“My car flipped over in a ditch on Ittibittiwassee Road Sunday night, and it’s totaled,” Qwilleran said and waited for a sympathetic comment. There was no reaction from the mesmerized driver, so he continued.
“Fortunately I had my seat belt fastened, and I wasn’t hurt except for a lump on my elbow as big as a golf ball and a stitch in my side, but the cats were thrown from the car. They disappeared in the woods. By the time I found them, they’d had an altercation with a skunk, and I had to drive them to the animal clinic. Did you ever spend fifteen minutes with two skunked animals in a car with the windows closed?”
There was no reply.
“I didn’t dare roll the windows down more than an inch or two, because the cats were loose in the backseat, and I didn’t know how wild they’d be after their experience. I couldn’t breathe, Edd! I thought of stopping at the hospital for a shot of oxygen. Instead I just stepped on the gas and hoped I wouldn’t turn blue.”
Even this dramatic account failed to distract Eddington’s concentration from the road.
“When I got home, I took a bath in tomato juice. Mr. O’Dell raided three grocery stores and bought every can they had on the shelf. He had to burn my clothes and the cats’ coop. Their commodes were in the car when it flipped, and they rattled around like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. One of them conked me on the head. I’m still combing gravel out of my hair and moustache.”
Qwilleran peered into Eddington’s face with concern. He was conscious, but that was all.
“The cats were deodorized at the clinic, but there’s no guarantee it’ll last. I may have to buy a gallon of Old Spice. I’m trying to keep them downwind.”
After a while Qwilleran tired of hearing his own voice, and they drove in funereal silence until they reached the Fitch mansion. Eddington parked the car at the backdoor in a service yard enclosed by a high, stone wall.
If the murderers had parked there, Qwilleran observed, their vehicle would not have been visible from either of the approach roads; on the other hand, if they had stationed a lookout in the vehicle, he could not have seen David and Jill approaching. The lookout may have been patrolling the property with a walkie-talkie, he decided.
Eddington had a key to the back door, which led into a large service hall—the place where Harley’s body had been found. Doors opened into the kitchen, laundry, butler’s pantry, and servants’ dining room. Qwilleran was carrying the wicker hamper; Eddington was carrying a shopping bag, and after groping in its depths he produced a can of soup and two apples and left them on the kitchen table. Then he led the way to the Great Hall.
Although lighted by clerestory windows 30 feet overhead, the hall was a dismal conglomeration of primitive spears and shields, masks, drums, a canoe carved from a log, shrunken heads, and ceremonial costumes covered with dusty feathers. Qwilleran sneezed. “Where is the library?” he asked.
“I’ll show you the drawing room and dining room first,” Eddington said, opening large, double doors. These rooms were loaded with suits of armor, totem poles, stone dragons, medieval brasses, and stuffed monkeys in playful poses.
“Where are the books?” Qwilleran repeated.
Opening another great door Eddington said, “And this is the smoking room. Harley cleared it out and moved in some of his own things.”
Qwilleran noted a ship’s figurehead, carved and painted and seven feet tall, an enormous pilot wheel, a mahogany and brass binnacle, and an original print of the 1805 gunboat, signed, and obviously better than his reproduction. There were several sailing trophies. And on the mantel, on shelves and on tables there were model ships in glass cases.
The hamper that Qwilleran was clutching began to bounce and swing.
He said, “Koko is enthusiastic about nautical things. Would it be all right to let him out?”
Eddington nodded his pleasure and approval. “ ‘Enthusiasm is the fever of reason,’ as Victor Hugo said.”
It was the liveliest display of spirit that Koko had shown since his ordeal. He hopped out of the hamper and scampered to a two-foot replica of the HMS Bounty, a three-masted ship with intricate rigging and brass figurehead. Then he trotted to a fleet of three small ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, all under full sail with flags and pennants flying. When he discovered a nineteenth century gunboat with brass cannon, Koko rose on his hind legs, craning his neck and pawing the air.
“Now where’s the library?” Qwilleran asked as he returned a protesting cat to the hamper.
It was a two-story room circled by a balcony, with books everywhere. Although there were no windows—and no daylight to damage the fine bindings—there were art-glass chandeliers that made the tooled leather sparkle like gold lace.
“How many of these do we have to dust?” Qwilleran wanted to know.
“I do a few hundred each time. I don’t hurry. I enjoy handling them. Books like to be handled.”
“You’re a true bibliophile, Edd.”
“ ‘In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight.’ That’s what Emerson said, anyway.”
“Emerson would have a hard time explaining that to the VCR generation. Let me close the doors and release Koko from his prison. He’ll flip when he sees these books. He’s a bibliophile himself.”
Koko leaped from the hamper and surveyed the scene. On three walls there were banks of bookshelves alternating with sections of fine wood paneling, each with a curio cabinet containing small collectibles in disorganized array. There were Indian arrowheads and carved ivories, seashells and silver chalices, chunks of quartz and amethyst mixed with gold figurines that might have been smuggled from an Egyptian tomb. (Amanda had said a lot of them were fakes.) Above each cabinet was a mounted animal head or a gilded clock or an elaborate birdcage or a display of large bones like relics of some prehistoric age. Koko inventoried all of this, then discovered the spiral staircase, which he mounted cautiously. It was different from any of the staircases he had known.
Meanwhile, Eddington had pulled a bundle of clean rags from his shopping bag. “You can start in that corner with S. I left off at R. Slap the covers together gently, then wipe the head and sides with a cloth. Dust the shelf before you put the books back.”
By this time Koko was whirling up and down the spiral stairs in a blur of pale fur and using the balcony as an indoor track.
Eddington opened the shallow drawer of the library table, a massive slab of oak supported by four carved gryphons. He removed the drawer entirely, and, after groping inside the cavity, brought out a key. “The rare books are in a locked room with the right temperature and humidity,” he said. “ ‘Infinite riches in a little room,’ as Marlowe said.” Carrying his shopping bag he unlocked a door in a paneled wall and stepped inside. Qwilleran heard the lock click.
As he started dusting he pondered how much of Eddington’s time in the locked room was spent with Cyrus Fitch’s torrid literature. He himself had to exercise severe self-discipline to resist reading everything he dusted: Shaw, Shelley, Sheridan, for starters.
Koko busied himself here and there, and his activity and excitement caused his deodorant to lose its effectiveness. “Go and play at the other end of the room,” Qwilleran told him. “Your BO is getting a little strong.”
At noon Eddington reappeared and said somberly, “Time for lunch.” He looked worried.
“Anything wrong in there, Edd?”
“There’s a book missing.”
“Valuable?”
The bookseller nodded. “There might be more missing. I won’t know till I finish checking the whole inventory.”
“Could I help you? Could I read off the listings or anything like that?” Qwilleran had a great desire to see that room.
“No, I can do it better by myself. Do you like cream of chicken soup?”
Koko was now examining the far end of the room—the only wall without bookshelves. It was richly paneled, and it sealed off one end of the library under the balcony. Koko always discovered a
nything that was different, and this wall looked like an afterthought; it destroyed the symmetry of the room.
“Start heating the soup,” Qwilleran said. “I want to finish dusting this bottom shelf.”
As soon as Eddington had left, he rapped the odd wall with his knuckles. This had been a bootlegger’s house, and bootleggers were known to like secret rooms and subterranean passages. He studied it for irregularities or hidden latches. He pressed the individual sections, hoping to find one less stable than the others. While he was systematically examining the wall, the library door opened.
“Soup’s ready!”
“Beautiful paneling!” Qwilleran said. “Just by touching it anyone could tell it’s superior to the stuff they use nowadays.”
He bundled Koko into the hamper, apologizing for his scent, although Eddington insisted he didn’t notice anything, and the three of them went to the kitchen for lunch.
“It isn’t much,” the little man said, “but ‘We must eat to live and live to eat.’ Fielding said that.”
“You are exceptionally well-read,” said Qwilleran. “I suspect you do more reading than dusting when you disappear into that little room. What kind of books do you have in there?”
The bookseller’s face brightened. “The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 . . . a Bay psalm book in perfect condition—the first book published in the English colonies in America . . . a first of Poe’s ”Tamerlane“ . . . the first bible printed in America; it’s in an Indian language.”
“What are they worth?”
“Some of them could bring a price in five or six figures!”
“If one were stolen, would it be difficult to sell? Are there fences who handle hot books?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about that.”
“Which book is missing?”
“An early work on anatomy—very rare.”
“A family member may have borrowed it to read,” Qwilleran suggested.
“I don’t think so. It’s in Latin.”
“I’m amazed at your knowledge of books, Edd. I wish I could remember everything I’ve read and come up with a trenchant quote for every occasion.”
Eddington looked guilty. “I haven’t done much reading,” he confessed. “I took Winston Churchill’s advice. He said: ‘It’s a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.’ ”
After the meagre lunch (Koko had a few bits of chicken from the soup) the party returned to the library. Eddington locked himself in the little room while Qwilleran resumed his dusting (Tennyson, Thackeray, Twain) and Koko resumed his explorations.
The hush in the library was almost unnerving. Qwilleran could hear himself breathe. He could hear Koko padding across the parquet floor. He could hear . . . a sudden creaking of wood at the far end of the room. Koko was standing on his hind legs and resting his paws on the paneled wall that was different from the others. A section of it was moving, swinging open. Koko hopped through the aperture.
Qwilleran hurried to the spot. “Koko, get out of there!” he scolded, but the inspector general had found something new to inspect and was totally deaf. The secret door opened into a storage room—windowless, airless, stifling, and dark. Qwilleran groped for a light switch but found none. In the half-light slanting in from the library chandeliers he could see ghostly forms in the shadows: life-size figures of marble or carved wood, a huge Buddha, crude pottery ornamented with grotesque faces, a steel safe, and . . . a brass bugle! It was the one he would have used in the Theatre Club production if the show had not been canceled, and he resisted the impulse to shatter the silence with a brassy blast.
In the close atmosphere Koko’s unfortunate aroma was accentuated. He was prowling in and out of the shadows, and one of the items that attracted him was an attaché case. Qwilleran had learned not to take Koko’s discoveries casually, and he grabbed the case away from the purring cat. Kneeling on the floor in a patch of dim light he snapped the latches, opened the lid eagerly, and sucked in his breath at the sight of its contents. As he did so, a shadow fell across the open case, and he looked up to see the silhouette of a man in the doorway—a man with a club.
Lunging for the bugle, Qwilleran raised it to his lips and blew a deafening blast. At the same moment the man came through the door, swinging the club. Qwilleran bellowed and struck at him with the bugle. In the semidarkness both weapons missed their mark. The club descended again, and Qwilleran ducked. He swung the bugle again with both hands, like a ballbat, but connected with nothing. The two men were flailing blindly and wildly. Qwilleran was breathing hard, and the stitch in his side felt like a knife-thrust.
Dodging behind a cigar store Indian he waited for the right moment and slashed again with all his strength. He missed the man, but he struck the club. To his amazement it crumbled! Instantly he swung the brass bugle at his assailant’s head, and the man sank dizzily to the floor.
Only then did Qwilleran see his face in full light. “David!” he shouted.
Outside the door a hollow voice roared, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Qwilleran froze and slowly raised his hands. From the corner of his eye he could see a handgun; it was pointed at the crumpled figure on the floor.
“Edd! Where’d you get that?” he gasped.
“It was in my shopping bag,” said the little man, reverting to his usual shy delivery. For the first time in his life he had projected his voice.
“Keep him covered while I call the police, Edd. He might come around and start trouble again.”
As he spoke, Koko emerged from the shadows and stalked the supine figure on the floor. He was purring mightily as he rubbed his head against the sprawled legs. He climbed on the man’s chest and sniffed nose to nose. The man stirred and opened his eyes, saw two blue eyes staring into his own, caught a whiff of Koko’s aroma, and passed out again.
SCENE TEN
Place:
Back at Qwilleran’s apartment over the garage
Time:
Later the same day
No one talked on the way back to Pickax. Eddington Smith was frozen to the wheel; Qwilleran was still aghast at his recent discovery; and Koko was asleep in the hamper, which was placed at the extreme rear of the station wagon, with all the windows open.
“Thanks for the ride, Edd. Thanks for the good lunch,” Qwilleran said when they arrived. “Don’t forget to report that missing book to the lawyer.”
“Oh, I found it! It was on the wrong shelf!”
“Well, it was an exciting afternoon, to put it mildly.”
“ ‘Excitement is the drunkenness of the spirit,’ as somebody said.”
“Uh . . . yes. I’m glad you didn’t have to use your gun.”
“I am, too,” said Eddington. “I didn’t have any bullets.”
It was then that Qwilleran noticed Francesca’s car in the drive, and it reminded him that his troubles were not over. He carried the hamper into the garage. “Sorry, Koko. I’ve got to keep you down here until Fran leaves. You’re smelling pretty ripe.”
As he climbed the stairs to his apartment, his nose told him that Yum Yum also needed another shot of deodorant spray, and his eyes notified him that something was missing in the hallway. The Mackintosh coat of arms was not leaning against the wall in its accustomed place.
“Hello!” he called. “Fran, are you here?”
When there was no reply, he checked the premises. In the living room, lying in the middle of the floor, was the heavy circle of ornamental iron. In the cats’ apartment he found Yum Yum huddled in a corner, with a pathetic expression in her violet-blue eyes. In his studio he found a red light glowing on the answer-box. He punched a button, listened to the message and then hurriedly called Francesca at home.
“Qwill, you’ll never believe what happened!” she said. “I wanted to incorporate the Mackintosh thing in one of your radiator enclosures, so I went over to measure it and see how it would look. I was halfway across the living room with it . . .”
“You lifted
that piece of iron?”
“No, I was rolling it like a hoop when I accidentally stepped on a cat, and it screeched like seven devils. I was so spooked that I rolled the damn thing over my foot!”
“Yum Yum’s screech could raise the dead,” he said. “I hope you’re not hurt, Fran.”
“Hurt! I was wearing sandals and broke three toes! A police car took me to the hospital. Dad will pick up my car later. But Qwill,” she wailed, “I won’t be able to go to Chicago tomorrow!”
Qwilleran heaved a sigh of relief that activated the stitch in his side, but he extended sympathy and said all the right things. After that he went to the cats’ apartment, picked up Yum Yum and stroked her smelly fur. “Sweetheart,” he said, “did you trip her accidentally, or did you know what you were doing?”
Immediately he telephoned Polly at the library to remind her that he was driving her to the airport in the morning. “I may board the plane with you,” he added. “I know some good restaurants in Chicago.”
He sprayed the cats and was serving them a small shrimp cocktail and a dish of veal Stroganoff when he happened to glance out the front window. A police car was in the driveway, and the burly figure of the chief was stepping out of the passenger’s door and approaching Francesca’s car with a bunch of keys.
Qwilleran opened the window. “Brodie! Come on up for a cup of coffee!”
The chief was more amiable than he had been when questioned about the Fitch case. He clomped up the stairs saying, “I hope it’s not the same witch’s brew you gave me once before.”
Qwilleran locked the cats in their apartment, set the automatic coffeemaker for extra strong, and handed the chief a mug. “You’re in a better frame of mind than the last time I saw you.”
“Arrgh!” growled Brodie.
“Is that a comment on the coffee or the state investigation?”
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue Page 17