For someone who had spent several hours slaving in the kitchen, Iris Cobb was rather festively attired. Her hair was carefully coifed. She wore a bright pink dress, embroidered with a few sad glass beads, and her two dangling pairs of eyeglasses, one of which was studded with rhinestones.
Qwilleran bit into a rich, dark chocolate square—soft and still warm from the oven and filled with walnut meats—while Mrs. Cobb rocked industriously in the twiggy rocking chair.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said. “What I said about Andy’s horoscope—I really wasn’t serious. I mean I never actually thought there was anything in it. I wouldn’t want to stir up any trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well, I just heard that you’re a crime reporter, and I thought you might be here to—”
“That’s ancient history,” Qwilleran assured her. “Who told you?”
“The Dragon. I went over to borrow some beeswax, and she told me you were a famous crime reporter in New York or somewhere, and I thought you might be here to snoop around. I honestly never thought Andy’s fall was anything but a misstep on that ladder, and I was afraid you might get the wrong idea.”
“I see,” said Qwilleran. “Well, don’t worry about it. I haven’t had an assignment on the crime beat in a dog’s age.”
“That’s a load off my mind,” she said, and she relaxed and began to survey the apartment with a proprietary air.
“Do you care for that papered wall?” she asked with a critical squint. “It would drive me crazy to lie in bed and look at all those printed pages from books. They’re applied with peelable paste, so you can pull them off if you object—”
“To tell the truth, I rather like that wall,” Qwilleran said as he helped himself to a second chocolate brownie. “It’s Don Quixote mixed with Samuel Pepys.”
“Well, everyone to his own taste. Are you going away for Christmas? I’ll be glad to look after the cats.”
“No. No plans.”
“Do you have a Christmas party at the office?”
“Just a Christmas Eve affair at the Press Club.”
“You must have a very interesting job!” She stopped rocking and looked at him with frank admiration.
“Koko!” Qwilleran shouted. “Stop tormenting Yum Yum.” Then he added to Mrs. Cobb, “They’re both neutered, but Koko sometimes behaves in a suspicious way.”
The landlady giggled and poured another cup of coffee for him. “If you’re going to be alone for Christmas,” she said, “you must celebrate with us. C.C. trims a big tree, and my son comes here from St. Louis. He’s sort of an architect. His father—my first husband—was a schoolteacher. I’m an English major myself, although you’d never guess it. I never read any more. In this business you don’t have time for anything. We’ve had this house four years, and there’s always something—”
She prattled on, and Qwilleran wondered abut this fatuous little woman. As a newsman, he was used to being cajoled and plied with food—the latter being one of the fringe benefits of the profession—but he would have preferred a landlady who was a degree less chummy, and he hoped she would leave before the dealers came down from Hernia Heaven.
Her overtures were innocent enough, he was sure. Her exuberance was simply a lack of taste. She was not amply endowed with gray matter, and her attempt to reverse herself about Andy’s accident was pathetically transparent. Had she guessed that her husband might be implicated, if it proved to be murder?
“He died of food poisoning—a rare botulism,” Mrs. Cobb was saying.
“Who?” asked Qwilleran.
“My first husband. I knew something tragic was going to happen. I’d seen it in his hand. I used to read palms—just as a hobby, you know. Would you like me to read your palm?”
“I don’t have much faith in palmistry,” Qwilleran said, beginning to edge out of the deep-cushioned Morris chair.
“Oh, be a sport! Let me read your future. I won’t tell you if it’s anything really bad. You don’t have to move an inch. You sit right where you are, and I’ll perch on the ottoman.”
She plumped her round hips down beside his propped foot and gave his leg a cordial pat, then reached for his hand. “Your right hand, please.” She held it in a warm moist grasp and stroked the palm a few times to straighten the curled and uncooperative fingers.
Trapped in the big chair, he wriggled uncomfortably and tried to devise a tactful escape.
“A very interesting palm,” she said, putting on one pair of glasses.
She was stroking his hand and bending her head close to study the lines when the room exploded in a frenzy of snarling and soprano screams. Koko had pounced on Yum Yum with a savage growl. Yum Yum shrieked and fought back. They rolled over and over, locked in a double stranglehold.
Mrs. Cobb jumped up. “Heavens! They’ll kill each other!”
Qwilleran yelled, smacked his hands at them, struggled to his feet and whacked the nearest cat’s rump. Koko gave a nasty growl, and Yum Yum broke away. Immediately Koko gave chase. The little female went up over the desk, round the Morris chair, under the tea table—with Koko in pursuit. Round and round the room they went, with Qwilleran shouting and Mrs. Cobb squealing. On the fourth lap of the flying circus, Yum Yum ducked under the tea table and Koko sailed over it. Qwilleran made a lucky grab for the coffee pot, but Koko skidded on the tray and sent the cream and sugar flying.
“The rug!” the landlady cried. “Get a towel, quick! I’ll get a sponge.”
She ran from the apartment just as the dealers came hurrying down from Hernia Heaven.
“What’s the uproar?” they said. “Who’s getting murdered?”
“Only a family quarrel,” Qwilleran explained, jerking his head toward the cats.
Koko and Yum Yum were sitting quietly in the Morris chair together. She was looking sweet and contented, and Koko was licking her face with affection.
ELEVEN
Cobb snored again that night. Qwilleran, waked at three o’clock by the pain in his knee, took some aspirin and then listened to the muffled snorts coming through the wall. He wished he had an ice pack. He wished he had never moved to Junktown. The whole community was accident prone, and it seemed to be contagious. Why had he paid a month’s rent in advance? No matter; he could stay long enough to complete the Junktown series and then move out, chalking it up to experience: Beware of prospective landladies who give you homemade apple pie. Yes, that was the smart thing to do—concentrate on writing a good series and quit snooping into the activities of a deceased junk dealer.
Then Qwilleran felt a familiar tingling sensation in the roots of his moustache, and he began to argue with himself.
—But you’ve got to admit there’s something dubious about the setup in Andy’s workroom.
—So he was murdered. So it was a prowler. Attempted robbery.
—A prowler would whack him on the head and then run. No, the whole incident looked staged. Staged, I said. Did you hear that?
—If you’re thinking about the retired actor, forget it. He’s a harmless old codger who likes animals. Koko took to him right away.
—Don’t forget how that avalanche slid off the roof at the appropriate moment. One of those icicles could have brained you. As for Koko, he can be remarkably subjective. He rejected Mrs. Cobb simply because she squeaked at him.
—Still, it would be interesting to know how she wrenched her back two months ago.
—Now you’re grabbing at straws. She doesn’t have the temperament for murder. It takes someone like Mary Duckworth—ice cold, single-minded, extremely capable.
—You’re wrong about her. She can be warm and compassionate. Besides, she would have no motive.
—Oh, no? She had quarreled with Andy. Who knows how serious it might have been?
—Undoubtedly they quarreled about the other woman in his life—still no motive for murder, if she loved him.
—Perhaps he was threatening to do something that would hurt
her more deeply than that.
—But Mary insists he was kind and thoughtful.
—He was also dogmatic and intolerant. He might be “doing his duty” again. That kind of person is a classic heel.
—I wish you’d shut up and let me go to sleep.
Eventually Qwilleran slept, and in the morning he was waked by two hungry cats, playing hopscotch on his bed and miraculously missing his sore knee. Cats had a sixth sense, he noted, that prevented them from hurting the people they liked. He gave them a good breakfast of canned crabmeat.
Later he was applying cold wet towels to his knee when he heard a knock. He took a deep breath of exasperation and moved painfully to open the door.
Iris Cobb was standing there, wearing her hat and coat and holding a plate of coffeecake. “I’m on my way to church,” she said. “Would you like some cranberry twists? I got up early and made them. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Thanks,” said Qwilleran, “but I’m afraid you’re trying to fatten me up.”
“How does the rug look this morning? Did the cream leave a spot?”
“Not bad, but if you want to send it out and have it cleaned, I’ll pay for it.”
“How’s your knee? Any better?”
“These injuries are always worse in the morning. I’m trying cold compresses.”
“Why don’t you have dinner with us around seven o’clock, and then you won’t have to go out of the house . . . . C.C. can tell you some interesting stories about Junktown,” she added when Qwilleran hesitated. “We’re having pot roast and mashed potatoes—nothing fancy. Just potatoes whipped with sour cream and dill. And a salad with Roquefort dressing. And coconut cake for dessert.”
“I’ll be there,” said Qwilleran.
As soon as he was dressed, he limped to the drugstore, being unable to survive Sunday without the Sunday papers. At the lunch counter he choked down two hard-boiled eggs that were supposed to be soft-boiled and gave himself indigestion by reading Jack Jaunti’s new column. Jaunti, who was half Qwilleran’s age, now had the gall to write a column of wit and wisdom from the Delphic heights of his adolescent ignorance.
The newsman spent the rest of the day nursing his crippled knee and pecking at his crippled typewriter, and his ailment activated the Florence Nightingale instinct that is common to cats. Every time he sat down, Yum Yum hopped on his lap, while Koko hovered nearby, looked concerned, spoke softly, and purred whenever Qwilleran glanced in his direction.
When seven o’clock arrived, whiffs of beef simmering with garlic and celery tops beckoned the newsman across the hall to the Cobbs’ apartment. C.C., shirtless and shoeless, sat with one leg thrown over the arm of his chair and a can of beer in his hand. He grunted at the arriving guest—a welcome more cordial than Qwilleran had expected—and Mrs. Cobb turned joyous eyes on her tenant and ushered him to a stately wing chair.
“It’s Charles II,” she said. “Best thing we own.” She pointed out other treasures, which he admired with reserve: a stuffed owl, a wood carving of an adenoidal eagle, an oil portrait of an infant with a bloated forty-year-old face, and an apothecary desk with two dozen tiny drawers of no use to anyone but an apothecary. A radio on the desk top pounded out a senseless, ceaseless beat.
Mrs. Cobb, playing the fussy hostess, passed a platter of tiny meat turnovers and served small glasses of cranberry juice cocktail on plates with lace paper doilies.
C.C. said, “Who you trying to impress with this fancy grub?”
“Our new tenant, of course. I wouldn’t slave over piroshki for a slob like you,” she said sweetly.
C.C. turned an unshaven but handsome face to Qwilleran. “If she starts buttering you up with her goodies, watch out, mister. She might poison you, like she did her first husband.” His tone was belligerent, but Qwilleran caught a glint in the man’s eye that was surprisingly affectionate.
“If I poison anybody,” his wife said, “it will be Cornball Cobb . . . . Would you all like to hear something interesting?” She reached under a small table and brought a portable tape recorder from its lower shelf. She rewound the reel, touched a green push button and said, “Now listen to this.”
As the tape started to unwind, the little machine gave forth an unearthly concert of gurgles, wheezes, whistles, hoots, honks, and snorts.
“Shut that damn thing off!” Cobb yelled, more in sport than in anger.
She laughed. “Now you know how you snore. You wouldn’t believe me, would you? You sound like a calliope.”
“Did you spend my good money just for that?” He got up and hit the red push button with a fist, silencing the recital, but he wore a peculiar look of satisfaction.
“I’m going to use this for evidence when I sue for divorce.” Mrs. Cobb winked at Qwilleran, and he squirmed in his chair. This display of thinly veiled sexuality between husband and wife made him feel like a Peeping Tom.
C.C. said, “When do we eat?”
“He hates my cooking,” Iris Cobb said, “but you should see him put it away.”
“I can eat anything,” her husband grumbled with good humor. “What kind of slop have we got today?”
When they sat down at the big kitchen table, he applied himself to his food and became remarkably genial. Qwilleran tried to visualize C.C. with a shave, a white shirt, and a tie. He could be a successful salesman, a middle-aged matinee idol, a lady-killer, a confidence man. Why had he chosen this grubby role in Junktown?
The newsman ventured to remark, “I met the Three Weird Sisters yesterday,” and waited for a reaction.
“How d’you like the redhead?” Cobb asked, leering at his plate. “If she didn’t have her foot in a cast, she’d chase you down the street.”
“And what do you think of our other tenant?” Mrs. Cobb asked. “Isn’t he a funny little man?”
“He puts on a pretty good show,” Qwilleran said. “He tells me he was a Broadway actor.”
C.C. snorted. “Nearest he ever got to Broadway was Macy’s toy department.”
His wife said, “Ben loves to play Santa Claus. Every Christmas he puts on a red suit and beard and goes to children’s hospital wards.”
“They must pay him for it,” said C.C. “He wouldn’t do it for free.”
“One day,” she went on, “there was an injured pigeon in the middle of Zwinger Street—with dozens of other pigeons fluttering around to protect it from traffic, and I saw Ben go out with a shoebox and rescue the bird.”
Qwilleran said, “He has a repulsive thing in his shop—a stuffed cat on a dusty velvet pillow.”
“That’s a pincushion. They were all the rage in the Gay Nineties.”
“Can he make a living from that dismal collection of junk? Or does he have a sideline, too?”
“Ben’s got a bundle salted away,” C.C. said. “He used to make big money in his day—before taxes got so high.” Mrs. Cobb gave her husband a startled look.
The man finished eating and pushed his dessert plate away. “I’m gonna scrounge tonight. Anybody want to come?”
“Where do you go?” Qwilleran asked.
“Demolition area. The old Ellsworth house is full of black walnut paneling if I can beat the other vultures to it. Russ says they’ve already grabbed the stained-glass windows.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” his wife said. “It’s so cold, and the ice is treacherous, and you know it isn’t legal.”
“Everybody does it just the same. Where do you think the Dragon got that Russian silver chandelier? She makes like she’s so high class, but you should see her with a crowbar!”
Mrs. Cobb said to Qwilleran. “C.C. got caught once and had to pay a heavy fine. You’d think he would have learned his lesson.”
“Aw, hell! It won’t happen twice,” her husband said. “Somebody tipped off the police the other time, and I know who it was. It won’t happen again.”
“Let’s take coffee in the living room,” Mrs. Cobb suggested.
Cobb lighted his cigar and Qwilleran lighted his pipe
and said, “I understand Junktown doesn’t get much cooperation from the city government.”
“Mister, you’d think we were some kind of disease that’s got to be wiped out,” Cobb said. “We asked for better street lights, and the city said no, because Junktown’s due to be torn down within the next ten years. Ten years! So we tried to put in old-fashioned gaslights at our own expense, but the city said no dice. All light poles gotta be forty feet high.”
“C.C. has spent days at City Hall,” said Mrs. Cobb, “when he could have been earning good money on the picket line.”
“We used to have big elm trees on this street,” her husband went on, “and the city cut ‘em down to widen the street. So we planted saplings on the curb, and guess what! Chop chop! They widened the street another two feet.”
“Tell Qwill about the signs, C.C.”
“Yeah, the signs. We all made old-time signs out of wormy wood, and the city made us take ‘em down. Unsafe, they said. Then Russ put hand-split cedar shingles on the front of his carriage house, and the city yanked ‘em off. Know why? They projected a half-inch over the sidewalk! Mister, the city wants this neighborhood to decline, so the land-grabbers can get it and the grafters can get their cut!”
“Now we’re planning a Christmas Block Party to bring in a little business,” said Mrs. Cobb, “but there’s so much red tape.”
“You gotta get permission to decorate the street. And if you want to play Christmas music outdoors, you get a permit from the Noise Abatement Commission. If you want to give door prizes, you get fingerprinted by the Gambling Commission. If you want to serve refreshments, you get a blood test at the Board of Health. Nuts!”
“Maybe the Daily Fluxion could expedite matters,” Qwilleran suggested. “We have some pull at City Hall.”
“Well, I don’t care one way or the other. I’m gonna go scrounging.”
“I’d go with you,” said the newsman, “if I didn’t have this bum knee.”
Mrs. Cobb said to her husband, “Don’t go alone! Can’t you get Ben to go with you?”
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, Ate Danish Modern, Turned on and Off Page 10