the ashes.

  Gerry felt responsible for the bones. She agreed and hung up. Next she called Father Lackey. “Father? Gerry Coneybear here.” She explained what she wanted to do. The priest was amenable and said he’d make the arrangements. As she hung up the phone, she heard the little bell she’d given Prudence tinkling. Calling, “Coming!” she first plugged in the kettle, then visited the sick room.

  Prudence was sitting up, her bed covered in old letters. At her insistence, Gerry had brought one of the boxes from the office and she was going through, reading, then meticulously describing the contents of each letter on a neat list. “You’re so organized! Do you want lunch?”

  Prudence smiled. “Maybe toast. And another cup of tea?”

  “I’ll eat up here with you and you can tell me what’s in the box.” Gerry prepared her favourite ham and cheese on a croissant, made toast and two mugs of tea. It all fit on one of Aunt Maggie’s old metal trays, one with piecrust edges and stamped all over with a pattern of yellow roses. “Here we are.”

  The Honour Guard were elsewhere in the house on their own business and the women had the room to themselves. “Well, this is nice,” commented Prudence. “It’s almost worth being sick to be waited on like this.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” Gerry warned. “No. I’m kidding. Take it easy this week and go on your trip soon and you’ll feel terrific again. What’s in this box?”

  Prudence finished the toast and carefully brushed crumbs off the front of her nightie onto the plate. “I took everything out and ordered it. And it’s quite interesting. It seems to be mostly papers about the first Margaret Coneybear, Margie that was, but they end when she’s widowed in —” Prudence consulted her list. “In 1897. Her husband, Jonas Petherbridge, fell through the ice during harvesting.”

  Gerry wrinkled her brow. “But how was there ice during harvest time?”

  “They were harvesting ice. From the lake. It was a big business. They’d cut chunks of ice and bury them under straw or sawdust in warehouses, then sell them for iceboxes when the weather got hot.”

  “Oh. And Jonas fell through. Po
or Margie.”

  “She had one son, also named Jonas.”

  “Wait. I’m going to get the tree. You’d think I’d know it by heart by now.” Prudence smiled as Gerry’s voice disappeared and she clattered downstairs. She sipped her tea until her return. “Now,” Gerry said, breathlessly, “here’s Aunt Margie. How many greats?” She counted back, using her finger. “Great, Great Aunt Margie. And her two Jonasas. Oh, look. Jonas the second was Uncle Geoff’s father.”

  The women paused, painfully remembering Geoff Petherbridge, so recently deceased, and by his own hand.

  Gerry was the first to recover. “So G.G.A. Margie is the other reason Uncle Geoff and Aunt Mary’s children Margaret and Andrew are descended from both of John Coneybear’s children. Fascinating.”

  “Yes. And even more fascinating is after her husband died, she started keeping a diary.” Prudence handed Gerry an old volume with silky paper and a soft brown leather cover. “I haven’t finished it yet. Read the first entry.”

  “‘May 2nd, 1898. Mother’s birthday. My mother was afraid to show me affection. I was ten and she was dead before I realized that she did sometimes, but only when my father was absent. Then she’d caress me and call me her little raven, her little crow. I suppose because of my dark looks.’ Oh, that’s so sad,” Gerry commented.

  “Read on,” Prudence urged.

  “‘She said other things, too, which I didn’t understand until she was dead and I found the letter which she’d hidden inside the doll.’” Gerry stopped. “But there wasn’t a letter inside the doll. Just a few peculiar objects.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll get them.” Gerry fetched the ripped up doll and the treasures it had guarded from her room. She laid them on Prudence’s lap.

  “But this is your Aunt Maggie’s doll.”

  “Maybe Margie gave it to her?”

  “Maybe. Maggie never said. It was just an old doll, handed down in the family. And you say these were inside? What made you look for them?”