Only the Cat Knows

by Marian Babson

  ‘No, no, I’m fine.’ I shrank away. Look all you like, but mustn’t touch! The unwritten rule of all the clubs I had ever played in was firm in my mind. It applied more than ever here. And now.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I apologized to the others with a gallant little smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m not as strong as I thought I was …’ I faltered to a stop as, in looking around, I inadvertently met Ivor’s gaze. He was quivering with a sympathy and understanding I didn’t believe for one instant. He also appeared to be trying to signal something to me.

  ‘I need rest now,’ I said firmly. ‘Lots of rest. I’ll take a sleeping pill, perhaps two …’ That should be plain enough — even to him. The bolt on the door would reinforce the message.

  ‘That sounds like an excellent plan.’ Monica still hovered at my side, obviously prepared to catch me if I fainted. ‘And you mustn’t dream of trying to join us tomorrow evening if you don’t feel completely up to it.’

  We were out of the dining room now and walking along the cloister. I dared to straighten up and walk a bit faster.

  ‘Slow down.’ Monica said. ‘You’re already too tired. You don’t want to overdo it.’

  ‘Yes … yes, you’re right. I’m sorry …’ I slowed, swayed and fluttered, going into my modified dying-swan routine again. ‘But suddenly, I just … wanted to get back … to lie down … to sleep …’

  ‘You have overdone it.’ Monica was contrite. ‘I should have insisted you stay quiet for a few days before you attempted anything social. It was too much for you.’

  ‘It was just … all those people … all at once,’ I apologized. ‘And all of them strangers to me … and they didn’t seem to know they were.’

  ‘I understand,’ Monica assured me. ‘I’ll speak to them again. And I’ll see that you take it easier. I’ll have your meals served in your room for the rest of the week. That should give you time to get your bearings.’

  ‘No, please —’ I’d overplayed it, the last thing I wanted was to be confined to quarters for days. ‘I don’t want to be any bother to you.’

  ‘It’s no bother for me.’ Monica smiled faintly. ‘If you had any memory, you’d know we keep a full staff. They’ll take care of everything.’

  ‘Of course. I should have known. Dinner was served so smoothly … so unobtrusively.’

  ‘They either train up well,’ Monica nodded in self-congratulation, ‘or they don’t last. Everett Oversall demands perfection — and pays for it.’

  I had the uneasy feeling that I had just been given a not-particularly-coded message. Had Nessa not been shaping up satisfactorily? Or was there something else she might remember — if she could?

  ‘Here we are.’ With relief, I pulled the key from the pocket of my kaftan as we reached my door.

  Monica’s eyebrows flicked upwards, but she didn’t comment. I gathered that no one locked their doors around here. But they didn’t know what I knew.

  ‘Goodnight.’ I cut off any possible suggestion that she might accompany me any farther. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘Not at all.’ She stepped back. ‘I hope you sleep well.’

  So did I. With a final exchange of smiles, I closed the door gently as she turned away. For a long moment, I leaned against the door, eyes closed, while the tension drained out of me. It had been harder than I had anticipated, but now that I had jumped the first hurdle, it might be easier.

  I locked the door and shot the bolt home. Before I went to dinner, I had closed the inner shutters, drawn the heavy floor-length curtains and left a small lamp alight so that I wouldn’t come back to darkness. Even so, there was something that did not feel right. I looked around uneasily.

  Where was the cat?

  ‘Gloriana?’ I called. ‘Glori —?’

  No response. No sign of her.

  I replayed the last few minutes in my mind. I hadn’t opened the door wide, just enough to allow me to slip through. I had felt no movement at my feet, as of a cat darting out. When I had turned to close the door, Monica was the only one walking along the cloister. The cat couldn’t have moved out of sight that quickly.

  She must still be in here. Hiding.

  ‘Glori —? It’s only me. I thought we were friends now. Where are you?’ Checking dark corners on the way, I moved into the bedroom. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are. Glori …?’

  She had to be here. Somewhere.

  ‘Gloriana? Duchess?’

  I was conscious of a faint movement, a stirring where the bedspread brushed the floor.

  Slowly, cautiously, a little pink nose poked out.

  ‘It’s all right. You can come out. You’re safe.’

  Why had I said that? Why shouldn’t she be safe, here alone in Nessa’s bedroom?

  The rest of the head emerged, ears laid back, eyes wild and frightened. Seeing no one but me, she came all the way out from under the bed, her fur bristled, her tail a bush.

  ‘What the hell?’ I stooped to pick her up. She cringed and stiffened in initial resistance, but as I cuddled her against my chest, she caught the scent of Nessa’s perfume and stopped struggling.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s spooked you?’

  She looked up at me and allowed herself one faint plaintive mew before turning her head away to stare anxiously around the room.

  I followed her gaze, turning my head with hers, until it stopped at the closet door and her tiny body quivered. If she weren’t a cat, she’d make a good bird dog. The door was ajar.

  I was sure I had closed it. Nessa and I always closed doors. It was the way we had been brought up; you don’t waste money by heating unused spaces.

  ‘Have we had a visitor?’ I murmured soothingly, creeping up on the door. ‘An intruder? While I was out …?’

  In the pool of sudden light when I swung the door open, I could see that the suitcase I had supposedly brought home from the hospital had been moved slightly. I bent to inspect it. The lock seemed a little scratched, but it had not been broken. I was glad that I had locked my make-up box safely inside.

  Whatever someone was looking for, it seemed that they had not found it in the original search. Apparently, they had concluded that it had gone to hospital with me and they hoped I had brought it back.

  Gloriana lifted her head suddenly and growled. But not at me. She was staring into the darkness at the back of the closet.

  ‘All right.’ I straightened up and could just barely discern a dark shape trying to blend into the shadows. ‘I suggest you come out now. With your hands raised.’ I put a lifetime of thriller-attending menace into the implied threat, although the worst I could shoot at anyone was an angry cat. That might have been enough.

  ‘That sodding cat!’ One of the blonde clones walked slowly forward. ‘It gave me away, didn’t it?’

  Chapter Five

  Gloriana stretched out her neck and hissed violently; the dislike was mutual.

  ‘She’s a clever girl.’ I stroked Gloriana fondly. ‘Unlike some I could mention. Who are you? How did you get in here? I locked the door when I went out to dinner and it was still locked just now.’

  ‘That means nothing here.’ She faced me defiantly. ‘As you very well know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘You don’t think I believe that!’ But there was a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

  ‘Believe it or not —’ I shrugged — ‘it’s the truth.’

  ‘I heard … we were told … about your … problem. But I can’t believe you don’t remember me. We’re friends … best friends.’ She moved forward and reached out to touch my arm. ‘Confidantes.’

  Gloriana hissed again. She stepped back quickly.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  Frankly, I preferred to believe the cat. Her opinion of the stranger seemed to be on a par with her opinion of Beloved — and she had been right about him.

  ‘Vanessa —’ she tried again. ‘I must ta
lk to you. Remind you —’

  ‘So, in your anxiety to have a girlish chat, you sneak in here and hide in my closet?’

  ‘That … that was a mistake.’ She hung her head. ‘I realized it as soon as I heard your key in the lock. That was why I changed my mind and hid in the closet. I was going to stay there until you were asleep, then leave and talk to you in the morning.’

  ‘Mmm-hmmm. And you left the door ajar so that you could peek out and watch for the coast to be clear.’ And wouldn’t she have got an eyeful?

  I’d have been very quiet. You’d never have known.’

  But you would. I looked at her, keeping my face blank. She was one of the two who had slipped out of the library, who had not appeared at dinner. Too busy taking the opportunity to search my rooms. I’d caught her, but where was her friend?

  ‘Vanessa, don’t look at me like that.’ She stretched out her hand again, but Gloriana shifted in my arms and she pulled it back swiftly. ‘I said I’m sorry. I apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re my friend —’

  ‘I’m still waiting for you to tell me your name,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Kiki …’ she faltered. ‘Vanessa, it’s me, Kiki.’

  ‘Kiki who?’

  ‘Kiki — Oh, God, I can’t believe this! Kiki van Grooten.’

  ‘Kiki van Grooten.’ We were making progress. ‘You’re Dutch, then. Your English is very good.’

  ‘No, oh, no!’ She looked at me in horror. ‘You know that’s my stepfather’s name. Mummy married Janwillem van Grooten, the diamond merchant. I’m as English as you are!’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ I said coldly, ‘suppose you give me back my key.’ I held out my hand.

  ‘Oh, I can’t believe this!’ But she produced a key from some fold of her clothing and reluctantly held it out, keeping her distance from the cat. ‘And we were such good friends,’ she mourned.

  ‘And we might be again.’ Somehow, I didn’t believe it for a moment. ‘Once we have a chance to get re-acquainted.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘You … you seem changed. You’re … harder … unforgiving.’

  Getting pushed off a parapet will do that to a girl And that was an interesting word for her to use. What else was there to forgive? More than just snooping around in my quarters, I suspected.

  ‘Perhaps the fall brought out another side of my personality.’ I whisked the key away from her. ‘And if anyone else has any of these, you might pass the word that I want them back. Or perhaps it might be simpler to have the lock changed.’

  ‘If you think that will make any difference —’ for a moment, her mask of contrition slipped and she was openly, blatantly mocking — ‘then you really have lost your memory!’

  ‘Well,’ I said to the Duchess as the door slammed behind our unwanted visitor, ‘what was that all about? And are there any more around like her?’

  Evidently not. Relaxed now, the cat abandoned my protective arms and leaped to the floor, heading for the shelf that held the cat crunchies. Repelling invaders can bring on an appetite.

  I gave her a generous handful — she’d earned them — and went back to investigate the farthest reaches of that closet to make certain that no one else was lurking there. Like her friend, Nina, for instance — they had left the library together.

  But, wherever she was, Nina wasn’t in there. What was? I wondered. What was it they were looking for? Something small, since, having once searched the place, they were trying again, with particular attention to the suitcase I had brought back from the hospital. The most valuable — and incriminating — thing in that was my make-up box. The real reason I kept any case containing it locked at all times. Engagements at too many slippery little clubs on the way up had taught me that helping themselves to other people’s make-up was one of the things certain performers could be conscienceless about. Rather like not returning books, I suppose. Some things were deemed to be public property — unless you kept a good watch on them.

  Somewhere outside, a seagull called again — or perhaps another cat. Gloriana cocked her head to listen.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

  She gave me her huffy Duchess look. It was obviously none of my business.

  ‘Only asking.’ I shrugged and turned away. I could be indifferent, too.

  The cry outside was not repeated; the silence deepened. I wondered what the others did through the long nights. Unless they all had small television sets secreted in their rooms. Officially, television was barred, Nessa had told me in one of her early letters, except for the cinema-size set in the study. Old Oversall liked to keep his companions around him in his leisure hours — and he chose the programmes for viewing himself. It wouldn’t be surprising if there were a few smuggled sets around. Most of the ladies comprising his retinue had been independent spirits with minds of their own — until he had suborned them.

  Perhaps the younger ones still were. And perhaps it didn’t matter so much any more to the older ones; their world had faded away, as all worlds do. No more the glitzy nightclubs where they had sipped champagne from crystal glasses while music with melodies and narrative lyrics played softly in the background.

  The sort of places where Yvonne Beauclerc had started her career, sighing, gurgling and moaning her laments of lost love and betrayal into the blue haze of cigarette smoke that helped create the cloudy dreamy sense of unreality and a private world only found in old movies these days.

  Which was where Yvonne had had a few more brief moments of fame. But, as was usual when film makers found themselves with a chanteuse under contract, they didn’t know what to do with her. A few appearances as a featured player — always in nightclub scenes, crooning into a microphone while the camera cut away to the more important business of the hero and heroine at a nearby table, invariably plotting together to uncover a killer, or a spy ring, and falling in love.

  After a few of these clinkers, Yvonne had returned to the international cabaret circuit, trading on her screen credits as much as her voice.

  Somewhere along the way, Everett Oversall had entered the scene and she had become his ‘new romance’, as the gossip columnists of the day — ever careful of the libel laws — had tactfully phrased it.

  Oh, yes, I’d done my homework on the Internet before I came here, pulling up everything possible on Oversall’s background. Most of it was from files of tabloid newspaper gossip from his playboy years; he had kept an exceptionally low profile before that.

  But the meeting with Yvonne had been the beginning of his nightclubbing phase. Constant photographs had appeared in all the tabloids and some of the broadsheets. It became noticeable that his entourage was expanding. He collected Candy Shaeffer in New York and added Amanda Sloane in London. While others came and went, they remained to form a stable core.

  A few years later, when Oversall shares wobbled a bit and shareholders grew restless, most of the publicity ceased. The earlier, more serious and work-centred Oversall re-emerged; a man dedicated solely to his business interests. All mention of the women in his background disappeared, although they didn’t.

  Rumour had it that Candy Shaeffer, who had cut her fangs as a New York public relations executive, was masterminding the repositioning of Oversall in the business world. It worked. There hadn’t been a photograph of him in anything but Captain of Industry mode for the last decade or so.

  Amazing how much one can gather from the gossip columns over the years. Now all I had to do was keep pretending that I didn’t know a thing and couldn’t recognize anyone from anywhere.

  ‘Tricky.’ I told my audience. ‘Very tricky.’

  The cat had been crouched nearby, watching closely as I went through my bedtime routine. She blinked when I finished shaving and rubbed in moisturizer.

  Nessa’s moisturizer, smooth and creamy, with a faint scent of lilacs, bringing back the springtimes of our childhood, when the lilac bushes in the garden came into full bloom and their heavy fragrance blended with t
he sea air. I wondered if that were why Nessa used this particular brand; it would remind her, too, of those carefree days.

  Nessa! My heart twisted abruptly. How was she now? Why had there been no news? Because there was none or …

  Or because I was Nessa now. Dr Anderson could not issue bulletins on the state of a patient presumably discharged and back in circulation. I would get a private report when he came to examine ‘me’ and check ‘my’ progress.

  Eyes wide, whiskers quivering, the cat inched forward a bit. I could see her problem: I looked like Vanessa, I smelled like Vanessa, but …

  Suddenly she straightened up, alert and turning towards the outer door. I followed her into the sitting room and up to the door.

  Nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, the doorknob wasn’t moving. But I trusted my little honorary bird dog — and she was pointing.

  We both waited silently. Nothing happened. Perhaps the cat was just as jumpy as I was right now and it was a false alarm. Or someone had passed by, walking innocently along the cloister.

  Then she moved forward again, neck stretched out, nose twitching. I saw that something had already happened.

  A triangular corner of paper almost the same shade as the carpet peeked from beneath the door. We both eyed it mistrustfully.

  I decided I was in no hurry to pick it up. The cat looked up at me impatiently, but I shook my head.

  ‘Later,’ I whispered. If anyone was lurking about outside, waiting for me to discover their missive, let them wait until they gave up and went away.

  I chose a book from Nessa’s shelves and tried to read. The cat continued to stand guard at the door.

  After half an hour, I joined her to slowly pull in our catch and examine it. It was a small plain card, the size of a calling card.

  The message was printed in block capitals:

  WHEN YOU REMEMBER,

  I’LL BE WAITING.

  I stared at it for a long time, wondering which way to read it.

  As a romantic promise? Or a threat?