The Diamond Cat

by Marian Babson

  Or was she being a little paranoid? She watched Forrest arguing half-heartedly with her mother. She saw that Ames was staring around from under lowered lids, taking in every corner of the room, his gaze returning to the two doorways leading to the rest of the house. Under the controlled exterior, he gave the impression of a man eager to be up and doing something: like searching the house. But, first, there had to be permission.

  “I’m sorry you feel this way, Mrs. Bilby,” Forrest said. “We had hoped to reroof the whole terrace as a demonstration of the—”

  “You’re wasting your time!”

  “Very well then.” Huntley Forrest made a graceful gesture of resignation. “I’ll speak to the other property owners. Perhaps when they’ve all agreed, you might change your mind.”

  “Don’t count on it!”

  “No.” He looked down at his lap. “Sorry, old boy, I’m afraid I’ll have to shift you. I have the feeling we’ve worn out our welcome.”

  There hadn’t been much of a welcome to begin with, his wry smile acknowledged. He set Pasha down gently on the carpet with a final pat. Pasha moaned and tried to climb back into his lap.

  “Sorry, old boy.” With a curiously awkward movement, he pushed himself up out of the chair. “I wonder …” He hesitated.

  Mrs. Bilby’s eyes narrowed, daring him to ask for something.

  “I wonder if I could possibly use your telephone for a moment? It’s just a local call. And I’ll pay, of course,” he added hastily.

  “You’d better!” Mrs. Bilby glowered, unable quite to refuse such a reasonable request, especially as he had offered to pay. Bettina wondered vaguely why he didn’t use his mobile phone. Perhaps he had left it at home today.

  “He won’t be long,” Darren Ames assured them, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. “We just have to check in with headquarters every so often.” He bared his teeth in that meaningless blinding smile.

  Beyond him, a shadow moved at the front window beside the door, momentarily blocking out the light, as though someone had just peered in.

  “What—?” Bettina started forward but, by the time she had reached the window, he was gone. Someone was turning in at Zoe’s gate; he looked rather like the other man from the Water Board, although he, too, was dressed differently this afternoon.

  “Thank you very much.” Huntley Forrest reappeared in the doorway, sending Darren Ames a look that brought him scurrying to his side. Pasha started forward hopefully.

  “See them out, Bettina,” Mrs. Bilby ordered. “And make sure you lock the door behind them!”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Bettina murmured, following them into the hallway. “My mother …”

  “Yes, we understand,” Forrest said. “Don’t distress yourself. You can tell your mother”—his smile was wintery—“I’ve left the payment beside the phone.”

  “Oh, really, you needn’t have …

  “Mee-yoooorrr. “ Pasha issued a protest of his own. He didn’t want this charming person to leave, but he was the only one who didn’t.

  “You’ve made quite a hit with Pasha,” Bettina said.

  “It’s mutual.” The man stooped to bestow a final pat. “Perhaps another time, old boy. Goodbye.”

  Bettina’s eye was caught by a glint beside the telephone as she passed it and a wave of embarrassment swept over her. He had left a one-pound coin there. For a local call. She was glad she hadn’t seen it while he was still here.

  “Have they gone?” Mrs. Bilby was beside her. “Ah!” She saw and swooped on the pound coin. “That’s more like it.”

  “It’s far too much.”

  “It will make up for the perfectly good pot of tea we wasted talking to them. It will be stone cold now.”

  “It’s still too much.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Her mother glared at her. “My time is worth something!” She turned on her heel and marched off to the kitchen. “I’ll start a fresh kettle.”

  Pasha looked from Bettina to Mrs. Bilby’s departing back then, wistfully, at the front door—through which all his new friends seemed to disappear. He twitched his whiskers unhappily and slumped to a mournful heap at Bettina’s feet.

  “Poor Pasha.” She bent to stroke him absently, her mind toying with an idea. Would it work?

  She could only try. She picked up the telephone and pushed the recall button. The call was answered on the first ring.

  “One-nine-eight—” the female voice sounded oddly familiar—“eight-nine-nine-eight.”

  The number was oddly familiar, too. Bettina fished out of her pocket the scrap of paper on which Vivien had scrawled her telephone number. The numbers matched.

  “Hello? Hunt? Hello?” The voice grew fearful, anxious. “Is everything all right?”

  Bettina replaced the receiver silently. She had nothing to say to Vivien Smythe. Not yet. Thoughtfully, she turned the scrap of paper over and stared down at it.

  She recognized a portion of the map she had taken from Vivien’s Burberry pocket that stormy day. It showed the familiar streets of the immediate area, with the blue perimeter line encircling them, but something new had been added.

  Now there was a red inner line, marking the boundaries of their even more immediate neighbourhood, encircling a core of no more than five streets, with her own street in the centre.

  They were narrowing the field.

  Jack Rawson arrived soon after four o’clock to collect Enza. They greeted each other rapturously.

  “She’s been a good lass?” he asked proudly. It wasn’t really a question, he had no doubt about it.

  “No trouble at all,” Bettina assured him.

  “She can come again,” Mrs. Bilby said. “Unlike some.” She cast a cold look at Adolf, who sneered back at her.

  “Ah, he’s a feisty one.” Jack Rawson regarded Adolf with a faintly proprietorial air. “They’ll be some rare kittens. Not like you, eh, poor Eunuch?”

  Pasha might not understand the words, but he knew he was being mocked. He glared at Jack, then turned his back on him, crouching down in a brooding heap, closing his eyes and absenting himself from the situation, only a querulous little moan betraying that he still knew where he was and wished he wasn’t.

  Bettina wondered if some sixth sense was telling him how close he was to being abandoned.

  “I hope they don’t think they can stick us with him.” Mrs. Bilby shook her head forebodingly. “Graeme doesn’t want him back without Sylvia and, if you ask me, I’d say it will be a cold day in hell before he sees Sylvia again. She made a great song and dance about meeting him in Edinburgh—and it turns out he was never in Edinburgh at all. He’d been in Brussels—and she knew it. So where has Sylvia gone, I ask you?”

  “You think she’s left him?” Jack Rawson’s eyes gleamed. He had been on the point of leaving, now he sat down and edged his chair closer, all set for a good gossip. “Well, it might not surprise me. I don’t think his finances are as steady as they used to be—and I don’t think Sylvia is the kind of lady to put up with a change in her lifestyle, not if it means scrimping and saving like the rest of us.”

  Bettina kept quiet, determined not to be drawn into their speculations. She was not going to betray Sylvia’s confidences, although she was increasingly beginning to wonder if any of them had been true. Graeme had seemed so certain that Sylvia had known he was in Brussels.

  Adolf strolled casually towards the litter box, but stopped suddenly and looked over his shoulder, as though conscious of watching eyes. Bettina looked away hastily, but he knew. He changed direction and moved towards the front hall. Was he seeking a dark and quiet corner in which to misbehave in private?

  Bettina rose and, with equal casualness, followed him. The tip of his tail twitched, signalling his awareness of pursuit—and his annoyance. He reached the foot of the stairs, sat down firmly, and began washing.

  Bettina leaned against the wall and regarded him sombrely. How long could this go on? (“He’s the stubbornest little dev
il you ever saw,” May Cassidy had often said. Now he seemed determined to prove it.)

  There was a burst of raucous laughter from the kitchen and Pasha scurried into the hallway, ears laid back and tail bushing. He stared around wildly with a hunted look.

  “It’s all right, Pasha,” Bettina soothed. “Don’t pay any attention to them. It’s not your fault.”

  Pasha faced her accusingly. It’s all right for you, he seemed to say. Then something outside—a movement? a sound?—caught his attention and he moved to the front door to rear up on his hind legs and stare out of the side window.

  Bettina was right behind him, alerted by his sudden tense interest. They both watched as the man at the gate stared down the path at the house, then retreated back to the edge of the pavement. He took a pair of binoculars from his pocket and trained them on the roof, turning them slowly from side to side and up and down to cover every inch of it.

  Pasha gave a plaintive moan and dropped back to the floor, but Bettina continued to stare at the man. She had seen him before. He was in jeans and a Barbour jacket rather than the uniform he had originally worn, but he still had a cap on his head, although not one that was part of a chauffeur’s uniform.

  As she watched, he lowered the binoculars and moved on to the next house, where he thoroughly inspected Zoe’s roof, and then went on again. It was obvious that he was going to check every roof in the terrace. And good luck to him; there was nothing in any of them to find.

  Pasha slouched into the living room, back in his dejected mood. Adolf went after him.

  And everywhere that Adolf goes … Bettina thought grimly, trailing him.

  Pasha went over to the chair Huntley Forrest had occupied and leaped up into it, nose twitching as he sniffed at the seat cushion.

  Adolf decided to join him, that cushion was as comfortable as any of the others. He curled up immediately, but Pasha was restless, his nose now quivering along the divide between the cushion and the armrest.

  Something in his demeanour kept Bettina watching. With growing excitement, Pasha began poking one paw down into the crack and drawing it up again.

  “What are you fishing for, Pasha?” Bettina moved closer.

  Pasha ignored her, intent on his goal. He probed deeper and deeper with his paw until—suddenly—he had it! Something small and gold and gleaming flew out from the upholstered crevasse and landed on the floor at Bettina’s feet.

  Pasha leaped out of the chair after it, but Bettina was closer. She picked it up and stared at it, oblivious to Pasha’s injured claim that it was his.

  It was a small gold charm: an artist’s palette with two tiny brushes in the miniature thumb hole.

  “Well, well, well,” Bettina said to Pasha “In fact, well done.”

  She had the feeling that they would be seeing Vivien Smythe again before very long.

  Chapter 13

  After Jack Rawson took Enza home, Adolf retired to his carrying case to curl up and sulk. He was nearly as fed up with Bettina as she was with him.

  “Good! Stay there!” She closed the door and tripped the latch. “At least I’ll know where you are.” And she would inspect the carrier when she let him out again, in case he had left something of value inside.

  “You should have done that long ago,” her mother approved. “To all of them. At last, you’re showing some sense.”

  “Poor Pasha, you’re not very happy, are you?” Now there was time to pick him up and cuddle him. “And you’re no trouble.”

  “He’s brooding because he knows he’s being left behind in the moonlight flit.” Mrs. Bilby glared at Bettina. “And you needn’t think we’re keeping him! Worth his weight in diamonds, indeed! He’s not worth his weight in what pours out of him!”

  Unlike our dear Adolf. Bettina did not say it aloud. She held Pasha a little closer and was rewarded by a soft throbbing purr of contentment. He was not to know that he had become such a problem to everyone. She buried her nose in Pasha’s ruff to hide a wry smile.

  “I mean it,” her mother warned. “I’m not standing for anything else. I’ll turn him in to the Cats Protection League, if I have to, but I’m not having him eating his head off around here.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Bettina said. “Sylvia will be back for him. She loves him.”

  “Not any more,” Mrs. Bilby said. “You heard the way Graeme was talking. Sylvia doesn’t care for anything that isn’t going to bring her a profit. And that goes for Graeme, too. It’s only a matter of time until he admits it to himself.”

  It was only too possible. But Bettina still had the feeling that Sylvia would relinquish Graeme more easily than she would let go of Pasha. At least Pasha wasn’t deliberately betraying her.

  But … was Graeme? She had only Sylvia’s word for that—and Sylvia had even got the location wrong. Sylvia’s word was beginning to look increasingly unreliable. Was Sylvia playing some game of her own? And, if so, what?

  But Sylvia was not the only game player around. Bettina looked at her watch; it had now been some hours since Huntley Forrest had carefully planted Vivien’s “missing” charm in the depths of the armchair. It was just about time for the enigmatic Vivien to surface again with some fresh excuse for—

  The telephone rang and she went to answer it. Right on cue.

  “Hello …” She was tempted to add Vivien, but restrained herself. It was probably wiser not to let the mysterious Ms. Smythe become aware of the fact that her game had been discovered. Especially since she wasn’t quite sure what that game might be.

  “Is that Miss Bilby?” Just as well she hadn’t used any names. The man’s voice was soft and authoritative—and not unfamiliar.

  “Inspector Hughes?”

  “That’s right.” For a moment he sounded flattered, then his deductive processes went to work. “Ah, the accent, I suppose.”

  “Ummm … partly.” She felt quite, well, flustered. In truth, she had not noticed the accent at all; it was the timbre of the voice that had reached her.

  “Are you feeling better?” He caught her intonation and did not seem displeased.

  “Better?” For a moment, she was at a loss.

  “I dropped round to your office, but you weren’t there. Your boss said you’d reported in sick.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I’m a lot better, thank you. Not well enough to go to work tomorrow, I’m afraid,” she added hastily, with a bitter thought for Adolf. “I can’t be sure. It depends on … how I’m feeling in the morning. These things come and go.”

  “Nasty things, viruses.” He was sympathetic. “You don’t want to take any chances. Better to be safe.”

  “I intend to be,” Bettina said firmly, then wavered as a new thought came to her. “Ummm … why did you call at the office?”

  “Just a few more questions,” he said smoothly. “Perhaps I might come round now, if it’s convenient? It won’t take long.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Somehow, this didn’t sound very official. She thought the police just turned up at the door without worrying about anyone’s convenience. That was what they had done before.

  “BETTINA!” Her mother’s voice was loud enough to be heard at the other end of the line. “Get out here! That Adolf is going to be sick. Get him out of the house!”

  “Yes, I’m coming.” She turned back to the receiver. “I’m sorry—”

  “I heard,” he said “Go ahead. I’ll be round shortly.”

  Adolf was threshing about in his carrying case, hunched up and heaving, making distressing sounds and bumping into the sides of the case as he struggled.

  “Get him out of here, cage and all! Pick it up and take it out into the garden and dump him. He’s having a fit!”

  “It’s probably a hairball.” And, with any luck, Adolf would cough it up with the diamond neatly in the middle of it, like a pearl in an oyster. Or perhaps it was just the diamond itself.

  “I don’t care what it is—get him out of here!”

  “Easy, Adolf, easy.” B
ettina bent and opened the door of the case. “Come on, now.”

  Adolf backed out of the case, still heaving and retching. He backed halfway across the kitchen floor before seeming to realize that he was out and free.

  “Come on, Adolf,” Bettina encouraged. “Cough it up. Spit it out. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  Adolf stepped back, then remained very still and hunched over, mouth open. His head bobbed convulsively a few times then, abruptly, he straightened up and shook himself.

  “All right, Adolf?” Bettina watched him with concern. “Are you all right now?”

  Adolf sat down, swallowed hard twice, and regarded her with bright-eyed interest.

  False alarm.

  “I still say put him out!” Mrs. Bilby glared at Adolf. “He’ll only sneak around to some dark corner and sick it up there.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Bettina promised. “Very carefully.”

  “You should have better things to do.” Her mother sniffed. “Wasting all your time and energy on ruddy cats.”

  When she should be wasting it on a ruddy mother. Bettina could easily identify the underlying cause for complaint.

  Pasha had been watching Adolf’s performance with great interest; now he strolled over to touch noses with him. There appeared to be an exchange of thought, then they both turned and stared at Bettina meaningfully.

  “I suppose a bit of cod-liver oil might soothe your throat,” she agreed. “And Pasha could always use a little more.”

  “I can’t sit here and watch you spoiling those cats!” Mrs. Bilby got to her feet. “I’m going to watch television. Call me when dinner’s ready.”

  Both cats seemed more relaxed with Mrs. Bilby out of the way. They tucked into their cod-liver oil with gusto.

  Bettina wished that she could feel more relaxed. She surveyed Adolf anxiously. Had that coughing fit meant that the diamond was caught somewhere well above the point it could reasonably be expected to have reached by now? If so, did that mean Adolf could retain it longer? She tried to tell herself that twenty-four hours wasn’t all that long, but she wasn’t very convinced. It seemed like forever. Still, Adolf was showing no ill effects—unless that retching had been the start of complications. She wished she knew more about feline anatomy. Perhaps she ought to ring Zoe at the library and ask her to bring home some books about—