Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

It was time Jasper Seines went. What surprised Mungo was that Harry hadn’t bumped him off. He had seen Harry cast truly malevolent looks at the boy, but Harry was taking the gentlemanly approach (and Harry was always that) by merely suggesting to Mrs. Tobias, his housekeeper and sometime cook, that Jasper Seines must be missing school. Hint, hint, nod, nod, wink, wink. But Mrs. Tobias wasn’t one to pick up a hint and a nod, so Harry might hand her a broader message by kicking Jasper Seines down the cellar stairs.

Mungo looked over the kittens as if they were licorice allsorts. He saw one was even smaller than Elf and was about to pick it up when Schrödinger padded over to scotch that particular bit of fun. Schrödinger was as black as squid’s ink and with almost as many appendages, or so it seemed, when she started routing Mungo.

He sent her the message Don’t be daft. I’m not doing anything. She stared at him round-eyed, refusing to return a message, probably feeling it beneath her.

So into this voiceless habitation came Jasper Seines. “Well, well, well, wot’s all this, then?” doing his imitation of some beat copper. Then suddenly, like a magician grabbing an object out of the air, he yanked up one of the kittens by its tail. The little thing screeched, and this earned Jasper Seines an attack from both sides: Schrödinger clawing his leg and Mungo sinking his teeth into the boy’s ankle.

“You little fuckers! Get offa me!”

The kitten dropped back into the drawer, and Jasper Seines yelled and, unable to shake off Mungo, yelled some more. Finally released, he ran crying to Mrs. Tobias; tears went flying from his doughy face as if even they wanted to get as far away from Master Seines as they could.

Neither Schrödinger nor Mungo subscribed to that old saw about my enemy’s enemy. Nonetheless, Mungo thought, if they worked together (for once), they might be able to get rid of Jasper Seines.

Schrödinger jumped into the drawer to see that no other devilment befell her brood; Mungo left the music room and went clicking across the gorgeously polished hardwood floor to sit near the kitchen and take in what was going on.

Tearily, Jasper Seines was denying any action on his part. “No, I never done nuttin’…”

“My patience is wearing thin, my lad.”

Mungo sighed. Mrs. Tobias was nobody’s fool.

“Aw right, I’d as soon go home! I don’t like it here!”

What a nasty nephew. But what a promising bit of conversation. Now all Mungo had to do was give this beastly child a little nudge out the front door.

Afternoon was drawing in and Mungo had his eye on his favorite spot, underneath a small wrought-iron bench in the rear garden. There was a doghouse, too, but he wouldn’t bother himself.

Trotting toward the bench, he could already feel the cool grass against his stomach, the feathery shade made by the thin and delicate fronds of a willow, moving in the breeze.

That’s why he was brought up smartly by finding his spot occupied by a black cat calmly snoozing there, not bothered by the traffic blaring its way along Upper Sloane Street. The cat lay with its front paws hooked around its chest, in that deft way of cats. It looked like a loaf of pumpernickel.

Carefully, Mungo crept closer to the bench and sat down far enough away that the cat would miss him if he woke suddenly and took a swipe at Mungo. The cat slept on, sensing nothing. For one crazy moment, he thought it might be Schrödinger. It was just as black, certainly, and looked just like her, except for the bright blue collar round the stranger’s neck.

Mungo pulled a pebble from beneath a tree and aimed it toward the cat. The pebble rolled against a paw, but the cat only twitched its nose before it resettled itself even more deeply into pumpernickel posture. This was irritating. If someone hit him, Mungo, with a pebble, he’d be off the ground and flailing. He jumped onto the bench, from which position he could watch the cat through the wrought-iron interstices of the seat. There were large openings in the fussy scroll-work through which he could reach his paw, but he couldn’t reach the cat.

He could bark to wake the cat up, but he didn’t like to bark; barking was a last-ditch effort. Mungo hopped down from the bench and moved around to where he was before. He lay down, his head on his paws, his gaze level with the cat’s closed eyes. When the cat woke, he would be startled; it would be fun.

The cat’s eyes opened so slowly, they seemed not to move. Mungo raised himself to a sitting position, leaned on one paw, then the other, back and forth as if getting ready to make a dash.

The cat yawned.

That annoyed him. Mungo was, after all, a dog. He pricked up his ears: the cat was sending him a message:

I hope I’m not dead and you’re not heaven.

Mungo took a startled step back. He wasn’t at all sure that message was complimentary. He sent a message back: No, it’s not heaven; it’s Belgravia, though some here would argue there’s a difference. Who are you?

Morris.

The cat shoveled its rear end back and assumed one of those sloping Zen-like stretches that cats were so good at. Even Schrödinger looked agile in that butt-to-sky pose.

Do you live around here? asked Mungo. I mean in one of these other houses? Because this is my garden.

Morris lay back down in the paws-to-chest position that Mungo envied.

No, I live off somewhere.

That’s not going to get you far. You don’t even know the name of the place?

Never thought I’d have to know. I never thought I’d be kidnapped before. The slow-blinking eyes blinked again.

Kidnapped! Wow! That was supposed to have happened to Mungo once, but it hadn’t. That story was Harry’s invention. If there was one thing Harry was good at, it was making up stories and otherwise lying.

You mean honest-to-God kidnapping? Or do you know Harry?

Harry who?

Never mind. (Less said the better.) You don’t know where you were kidnapped from? Or to?

It’ll come back to me. I know it’s a pub. One minute I was on my table in the pub gardens, having a kip. There I lay until someone jerked me up and started roughing me around. Then I was in a car. Then I don’t remember.

What pub is it?

I think it’s called the Black Cat. Once in a while a customer would remark on me being the pub’s cat and wasn’t that clever? Clever. I ask you. Anyway, I’m not. My owner’s name is Dora.

Go on.

Well, I’m wandering about outside looking for field mice, and I come across a person lying on the patio where the tables are.

Mungo sat straight up, big-eyed.

It didn’t move, this person. I sniffed all around and smelled something like blood, I think.

Blood! Mungo could feel the small stiff hairs rise along his spine. He would like to be a bloodhound.

It must’ve been a dead body.

I expect so. Then I saw an old woman coming along with a fat dog and ran back inside the pub. Do you have anything to eat? I’m really hungry. A nice piece of fish would go down a treat. Of course, I’d take anything.

Mungo was thinking furiously. I’m going in for a bit.

Back to the house? Will you come back?

Yes. I’ll bring some food. You stay here. I won’t be long.

The rear door was open, as it often was off the latch in good weather. Mungo hated the dog door because he was afraid of getting stuck in it. All he needed to do here was get a paw in between door and doorjamb and pull.

Mrs. Tobias was busy arranging thin cucumber slices on a cold salmon. “Mungo! Where have you been?”

Mrs. Tobias always sounded surprised to see Mungo was still living here. “This is for your master’s dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?”

My what? Was she kidding?

“He does like his bit of salmon.”