Murder on Show (16 page)

‘How
is
Pandora?' she asked sympathetically. So of course I had to pop into her stall and speak to her for a while.

‘Coming along,' I said. ‘How's Mother Brown?' It seemed only courtesy to return the inquiry.

‘Just fine.' Helena gestured toward the pen and I had to step over to have a look.

A tumbled heap of small brown bodies lay in a mound, shaken occasionally by a seismic shudder that was a hiccough from one of them. Beside them sprawled Mother Brown, purring, her eyes blinking slowly in drowsy contentment.

‘Beautiful!' I said, and found I meant it. Helena smiled her slow cat-like smile.

‘Isn't it?' she agreed. Adding, in non-sequitur, ‘Pandora should have beautiful kittens, too. Providing she's bred to the right stud.'

‘You said she was still a kitten!' I was instantly defensive. It was all right for Mother Brown, who had obviously been born to be a brood cat. But little, nervous, thoroughly upset Pandora was a different matter altogether.

‘Of course.' The cat-like smile broadened. (I need look no farther for the Cheshire Cat – here was the wide, mocking smile which might haunt a man for the rest of his days.) ‘I didn't mean immediately, I was thinking of the future. The distant future, perhaps – but the future. They might take after her. They might be stars, too.'

‘Too?' This was a new aspect of Pandora.

‘Didn't you know? Poor Pandora,' she said, ‘a has-been so young. She had a part in a television serial, but it only ran nine weeks. By then, she was at the awkward age – not a kitten, not a cat. I think one of the reasons Rose was so enthusiastic about this Exhibition was because she'd hoped it would be a showcase for Pandora, and help her to stage a comeback. I thought you knew.'

‘I must have missed that serial,' I said, not wanting to admit that we hadn't a set. I'd been wondering why Pandora was in the Working Cats Section, but had put it down to sheer nepotism, as her owner was the Organizer.

‘Douglas,' Kellington called, ‘are you ready?'

I was more than ready. ‘Coming,' I answered gratefully. ‘Just a minute.'

I turfed Pandora into her pen, but she had no intention of staying there. Giving me a filthy look, she pressed against the mesh of the pen and chirruped seductively at Gerry. He reacted immediately (all his birds have trained him well), recognizing the tone, if not the precise message. It struck me forcibly that the female of the species – any species – is deadlier than the male because she has a better appreciation of her own power. And less scruples about using it.

‘What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?' Gerry opened the pen and lifted her into his arms. She nestled there smugly, radiating triumph, deliberately not looking at me.

Once you let them know they can work the jealousy racket, you're done for. I turned away, more to show her I didn't care than because the next stall interested me all that much.

Carlotta was just inside the guard rail, talking to Hugo while scanning the Main Aisle with tawny, brooding eyes. I was glad she wasn't looking for me.

‘Pure gold?' she repeated Hugo's last words mechanically, not really paying any attention. ‘
Solid
gold?'

‘Eighteen-carat – my masterwork,' Hugo mourned, evidently under the impression that they were reaching a meeting of minds. ‘It was destined for a touring Art Exhibition, to go round the world, before being sold at auction in Texas with the rest of the Art. And now it's gone. It was priceless. Irreplaceable.'

Carlotta gestured impatiently, ‘Ah, but you had insurance?'

‘What is insurance? Mere money. It cannot replace a Work of Art!' He leaned towards her intently, his eyes didn't quite meet hers. They seemed, instead, to be focused on the rubies dangling from her ears.

‘But gold,' Carlotta said, ‘is not
importante.
It is not bronze, or marble, or –'

‘I must work again in gold,' he said. ‘Even though I now realize the danger. How much more a hostage to fortune is a Work of Art created in a material of intrinsic value! Yet, I must continue in gold – it's so beautiful, so malleable – it
responds
so well to one.'

‘Least of all –' Carlotta drew herself up portentously, still trying to indoctrinate the reluctant troops – ‘is it
importante
beside a real cat. The living must take precedence above all imitations.'

Unlikely as it seemed, I found myself in total agreement with her on something. Now that I had seen one of the Exhibition Pens festooned with the decorations won by a lately-departed pet, I understood the full significance of the way Hugo had decorated his stall. The presumption irked me. As though the loss of a well-insured chunk of metal (however valuable) could be comparable with the loss of a warm, affectionate, flesh-and-blood little creature.

‘But my golden cat – last to the world for ever,' Hugo was still mourning. ‘Doubtless already melted down in some back room in Bermondsey.'

Carlotta shrugged, setting several gold chains jangling. Hugo assessed them with greedy, gleaming eyes. Even I could see that they'd melt down into quite a sizeable chunk of raw material. But Carlotta was no Rose Chesne-Malvern, to be impressed by talk of Art. Carlotta believed her living cats were Art – and inanimate representations left her cold.

‘Your stall is nearest my cats.' Carlotta turned tawny, hypnotic eyes on him. ‘Is there anything you have seen or heard to make you suspect who has tried to harm them so?'

Hugo gulped air like a man going down for the third time. He put out his hand, as though to grasp a gold necklet in lieu of a straw, then seemed to become aware that he could not snatch it away from her. Not without a few more preliminaries.

‘As a matter of fact,' he said, ‘there
is
something. Just hovering at the edge of my mind, but I can't quite get it. Perhaps, if we talked a bit more, I might remember.'

‘You
must
remember!' Carlotta commanded. ‘So much depends on it.'

‘Yes, yes, I'm trying,' Hugo agreed. ‘Perhaps if we went somewhere quieter. So that I could concentrate ...' It was my personal opinion that Hugo had nothing to remember, but hoped that he might ingratiate himself with Carlotta if he could spend enough time with her. My money was on Carlotta to withstand the blandishments of any con man – even so accomplished a one as Hugo.

If he
did
have any information, of course, he was just the sort to try to sell it at a profit instead of volunteering it to the police. But it was no business of mine – let the Inspector look after his own investigation. Just the same, I looked after them thoughtfully as they left.

‘Come along.' Kellington stood outside our stall, with Dave Prendergast.

‘Right. You can hold down the fort?' I checked automatically with Gerry. He nodded. ‘Do you want us to bring back sandwiches or anything for you?'

‘No, you go ahead,' he said. ‘I'll take Penny over when you come back.'

The crowd was thinner now. The Press were especially thin on the ground. Having regard to the hour, and the fact that the police had commandeered the Press Gallery with its associated bar, I knew I'd find most of them across the road at the pub.

It was going to be a working lunch. I wondered idly if that were the reason Kellington had decided to attach himself to me.

He wasn't, of course, the only one to want to attach. The kids were waiting close to the Main Entrance, and mobbed me as we emerged.

‘Later,' I told them. ‘On the way back. I'm just going over to the pub for lunch. Have you lot eaten yet?'

The boys muttered something vague, but the little girl looked up at me and shook her head. ‘
They
won't,' she said. ‘They're afraid you'll change your mind.'
They
glared at her for giving them away.

‘Now, see here.' I faced them sternly. ‘I promised I'd take you in with me. Free. And I will. So get something to eat for yourselves. After all,' I added craftily, ‘it's quite a big Exhibition – and you want to keep your strength up, so that you can see it all, don't you?'

The idea was a new one, and it seemed to jar them. They clustered together for a brief war conference. The words ‘fighting fit' floated to me from the huddle. It was the type of remark that an adult doesn't realize – until too late – should have been analysed on the spot.

They broke apart and I knew I had won. ‘I'll pick you up here at the Main Entrance in about an hour or so,' I said. They nodded and I saw them heading purposefully for the mobile hamburger stand as we crossed the street to the pub.

The end of the Exhibition had thrown Dave Prendergast into a brooding mood, too. Only Kellington seemed his usual ebullient self.

‘I thought your Product went very well,' I tried to cheer Dave. ‘Every time I went past your stand, business was booming. The manufacturer ought to be very pleased.'

‘Oh, he is,' Dave said. ‘He's got his research team working round the clock to get the twin product ready in time for Cruft's. And,' he added gloomily, ‘they're talking about putting me in charge of the stand there, too.'

‘Sounds fine,' I lied heartily. I couldn't think of a worse fate – but Dave badly needed cheering.

‘Oh, it will lead to bigger and better things,' he said. I agreed. From there, where could you go but up? ‘They've got you marked for great things, obviously.'

‘I suppose so.' He shuddered. ‘But it's the steps along the way that are getting me down. I mean, after the Exhibition closes, I'll have to dismantle the stand – alone.'

I whistled. ‘That's going to be quite a job. All those trees and bushes –'

‘They're no problem,' he said. ‘We never took them out of their bags. The roots are still bound up in balls of earth and covered with burlap. We just slipped them into the stuff as they were. They can be pulled out in nothing flat and sent back to the Nursery. The trouble is the damned product.'

‘It
is
a bit thick,' Kellington sympathized.

‘Thick – it's two bloody feet deep! And it's got to be shovelled back into sacks and carted back to the factory. I wouldn't mind that so much –' Dave gazed darkly into the middle distance – ‘but we left the shovel sticking into the stuff in one corner, so that the Exhibitors could pinch a sample for their earth trays and –'

‘What shovel?' I asked. ‘I've only seen a pitchfork there.'

‘That's just it,' Dave said. ‘Some sod stole the shovel. And the pitchfork, too.'

Then I remembered that I hadn't even seen the pitchfork after that camera crew had overrun the stand. But it was too late for that information to be of any use to Dave.

‘All I've got left to work with,' Dave brooded, ‘is the trowel.'

I nodded. There wasn't much to say. Dave
did
have a nasty task ahead of him, but it's these little vicissitudes along the road of life that separate the men from the boys.

The waitress brought our steak-and-kidney pies, and Kellington ordered another round of drinks. We tucked into the meal – there was no telling when we'd get our next one. In the ordinary way of things, I felt there was probably a lot more than there seemed to be to closing down an Exhibition. And, with the police around to complicate things, it might be midnight before we finished.

‘Considering everything,' Kellington said thoughtfully, ‘I think it was a very successful Exhibition. You certainly handled the publicity well.'

I winced. ‘Considering everything,' I said. I'd had quite a few vicissitudes along the way on this one, myself.

‘Of course, I always handle all my own public relations,' Kellington said. ‘But I've been very favourably impressed by the way you've managed this. I certainly intend to recommend Perkins & Tate, if anyone asks my advice about public relations.'

‘Thanks a lot,' I said. His recommendation, and five pence, would get us a ride on any bus in Town.

‘Yes –' Dave surfaced suddenly – ‘great work, Doug. You sure got maximum coverage for the Exhibition.'

‘Thanks,' I said wryly, knowing he wasn't really paying any attention to what he was saying. He was on automatic pilot again. Otherwise, he would have realized that that was the last compliment he should have paid me.

He made it sound as though all those bright, publicity-attracting items, from grand larceny to murder, had been deliberately engineered as elaborate publicity stunts. All the fun of the fair, with Perkins & Tate (Public Relations) Ltd.

‘My round, I believe.' I pushed back my chair and headed for the bar.

I picked up the kids at the Main Entrance and, true to my word, took them in with me. ‘Now look,' I said, as I turned them loose inside, ‘if anyone asks you, you're my guests. My name is Doug Perkins, can you remember that?'

They gave me a collective disgusted look. ‘Doug Perkins,' they chorused.

‘Fine. I'll be over in the Main Aisle. You kids look around and enjoy yourselves. But, remember, I'm trusting you to behave – don't pet the cats, don't get anyone upset, no running or shouting – or out you go. Okay?'

‘Okay.' They nodded reassurance to me, and melted away into the thickening crowds. Only the little girl looked back over her shoulder to give me a grateful smile.

I waved to her, then turned to follow Dave and Kellington, automatically scanning the other aisles as I walked past. Everything seemed to be going as well as could be expected.

‘Douglas!' A familiar figure hailed from one of the aisles. ‘Come here and tell me what you think of this.'

Marcus Opal cradled a little tabby Manx female in his arms. She was almost golden in her markings, with deep topaz eyes.

‘Very pretty.' I stroked her, as they both seemed to expect me to do. She had the fine, silky fur that told me she was not quite a year old. (Already I had learned to guess at the age of a cat by the texture of her fur.) ‘Very nice.'