The Tell-Tail Heart: A Cat Cozy (Cattarina Mysteries) (4 page)

Plague of Mystery

C
law, Stub, and Ash scrambled to
a stop against the man's dirty working boots. Not only had the country gent
stopped the fisticuffs between Mr. Uppity and Mr. Abbott in the tavern, he'd helped
me out of a predicament as well. The demon cats hesitated, as if they might rebel
against my liberator, but they scattered with a wave of his cap. Before the
three retreated into the underbrush, Claw offered a final warning: "Without
the human's help, you would've been mine. Until next time, Tortie."

I wriggled to escape the man's arms, but he held
me fast in the folds of his black-smudged coat. "Good thing I took the
long way home, kitty cat," he said. He examined me with soft brown eyes,
not unlike Sissy's. Moonlight filtered through the branches and glowed along
the edges of his clean-shaven face, bouncing off the tip of his up-turned nose.
Though he was fully grown, his skin, teeth, and sun-touched hair still held the
assurance of youth. "Wait. Haven't I seen you before?" He pushed back
his cap to get a good look at me. "I declare! In the tavern! I would've said
hello—I like cats, you know—but that old man wouldn't let up. Kept
running his mouth about President Tyler. Gets into a fella's brain until he can
hardly think straight."

I offered a feeble and helpless meow, hoping he'd
show me mercy.

Brow furrowed with uncertainty, he looked through
the trees to the pale stone building across the street. After a brief rest, he started
back up the trail, traveling deeper into the park. I hadn't noticed in the
tavern, but he walked with a limp.
Drag-step-drag-step
. Despite not
knowing our destination, the warmth of his coat lulled me into complacency,
causing a purr to rise from my throat. Any man who used the term "kitty cat"
couldn't be that bad, I reasoned. Unsure of his true name, I gave him my own
for the duration: Mr. Limp.

We soldiered on through the cold air until the canopy
of trees gave way to a man-made canopy of shop awnings. As we strolled, Mr.
Limp opined at length about digging and graves and diseases, giving me insight
into his occupation—gravedigger. His choice of employment would have
fascinated Eddie. My stomach lurched at the thought of my friend. Was he now,
this very instant, pacing the floor with worry? The smell of baking bread interrupted
this useless line of inquiry, and my purr grew louder. Now I understood where
we were headed. A half block later, my savior set me on the steps of Shakey
House—not home, but close enough. "There you go, kitty cat," he
said. "Safe as wet dynamite."

I meowed in both gratitude and apology. In my
fervor to free myself, I'd smeared the collar of his coat with blood. That
tabby would pay for puncturing my neck. At least she hadn't struck a vein.

Mr. Limp acknowledged my meow with a tip of his cap,
then left the way he'd come. As I watched him go, I wondered if he'd end up in
that building by the park. I licked my paw and cleaned my face. Strange that a
shabby, unkempt man lived in such a grand abode. Yet Eddie, the dandiest man I
knew, cohabitated with a family of cockroaches, a number of silverfish, and
three—correction—two mice. Human manner and human condition didn't
always coincide. The clank of pans inside the bakery reminded me of the time. I
wanted to be home before sunup lest Eddie send a search party for me.

A leap ahead of the sun, I arrived at our home
on Coates, panting and wheezing from my run along the railroad tracks. What a
foolish cat I'd been. No eyeball was worth the risk of Claw or Mr. Abbott
ending me for good. I would have to find another way to lift Eddie's spirits.
Or he could darned-well lift his own. I pushed through the still-cracked door—no
one had shut it—and entered the hallway to a mournful wail.

"No! No! No!" Eddie shouted. "It's
all wrong!"

I trotted to the front room to find my companion
at his desk. He sat in much the same position as before, but he'd rolled up his
sleeves and kicked off his shoes. His hair stood on end from, I assumed, being
tugged by frantic hands, and his cravat lay on the floor like a dead snake. He'd
allowed the fire to burn out, letting an autumn chill into the room.

"It was so easy with the Rue Morgue story,
Catters," he said to me. Judging by the occupied look on his face, he had
no idea I'd been missing for half the night. Perhaps it was better that way. "That
plot came to me as if in a dream. But this new story vexes me beyond
comprehension. It's not the
who
or the
what
, but the
why
."
He stood and pulled the eyeball from his pocket. "And this trifle is doing
me no good. It's lost its magic." He crossed to the fireplace and set it near
the mantel clock with a finality I hadn't expected. Then he turned and dropped
to one knee. "Come here, my Cattarina."

I obliged him, taking pleasure in the rug
beneath my paws. It had been a long night of cobblestones and brick.

"Did you sleep well?" He stroked my
fur. "Did Sissy?"

I arched my back at her name and curled into his
hand. I hoped she'd fared well last night without my company.

Eddie picked me up and sat us in Muddy's empty
rocking chair, stretching his stocking feet toward the hearth. "If I knew
more about the murder, Catters, I might be able to fix things on the page. But
as it is…" He held me up to his face and repeated that word again,
murder
.
"Cats know nothing of the kind, you lucky soul. Alas,
I
must dwell
on such atrocities." He settled us into the chair and began to rock. "Madness,
Catters. I know madness is the cause. It must be." The rocking slowed, he
whispered
murder
one more time. Then his lips parted in sleep.

Silly of me to think the glass orb had intrigued
my friend. On the contrary!
The means by which it had been acquired
fascinated him, and this conundrum had evidently overwound his brain. Eddie had
the mutability of a boundless sky: he could blind us, almost burn us, with his
brilliance one day, then fall into a black and starless despair the next, never
lingering too long at dawn or dusk. And no one in the Poe household was immune
to these changes. Why, last full moon he broke one of Muddy's dragon plates
after merely reading a newspaper article. He'd read it aloud, but it muddled my
ears with strange language like
supercilious
and
commonplace
. I
had a hard enough time keeping track of our current vocabulary. Today, however,
I sensed a difference. This riddle gripped him from the inside, as it did me. I
wound tighter in his lap to keep from falling since his arms had gone limp, and
though I shut both eyes, sleep did not come. I had a feeling we wouldn't get
much until I solved the mystery that plagued us both.

The
Fickle One

S
ome time before dawn, I left Eddie's
lap and crept into Sissy's bedroom to lie next to her. Even after old Muddy
rose to stoke the kitchen fire, we stayed in bed a while longer, lingering in
the relative warmth of the thin blanket. When a shaft of sunlight lit the room,
I stretched and flexed my toes. My tail still smarted from last night's mishap,
but less so than before.

Sissy yawned and pushed an errant lock of hair
from her face. Pinpricks of blood dotted the neck of her white chemise, yet her
cheeks held color—a good sign. "Where were you last night, Miss
Cattarina?" she asked. "I was so cold without you." She rubbed
the space between my eyes and smiled. "You were sleeping with Eddie, weren't
you?"

I rolled onto my back and offered her my belly.
She took my suggestion and smoothed the fur on my stomach. After breakfast, I'd
devise a plan for bringing Mr. Abbott and his alleged crime to Eddie's
attention. While I hoped
some
measure of justice would come to that
pernicious tail runner, my primary concern was my friend's writing. As long as the
ink began to flow again, the Poe house would be set to rights, and I would have
fulfilled my job as muse.

Before long, the scent of frying mutton roused us
from the covers. Sissy crossed to the wardrobe to dress, while I hopped into
the chair by the door to supervise. I had no idea what humans did before cats crept
from the primordial forest to observe them. Whatever the activity, it couldn't
have been that important.

"Can you keep a secret, Cattarina?"
Sissy opened the tall wooden chest and withdrew her corset—an item she reserved
for her "good days" when coughing spells were at their lowest. "I
intend to look into this eyeball business. I know Mother would object, and
Eddie, too, but I want to prove that I'm useful. That I'm not just a consumptive
invalid. You understand me, don't you?" She winked at me, then laced the
corset around her chemise, keeping it loose. Petticoat and gown followed. I
watched with fascination as she twisted her long, dark locks and secured them
to the back of her head with a comb. I never tired of that hairstyle. It
reminded me of a snail's shell.

She continued, "Eddie and Mother think they're
keeping unpleasant things from me. But I read about them in the papers."
She turned from the mirror and whispered, "You know. The murders."

I cocked my head, surprised by her knowledge of
the term. I welcomed any assistance, of course. Yet in her debilitated state, I
questioned how much she could offer. When Muddy called us to breakfast, we
padded downstairs, the temperature climbing as we neared the kitchen. Once the "good
mornings" had been dispensed with, Eddie, Sissy, Muddy, and I ate small
plates of fried leftover mutton and fried leftover porridge. Ash may have
belittled me yesterday, calling me someone's "property," but I was
also the one eating a nice warm bowl of food today. I knew from experience that
living feral meant living by the pangs of one's stomach.

Once I'd cleaned the bowl, I licked away the last
bit of grease and groomed the dragon painted on the rim of the bowl. Then I
retreated to the corner near the woodstove for my morning spruce-up. I'd come
home filthy last night, but hadn't had the energy to give myself a bath before
retiring. I began with my forepaws, still sore from my jaunt, and listened to Eddie
drone on about this and that with a voice craggy from lack of sleep. He didn't
speak of the eyeball. I turned and worked on my hindquarters. In order to find
Mr. Abbott and learn if he really
had
committed the crimes I suspected
him of, I needed to visit—what had Claw called it?—the Logan Square
area and explore the uncharted south. I assumed the man lived in the direction
the gig had traveled. Except returning meant facing that horrid gang of demons.

"What are your plans today, my dear?"
Eddie asked Sissy. He crossed his ankles under the table.

"A little of this, a little of that,"
she said breezily. She lifted her coffee cup and let the steam rise to her lips.
"I may go out later if the weather stays fair."

"Out?" Muddy frowned. "Do you think
that's a good idea? It may turn windy later."

Sissy shot me a furtive look, though I knew not
why. "I'll be fine, Mother."

"As long as you're feeling up to it, let's
take tea outside," Eddie said to Sissy. "We'll have a little picnic
along the river." He pushed his chair from the table, scraping its legs
along the floor. "Now if you'll excuse me. I saw Mr. Coffin poking around
this morning, and I want to talk to him about—"

"The wobbly porch rail," Muddy said at
once. She stood and gathered the dishes. "And the cracked window in the
parlor."

"
Just
what I had in mind," he
said.

"And don't let that fatted goose convince
you we owe money. We're paid up until the end of October."

Eddie drummed his fingers on the table. "Catters?"

I looked up from a rather indelicate grooming
pose, one leg high above my head.

"Let's visit Mr. Coffin," he said. "Shall
we?"

The remainder of my bath could wait. I followed
Eddie outside, where we found Mr. Coffin hammering a board onto Ms. Busybody's broken
stoop next door. He looked up as we approached, a row of nails clenched between
his teeth. Though I hadn't known him long, Mr. Coffin had already secured a
spot on my "favored humans" list. A gentle soul with the temperament
of fresh, cold milk on a hot day, he'd never once raised his voice, not to
Eddie, not to Muddy or Sissy, and most of all, not to me. Besides which, I
rather liked fatted geese.

Mr. Coffin stood with a grunt and removed the
nails from his mouth. He tossed them into his toolbox, along with the hammer. "Hullo,
Poe."

"Good morning, Mr. Coffin," Eddie
said.

"How is your dear wife? Any change?"

"Virginia is well.
Very
well."

I wove between Mr. Coffin's legs, gifting him
with fur. When a fresh breeze blew in from the Schuylkill, I lifted my nose,
reveling in the scent of fish. The pastureland we lived in now smelled better
than our previous haunt, a dense city neighborhood that reeked of garbage and
other human wastes of which I dared not think. Fairmount was a tree climber's
paradise, and I, for one, hoped we never left.

"Any news about your job in the Custom House?"
Mr. Coffin wiped his hands on a rag he took from his back pocket. "I
faithfully scour the papers each morning, hoping for a glimpse of your name."

"The machinations of the federal government
are beyond
my
meager comprehension. In the meantime, I am hard at work on
my future—
The Penn
magazine. We are still looking for investors. Have
I mentioned it before?"

"You
may
have," Mr. Coffin
said.

Eddie flashed his teeth. Devoid of merriment,
the gesture intuited nervousness. Cats, I might add, are incapable of such
subterfuge. He picked a piece of chipped paint from the finial. "Say, Mr.
Coffin, what do you know about the murders near Logan Square? As alderman, your
brother-in-law must have some insight into the crime."

"What is it about violence that fascinates
you?"

"I have so few hobbies. Without them, I
might perish from boredom.
Then
who would pay my rent?"

Mr. Coffin laughed. "You got me there, Poe."
He replaced the rag in his pocket and turned to me, his double chin stretching
with a smile. "I see you've brought God's favorite creature round this
morning. Hullo, Cattarina. Have you missed me?"

I nudged his leg.

With great fanfare, he took a sliver of jerky
from his pocket and dangled it above me, his fingers a baited hook. Yet I made
no move toward the treat. So he knelt down on one knee—a task that took
real effort—and held it out for me. When he realized the futility of his
scheme, he handed the jerky to Eddie, who in turn handed it to me. I wasn't
above taking food from Mr. Coffin. Things just tasted better from Eddie's hand,
and I ate from it when I could.

"She's the fickle one, isn't she?" Mr.
Coffin said. He stayed low and helped himself onto the bottom step of Ms.
Busybody's stoop. "Now about those murders." He paused, squinting
into the sun. "I take it they're research for a story."

"Yes. I don't have a title yet, but I do
have a draft of the opening lines." Eddie cleared his throat and recited a
speech that, from its timbre, seemed to carry importance.

"TRUE!—nervous—very,
very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole
story."

He
coughed, mumbled apologetically about the "anemic opening," then
continued:

"It is
impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it
haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I
loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For
his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the
eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell
upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made
up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye
forever."

Eddie finished by bowing to Mr. Coffin. Mr.
Coffin applauded. It was all too much for me. I sat on a sun-warmed patch of earth
and kneaded my claws in the grass, the problem of Claw still taxing me. Perhaps
I could offer him a bribe for safe passage. But he and his gang surely had all
the mice they could handle. A carriage might move me through danger
if
I
could sneak onto one heading the right direction. A meadowlark landed in the
dust near our porch and hopped about on little stick legs. Had I not been so
full of Mr. Coffin's jerky and my own questions, I might've dispensed with the
nuisance for flaunting such nauseating patterns this early in the day.

"You assume madness as the motive for the
killings," Mr. Coffin said.

"How can anyone think otherwise?"
Eddie gazed past the line of row houses into the adjoining field. "Though
I'd like to be certain. Details matter. Details are everything."

"The district, from what my brother-in-law
tells me, knows nothing of the villain. No suspects, no witnesses. Two murders
a fortnight apart, two prosthetic eyes taken as plunder, both of them pale blue.
That is all."

"Both of them pale blue?" Eddie asked.
He gave Mr. Coffin his full attention. "I—I hadn't realized. The
paper never stated the color of the prostheses. How very curious."

Mr. Coffin rose and retrieved his hammer. "No
matter the color, two women are dead. And when they catch the culprit, I hope
they lock him in the Eastern State Penitentiary."

I froze at the utterance of the prison, a name I
knew all too well, and a plan began to form. I didn't need brains or bribes to
get past Claw; I needed brawn. And the Eastern State residents had plenty.