The Black Cat (16 page)

The bloody traffic light had decided its changing days were over. Jury sat behind the wheel, waiting.

I’ve ‘ad enough o’ you lot, thinking I’ll go red-yellow green at a moment’s notice just t’ please you. Well, see ’ow you like sittin’ ‘ere for several minutes…

Jury hit the steering wheel. Was he going insane? Imagining what was rattling through the head of a traffic light? Next it’d be British Telecom over there in that forlorn-looking telephone box, trying to get a message across to him-

Which made him think of Mungo and Schrödinger…

Finally the light changed (reluctantly?), and he turned onto Upper Street. No, there was no doubt in his mind that those two had been trying to tell him something. It didn’t surprise him that Mungo had done this, but the black cat?

The black cat.

That cat seemed to be getting along famously with Mungo. They were like conspirators.

Frowning, he pulled up in front of his building, got out and locked the car, and took the steps two at a time. He didn’t feel up to a conversation with Mrs. Wassermann tonight and hoped she wasn’t looking for him through the window of her basement flat.

He watched the moon through the window of his flat and thought about it.

The black cat wasn’t Schrödinger.

Schrödinger and Mungo didn’t get along, according to Harry, and that black cat and Mungo were getting along so well, they seemed to be on the same wavelength.

That cat wasn’t Harry’s cat.

All right, so the cat was a stray. Ridiculous. Harry Johnson taking in a stray cat? And pigs might fly.

Jury knew where he was going with this. Harry had been in Chesham; Harry had been in the Black Cat. And Harry would steal a blind beggar blinder, if it served his purpose.

What was his purpose? What in the world would Harry want with Dora’s cat?

His first impulse was to drive to Belgravia and make Harry turn over the cat. How could he-or why would he refuse to-let the cat go if it wasn’t his cat?

In the middle of this thought there was a knock. He said, “Come in,” and Carole-anne appeared in his doorway like a vision, red gold hair glowing as if the moon hung behind her. The light actually came from the wall sconce in the hallway. It was hard enough dealing with Carole-anne when the light was off, much less on.

“Well, come on. We’ve a date, remember?”

Jury did not, and his expression showed it.

She sighed deeply, still in the lit-up doorway. She checked the small circlet of a watch on her wrist. “It’s nearly gone ten. It’s not very flattering you forgot.”

“I agree. If I had forgotten. But I didn’t forget. We don’t have a date.”

“Yes, we do. Down to the Mucky Duck.”

“I didn’t forget we had a date to go to the Mucky Duck, either.” He bit back a smile. “You’ve stooped to this, have you? Manufacturing dates. And get out of the doorway, will you? The glow hurts my eyes.” He shaded them.

Frowning, she moved into the room.

The view from there was pretty good, too. A sea green or sea blue dress, depending on the way she moved. A mouth of pearly coral lipstick that seemed to have been kissed by that same sea. Long, very thin silver earrings, which darted with shivery little colors as the light hit them.

“Making it up, honestly.” She sank down on his sofa and drew a little mirror from her purse, looked in it, saw nothing apparently, snapped it shut, and said, “Friend of yours called.” She pointed at Jury’s phone as if the friend were trapped inside.

“And…?”

“What?”

“Who was the friend?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I?” She had taken a nail file from her bag and sat filing away.

“Actually, yes. As you were the one who took the message.”

“Oh. Someone named… Fiona?… No… Felicia?…”

“Phyllis?”

“Could’ve been. You ready?” File back in purse, she was up and dusting off a self that needed no dusting.

“Did Phyllis want me to call her?” Of all the forensic pathologists, medical examiners, or coroners in the British Isles, Dr. Phyllis Nancy was the one Jury would always choose. She was the most able, the most accommodating, the most dependable. If Phyllis said she would have the results of an autopsy back to him at a certain time, it was always there, spot-on. Greenwich could have set the clock by her.

Jury had unhooked his jacket from a chair and was shoving his arms into it, the Mucky Duck clearly his destination one way or the other.

“Not really.”

He collected his keys. “Not really, but then what aspect of unreality was she interested in?”

“Just something about dinner. Or lunch.” Carole-anne yawned. It was all the same to her. “Maybe you were supposed to have a meal with her? Or not. Anyway, she was just reminding you of whatever it is. I couldn’t make it out.”

They were on their way downstairs now, Carole-anne wearing, he was almost certain, her party pair of Manolo Blahniks. This heel wasn’t chunky, as was the heel on the pair in Chris Cummins’s collection.

“She sounded,” added Carole-anne in her assessment of Phyllis’s call, “just as flighty as you do.”

The Mucky Duck always lived up to its name (though not the “duck” part), sodden with beer and smoke.

Every man she passed eyeballed Carole-anne, probably hoping Jury was her father. She sat down at a table and asked for a pint of Bass.

“Half-pint is more ladylike,” he said, secretly applauding her refusal to participate in the gender issue.

“Half-pint’ll get dumped over your head, too.”

“You know, you really are crabby tonight,” said Jury.

“You’d be too if you had to spend most of it reminding someone they had a date with you.” The little mirror came out again and she was inspecting her face for forgotten flaws.

Might as well inspect Rossetti’s Beatrice, which she greatly resembled. The compact shut. “You still here?”

“I don’t want to forget what you look like while I’m gone.”

Her eyebrows squiggled. She had a lively frown.

As he left the table, Jury could have sworn six men got up to move on it. When he quickly turned, he could also have sworn they all sat back down again.

Probably just his imagination. But he kept his eye on her off and on while he waited for the barman to take the order.

He returned and set the two pints on the table and then sat himself down.

He folded his arms and leaned toward her. “Now that we’re on our date, what shall we talk about?”

Carole-anne took a ladylike sip of her beer and said, “Who’s Phyllis?”

Wiggins had been here before; he already knew his way around the kitchen and seemed to have made himself invaluable to Myra Brewer. Wiggins had the touch: that’s what Jury had been trying to tell him.

It was the next morning, and they were visiting Myra Brewer.

“We’re out of biscuits,” called Wiggins.

We. Jury loved it.

“Yes, but there’s Choc-o-lots fresh. The ones with marshmallow.”

“Found them.”

Then there was the sound of water running, a kettle being filled. This attention to tea in the midst of death didn’t bother Jury, nor did it make Myra Brewer less sympathetic. For it was clear she missed Kate Banks greatly and was very much affected by her death and the manner of it.

So tea, especially with Wiggins on the job, was an antidote as good as any Jury could ever muster. He thought sometimes it was the rituals that got us through.

Jury sat in a heather gray, rough-textured chair in the small flat in St. Bride Street, barely two blocks from Mr. Banerjee’s corner store. Myra Brewer, Kate Banks’s godmother, lived on the second floor and had trouble, she’d said, with stairs, stairs shamefully inadequate, for the handrail to the first flight had been broken and never mended. She was in her eighties and not “spry,” as she’d told Jury, an understatement if ever he’d heard one.

“There was never any young person good as my Kate. She was a gem, that girl. Come all the way from Crouch End every week, rain or shine-sometimes more than once-and did my bit of shopping for me. Never a cross word, always wanting to help, like ‘Myra, let me Hoover that old rug for you.’

“Well, you wouldn’t think I’m the luckiest person in the world, but I was lucky in Kate. Sometimes I don’t think it’s sickness nor being penniless that’s hardest; it’s being forgot. The worst thing about getting old is people don’t look in.”

It was one of the saddest testaments to age Jury had ever heard. And a heartfelt epitaph. She was thinking, he supposed, that no one would be looking in now, but she kept that thought to herself. There was little self-pity in her talk.

Wiggins, jacket off, in shirtsleeves, had done himself proud with the tea tray, which he was putting down on a small coffee table. “Here you go, Mrs. B. Done and dusted.”

Mrs. B. Jury plucked a Choc-o-lot from a plate.

“Did some bread and butter, too. That’s a nice loaf of granary bread.” Wiggins separated teacups and saucers and poured a measure of milk into each, then raised the sugar bowl in question. Myra took two spoons, Jury one, Wiggins four.

“Thank you, Mr. Wiggins. Thank you very much,” she said, bringing her cup to her mouth and drinking a bit noisily.

Jury set down his cup. “Now, Mrs. Brewer, you said Kate was a friend’s daughter?”

“That’s right,” said Wiggins.

Jury gave him a look, but he knew it failed to temper Wiggins’s apparent conviction that he was now one of the Brewers.

“Eugenie,” said Myra Brewer, “Eugenie Muldar.”

“Kate Muldar, then. What about Kate’s husband? Is he in the picture?”

“Oh, my, no, they’ve been divorced for over a decade. Johnny Banks was his name.”

“And with the divorce, was there ill will on his part?”

Myra Brewer shook her head. “No. They’d gotten married so young, they both seemed relieved to be out of it.”

“I see.” Jury paused, wondering how to ask the question. “Did Kate do any other work you knew of?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean besides her steno job? No. Why?”

“Moonlighting, maybe. You know, lots of women with that sort of job do private work-”

Wiggins carried on: “Like typing up manuscripts, or for businessmen who want documents typed, or letters, things like that. A hotel often offers stenographic services to businessmen. Your Kate might have taken on extra work for the extra money. Reason we’d be interested in this is to look at anyone she might have worked for to see if there’s anyone who might have wanted to harm her.”

“Oh. But you don’t think it was someone she knew? I expect I was assuming what happened to Kate was a-what do you call it?-a mugging?”

Jury said, “She wasn’t robbed. She had money on her. Tell me, would she have been bringing it to you? Do you need money?”

That was a bit of a twist in the account. Myra gave a short laugh. “I always need money.”

“Any particular amount? I mean for a scumbag landlord or British Telecom raising its rates? Something generally making your life hell?”

Again, she gave a sharp, joyless laugh. “I should say so. The property manager-that’s what they call themselves, these greedy landlords-he’d been trying to get two months’ back rent that I don’t owe him. I’ve been to the counsel about it. He says I must pay up or I’ll be tossed out with the rubbish. Nice way of putting it, isn’t it?”

“That must be extremely worrisome. How much does he claim you owe him?”

“Seven hundred pounds.”

Jury nodded. “Had Kate told you she’d bring you the money?”

Genuinely shocked by this, Myra said, “Kate? Kate hadn’t that kind of money.” She thought for a minute. “Though she was certainly generous with what money she did have. She’d do my shopping for me, like I said, and refuse to take a penny. Kate was a good girl.”

“Sounds like it,” said Wiggins, pouring himself another cup of tea, adding milk, thoughtfully stirring sugar into it. “We found-”

Jury gave him a kick under the coffee table.

“Found… only she appeared to dress quite well.”

“Yes, she did. Kate was always nicely turned out. She got those designer clothes at Oxfam.”

Wiggins couldn’t help himself. “Those shoes? Christian Louboutin? Oh, I shouldn’t think Oxfam would have those.”

Jury shot Wiggins another warning look. “Maybe they were knockdowns.”

This talk of dress bewildered Myra Brewer.

Jury said, “You knew Kate all her life, did you?”

She nodded. “Though I wouldn’t see her for long periods. They were here and there. Her mum, Eugenie, never stayed put for long. Restless, poor thing. She’d just go off sometimes, take the kids, sometimes not. She’d leave them with me, usually. We were still best friends even though I thought she didn’t do right by the kids. Well, I was Kate’s godmother and I should act the part.”

“What about Kate’s siblings?”

“There was just the one, a brother. They called him Boss, for some reason. He had an unusual name, anyway: Brent. I never did know where that came from. I don’t think it was a family name.”

Wiggins had his notebook out, which necessitated putting down his cup. “And where might we find them, your friend Eugenie and her son?”

“No joy there, Mr. Wiggins. They’re both gone. Eugenie to lung cancer, and the boy, Brent, was in a car crash. Probably joyriding with his friends. His mum had warned him about that.”

The voice faded out, as if that had been more than she wanted to say and she was looking through a mist that had collected over tea. She said, “You know, I felt shocking little when they went. It’s as if I had just let go?” She was posing the question to the room, not expecting an answer. “Carelessness, I mean. It’s like I should’ve held on to the string tighter. It would be nice to see them again. I expect a lot of us only come to that when it’s too late.”

There was a silence. Then Jury said, “Probably all of us find the feelings we’ve misplaced when it’s too late. It’s not you; it’s inevitable; it’s the human condition.” He was silent for a moment. “That’s the whole of her family, then?”

She nodded. “Now there’s just me. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Kate came round so much.” She brought her hand to her forehead. “Well.”

Jury gave her a moment, then asked, “What about men? Was there anyone in particular?”

“Not that she ever said. No, she didn’t talk about any men friends. I told her, ‘Katie, you should be going out, having a bit offun.’ She’d just laugh. She said, ‘I haven’t yet found a man who could sit alone with a book for half an hour without getting jumpy.’ Well, I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. I do know Kate was a great reader; she loved books. Her favorite place in London was that big Waterstone’s bookshop in Piccadilly.”

Myra took the handkerchief from her face and looked anxiously from the one to the other. “But you’re suggesting… what are you saying? That it was some man she knew? She was all dressed up, you said. Like she was on a date? But then why would she be coming round here?”

“It could be,” said Wiggins, “that she’d left someone-her date-and then come round.”

“Then it wasn’t just some stranger. He must’ve been here with her. That’s shocking, shocking. It’s as if it happened right on my doorstep.”

“It could have been someone who knew where she was going. That’s why we need to know about her friends.”

Jury thought they were finished here, at least for now. He took a card from an inside pocket and passed it over to her. “Call me anytime at all if you think of something that might be relevant.”

Wiggins put away his notebook and rose, too, lifting his teacup one last time and finishing off the tea. “Thanks for this, Mrs. B.” He gestured toward the tray.

“Well, you fixed it, Mr. Wiggins. Come back sometime when you have a minute to spare.” She trailed them to the door.

“I might do that. I might just look in sometime.” He smiled at her.

The old Wiggins, thought Jury, was back.