Prudence nodded again. “Which I thought was strange, as it was Mary who married a wonderful man who’d do anything for her, had children. Whereas Maggie had an old house full of cats.”
“Ah, but Maggie was loved. By her cats, by you, by her neighbours. Mary knew that. And she must know there aren’t very many people who love her.”
“Geoff, Andrew and Margaret. I don’t think her grandsons like her very much. And Maggie loved her sister, though she found her difficult.”
“Who else was jealous of Maggie? Andrew? Nah. He likes his work, his china, his house. Margaret? Maybe. But surely she’ll inherit from her parents?”
Prudence spoke slowly. “But they’re not really old yet. What if Margaret didn’t want to wait? Who would inherit if Maggie was dead? Margaret must have thought her mother. We all did. Maybe Mary idly said, ‘When I inherit Maggie’s place, you can have it’ to Margaret.”
“So we’re back to the house being the motive,” Gerry concluded glumly.
“Gerry.”
“Yes?”
“Who inherits if you die?”
“Well, I don’t have a will yet, or any children, so — ” They looked at each other and their eyes widened. “It would go to Mary as Maggie’s last surviving sibling. Oh, Prudence!”
Prudence looked worried. “We better sort this mess out quickly. Until we do, you may be in danger.”
There was a lot of tidying and cleaning and rearranging of furniture to do inside and out after the busy weekend. Prudence worked in the house while Gerry wandered around outside, picking up cigarette butts and the odd plastic cup or napkin.
The mist had soaked the lawn, though by mid-morning, most of the thickest patches had dissipated, leaving thin wisps to streak the surface of the lake.
The cats didn’t like it, stayed on the flagstone paths where they could keep their feet dry. Only Marigold followed Gerry about, herself a thin wisp of a cat, her ribs showing through her scant coat.
Gerry had seen photos of Marigold in her prime. What a pretty cat she had been — fluffy, dainty, her tricolour coat unique, as all calicoes are. Now her disease had matted and clumped the once wonderful fur. On skinny legs, she walked ahead of Gerry, to the spot where the rest of the aconite plants flourished, sat and looked up at her. “All right. I’ll start there,” Gerry promised.
After a sober lunch, Gerry and Prudence drove to Mary and Geoff’s. “We’ll start with the queen and then go tackle the princess,” Gerry quipped.
But the princess was there. Margaret answered the door, her mother behind her, curious who it might be. Though they were alone together, both Mary and Margaret wore make up, their hair had been done and they wore skirts with matching sweaters and high heels. Gerry contrasted her sweats and Prudence’s plain blouse and slacks. “Are you expecting company?” she asked Mary.
“No, but come in anyway,” Mary invited dryly. She gestured to the interior. They walked through to the kitchen where they saw the ladies were in the middle of their lunch. “What do you want?” Mary asked rudely, sitting back down and picking up her knife and fork.
Gerry and Prudence sat on the couch in the living space that was down a few steps and adjacent to the kitchen. Margaret stared at them. “Eat your lunch, Margaret,” Mary ordered. Margaret picked at her food nervously.
“We came to ask you — ” Gerry’s voice came out high-pitched and shaky. She stopped and collected herself. “We want to know if you had anything to do with Aunt Maggie’s death.”
Aunt Mary became very still for a moment. Then Margaret choked. “Got a bit of quiche stuck,” she said hoarsely, then proceeded to cough for a few minutes, before she could drink some water. “That’s better.”
Gerry waited. Mary spoke first. “What have you heard?” She drank from her wine glass, gestured to Margaret to refill it from the bottle on the table.
“I haven’t — we haven’t heard anything. But I’ve noticed a lot of weird things at the house. Prudence has too.” Gerry didn’t want to be specific. After all, the clues, except the china figurine, were all cat-related. How would that sound? My aunt’s cat is indicating someone poisoned her.
At mention of Prudence, Mary sneered. “Prudence! And how is the faithful retainer this morning?”
“What’s a retainer?” Margaret sounded puzzled. “David has one for his teeth.”
“You’re an idiot, Margaret.” Tears welled in Margaret’s eyes. “Retainer is an old word for servant, which you’d know if you ever read anything other than décor mags.”
“Andrew reads décor mags,” said Gerry, drawn to defend Margaret, though unwillingly. “So do I. I quite like them.”
“Andrew presumably reads them for work and you’re an artist, but Margaret’s just a foolish housewife who barely made it out of high school before she got herself pregnant.”
“I’m fine, Cousin. Thanks for asking.” Prudence’s voice cut into the conversation like a sabre taking an arm off an opponent. “And Margaret struggled in school because you alternately praised and criticized her so the poor girl didn’t know whether she was a genius or a fool.”
Mary was silenced, pushed her plate away and leaned back, toying with the stem of her wineglass, rolling it between her fingers.
Gerry thought it was time to get back on track. “We, Prudence and I, have reason to believe that Aunt Maggie was poisoned by a cup of herbal tea prepared from a plant common to both her and your gardens.” She paused and looked at Margaret. “Do you have a garden?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Mary spoke for her daughter, who was sitting with her mouth open. “How could she afford a gardener? The boys cut the grass and that’s it.” She looked interested as she added, “What plant, specifically?”
Gerry took a deep breath. “Aconite. Monkshood.”
“Well, I don’t know how you’d die, but it’s certainly supposed to be poisonous.” Mary looked curiously at Gerry. “And you really think one of us would do that?”
“Who else would Aunt Maggie let into her house, much less her bedroom, than a family member?” There was a strange quietness in the room after Gerry spoke. The four women all looked at each other. Gerry broke the silence. “I was in Toronto.”
“I was at home alone,” said Prudence.
“I was with you, Mother, until about ten that evening, then I went home. The boys were there when I arrived.”
“And I was obviously here and Geoff would have been somewhere about, working in the basement on something or other, or watching TV.”
Gerry spoke slowly. “So none of you really has an alibi, as you, Margaret, could have driven to Aunt Maggie’s on your way home, and you, Aunt Mary, could have slipped out after Margaret left.”
“And what about Prudence?”
“Why would Prudence kill Maggie?” Gerry watched her aunt and cousin closely.
Margaret spoke. “Maybe Maggie told Prudence about her ridiculous will and Prudence needed the ten thousand dollars.”
“For what?” an exasperated Gerry demanded.
Mary snorted with laughter. “Maybe to pay that creepy Mrs. Smith for séances, hmm, Prudence? So you can ‘talk’ to your mother. My Aunt Constance. Boy, there was a whacko. And Prudence has inherited her craziness, by the looks of it. The Parsleys always did have a mongrel streak. Why, look who Prudence chose to marry?”
“Enough!” thundered Prudence, rising. “Gerry, we’re finished here.”
A dumbstruck Gerry followed Prudence out to the car. “Prudence, what on earth?”
“Just drive, Gerry,” Prudence said through gritted teeth. “Just drive.”
When they got near The Maples, Gerry broke the silence. “Do you want to get the carriage?”
Prudence replied angrily, “No. I know you think it makes me look foolish. Just take me home.”
“I don’t know where you live,” Gerry said gen
tly.
“I’ll tell you when to stop.”
When they got to Station Road, Prudence gestured to turn. Gerry turned. They went up the first little hill, around the big curve and over the tracks. Station Road was traditionally where some of the less affluent members of Lovering society lived. Some of the houses were in stages of refurbishment, exhibiting tarps over unfinished roofs and scaffolding where partly torn-apart walls might linger for years. Yet people lived in them. Other houses were better kept, and it was to one of these, a little white cottage, that Prudence directed Gerry.
“Why Prudence, it’s lovely!” And it was.
A one-storey building, it sported a tiny peaked front roof with delicate white cut-out detail, pale blue tiles and similarly coloured shutters and window boxes. These were filled with salmon-pink geraniums and trailing white lobelia. The whole was sparkling white, freshly painted. “It’s like a little jewel!” exclaimed Gerry.
“It’s not bad,” grudgingly admitted Prudence. “Thank you for the ride.” She got out of the car.
“See you Wednesday,” Gerry called, then thought, I hope I see you on Wednesday. Worried that the ugly afternoon might have affected her relationship with Prudence, Gerry sadly drove home.
She stopped at Cathy’s to pay her for the catering, but her friend wasn’t there, so she drove home and fed the cats. She fixed herself a plate of leftovers and sat at the table in the living room looking out at the lake. The cats knew better than to beg from her while she was eating, but that didn’t stop some of them from sitting under the table hoping for crumbs. It was nice to know their warm, furry bodies were nearby. She felt closest to her aunt in this room. “She must have sat here plenty of times, eh, guys?”
She heard a car drive up. Someone opened the door and stood on the kitchen porch, rattling the kitchen doorknob. “Gerry, it’s me. It’s Margaret.” Gerry sat very still. Then she heard a key turn in the lock and Margaret was in the kitchen. She looked into the room where Gerry sat among the cats. “Why Gerry, that’s where Aunt Maggie used to sit.”
Gerry’s mouth hung open. “A key. You have a key. And you just used it to let yourself into my house.”
Margaret looked down at her hand. “Oh, this is Mother’s. I borrowed it. I have to talk to you.”
“First, I need that key, Margaret.” She wondered how many other copies were floating around. Did Andrew have one?
Margaret put the key on the table and sat down in one of the dining chairs next to Gerry. “I remember when I was little coming here with Mother and Andrew. And Dad. Of course, you weren’t born yet. Gramma Ellie was still here. I vaguely remember Grampa Matthew but he died when I was very young.”
Despite her caution around her cousin, Gerry was interested. Here was Margaret, chatting about Gerry’s grandparents, her father’s parents, who she’d never had the chance of knowing. “What were they like?”
“Grampa was tall and heavy. He was a banker or something. Something in the city. He took the train every day. That’s where they found him, slumped in his seat on the train one afternoon. Missed his stop, and the conductor in those days knew where everybody should be getting off, so he shook his shoulder but he was dead.” She stopped talking abruptly.
“And Gramma Ellie?” Gerry prompted gently.
“Oh, I liked her. She’d been brought up strict and went the other way, spoiled her children and grandchildren. She would have us over and cook special things. Little cakes just for us children. Pink icing for me. Blue for Andrew.” Margaret paused again, stuck in some memory she seemed loath to leave.
“Aunt Maggie lived here too, right?”
“Yes. But no one paid much attention to her. She was five years younger than my mother, but it seemed the other way, as if she was older. She was always going off somewhere to read or draw, or nurse a sick cat.” Margaret drew her feet together under her chair. “I don’t like them, you know.”
“I can tell.”
“It’s their eyes. So cold. Not like dog eyes. I like dogs.”
“Did you know my father at all? When he was young?”
“No. He was already gone. Then first Grampa and then Gramma died and in the will it said the house went to Maggie. Mummy was terribly angry. She screamed and screamed. Daddy kept telling her to be quiet but she slapped him. I heard it. It got very quiet in the house. He went out. Mummy cried for hours.”
Gerry felt creeped out that Margaret had dropped her usual formal appellation of “Mother” for the infantile “Mummy,” but supposed if Margaret was regressing to describe a childhood experience, it might be normal.
Margaret continued in a harder voice. “Then I married Doug. I was pregnant — only just — with James, and Mother and Dad insisted. At first it was nice, having a house and a baby. But then I had the others close together and the house was too small, Doug started drinking and struggled with going to work.
“Do you know what it’s like living with an alcoholic?”
Gerry shook her head.
“It takes a while before you realize. And he was perfectly nice, as long as he had his twelve beers a day. Beer for breakfast, beer for lunch, beer for supper. Beer until he’d pass out in front of the TV in the middle of the night, spill the dregs on his clothes or the furniture.
“Do you know what it’s like being terrified to sleep because you’re afraid your husband is going to set himself and you and your house of babies on fire from his cigarettes? I’d find them burned out on the floor around his easy chair where he’d dropped them.”
Margaret was shaking with anger and, despite her dislike for her cousin, Gerry felt sorry for the woman. She’d certainly been unlucky. “You had a bad time,” she said gently.
Margaret’s head snapped back. “I don’t need your sympathy, Gerry. You being nice to Doug! How do you think that makes me feel? I’m your cousin, not him.”
Gerry began explaining. “Well, actually, he’s kind of both our cousins — ”
But Margaret interrupted. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.” Her face took on a look of cunning as she leaned forward. “Earlier you said you think Aunt Maggie was poisoned by some herb or something? Well, I heard Mother, before Aunt Maggie died, recommending an herbal tea to her, for insomnia. She said she took it herself, which is a laugh. The only thing Mother takes when she can’t sleep is a large brandy.”
“You’re accusing your mother?” Gerry asked incredulously.
Margaret rose to leave. “I just thought you should know. Ask her yourself.” Predictably, she slammed both the kitchen and porch doors.
Oh, I will, thought Gerry, as she wearily locked up and went to bed.
14
Tuesday Gerry took a break from it all, drove to the train station and treated herself to a day at the museum.
She had to confess a preference for the modern art over the old masters, though she spent a lot of time looking at the Impressionists, who, in her opinion, linked the other two categories.
She remembered one of her teachers at art college suggested that, as artists, they always ask, “What can I learn from this?” And it was in that spirit that she toured the various galleries within the museum.
Though she’d never constructed one, she was fascinated by the installations, art as experience, three-dimensional, surrounding the patron with not just visual but aural, sometimes tactile sensations.
If you can imagine it and make it, it’s art, she thought, as she moved dreamily from artist to artist.
She bypassed the small, trendy bistro on the building’s top floor for a late lunch in the cafeteria, where its less affluent customers unselfconsciously ate sandwiches and drank milk or soda, then she visited the Canadian section.
There’d been a real flowering in Canadian painting in the early twentieth century, as celebrated in the museum’s collection. The Group of Seven was well represented. There were a few Emily Ca
rrs.
In the middle of the century had come a brilliant explosion of talent in French Canada, and Gerry lingered in front of paintings by Jean-Paul Riopelle and Paul-Émile Borduas. The chunkiness of the latter’s technique appealed more to her than the splatter of the former’s, but she liked them both for their colour and energy.
“Pure art,” she breathed, once again a worshipper at that altar. On the way home, staring out the train window, her brain still dazzled by all she’d seen, she resolved to set aside a little time in her own life for non-commercial work.
She drove from the train station to home, looking at objects differently, not as houses and gardens, trees and flowers, but as shapes and colours. She was still in this happy state when she pulled into her driveway and parked next to her uncle’s Mercedes.
She sighed. He was sitting in his car, gripping the wheel, staring at the lake. He turned his head to meet her gaze. He looked miserable. She got out of her car quickly. “Uncle Geoff, what’s happened?”
He tried to cheer up and mostly succeeded. “Gerry!” he said with a sort of fake heartiness. “Just wanted to have a word with you.”
“Oh, I’m relieved. I thought someone was ill or worse, you looked so sad. Come on. You’ll have to bear with me. I’m late and there are nineteen hungry cats to attend to. Can I fix you a cup of tea?”
They went inside and barricaded themselves in the kitchen while the cats agitated beyond its door. Gerry prepared cat food, made tea, grabbed some cheese straws to eat with it, and opened the door.
Geoff and she edged through the furry mass and into the next room, where they sat at the table. “Uncle Geoff, I’ve had the most wonderful day, looking at art, getting all inspired, realizing there’s more to life than just making money.”
He drank his tea and let her talk. She’d just said, “It’s funny. I was just sitting here with Margaret yesterday,” when he put down his cup. One by one, satiated cats drifted into the room, some just giving them a look as they passed through, others stopping to groom and settle. Mother paused by Uncle Geoff’s legs, readied herself and jumped. He petted her absently.
The Cat Among Us Page 14