The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  Qwilleran shook his head. “She’s new since I left the paper.”

  “She’s a photojournalist, and she freelances for national magazines. She might come up to Moose County next spring and do a picture story on the abandoned mines. Not bad!”

  “Not bad,” Qwilleran echoed quietly.

  He was still abnormally quiet when they boarded the tiny commuter after midnight. He occupied the window seat, and when he turned to listen to Junior he could see a man sitting across the aisle, holding an open magazine. The passenger stared at the same page throughout the flight.

  He isn’t reading, Qwilleran thought. He’s listening. And he doesn’t belong up here. No one in Moose County has that buttoned-down cool.

  At the airport terminal the stranger went to the counter to rent a car.

  “Junior,” Qwilleran muttered, “who’s the guy in the black raincoat?”

  “Never saw him before,” Junior said. “Looks like a traveling salesman.”

  The man was no traveling salesman, Qwilleran told himself. There was something about his walk, his manner, the way he appraised his surroundings . . .

  As they drove back to Pickax in the early hours of the morning, Junior finally showed signs of running out of exuberance, and he noticed Qwilleran’s preoccupied silence. “Anything wrong at your house, Qwill? You said it was an emergency.”

  “It’s an emergency, but not at my house. Your mother called my housekeeper, and Mrs. Cobb phoned the Press Club. You’re needed at home in a hurry. There’s no storm moving in; I lied to you about that.” Qwilleran made a right turn at the traffic light.

  “Hey! Where are you going? Aren’t you dropping me at the farm?”

  “We’re going to the hospital. There’s been an accident. A car accident.”

  “My dad?” Junior shouted. “How serious?”

  “Very bad. Your mother’s waiting for you at the hospital. I don’t know how to say this, Junior, but I’ve got to tell you. Your dad was killed instantly. It was on the bridge—the old plank bridge.”

  They pulled up at the side door of the hospital. Junior jumped out of the car without a word and bolted into the building.

  Monday, November eleventh. “Heavy cloud cover throughout the county, with promise of snow before nightfall. Present temperature in Pickax, twenty-two degrees, with a windchill factor of ten below.”—So said the WPKX meteorologist.

  On Monday morning the schools, stores, offices, and restaurants of Pickax were closed until noon—for the funeral. The day was cold, gray, damp, and miserable. Yet, crowds milled about the Old Stone Church on Park Circle. Other onlookers huddled in the little circular park—shivering, stamping feet, swinging arms, clapping mittened hands together, anything to keep warm, and that included a furtive swig from a half-pint bottle in desperate cases. They were expecting to see a record broken: the longest funeral procession since 1904.

  Police cars blockaded downtown Main Street to facilitate the formation of the procession. Cars bearing purple flags on the fender were lined up four abreast from curb to curb.

  Qwilleran, moving through the crowd in the park, watched faces and listened to the low, respectful hum of voices. Small boys who climbed on the fountain for a better view were shooed away by a police officer and admonished if they shrieked or raced through the crowd.

  Gathered inside the church were the numerous branches of the Goodwinter clan, as well as city officials, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and the country club set. Outside the church were the readers of the Picayune: businessmen, housewives, farmers, retirees, waitresses, laborers, hunters. They were witnessing an event they would remember all their lives and describe to future generations, just as their grandparents had described the funeral of Ephraim Goodwinter.

  Among them was one man who was obviously foreign to the scene. He wandered through the crowd, glancing alertly in all directions, studying faces. He was wearing a black raincoat, and Qwilleran hoped it had a heavy lining; the cold was bone-chilling.

  A hunter in orange-and-black camouflage was mumbling to a man who wore a feed cap and had a cheek full of snuff. “Gonna be a long one. Longer than Captain Fugtree’s, looks like.”

  The farmer shifted his chew. “Near a hundred, I reckon. The captain had seventy-five, they said in the paper.”

  “Lucky they could bury him before snow flies. There’s a Big One headed this way, they said on radio.”

  “Can’t believe nothin’ they say on radio. That storm from Canada blowed itself out afore it got anywheres near the border.”

  “Where’d it happen?” the hunter asked. “The accident, I mean.”

  “Old plank bride. It’s a bugger! We been after the county to get off their duff and widen the danged thing. They say he rammed the stone rail, flipped head over tail, landed on the rocks in the river. Car caught fire. It’s a closed casket, I hear.”

  “They should sue somebody.”

  “Prob’ly goin’ too fast. Mebbe hit a deer.”

  “Or coulda been he was on a Friday night toot,” the hunter said with a sly grin.

  “Not him! She’s the one that’s the barfly. With him it was never nothin’ but work work work. Fell asleep at the wheel, betcha. Whole family’s jinxed. Y’know what happened to his old man.”

  “Yeah, but he prob’ly deserved it, from what I hear.”

  “And then there was his uncle. Somethin’ fishy about that story!”

  “And his grandfather. They never got the lowdown on what happened to him. What’ll they do with the paper now?”

  “The kid’ll take over,” the farmer said. “Fourth generation. No tellin’ what he’ll take it into his head to do. These young ones go away to school and get some loony ideas.”

  Voices hushed as the bell began to toll a single solemn note and the casket was carried from the church, followed by the bereaved family. The heavily veiled widow was accompanied by her elder son. Junior walked with his sister from Montana. On the sidewalk and in the park the townspeople crossed themselves and men removed their headgear. There was a long wait as the mourners moved silently to their cars, directed by young men in black car coats and ambassador hats of black fur. At a signal, men in uniform fell into rank and hoisted brass instruments. Then, with the Pickax Funeral Band playing a doleful march, the long line of cars started to move forward.

  Qwilleran pulled down the earflaps of his winter hat, turned up his coat collar, and headed across the park to the place he now called home.

  The Klingenschoen residence that Qwilleran had inherited was one of five important buildings on the Park Circle, where Main Street divided and circumvented a little grassy plot with stone benches and a stone fountain. On one side of the circle were the Old Stone Church, the Little Stone Church, and a venerable courthouse. Facing them across the park were the public library and the K mansion, as Pickax natives called it. A massive cube of fieldstone three stories high, the mansion occupied its spacious grounds with the regal assurance that it was the most impressive edifice in town, and the costliest.

  For a man who had chosen to spend his adult life in apartments and hotels, always on the move like a gypsy, the palatial residence was a discomfort, an embarrassment. Eventually Qwilleran would deed it to the city as a museum, but for five years he was doomed to live with the Klingenschoen brand of conspicuous consumption: vast rooms with fourteen-foot ceilings and ornate woodwork; crystal chandeliers by the ton and Oriental rugs by the acre; priceless French and English antiques, and art objects worth millions.

  Qwilleran solved his problem by moving into the old servants’ quarters above the garage, while the housekeeper occupied a sumptuous French suite in the main house.

  Housekeeper was a misnomer for Iris Cobb. A former antique dealer and appraiser from Down Below, she now functioned as house manager, registrar of the collection, and curator of an architectural masterpiece destined to become a museum. She was also an obsessive cook who liked to putter about the kitchen—a dumpy figure in a faded pink smock. Despite
her career credentials the widowed Mrs. Cobb baked endless cookies and pies with which to please the opposite sex, and she was inclined to gaze at men worshipfully through her thick-lensed eyeglasses.

  Mrs. Cobb had a hearty oyster stew waiting for Qwilleran when he returned from the funeral. “I looked out the window and saw all the cars,” she said. “The procession must be half a mile long!”

  “Longest in Pickax history,” Qwilleran said. “It’s not only the funeral of a man; it may turn out to be the funeral of a century-old newspaper.”

  “Did you see the widow? She must be taking it terribly hard.” Mrs. Cobb related emotionally to any woman who lost a husband, having experienced two such tragedies herself.

  “Mrs. Goodwinter’s three grown children were with her—also an older woman, probably Junior’s Grandma Gage. She was tiny, but as straight as a brigadier general. . . . Any phone calls while I was out, Mrs. Cobb?”

  “No, but a busboy from the Old Stone Mill brought over some pork liver cupcakes. It’s a new idea, and the chef would like your opinion. I put them in the freezer.”

  Qwilleran grunted in disgust. “I’ll give that clown an opinion—fast! I wouldn’t touch a pork liver cupcake if he paid me!”

  “Oh, they’re not people food, Mr. Q! They’re for the cats. The chef is experimenting with a line of frozen gourmet dinners for pets.”

  “Well, take a couple out of the freezer, and the spoiled brats can have them for supper. By the way, have you noticed any books on the floor in the library? Koko is pushing them off the shelf, and I don’t approve of his new hobby.”

  “I tidied up this morning and didn’t notice anything.”

  “He’s particularly attracted to those small volumes of Shakespeare in pigskin bindings. Yesterday I found Hamlet on the floor.”

  Behind Mrs. Cobb’s thick lenses there was a mischievous twinkle. “Do you think he knows I’ve got a baked ham in the fridge?”

  “He has devious ways of communicating, Mrs. Cobb, but that would be a new low,” Qwilleran said. “What is today? Monday? I suppose you’re going out tonight. If so, I’ll feed the cats.”

  The housekeeper’s face brightened. “Herb Hackpole is taking me out to dinner—somewhere special, he said. I hope it’s the Old Stone Mill. They say the food’s wonderful since the new chef took over.”

  Qwilleran huffed into his moustache, a private sign of disapproval. “It’s about time that skinflint took you out to dinner! It seems to me you always go over to his place and cook for him.”

  “But I like to!” Mrs. Cobb said, with her eyes shining.

  Hackpole was a used-car dealer with a reputation for being obnoxious, but she found him attractive. The man had red devils tattooed on his arms and wore his thinning hair in a crew cut, and he often neglected to shave, but she liked men in the rough. Qwilleran recalled that her late husband had been an uncouth lout and she loved him deeply. Now, since starting to date Hackpole, her round cheerful face had become positively radiant.

  “If you want to have someone in for dinner,” Mrs. Cobb said, “you can serve the baked ham, and I’ll make the ginger-pear salad you like, and I’ll put a sweet potato casserole in the oven. All you have to do is take it out when the bell rings.” She was acquainted with Qwilleran’s helplessness in the kitchen.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said. “I might invite Mrs. Duncan.”

  “Oh, that would be nice!” The housekeeper’s expression was conspiratorial, as if she sensed a romance. “I’ll set the marquetry table in the library with a Madeira cloth and candles and everything. It will be nice and cozy for two. Mr. O’Dell can lay a fire with those applewood logs. They smell so good!”

  “Don’t make it too obviously seductive,” Qwilleran requested. “The lady is rather proper.”

  “She’s a lovely person, Mr. Q, and just the right age for you, if you don’t mind me saying so. She has a lot of personality for a librarian.”

  “It’s a new trend,” he said. “Libraries now have fewer books but a lot of audiovisuals . . . and champagne parties . . . and personality all over the place.”

  After lunch Qwilleran walked around the Park Circle to the public library, which masqueraded as a Greek temple. It had been built by the founder of the Picayune at the turn of the century, and a portrait of Ephraim Goodwinter hung in the lobby, although it was partly obscured by a display of new video materials and there was a slash in the canvas that had been poorly repaired.

  The after-school crowd had not yet swarmed into the library with homework assignments, so four friendly young clerks rushed to Qwilleran’s assistance. Young women were always attracted to the man with a luxuriant moustache and mournful eyes. Furthermore, he served on the library’s board of trustees. Furthermore, he was the richest man in town.

  He asked the clerks a simple question, and they all dashed away at once in several directions—one to the card catalogue, one to the local-history shelf, and two to the computer. The answer from all sources was negative. He thanked them and headed for the chief librarian’s office on the balcony.

  Carrying his lumberjack mackinaw and woodsman’s hat, Qwilleran bounded up the stairs three at a time, thinking pleasant thoughts. Polly Duncan was a charming though enigmatic woman, and she had a speaking voice that he found both soothing and stimulating.

  She looked up from her desk and gave him a cordial but businesslike smile. “What a pleasant surprise, Qwill! What urgent mission brings you up here in such a hurry?”

  “I came chiefly to hear your mellifluous voice,” he said, turning on a little charm himself. And then he quoted one of his favorite lines from Shakespeare. “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low—an excellent thing in woman.”

  “That’s from King Lear, act five, scene three,” she replied promptly.

  “Polly, your memory is incredible!” he said. “I am amazed and know not what to say.”

  “That’s Hermia’s line in act three, scene two, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. . . . Don’t look so surprised, Qwill. I told you my father was a Shakespeare scholar. We children knew the plays as well as our peers knew the big-league batting averages. . . . Did you go to the funeral this morning?”

  “I observed from the park, and it gave me an idea. According to the phalanx of eager assistants downstairs, no one has ever written a history of the Picayune. I’d like to try it. How much is there to work with?”

  “Let me think. . . . You could start with the Goodwinters in our genealogical collection.”

  “Do you have back copies of the newspaper?”

  “Only for the last twenty years. Prior to that, everything was destroyed by mice or burst steam pipes or mismanagement. But I’m sure the Picayune office has a complete file.”

  “Is there anyone I could interview? Anyone who would remember back sixty or seventy-five years?”

  “You might check with the Old Timers Club. They’re all over eighty. Euphonia Gage is the president.”

  “Is that the woman who drives a Mercedes and blows the horn a lot?”

  “A succinct description! Senior Goodwinter was her son-in-law, and since she has a reputation for brutal candor, she might supply some choice information.”

  “Polly, you’re a gem! By the way, are you free for dinner tonight? Mrs. Cobb is preparing a repast that’s too good for a lonely bachelor. I thought you might consent to share it.”

  “Delighted! I must not stay too late, but I hope there will be time for reading aloud after dinner. You have a marvelous voice, Qwill.”

  “Thank you.” He preened his moustache with pleasure. “I’ll go home and gargle.”

  Turning to leave, he glanced across the balcony to the reading room. “Who’s that man over there—with a pile of books on the table?”

  “A historian from Down Below, doing research on early mining operations. He asked if I could recommend any good restaurants, and I suggested Stephanie’s and the Old Stone Mill. Do you have any other ideas?”

  “I think I
do,” said Qwilleran. He clapped his hat on his head at a wild angle and clomped around the balcony in his yellow duck boots, stopping at the table where the stranger was seated.

  In a parody of a friendly north-country native he said, “Howdy! Lady over yonder says yer lookin’ fer a place to chow down. Fer a real good feed y’oughta try Otto’s Tasty Eats. All y’can eat fer fi’ bucks. How long y’gonna be aroun’?”

  “Until I finish my work,” the historian said crisply, bending over his book.

  “If y’wanna shot-na-beer y’oughta try the Hotel Booze. Good burgers, too.”

  “Thank you,” the man said in a tone of dismissal.

  “I see y’be readin’ ’bout them ol’ mines. M’grampaw got killed in a cave-in back in 1913. I weren’t born yit. Seen any ol’ mines?”

  “No,” the man said, snapping his book shut and pushing his chair back.

  “Nearest hereabouts be the Dimsdale. They got a diner there. Good place t’git a plate o’ beans ‘n’ franks.”

  Clutching his black raincoat, the stranger walked rapidly to the stairway.

  Pleased with the man’s exasperation and his own performance, Qwilleran straightened his hat, bundled up in his mackinaw, and went on his way. He knew by the man’s obvious lack of interest that he was not what he claimed to be.

  At 5:30 Herb Hackpole arrived to pick up his dinner partner, parking in the side drive and tooting the horn. Mrs. Cobb scurried out the back door as excited as a young girl on her first date.

  At 5:45 Qwilleran fed the cats. Pork liver cupcakes, when thawed, became a revolting gray mush, but the Siamese crouched over the plate and devoured the chef’s innovation with tails flat on the floor, denoting total satisfaction.

  At 6:00 Polly Duncan arrived—on foot—having left her small six-year-old maroon car behind the library. If it were seen in the circular driveway of the K mansion, the gossips of Pickax would have a field day. Everyone knew what everyone else drove—make, model, year, and color.