The Cat Vanishes

by Louise Carson

  Regretfully, Gerry pushed the papers from her. Two days until her party. Two days until her party! She dragged the cake recipe book closer and flipped the pages furiously. “Fancy but not too difficult. Yum. I could do that.” She made her grocery list, checked Prudence, who had gone back to bed, clothed, and dozed off lying on top of it. “Prudence, do you need anything in Lovering?” A grunt was her reply.

  Gerry decided to do the shopping, then have lunch at the Two Sisters’ Tearoom. It was with a happy sigh that an hour later she perused the little menu. Jane stood at her side. “I just made the egg salad. It’s served with watercress.”

  Gerry beamed. “I’ll have that then, though I was tempted by your curried chicken sandwich. But I had curry last night.”

  “So, egg?”

  Gerry nodded. “And a coffee, please. Your coffee is so good.”

  A pleased Jane bustled away and Gerry sat back and let her mind drift. She loved Prudence and loved having her stay, but had to admit she’d grown used to being alone in her own house. Prudence must feel the same. No rush to get back. She let her mind roam over her guest list.

  Cathy, Markie, Cece, Bea, Prudence and me. That’s six. Mr. Parminter — I mean Blaise — Andrew, Doug and David. Ten.

  Jean put down an appetizing-looking sandwich with potato chips on the side, then got the coffee, cream and sugar. “Enjoy,” she said and disappeared into her kitchen.

  Gerry was the only customer. It was true then, the people of Lovering really did hunker down at home in winter. And tourists were scarce. So why was Jane open?

  The woman herself appeared with a tray of scones. Gerry could smell they were warm from the oven. She speeded up eating her excellent sandwich. “Jane, I thought you were going to be closed longer over the holidays.”

  Jane came over to Gerry’s table. “Mind if I sit down? I’ve been up since before dawn, which, admittedly, in winter is only about eight o’clock. Betty Parsley’s visitation is this afternoon. I’m preparing dozens of scones and sandwiches. Apparently, she was quite a fan. So I thought, as long as I’m here, I may as well open.”

  Gerry was surprised. “So the police have finished with the body.” Suddenly, it felt wrong to be sitting here enjoying herself when Betty Parsley was about to receive her send-off. She pushed away the remains of her sandwich.

  “You done with that? I’ll bring you a nice hot scone — cranberry lemon.” Gerry let Jane go. Should she go to the funeral home? No. She felt she’d be intruding. She was just a customer of the Parsley Inn, but then again, she was some kind of cousin to that branch of the Parsleys. She decided no to the visitation and maybe yes to the funeral.

  “No, I can’t go to either,” she said aloud. “I’ve got to prepare for the party. Oh, I’ll ask Prudence.” She was enjoying her scone — it was very good — with a second coffee when Annette Bledsoe walked in.

  Gerry invited her to sit.

  Annette’s face was flushed. Self-importantly, she leaned forward and in hushed tones, said, “You’ll never guess.” What she had to say made Gerry alter her list of party guests.

  Thoughtfully, she drove home, and was just in time to say hello, goodbye before Prudence left, picked up by her friend Lucy. “I’m going to see Mrs. Smith and then I’m going to Betty’s visitation. They’re my first cousins, Phil and Bill. I didn’t think you’d want to come. It’s between three and five and seven and nine, if you do.”

  Gerry unpacked the groceries and decided to get a head start on Saturday’s dessert. She baked a sponge cake and made a custard — her first — and left them both to cool. Then she decided, the heck with it, she was a fast reader; she’d have a look at Margie Coneybear’s diary herself.

  She went upstairs to Prudence’s room. Now where? The book could not be found. Mystified, Gerry went back downstairs. It wasn’t anywhere she could see. She saw the poinsettia still in its yogurt container. “Right,” she told Mother and the kittens. “We’re having a party soon. Better spruce the place up.” She put on her coat and went out to the woodshed, to the little area they called the potting shed.

  She rummaged around for a likely pot and saucer. Then she walked through into where the firewood was stored. What am I missing? she asked herself as she stood and looked down into the hole. Wait a minute. If Cormac worked for Mr. Muxworthy, Sybil’s father, why was he even at The Maples? Assuming he’d died there. It wasn’t like he had freedom of movement. And his sister, who’d worked at The Maples, was already dead and buried at St. Pete’s.

  So had he sneaked away, possibly at night, to see Sybil? Had they been together? Was Margie his child? Had John Coneybear found them — Sybil and Cormac — together at The Maples? Or had John found only Cormac, loitering, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sybil?

  Gerry felt the hair on her scalp prickle. She saw John Coneybear roll Cormac’s body into the hole. Suddenly, Gerry felt sorry for John. Maybe the death had been accidental. A cold sensible voice in Gerry’s brain asked, then why hide the body? Marks of violence on it, perhaps? Oh, Sybil didn’t know. Of course. If he just threw it in the lake someone might see him, and the recovered body would scream “Murder!”

  Gerry pictured John using a crowbar to raise two or three broad floorboards, hiding Cormac, then muffling a hammer as he repositioned the boards. Had the crowbar been the fatal weapon? Had John wiped it with trembling hands before returning it to its usual place in the shed?

  She roused herself. All your imagination, she thought, and took her plant pot inside. She repotted the poinsettia and moved it to a window. “Poor thing,” she said. “Not much light these days.” She put away her cake and custard and made a pot of tea.

  She was loath to go to the funeral home. She wouldn’t be missed. She made up the fire and waited for Prudence.

  Around five o’clock someone knocked at the front door. “That’s funny; my friends know to come to the side,” she muttered. A brown delivery van was awkwardly parked in the narrow circular front driveway. “I’m not expecting —” she began, then read the name of the sender, a local funeral home. She thanked the driver. “Another time, it’s easier to park at the side, at least in winter.” She held the box, listening as the driver reversed and pulled forward, reversed and pulled forward, until he could ease the van back on to Main Road.

  She opened the box on the entrance hall table and placed the urn containing Cormac’s newly cremated ashes there, directly under the painting of John Coneybear. She was ruminating in front of the living room fire when Prudence returned.

  “How was it?”

  Prudence disrobed, poured herself a cup of tea and sat in the rocker next to Gerry. She breathed in and exhaled deeply. “I may have overdone it,” she finally said.

  “Have an early night. But what did Mrs. Smith say?”

  Prudence reached down into her old black purse and pulled out G.G.A. Margie’s diary. “I brought this. I thought it might help Mrs. Smith.”

  “And did it?”

  “We didn’t get that far. Mrs. Smith asked if the spirit who’d previously communicated the names Coneybear and Muxworthy wanted to manifest and all hell broke loose.” She closed her eyes. “Not at first. At first Mrs. Smith just asked the spirit what it wanted. ‘To be with her,’ was the answer. Mrs. Smith asked, ‘Is she a Coneybear?’ and a glass on her kitchen counter shattered. Then she asked, ‘Is she a Muxworthy?’ One of the chairs at the table rocked from side to side.

  “I had written ‘Cormac’ and ‘Sybil’ on a piece of paper so Mrs. Smith asked, ‘Are you Cormac?’ and the chair rocked. Then she asked, ‘Is “she” Sybil?’ and the chair rocked again.

  “I scribbled ‘murder’ on the paper and showed Mrs. Smith. She was very nervous at this point. ‘Get ready,’ she said and we clutched the table. ‘Were you murdered, Cormac?’

  “We both felt the energy in the room get very low, as though our lives were being drained out of us. The
n everything in the room started moving. The chairs we weren’t sitting in rose, hanging pictures strained away from the wall, the light fixtures twisted. When we felt the table begin to rise, Mrs. Smith shouted, ‘Enough!’ and it all stopped.”

  “Good God! What happened then?”

  “He’d gone. Mother came through and reminded me to ask Lucy to make new curtains for my bedroom.”

  “Lucy wasn’t there?”

  “Lucy’s a churchgoer. She doesn’t approve of Mrs. Smith. She says, ‘Leave the dead to God.’ We’ve agreed to disagree. She waited in her car. I helped Mrs. Smith straighten up her place, then left.”

  “And then you went to the funeral home? No wonder you’re tired.”

  “Poor Phil. He’s lost weight and looks lost. His kids are stepping up, though. Betty trained them well, making them help out at the inn since they were little. They had that visitation organized and moving smoothly.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Four. Two boys and two girls. The Two Sisters’ did the food. It was terrific.”

  “I know. I ate there today.” Gerry picked up the diary. “Did you finish this?”

  Prudence got up and took the book from her. “Not quite. I’ll say goodnight.”

  “It’s only six-thirty!”

  “Well, I have to sleep now. If I get hungry, I’ll fix myself a snack later. Oh, Gerry.”

  “Yes?”

  “The Parsley twins were there.”

  “Oh?”

  “And they were arguing. One of them stomped out while the other stayed and made polite conversation, then he left too.”

  Gerry murmured, “Ralph and Steve.”

  Prudence added, “Or Steve and Ralph. I couldn’t tell them apart.”

  After Prudence went upstairs, Gerry made up the fire, ate a sandwich and sat at the table. On one side lay her family papers: the genealogical chart; her notes and Prudence’s, listing the contents of various boxes; and one of the as yet unsorted piles. On the other side of the table were the text and sketches for her cake-jumping cats.

  Somehow, she wasn’t in the mood for either. As her energy temporarily flagged, she decided she needed a break. From the two deaths, from her frenetic work schedule. A day trip somewhere.

  She tidied the kitchen, then decided to assemble her dessert for Saturday night. She laid out her materials and began.

  She cut the sponge cake into fingers, which she placed in a silver-rimmed cut glass bowl. She sprinkled sherry. She layered raspberry jam, custard, tinned peaches and more sherry-soaked cake — twice. She covered her creation with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. That’s done, she thought with satisfaction.

  Now she was in the mood for a slice of Dibble.

  Chapter Two

  Preparations

  Things got off to a slow start.

  First to appear were a series of posters, attached by Tess (assisted by Max) to the bottoms of telephone poles and next to the steps at the entrances to Dibble’s places of business — the fishmonger’s, the butcher’s, the pet store, the dog- and cat-grooming salon — where she felt sure they would be noticed by the village’s population of perambulating felines.

  The first poster simply said CAKE in giant letters, above a drawing of a table crowded with lavish cakes of various shapes and colours.

  A few days later, a second poster replaced the first. Now the word JUMP was on the bottom of the poster and a cat was soaring over it.

  The third poster, appearing nearly a week after the first, told most of the story. A cat was suspended in mid-jump over a pyramidal cake. A phone number — Castle Dibble’s — piped in icing ran around the side of the cake.

  So much for publicity, thought Ponscomb, regarding the third poster with satisfaction.

  Here Gerry paused from scribbling to sketch the three posters being put up at three different locations. In one little picture, Max was licking the back of a poster, his saliva the glue, while Tess, holding the poster, shrank back in dismay, droplets of spit flying everywhere. In another, in front of the butcher’s, Tess struggled with the poster alone while Max howled in front of the shop window where sausages and other delicacies hung out of reach. In the third — well, here Gerry’s imagination temporarily failed her and she simply showed the dogs sitting either side of the poster as human legs passed in front of them. She returned to her text.

  Meanwhile, Languida and Max (when he wasn’t helping Lady Ponscomb) had been figuring out the logistics of jumping. They had to consult with Queen Atholfass, who referred them to the castle library, where they found ancient texts and diagrams, which helped a lot.

  Then there was a great deal of quiet measuring and cutting (on the part of Languida) and hammering and yelping (on the part of Max) before the course was ready.

  They gathered the others to view it. Max proudly galloped around a few times, to demonstrate, and then a few times more, for emphasis.

  The course jumps consisted of planks of wood resting on barrels, old tables with chairs balanced on top, and, as the grand finale, a springboard. As Max boinged off the springboard one final time and landed squarely in a bed of geraniums, Languida said, rather desperately, “Of course, it will look much better with the cakes in place. And this is just the training course. We’ll make a better one for the competition.”

  “Yee-es,” said the Queen doubtfully.

  Gerry sketched a full-page illustration of all the characters watching, horrified, as Max sailed through the air towards the flowers. Even the butler, Sneathe, peered superciliously from a castle window.

  “And that’s enough for tonight,” Gerry said aloud. She left a note for Prudence, explaining about the next day and, after setting her alarm clock, fell into a deep sleep.

  She heard the train whistle blow far down the track where it curved. She began to run, but the case containing all her papers opened with a snap and sheets of illustrations, her family tree and old letters fell out onto the road. She stopped to gather them up.

  The whistle blew again and again she ran. She made it to the station platform when the case opened again, and again, all the papers fluttered out.

  The conductor shook his head as she approached the steps of one of the cars, retracting them and closing the door.

  As the train passed her, she saw her Grampa Matthew, his dead face immobile and pressed against a window.

  Her hand slapped the alarm on the clock radio off. “Ugh,” she said to Bob. It was so dark out, she almost changed her mind. “No. I need this,” she encouraged herself.

  She was still encouraging herself when, an instant coffee in her travel mug, she drove to Lovering’s train station. But she was congratulating herself when, an hour later, the weak sun appearing ahead of the train, they pulled into Montreal.

  After a leisurely breakfast at a patisserie, she visited the auction house where her Borduas was reposing, then waited for the Museum of Modern Art to open. She spent a fabulous day, wandering from gallery to gallery, making notes about technique and subject; ate a super lunch in the museum restaurant of poached salmon on lentils surrounded by a warm arugula salad, and finished with the best lemon meringue pie she’d ever tasted.

  Then she walked around Montreal for a while before grabbing a coffee at the station for her ride home. When she came into the house, she knew right away Prudence had gone.

  On the back of Gerry’s note Prudence had written, “Cleaned house today. Gone to Charlie and Rita’s. Construction tomorrow. Will return in time to make pudding for party.”

  Gerry wondered, pudding?

  20

  Saturday morning she woke up early after a restless night. A regular dripping noise outside drew her to the window. Water was running off her roof into the eavestroughs.

  The day was grey, the frost on her window melting; thin chunks slid down the wet glass. She could see out
! Across the road, Andrew’s house was a clear black and white. “He’s not up,” she yawned. Lightning, as usual when Gerry awoke, avoided intimacy by jumping off the foot of the bed and exiting the room. Bob, however, rolled on his back, inviting a game. She rubbed his tummy with one hand while searching for a tissue in the pocket of her robe with the other. “Oh!” she exclaimed and drew out the finger bone. She put it on the mantelpiece next to the things that had been hidden inside the doll. The key was there, too.

  “I don’t have time for you today, Cormac. I’m sorry.” The bone lay indifferently among Sybil’s keepsakes. Bob’s eyes gleamed as he spied his previous treasure, but he followed Gerry downstairs. After all, it was breakfast time.

  Cats fed, litter freshened, coffee in hand, Gerry sat and plotted her day. She worked backwards from when she expected her guests to arrive to the present and found that, if she did her errands this morning, she’d be free until teatime.

  The house was almost immaculate from Prudence’s cleaning on Friday. A few cat hairs here and there weren’t going to scare any of Gerry’s friends. Then she thought of the elegant Markie Stribling. Maybe she should fit in a last-minute vacuum of the entranceway and dining room. Her thoughts turned to what she should wear. Rats! She hadn’t stipulated dress-up or casual to her guests. It would probably be a mix. So I should dress somewhere in between so everyone feels comfortable, she decided.

  This thought process entailed a visit upstairs to peruse her wardrobe. Black dress pants, a white blouse and red scoop-necked sweater were approved. “And I’ll make an effort and wear nice shoes,” she mumbled, unearthing a pair of pumps from her cupboard.

  Somehow, what with getting in wood, playing chase-the-catnip-mouse-tied-to-a-string with the kittens and fretting over clothes, the morning had vanished. “Eeks!” she said when she saw the time. She rushed to Lovering and back, finished her trifle, prepared her beef for the oven and did a quick vacuum. She was just wondering if she should call Prudence to see if she needed a ride, when the woman herself arrived.