The Cat Who Played Brahms

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  When he left he was carrying one of Rosemary's catnip toys. "While you're here," he told her, "be sure to visit the flower gardens at the prison. The tulips are out now.

  Everything is later here than Down Below, you know." After he had gone Rosemary said: "What a nice young man! I can visit the gardens this afternoon while you're working on your book. I'd also like to get my hair done if I can get an appointment." The Siamese were delighted with their new plaything, catnip tied in the toe of a sock.

  Koko was especially dexterous, batting it with a paw, chasing it, tumbling with it, then losing it in some remote nook or crevice.

  Qwilleran, on the other hand, was less than delighted with his late breakfast. It consisted of a fresh fruit compote sprinkled with an unidentified powder resembling cement, followed by a cereal containing several mysterious ingredients — some chewy, some gummy, some sandy. He knew it was all the Right Food, and he consumed everything without comment but refused to give up his morning caffeine in favor of brewed herbs.

  Rosemary said: "I found some dreadful commercial rolls in your freezer, made with white flour and covered with sugary icing. You don't want to eat that junk, Qwill dearest. I threw them out." He huffed into his moustache and said nothing. After her noisy car had chugged down the drive and headed for Bob's Chop Shop, Qwilleran planned his own day. He set up his typewriter on the dining table, together with writing tools and scattered papers, in a realistic tableau of creative industry. Then he telephoned Mildred: "How are you doing?" "I'm not as hysterical as I was yesterday," she said, "but I feel terrible. Do you realize what it's like to have your next-door neighbor murdered?" "We've all got to start locking our door, Mildred — the way they do Down Below." "Buck and Sarah and Betty were such good friends of mine. We played bridge all the time. He'll be buried in his hometown, and the girls have taken off already, so it's quiet and gloomy. I miss hearing the woodworking machines. Would you like to drop in?

  I'll make a strawberry pie." "I have a houseguest," Qwilleran said, "and I was going to suggest that you and your husband come for drinks and then be my guests at the hotel dining room." "You're very sweet," she said, "but he's awfully busy on the farm right now. Why don't you bring your guest down here? I'll read the tarot cards for you." Next on Qwilleran's agenda was a trip into Mooseville. Before leaving the cabin he checked the whereabouts of the Siamese, closed the windows, and enjoyed the familiar ritual of locking the door. Leaving the cabin without locking up was an unnatural act that had made him uneasy ever since coming to Mooseville.

  For the last three days he had nursed a desire to take another look at the Minnie K, simply to convince himself that the boat really existed. He headed west, retracing the route taken with the unforgettable Whatleys. Beyond the Cannery Mall and beyond the FOO the landscape was dotted with ramshackle cottages, each with a junk car in the yard, a TV antenna on the roof, and gray laundry on the clothesline. Finally he turned down the lane alongside the trash-filled canal.

  There at the end of the rotting wharf was the boat with the torn, gray, spotted canvas chairs on the deck. But it was no longer the Minnie K; it was the Seagull, according to the freshly painted stern board. There was no sign of a crew. Farther down the shore other boats of equal dilapidation were moored in Monday morning lassitude.

  From one of those moldy decks, Qwilleran was sure, someone had been thrown into the icy lake.

  On the return trip to Mooseville he stopped at the FOO for coffee and the Monday edition of the Pickax Picayune. The news item he sought was buried at the bottom of page five under the Euchre Club scores. It was headlined: Incident on East Shore. Qwilleran read it twice.

  Buford Dunfield, 59, retired police officer and long- time summer resident of Mooseville, was found dead in the basement workshop of his posh East Shore cottage Sunday morning, the apparent victim of an unknown assailant, who attacked him with a blunt instrument just a few hours before his wife, Sarah Dunfield, 56, and his sister, Betty Dunfield, 47, returned home from their annual summer visit to Canada, where they attended three Shakespearean plays. Police are investigating.

  The restaurant was buzzing with conversation about fishing. Qwilleran suspected the customers switched to that subject automatically whenever an outsider walked in.

  His next stop was the tourist bureau. Roger was seated at his desk, bantering with a visitor — a fresh-faced youth who lounged in a chair expertly balanced on two legs, with his feet propped on Roger's desk.

  "Qwill! You're just in time to meet the managing editor of the Pickax Picayune," Roger exclaimed. "This is Junior Goodwinter, one of your admirers. We were just talking about you." The young man jumped to his feet. "Wow! The great man in person!" "And yet another of the famous Goodwinters," Qwilleran said. "I knew you were a journalist by the way you balanced that chair. Congratulations on your coverage of the Dunfield murder. That was the most succinct seventy-one-word sentence I've ever read." "Wow! You counted!" "You omitted only one pertinent fact: the titles of the plays that the ladies attended in Canada." "Now you're putting me on," said Junior. "At last I realize why you don't have any crime up here. You have 'incidents' instead. Brilliant solution to the crime problem." "Aw, take the nails out, will you? I know we do things in a different way up here — different from what I learned in J school anyhow. We're country, and you're city. Would you mind if I interview you some day?" "My pleasure. Maybe I'd learn something." "Well, so long. I've got to get out and sell some ads, Junior said.

  Qwilleran was shocked. "Don't tell me you sell advertising as well as edit the paper!" "Sure, we all sell ads. My father owns the paper, and he sells ads and sets the type." The managing editor loped out of the office in his jogging shoes, and Qwilleran's face registered amazement and amusement. "Isn't he young for a managing editor?" he said to Roger.

  "He's been working at the paper since he was twelve. Worked his way up. Graduated from State last year. Ambitious kid." "I've always wanted to own a small newspaper." "You could buy the Picayune cheap, but it would take a lot of dough to drag it into the twentieth century.

  It was founded in 1859 and hasn't changed since… Anything I can do for you today?" "Yes. You have all the answers. Tell me who killed Buck Dunfield." Roger flushed, "That's a tough one, I haven't heard any scuttlebutt. Sharon and I went over to see Mildred yesterday, and she was really shook up." "Was it a random killing? Did Dunfield have enemies? Or was he involved in something we don't know about?" Roger shrugged. "I don't know much about the summer people." "He lived next door to your mother-in-law and made candlesticks to sell in your wife's store. You never met him?" "I guess I met him on the beach a couple of times and had a few words." "You're lying, Roger. Are you practicing to be politician?" Roger raised both hands. "Don't shoot!" Then he gave Qwilleran a mocking grin. "Been doing any fishing from the Minnie K lately?" "Tell you something interesting," Qwilleran said. "I went back to have another look at the old scow this morning, and the name's been changed to Seagull with the S painted backward." Roger nodded. "I can tell you why, if you want to know. The skipper was probably afraid you'd go around blabbing about a body in the lake, and you'd involve the Minnie K.

  Then he'd be fined for operating an illegal charter service. Boats have to be registered before they can take trolling parties. From what you say about the Minnie K, she'd never pass the inspection." Qwilleran had one more mission to pursue that afternoon. His curiosity about the buried pail kept luring him back to the cemetery, and now that he could identify poison ivy he was ready for another expedition. Weekend activity in the lovers' lane had increased the amount of picnic litter, and the sunny days and rainy nights had done wonders for the weeds in the graveyard itself. He found the vicious vines with three pointed leaves around the small headstones, and he remembered how he had torn at them to read the inscriptions. Then he followed the faint foot-trail behind the Campbell monument.

  The pail was still camouflaged by scattered weeds, and it was still empty. But it had been used for some purpose. There were b
its of straw in the bottom of the pail, and the top-handle on the lid, which Qwilleran had left at right angle to the headstone, was now askew.

  Qwilleran didn't linger. He hurried back to the cabin in order to arrive before Rosemary. The whiffs of rotting fish, increasing in pungency, aggravated his cheerless mood. Rosemary, on the other hand, breezed into the cabin bubbling with enthusiasm and carrying an armload of yellow, white, pink, red, and purplish-black tulips.

  "The prison gardens are lovely," she said. "You must go to see them, Qwill dearest. A charming man gave me these to bring home. How many pages did you write today?" "I never count," Qwilleran said.

  "It's a lovely new prison. A very friendly woman outside the gate invited me to join PALS. That's the Prisoner Aid Ladies' Society, or something like that. They write letters to the inmates and send them little presents." "Did you hear any gossip about the murder?" "Not a word! Do you have any vases for these tulips? I have some groceries in the car for our dinner. I picked up some fresh fish and lovely parsnips and brussel sprouts-and some carrots for the kitty cats. You should grate a little carrot and mix it with their food every day." Brussel sprouts! Parsnips! Qwilleran had been thinking about a sixteen-ounce steak and French fries with ketchup and Parker-House rolls and a Roquefort salad and deep-dish apple pie with cheddar cheese and three cups of coffee.

  "Will the fish keep?" he asked. "I'd like to take you to the Northern Lights Hotel for dinner. My day hasn't been productive, and I need a change of scene." "Why, of course! That sounds lovely," Rosemary said. "Do I have time to walk on the beach for an hour?" "You won't like it. The beach is covered with dead fish." "That won't bother me," she said. "It's part of nature." Leaving tulips in a lemonade pitcher on the mantel, in a flour canister on the dining table, and in an ice bucket on the bar, Rosemary tripped jubilantly down the slope to the beach.

  Qwilleran sprawled on one of the sofas. "Koko, I feel like an idiot," he told the cat, who was studying him intently from the back of the sofa. "I don't have a single clue.

  What are we working with? A dead body in the lake, the murder of a retired cop, and a message on a cassette. Someone has been using this cabin for some kind of illicit or illegal purpose. Never mind who. We don't even know what." "YOW!" said Koko, blinking his large blue eyes.

  Qwilleran brought the cassette from his dresser drawer and once more played Little White Lies. The voice cut in: "… bring up more stuff… gotta make some changes..

  things are gettin' hot… at the boat dock after supper." It was a high-pitched nasal voice with a monotonous inflection.

  "I've heard that voice before," Qwilleran said to Koko, but the cat was playing with his catnip toy. "Things were getting hot because Buck was closing in on his investigation. Some changes had to be made because the cabin was no longer available as a depot." That voice! That voice! He had heard it at the post office, or at the FOO, or at the General Store, or in the hotel dining room.

  No! Qwilleran snapped to attention. The voice on the cassette was the voice he had heard in the fog, when two men were brawling on another boat. One voice had a deep rumble and a British accent. The other man spoke with a piercing twang and a flat inflection. As he recalled, something had happened to the engine, and they were arguing, apparently, about the best way to get it started.

  CLUNK!

  Qwilleran recognized the clunk of a book being pushed from a bookshelf and landing on the floor. Koko had done it before. He was never clumsy; if he knocked something down it was for a good reason.

  Koko was on the second shelf, digging behind a row of books to extricate his sockful of catnip. The book he had dislodged was a treatise on historic shipwrecks. It was lying open on the floor — open to a page marked by a folded slip of paper.

  There on page 102 was an account of the sinking of the Waterhouse B. Duncan, a freighter carrying a rich cargo of copper ingots. It went down in treacherous water north of Mooseville during a severe storm in November 1913. All lives were lost: three passengers and a crew of twenty-three, including a woman cook.

  The folded slip that marked page 102 was a penciled agreement to rent a boat for thirteen summer weekends, terms to be decided. It was dated the previous year and was signed S. Hanstable.

  There was something about this information that jogged Qwilleran's memory. Somewhere in one of her letters Aunt Fanny had mentioned… what? The recollection was a vague one. He delved into his correspondence file and groaned; not only were her letters cross- written but her handwriting was extremely individual, and the multitude of dashes made each page a dazzling plaid.

  He put on his reading glasses and squinted through half a dozen pages before he found the reference that was nagging his memory. On April third she had first offered him the use of the cabin. Written in her telegraphic style, the letter read:

  Charming little place — built entirely of Logs — quite comfortable — I'm getting Older — don't enjoy it so much — last summer decided to rent — two handsome young men — interested in marine history — came up on weekends — their girlfriends stayed all week — horrid creatures — played games with spaghetti — threw it at the ceiling — unspeakable mess — two weeks to clean the place — never again!

  Qwilleran's moustache bristled, the way it did when he thought he had found a clue.

  The bookmark raised other questions: Did Roger's wife own a boat? Did she print like a kindergarten teacher? Did she spell «decided» with an s?

  10

  Before taking Rosemary out to dinner Qwilleran fed the cats, both of whom fastidiously avoided every shred of carrot that contaminated their corned beef.

  He had made a reservation at the Northern Lights Hotel in order to get one of the high-backed booths constructed from the salvaged cabins of retired fishing boats. Diners in these booths had to be careful to avoid splinters, and in humid weather the booths exuded haunting reminders of their origin, but they were ideal for confidential conversation.

  Rosemary was wearing a Mooseville T-shirt and a braided leather necklace from the prison gift shop, and she looked so youthful, so vibrant, so healthy that Qwilleran found it hard to believe she had a grandson old enough to be in medical school. She hung her shoulder-strap bag on a hook at the entrance to the booth. "Isn't it wonderful," she said, "not to worry about theft! At home, when I go to a restaurant, I put this bag on the floor, keep my foot on it, and wind the strap around my ankle." The menu cover reproduced an engraving of a terrifying storm on the lake, and the paper placemats listed the dates of major shipwrecks plus the number of lives lost.

  Bon appetit, Qwilleran thought. He said to Rosemary: "You can order the poached scrod with cauliflower if you wish, but I'm going to have a large steak with fries… Don't look so shocked. I know the Right Food has done wonders for you; you don't seem a day over thirty-nine. But it's too late for me. The only time I ever looked thirty-nine was when I was twenty-five." "Truce! Truce!" she said, waving a paper napkin. "I didn't mean to be a nag, Qwill.

  You order whatever you want, and don't apologize. You're under creative pressure with your book, and you've earned a treat. How many chapters have you written? Would you read me a few pages tonight?" "And another thing, Rosemary: Please don't keep asking about my progress. I don't have a daily quota or a deadline, and when I'm not sitting at my typewriter I want to forget about it entirely." "Why, certainly, Qwill. I've never known an author personally. You'll have to tell me how to behave." He kept glancing across the room toward a party of four seated beneath a large painting of a drowning sailor in shark-infested water. "Don't look now," he said, "but the two men over there are wreck-divers, I've been told. They loot sunken ships." The men were tall, lean, and stony-faced. "They look like cigarette ads," Rosemary said, "and the girls with them look like models. How did they get those gorgeous tans so early in the season? And why don't they look happy? Their diet is probably inadequate." "I've seen the girls walking on the beach," Qwilleran said. "I think they're staying at a cottage near ours. They may be the four
who rented Fanny's cabin last year." He told how Koko had attracted his attention to the shipwreck book and how he had waded through the cross-written correspondence. "If you're looking for a quick way to get a headache," he added, "I'll lend you a few of Fanny's letters." "When am I going to meet her?" "Tomorrow or Wednesday. I'd like to ask her about these so-called marine historians and about her relationship with Buck Dunfield. There's one obstacle; it's hard to get her attention." "Some types of deafness are caused by a diet deficiency," Rosemary said.

  "She's not deaf, I'm sure. She simply chooses not to listen. Maybe you'll be able to get through to her, Rosemary. She seems to favor women… Excuse me a moment. I want to catch those people before they leave." He crossed the room to the wreck-divers and addressed the more formidable of the two.

  "Pardon me, sir. Aren't you a correspondent for one of the wire services?" The man shook his head. "Sorry, you're on the wrong track," he said in a deep and less-than-cordial voice.

  "But you're a journalist, aren't you? Didn't you do graduate work at Columbia? You covered the last presidential election." "Sorry, none of the above." Qwilleran made a good show of bewilderment and turned to the second man. "I was sure you were a press photographer, and you two worked together on big assignments." More genially the other man said: "Nothin' like that, suh. We're jest a coupla bums up heah awn vacation." Qwilleran apologized, wished them a pleasant holiday, and returned to the booth.

  "What was that all about?" Rosemary asked.

  "Tell you later." On the way home he explained: "I think there's a syndicate operating around here.

  They've been using Fanny's cabin for an underground headquarters. It's secluded; the doors have always been unlocked; and there are three avenues of access or escape: from the beach, from the highway, and from the woods. The boss has been giving tape-recorded orders to his henchmen, hiding the cassette behind the moose head." Rosemary laughed. "Qwill, dear, I know you're kidding me." "I'm serious." "Do you think it's drug-related?" "I think it's shipwreck-looting. The lake is full of valuable wrecks, and there's a book at the cabin that pinpoints their location and describes their cargoes. Some of the boats went down more than a hundred years ago." "But wouldn't the cargo be ruined by this time?" "Rosemary, they weren't shipping automobiles and TV sets in 1850. They were shipping copper ingots and gold bullion. The shipping manifests tell exactly what was aboard each vessel when it sank — how many barrels of whiskey, how many dollars in banknotes and gold. At one time this part of the country was booming." "Why did you talk to the men at the hotel?" "I thought one of them might be the ringleader, but there's no similarity between their voices and the one on the cassette. None at all. But the ringleader is around here somewhere." "Oh, Qwill! You have a fantastic imagination." When they arrived at the cabin Qwilleran unlocked the door and Rosemary entered. He heard her yelp: "Oh! Oh! There are tulips all over the floor!" "Those cats!" Qwilleran bellowed-loud enough to send both of them flying to the guest room.