The Black Cat (14 page)

Mungo had paced for so long, he felt he’d worn his paws to nubbins.

Morris was lying on the carpet in the music room, watching him. She yawned and slowly closed her eyes; all that pacing tired her. Most things did.

Mungo stopped. Why is it all down to me? This is your fate we’re talking about. I’m not the one who wants to get back to Amerslum.

Amer-sham. Anyway, it’s Chesham. I told you, more than once.

More than once. More than once. He lay down and tried to curl his legs into his chest. Do you have more joints than me?

I don’t know. Morris yawned again: How are you going to get me back to Chesham?

Mungo didn’t answer. He went over to the walnut bureau and its bottom drawer, looking at the pile of kittens, looking for Elf. He needed to relax. The kittens were piled on top of one another. Was there nothing but black cats in this whole wide world? No wonder Mrs. Tobias thought Morris was Schrödinger. It was amazing that the two cats could coexist in this house without anyone’s knowing.

Mungo rolled two kittens away from the pile. They spat at him. Then he unearthed Elf.

What are you doing with that kitten? Morris asked.

Nothing. Mungo had Elf in his mouth, looking around for a hiding place. This activity relaxed him a bit; he could do it and think about a problem at the same time. He looked over the music room. Not the grand piano; he’d done that, along with the coal scuttle, the umbrella urn, the planters.

Put that kitten down, said Morris.

Boss, boss, boss, boss. Mungo didn’t care; he wasn’t all that interested in hiding Elf, so he dropped him.

Elf made his way fuzzily back to the drawer, trying to think nasty thoughts about his tormentor, but he couldn’t, as he was too little and his mind was formless and without messages.

The Spotter had been talking about Chesham and a case. Then he’d gone on about the “two kids”-oh, what an adventure that had been! But if there was a “case” in Chesham, was it possible it was Morris related? Mungo stopped his pacing and stared at Morris (who was taking a nap, no help there). Morris had been witness, if not to the murder, then certainly to the dead body.

Mungo hitched up one paw, set it down, picked up the other paw, set it down, the other up, down, up, down. Nervous excitement. He paced again, head down as if he meant to ram through a-Wait! Morris might not have known what she was seeing. How could you see a murder and not know?

He trotted over to Morris and gave her a shove where she lay.

Wake up!

Morris shifted and recurled herself.

Wake up! Listen-Think! Did you see a murder? Did you see anything at all that might have been a murder?

Morris narrowed her eyes. Of course not. I saw this person lying there, and then the woman and dog came along.

Mungo paced again and wished he smoked cigars. He could stand reflectively by the bay window, tapping ash. All right, maybe she hadn’t seen anything. What if she had? What would they do with the knowledge? Go to the local station and fill out a report?

Pacing. Stopping. But… what if the Spotter were to see Morris?

Well, maybe…

What did they have to lose?

Nothing at all.

Mungo went over and plopped himself down beside Morris. Listen: Here’s what we’ll do. There’s this pub called the Old Wine Shades Harry’s always going to. The Shades, for short.

I’d rather go to my own pub.

Don’t go all weepy on me. Life’s hard enough.

It is for Dora.

Oh, God, thought Mungo, I’ll run away and be a hobo dog. But he knew he wouldn’t. The food was tasty here, and the beds were good. And there was Elf and the rest.

He said, The Shades.

Was Sally Hawkins so hopelessly blind that she really thought she could pass this thug off as the real Morris? Either she did or she didn’t care.

Waiting in the Black Cat for Wiggins, Jury drank his beer and thought about Joey. Joey would sort out Morris Two in an eyeblink. In his mind’s eye he saw his friends in the Jack and Hammer, casting their votes for a name that would no doubt be absurd.

His mobile trilled its tune. He nearly stubbed his finger racing to turn it off.

It was Wiggins. “I’m in a cab on my way to the pub. I did find out something from Mr. Banerjee; he was very helpful. That’s an interesting shop. Very Indian-like.”

“That could be because Mr. Banerjee is Indian, Wiggins.” Jury was keeping his eye on Morris Two, as the cat had jumped up to the table and was eyeing the mobile pressed to Jury’s ear. “Next time, I’ll make it a conference call, okay?”

“Conference call? What?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you, Wiggins.”

“Is there someone there with you?”

“No. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Morris Two was having a wash. A ruse, Jury knew. He was really waiting for Jury to take his eye off his pint and his phone from his ear.

“Right,” said Wiggins.

Jury clapped the mobile shut and set it on the table.

Morris Two stopped licking his paw and glared at it. From it to Jury. As the cat seemed to be thinking over the mobile’s tune, David Cummins walked in.

Looking, thought Jury, drawn and not very happy.

“David.” Jury motioned him over.

“I thought that car might be yours,” he said.

“You mean the unmarked Hertz rental with the bullet holes in the windscreen? Yes, I can understand why you’d hit on me straightaway.”

David laughed; the laugh made him look a little less ashen.

Jury pushed out a chair. “Sit down. You look like hell. Want a drink? I’m waiting for my sergeant.”

He sat down, extracted a cigarette from a pack of Rothmans, and looked at Jury, but Jury’s expression was noncommittal. “I can light one for you, too. Now, Voyager.” Wanly, he smiled, looked over his shoulder for Sally Hawkins, and, not seeing her, shrugged. “We were wondering if you could stop by the house? Chris wants to talk to you. She has an idea-well, let her tell you it.”

That was puzzling. “All right, sure. We’ll come round as soon as Sergeant Wiggins gets here. Twenty, thirty minutes?”

David rose. “Good. Thanks.” He sketched Jury a small salute and was out the door.

Ten minutes later, Morris Two was back at the window, straining to see the latest arrival.

It was Wiggins, who walked through the door, looked around, sussing out the place as if you couldn’t see daylight through the smoke and the people. There were only the three at the other table and a man at the bar, thoroughly juiced.

“There you are, boss.” Wiggins pulled out a chair, and Morris Two, who had just claimed it as his own, spat and jumped down.

“That cat’s a treat.”

“I told you about Morris, didn’t I? I think this particular incarnation of him once belonged to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Morris hates people. All people.”

“Abused as a kitten, it could be.”

“He’s certainly going to be abused as a cat. Want a beer?” The old Wiggins was more of a lemon squash guy.

“Bit early for me.”

“It’s after five.”

Wiggins made some sort of rocking hand gesture, sending what message Jury couldn’t imagine. Then he slid his notebook from an inside pocket, flipped it open. “This shopkeeper, Benjarii, told me he’d given some thought to the photo you’d shown him and remembered Kate Banks had come in a number of times over the course of the last year and that she’d bought staples, you know, bread, milk, butter-staples. Very pleasant, he said, but she wasn’t one for chatting people up. But once she’d bought ajar of curried pickle which he’d remarked on as being a favorite of his. Kate Banks said it was also a favorite of her friend’s. The implication was, he thought, that this was who she was buying for. It’s not much, but it means there is someone around there who knew her well.”

“Yes. And someone who might need seven hundred and fifty quid. I know I’m reaching here because the money could have been paid her that night after her escort encounter. But it also could have been cash not earned that night that she was taking to someone. How large an area would that shop encompass for people who shop there regularly? Not very big, I shouldn’t think.”

“No. There’s another shop three streets over and a Europa three streets north. People closer to those would be using them. So I’m guessing a three-block parameter, all four sides. I could narrow that because Mr. Banerjee said she came from that direction, in his case, north. He saw her once or twice cross St. Bride’s, coming to his shop, so the area to cover would probably be three blocks each direction.”

Jury turned his unfinished pint glass around and around. “It does sound as if Kate were taking care of someone. Some relation?” He turned the glass. “Has anyone ID’d the body yet?”

“They got Una Upshur in. But no one related to Kate Banks. They haven’t found any relatives. Sounds as if Kate was pretty much on her own.”

“Except for the one she was possibly helping. Maybe that person will go to police. Come on, Wiggins. We’re going to see DS Cummins and his wife.” Jury, standing, finished off his beer.

As Wiggins got up, Morris Two shot out of his lethal nowhere and streaked between Wiggins’s legs, almost tumbling him.

“Bloody cat!” he said as he grabbed the back of the seat for balance.

With cups of tea served all round, Chris Cummins fairly beamed at Jury and Wiggins, as if they might be as proud of this collection as she herself.

It certainly could have been said of Sergeant Wiggins, who found her aggregation of shoes even more fascinating than Jimmy Choo’s. He appeared to be drawn to these rows of shoes as much as he would have been to a medicine doctor’s strange roots, palliative powders, or dried animal parts. At the moment, he had helped himself to a shelf and had pulled down and was studying a sandal with a heel as tall as an Alp and a red sole. The vamp was made up of grass green foil rings twisting up to the ankle. He just stood and stared.

“Sergeant,” said Jury mildly, knowing he could not dehypnotize Wiggins, short of shooting him in the back.

Was this what she’d wanted to see him about? To talk about shoes?

But Chris Cummins short-circuited whatever extraneous topic Jury might have been going for by saying, “Christian Louboutin. He’s my favorite.” Then she reached up and took down one of the high-heeled shoes, this one of blue satin, then its mate, perhaps the better to make her point, turning both over for Wiggins to eye. “Red soles,” she said. “Louboutin always does red soles.”

“I wonder what it’s like to walk on,” Wiggins said.

“That,” said Chris with perfectly good humor, “I couldn’t tell you.”

Unmindful of his gaffe, Wiggins plowed on, pulling out one of another pair, the last in the bottom row. They weren’t nearly as comely as the others, just unembellished black patent.

“Oh, not those. That’s Kate Spade; I never did like her shoes. They’re so… uninteresting.” She turned to look at her husband. “Sorry, dear.” Then back to Wiggins, with whom she seemed to have formed a sort of shoe bond. “David brought those back by mistake. He was supposed to get Casadei and he got Kate Spade.” She shoved back the uninteresting Kate.

David Cummins didn’t seem to appreciate his wife’s joking tone. Indeed, Jury thought he went a little pale.

Wiggins, sensing some condition in another he should attend to, changed the subject and said to Cummins, “You were with London police, were you?”

He nodded. “South Ken. I was a DC. Got a promotion when I came here.”

Wiggins sighed. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said darkly.

Jury raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m only thinking of all the extra responsibility. I mean, that’s what I found.”

Jury rolled his eyes.

“Come on, love,” said David. “Let’s get to the point.” To the other two he said, “Chris is one for the drama.”

“You bet I am.” She wheeled over to the end of the shelf, reached up, pulled out a chunky-looking dark brown snakeskin shoe.

“Manolo Blahnik!” she said, as if she’d been waiting all her life to cry the name.

Wiggins looked blank.

“Manolo Blahnik, the famous shoe designer.”

It was Jury, not Chris, who said this, earning a look from her of admiration and from Wiggins a look that wondered if his boss was daft, knowing stuff like that.

“My upstairs neighbor,” said Jury, “has a pair and cited chapter and verse on his shoes.” Carole-anne gave him bulletins on her wardrobe changes, too. To Chris Cummins, Jury said, “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Mrs. Cummins.”

“Chris, please. Lost you?” She looked from one to the other, including her husband in her head shake. “And you call yourselves detectives. All right, give us the photo, love,” she said to David.

Jury looked at Cummins.

David opened the same folder that had held the photo of the Jimmy Choo shoes and took out another. He passed it to his wife.

“Now, you see this?” She pointed to the imprint of a shoe, or rather the heel of a shoe. The rest of it was lost in the earth and leaves. “This,” she said, tapping the heel, “could have been made by this shoe.” Again, she held up the chunky Manolo Blahnik shoe.

David Cummins already had out a magnifying glass, which he handed to Jury wordlessly.

Jury compared the imprint with the heel he held in his hand, then passed glass and photo on to Wiggins. “Has a cast been made of this?”

Cummins nodded. “Yes.”

“If it is a shoe, where would the imprint of the rest of it have fallen, do you think?”

“I’d guess the sole was on the hard surface of the patio. The stone is pretty much flush with the ground.”

“Forensic thinks it’s a heel print?”

“It’s certainly possible. They’ve been rather stumped by it, think it might have been done by the roadworks equipment.”

Chris sighed impatiently. “It’s a Manolo Blahnik, I’m telling you.”

Jury was doubtful, but he smiled at her nonetheless. “Good for you, Chris.” Seeing how delighted she was with the results of her detection, he didn’t add that there were probably a dozen other things, including shoes, that could have fit the image in the photo. Actually, he was impressed; the lady had a very good eye for detail.

“You think the killer was a woman?” said Jury.

She said in a tone heavy with irony, “We do all sorts of things, Superintendent. Scrub floors, make cookies, kill people. Yes, that’s what I’m saying: a woman wearing Manolo Blahniks.”

Her husband said, “It’s not as tidy as that, Chris.”

“Still…,” said Jury, picking up the shoe. “Could we borrow this?”

“Yes, of course.” She looked over her wall of shoes, smiling. “I knew this lot would come in handy someday.”

“London, would you say?” He was rocking the shoe slightly in his hand.

“You couldn’t buy them in Amersham. I’d try Sloane Street first. There’s his shop there. Besides that, you might find shoes in some designer knockoff place or one of those consignment places. I’ve found several pairs myself at a shop called Design Edge. It’s in Kensington High Street. You could try those places.”

“You shop in London?”

“Oh, you mean this?” She gave the wheelchair a slap and smiled. “No. But Davey goes to London when he gets days off. Remember, he’s the one who brought back the Kate Spade.” She laughed.

And David, once again, looked grim. The Kate Spade shoe episode was wearing thin.

Chris wheeled back to the center table and picked up a largish book with a glossy cover sporting a pair of high-heeled emerald green shoes, looking as if they’d been carelessly stepped out of, one lying on its side.

The title was, Jury thought, pretty forced: Shoe-aholic. He said, smiling, “I take it you identify with shoe-aholicism?”

She laughed. “You rolled that right out, Superintendent. Yes, I do. Davey brought me this from Waterstone’s Friday. It’s luscious.”

“Not nearly so much as the real thing,” said Jury, looking at the wall of shoes. Then he got up. “Thanks so much for the Manolo Blahnik insight. And the tea, of course. We’ll look into it.”

She sighed. “My theory is being dismissed, I can see that.”

“Absolutely not. You ready to go, Wiggins?”

His sergeant was back at the shoes again, looking broody.

“What do you think of that heel business? Just her passion for shoes?”

“That’s a great deal of money tied up in that collection. Eighty pairs, I counted. Say between five hundred, a thousand a pair, you’re looking at around sixty thousand.”

Jury smiled. “You counted them. I thought you were just admiring them.”

“Don’t be daft. This”-he pointed to his head, presumably the brain-“is always ticking over. Where to next?” Wiggins tested the acceleration by gunning the motor and then releasing the pedal.

“The Rexroth house. The people who threw the party. It’s not far. It’s on this road just a short distance past the pub.”

As they pulled away from the curb, Wiggins said, “Speaking of shoes…”

Jury rolled his eyes. Were they again?

“I must say, I’ve a friend who’d look smashing in that sequined number.”

Jury wasn’t aware Wiggins had a “friend,” much less a friend who’d look smashing in sequins.

Wiggins went on: “A DS doesn’t make that kind of money.”

“No. But his wife’s family apparently has that kind.”

“Oh.” Wiggins frowned and drove on.