The Diamond Cat

by Marian Babson

  For a moment, she thought it was the bogus Water Board workman again, then he straightened up and half turned, becoming identifiable: Graeme Martin. What was he doing prowling about their garden, acting as though he were looking for something … or someone?

  Surely, he didn’t expect to find Sylvia under the bushes. Or did he? Had he learned something to make him suspect that Sylvia had never reached Edinburgh, that she had not gone far from the house? That she had, perhaps, been the first to encounter whatever murderous maniac had been prowling the neighbourhood.

  Graeme suddenly looked directly at the house. Instinctively, Bettina stepped back before reminding herself sharply that she was not her mother, to hide behind curtains—and also that it was her garden and it was for Graeme to explain himself for trespassing.

  He waved and started towards the back door, the same thought perhaps occurring to him.

  Bettina gestured to him to wait a minute while she shooed the cats away from the door. He occupied the time in trying to smooth his dishevelled hair back into place and brush the twigs and leaves from his suit.

  “Good morning, Bettina.” He slipped through the door as she opened it slightly, still fending off Adolf. “Everything all right here?”

  “What’s the matter? Why were you—?”

  “I thought I heard a cat crying.” A safe excuse in this district. He took a swift look around. “They seem to be all present and accounted for. Hello, Pasha, how are you today?”

  Pasha looked at him and beyond him; no one else there. Pasha turned and stalked away, his tail shot up suddenly and the end twitched in unmistakable insult.

  “I’ll grant you he’s Sylvia’s cat,” Graeme said in an injured tone, “but does he have to be so bloody rude to everyone else? I’m the one who pays for his cat food, after all. And his damned cod-liver oil.”

  Since she had never heard Graeme utter a comment about Pasha that wasn’t bloody rude, it was hardly surprising that Pasha returned his sentiments, Bettina thought.

  “Bettina, what’s going on around here?” Dismissing Pasha, Graeme turned to her. “What happened to Mrs. Rome? I saw the ambulance last night. And the police. Was it a heart attack? How is she?”

  “They’re not sure she’s going to survive. It wasn’t a heart attack. An intruder broke in and beat her almost to death—” Bettina stopped. Broke in. One said it so automatically—and it wasn’t true. There had been no signs of a break-in at either back door or front.

  “Here? On our street? That’s terrible!” Graeme looked stunned. “And Sylvia and I moved here because we thought this would be a good place to live, much safer than in the city. Perhaps we’ll have to think again.”

  Of course, the back door was never locked. Bettina was still thinking. But no intruder, no stranger, would know that. Was it possible that Mrs. Rome had known the person who had entered her house and then treated her so savagely? “Don’t know …” she had kept repeating as the paramedics carried her away. Did that mean, not that she didn’t know her attacker, but didn’t know the information he had been trying to beat out of her?

  “Bettina? Bettina? Axe you all right?” Graeme was watching her with concern. “Is something wrong? What is it?”

  “I just thought—” No, Graeme was not a person to confide in. “I thought I heard something,” she finished as the doorbell rang. “Excuse me, that may be Zoe.”

  “Poor Zoe.” Graeme was behind her as she entered the front hall. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Catch Adolf.” She nearly tripped over the black and white blur streaking past her. “Don’t let him get out when I open the door.”

  “Oh. Right.” He bent and scooped up Adolf, who objected violently. “Ow! You little—” They retreated down the hallway, swearing at each other.

  Bettina opened the door cautiously, in case Adolf escaped, and gazed appreciatively at narrow tartan trousers tucked into dark green, butter-soft leather boots. The gilt chain of the matching shoulder bag gleamed in the deep fuzz of a long, dark green, mohair jacket. Bettina wondered if they still called the colour forest green—and if there were some subliminal message in that. Or a private joke.

  “May I come in?” Vivien Smythe asked brightly.

  Still bemused, Bettina stepped back to allow the world’s best-dressed market researcher to enter.

  “Thanks awfully.” Vivien blinked, stepping into the gloom of the hallway from the bright sunshine outside and moved directly into the living room. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb you again, but I’ve been racking my brain about what could have happened to my dear little charm and I suddenly remembered …” She headed unerringly for the armchair.

  “I was sitting in this chair”—she suited her action to the words—“and—oh!”

  Pasha bounded into her lap with a glad cry of welcome. It was the only welcome she was getting, but it seemed to be enough for her.

  “Oh, you beautiful, beautiful darling!” Vivien wrapped her arms around him and he nestled into the luxurious mohair purring happily.

  Bettina was aware of a faint sound from the kitchen, as of the back door closing. Graeme must have thought this was a friend come to visit and decided to slip away quietly. She hoped he had remembered not to let Adolf out.

  “Doesn’t he look gorgeous against the dark green?” Vivien gazed down at Pasha, lost in admiration. Pasha raised his head to nuzzle her chin.

  While they communed silently, Bettina quickly checked the kitchen. Graeme had gone but, thank heaven, Adolf was still there. He greeted her with a loud complaint.

  “You stay with me.” She picked him up. “I want to keep an eye on you.” She carried him back into the living room and took a seat on the sofa.

  Adolf and Pasha exchanged complacent glances from the respective arms enfolding them. This was the life. This was the way it ought to be all the time.

  “Isn’t it nice to have such a beautiful day?” Vivien lowered Pasha to her lap and smiled nervously.

  “Yes.” Bettina waited for the next move.

  “You know, I had cats when I was a child. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked them.” Her hand, toying with Pasha’s ears, seemed to be trembling. Pasha turned and gave her a curious look. “I’ve been so busy in recent years, so caught up in my work, that I haven’t had time to enjoy life properly.”

  “Yes,” Bettina agreed. “Market research must be quite arduous.”

  “Mark—? Oh! Oh, yes!” Her smile wavered before she caught it and stretched her lips wide again. “It is!”

  Bettina smiled back serenely. Liars needed a good memory. Vivien was having increasing trouble keeping her story straight. Perhaps her mistake was mixing in bits of her genuine personal life; her story was untravelling at the edges—and so was she.

  “Well, as I was saying”—Vivien attempted a recovery, speaking over-brightly and fumbling for her bag—“I remembered sitting in this chair and feeling a … a sort of tug at my wrist when I got up to leave—”

  Bettina forbore to point out that she had actually been sitting in the other armchair. It was Huntley Forrest who had been sitting in that one.

  “And I thought … possibly … my charm might have caught on the, plush and … and fallen …” Vivien began groping down between the armrest and the seat cushion.

  Bettina watched quietly as Vivien clawed her way down to the frame of the chair with increasing panic.

  “It’s got to be here!” Vivien choked out. “I … I mean, I was so sure. It came to me—almost like a revelation—that this was the only spot it could be …”

  She leaped up, tumbling Pasha to the floor, and wrenched the seat cushion off the chair. And sneezed.

  “Sorry about the dust,” Bettina said unrepentantly, as Vivien stared down at the denuded seat with hysterical incredulity, “I’m afraid the housekeeping around here isn’t all that it might be.”

  “I don’t understand …” Vivien began scrabbling at the lint bordering the base where the cushion had rested. “It has t
o be here! There’s no other place unless you’ve rearranged the furniture and I really sat in the other chair.”

  “I haven’t,” Bettina said calmly.

  “Oh!” Vivien’s face cleared. “Here it is!” She pulled up a small flat object, showering dust and lint in its wake, “I’m so pleased to have it again …” She blew on it to disperse the last of the dust—and suddenly her face was not pleased at all.

  “This isn’t my charm!” She glared down at it in furious dismay. “This is a threepenny bit. An old threepenny bit!”

  “Dear, dear,” Bettina said. “Has it been that long since Mother vacuumed the chairs? I must mention it to her next time she tells me how hard she works at the housekeeping.”

  “Oh!” Vivien hurled the offending coin across the room and advanced on the other armchair. “Then it must be this one—it has to be!” She began dismembering the chair with increasing hysteria.

  Pasha retreated to sit beside Bettina’s ankles, looking worried. Adolf watched with detached interest and a certain amount of speculation; if she unearthed anything of real interest, like a mouse, he was more than ready to join in the game.

  “I can’t understand it …” Vivien tore at the chair. “It must be here somewhere!”

  “You seem very certain.” Bettina allowed a trace of scepticism to shade her tone. “Yet you must have visited a lot of houses over the weekend.”

  “Not that many. I mean—Yes, I did. But not many people were home.” She looked at Bettina in desperation. “Perhaps the sofa…”

  “Why don’t you put the chair cushions back first,” Bettina suggested reasonably. “This room is beginning to look as though burglars have been ransacking it.”

  “Oh! Yes, sorry. I’m not usually so—” Vivien dived to replace the cushions; her sleek hairdo was falling to pieces. She ran her hand through it distractedly. “He—I must have got muddled. I must have been sitting on the sofa after all.”

  Bettina rose patiently to allow her to attack the sofa cushions. She was still standing when, distraught and on the verge of tears, Vivien finished her unsuccessful search and turned to face her again.

  Perhaps something showed in her expression because Vivien suddenly looked wary.

  “Is this—?” Bettina took the charm from her pocket and held it out. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  “Yes! That’s it!” Vivien snatched at it. “You let me go through all that and you’ve had it all the time,” she accused. “Why didn’t you tell me? Where did you find it?”

  “In the first armchair,” Bettina said. “Right where your husband planted it. Huntley Forrest is your husband, isn’t he?”

  “Oh! Oh! You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” Vivien burst into tears. “Oh, I can’t go on! I’m no good at this!”

  “No, you’re not,” Bettina said. “Suppose you tell me what you’ve really lost.”

  Vivien nodded, sobbing too heartily to speak for the moment. She sank down on the chair, hunched over, shaken by the force of her tears.

  Pasha crept over to comfort her. She pulled him into her lap and clung to him, seeming to draw strength from him. Her sobs gradually diminished.

  “My disks!” she choked out. “All my hard disks are gone!”

  Chapter 16

  “Your what?” It was the last thing Bettina had expected to hear. It made no sense at all.

  “My top-secret programme,” Vivien said. “My life’s work, practically. The last several years of my life, certainly. Gone, all gone! The software has disappeared.”

  “I thought you just said hard—” Bettina stopped, aware of the half-pitying, half-superior look Vivien was giving her.

  “You don’t know anything about computers, do you?” Vivien asked.

  “No,” Bettina said. “But I gather you do.”

  “Yes.” Vivien gave a deep sigh, a final dab at her nose and whisked her handkerchief back into her bag. “I’m rather good with them, in fact.”

  “And you have nothing to do with market research.” It was a flat statement, Bettina had had no doubt for a long time.

  “Only in the larger sense.” Vivien smiled faintly. “Our firm commissions it sometimes.”

  That was a lot more believable. Bettina waited.

  “Huntley and I have our own firm,” Vivien said. “Basically, we devise computer programmes. We started out doing special projects for private clients, then we began working out general programmes for commercial sale. We’ve done rather well.” She toyed modestly with one of the other charms on her bracelet. It was now clear that it was meant to be a computer screen and not a television screen; Bettina remembered wondering about it.

  “And we’re planning to do even better. I’ve been working on something rather unusual for the past few years. I won’t say it’s revolutionary—but it’s pretty damn good. The trouble is, I wanted it to be perfect, so I’ve kept on tinkering with it and—” She broke off, suddenly intent on stroking Pasha.

  “It’s my fault. I kept everything in the computer. I didn’t want to download until it was just right. I didn’t—” After a quick glance at Bettina’s face, she elucidated. “I didn’t take any copies of the programme. I didn’t keep any outside records. I didn’t have a backup. I left it all in the computer, except for the original—the one and only—set of hard disks. And they’ve been stolen. If I don’t get them back, it’s all gone.” She looked at Bettina sharply. “Do you understand?”

  “Not quite,” Bettina said honestly. “But I’ll take your word for it. What I really don’t understand is why you keep coming back here. We haven’t got your disks.” She had a momentary vision of the carrier pigeon fluttering lopsidedly through the storm, weighed down by a box of disks swinging from one leg. Where did the pigeon fit into this? Or did it?

  “I—” Vivien looked at her earnestly, looked away, then looked back again. “Oh, I wish I knew whether I could trust you!”

  Strange, that’s just what I’ve been thinking about you. They stared at each other silently. Bettina felt Adolf’s tail tapping against her arm like a metronome.

  The telephone shrilled abruptly, tearing into the silence, startling them both. Bettina was the first to recover.

  “It’s probably for you,” she said, going to answer it.

  “Bettina?” Zoe’s voice was strained and almost unrecognizable.

  “Zoe! Where are you?”

  “At the hospital …” Zoe took a deep ragged breath. “My mother has just died.”

  “Oh, Zoe. I’m so—”

  “And yours has collapsed.” Zoe took another noisy breath, “I’m sorry, Bet. You’d better get over here right away.”

  “Oh, no!” Suddenly dizzy, Bettina leaned against the wall, letting Adolf thud to the floor. He yelped a protest.

  “What is it?” Vivien hurried into the hall. “What’s the matter?”

  “My mother … hospital…” Bettina took a ragged breath of her own and spoke to Zoe. “I’ll be fight there. As soon as I can get a taxi.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Vivien said. “I’ll drive you.”

  “Thank you.” Bettina started for the door, then remembered “Oh! Adolf!” She looked round for him, found him crouched hopefully beside the front door, trying to look invisible, swooped and captured him.

  “I’ll just lock him up,” she told Vivien, “and be right with you. Oh, you might bring Pasha. He can go in his carrier, too, then I shan’t have to worry about what they’re getting up to when I’m not here.”

  “If you’re worried about them.” Vivien picked up Pasha, who had stayed dose to her side. “I could come back and look after them until you get back. I wouldn’t mind at all—and you wouldn’t have to shut them up.”

  “They’ll be all right, they’re used to it.” Bettina latched Adolf into his case. “They’re overdue for a nap, they’ll just curl up and sleep until I get back.”

  Adolf loosed a series of ear-splitting yowls, clearly calling her a liar and an unfeeling monster.
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  Pasha complained more softly; he didn’t mind the carrying case but rightly suspected this meant he was about to be parted from his new friend again—and that really upset him. He tangled his claws in the mohair and protested sadly.

  “Poor dears, they hate to be left alone,” Vivien said as Bettina disentangled Pasha and pushed him into his carrier.

  “Where’s Bluebell?” Bettina looked round for the missing member of the crew. She was nowhere to be seen.

  “Oh, never mind.” It was more important to get to her mother. Bluebell could be trusted not to get into too much mischief.

  “I’ll come back and look for her.” Vivien was obviously determined to be here and have the house to herself—for all the good it would do her. The diamonds were still in Bettina’s pocket. There was nothing to be found in the house—unless Adolf misbehaved in his carrier. And Vivien did not strike Bettina as someone who would rush to clean up after Adolf. She would be far more likely to pretend she hadn’t noticed it had happened and leave it for Bettina to clean up.

  “It wouldn’t be any trouble,” Vivien urged. “And you don’t know how long you might be gone. I can feed them and—”

  “All right, if you insist.” It was easier to give in. Vivien was providing a lift to the hospital and would otherwise keep badgering her all the way.

  “Just don’t let Adolf out of his carrier, no matter how much he nags,” Bettina said, adding for good measure, “He’s been acting oddly lately and I’m afraid he might be coming down with something—and you wouldn’t want Pasha to catch it.”

  “Certainly not!” Vivien immediately moved Pasha’s carrying case a good distance away from Adolf’s. “I’ll see that he stays where he is.”

  “When you’re ready to leave,” Vivien said, drawing up in front of the hospital, “just ring the house. I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “This has been very kind of you.” Bettina got out. “But Zoe has her car here, I’ll get a lift home with her.”

  Just as Bettina was closing the door, a disquieting thought occurred to her. “Vivien—be careful.”