Моника Шонесси - The Tell-Tail Heart

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Even in the shade of late day, the white walls and numerous windows lit the interior, giving it a cheery air, although further inspection put me to rights. The architecture may have been breezy, but the clientele was anything but. As I slunk along the corridors looking for Mr. Limp, I found the broken humans of which Midnight had warned me. At the time, I thought he meant their bodies. Now I knew he meant their spirits. A group of these pour souls—more than I could count on my toes—lived together in one long room that spanned the back portion of the building. Their beds lined the walls on either side, leaving a walkway up the middle for more ladies in white aprons. Nurses, I think they call them. Medicine bottles in hand, they tended their charges, engaging in lighthearted chitchat as they worked. I stood in the doorway and surveyed the room but did not see Mr. Limp. Then my eyes settled on the stocky man sitting by the bed of a young woman. It was Josef Wertmüller. I had never seen him this far from Shakey House before.

Using the beds as an on-again, off-again tunnel, I crept closer to the barkeep and his lady friend. Though she lay with her back to me, the young woman bore a passing resemblance to Sissy with her long dark mane and pale hands, making her all the more appealing. But unlike Sissy, emaciation had ruined the woman's body and thinned her hair. Her sparse locks spilled along the pillow like rivulets of the Schuylkill. I hid under an adjacent cot and listened for language I might recognize.

"Caroline," Josef said to her in a soothing voice, "where were you last night?"

Caroline . Now I knew what, or rather, who had troubled him the previous evening.

"I was here, Josef. You saw me." She tugged her blanket higher. "You emptied my bedpan, didn't you? Filled my water glass?"

" Nein , miss. I work the mornings."

"Why do you ask?"

He rubbed his side-whiskers and squinted. "No reason. No reason at all."

"You know I can't go anywhere in my…current condition." Her voice trembled. "Please go. I consider your questions rather unkind."

Josef stood. " Ich bitte um Verzeihung . I leave now. Just don't tell Dr. Burton I was here."

"Wait." She stretched her hand and took his arm. "Can you deliver a note to my friend? He usually visits in the evenings, but it can't wait."

"Of course."

"Good. I will give you his address." Caroline gestured to the stationery and pencil on the nightstand with one fragile hand. "Can you write it for me?"

He shuffled his feet.

"I will help you spell," she added.

Josef picked up the implements and sat down again.

Caroline began the dictation. "Dearest Owen…" I'd seen Sissy take down Eddie's words when his hand grew too tired to write, just as Josef did now. He licked the end of the pencil and scratched marks on the paper.

She continued, "I have missed you terribly. Please do not come tonight as Uncle has promised to visit, too. You know how he dislikes our courtship…"

Bless the girl. She'd given me time to think. Last night, news of the murders shook Josef more than I would've expected, eliciting great anxiety over this Caroline woman. But why? I ducked when the patient above me jostled the mattress. At first, I'd thought Mr. Abbott guilty of the crime. I had, after all, detected the same medicinal scent on him as on the eye. But now I wondered if the smell had come from Josef instead. I wiggled my whiskers. He couldn't be the killer. I fancied myself a skillful judge of character, and he'd shown no signs of amoral behavior. And yet…

Josef folded the piece of stationery and rose to leave. "I go, Caroline. Just as you said. To Rittenhouse."

I stiffened. Rittenhouse . That infernal neighborhood lay at the center of the mystery. If I didn't follow Josef, I would never put my suspicions to rest, and they had grown much, much stronger these last few moments. Before he could leave, I backtracked through my bed tunnel and waited behind a potted plant by the door. But he opened and shut the portal with such force that I did not have time to dart through it. So I waited for someone else to let me out. When no one came, I meowed.

I will say this: marble provides splendid acoustics.

A slack-chinned nurse escorted me out with more vigor than I'd anticipated, yelling "Shoo! Shoo!" as I left. To emphasize her point, she nudged me from the porch with said shoe , as if I needed help understanding the word. I paid her no mind; I had a two-legged mouse to catch. I sprinted outside and found Josef but made sure to stay several paces behind him. Mr. Abbot may have caught me following him, but my new quarry would not.

After a few blocks, Josef passed the same grocer's that Midnight and I had visited this morning, an indication we'd crossed into Rittenhouse. He turned the corner at the park, walked along the sidewalk for a time, and then stopped at a three-story townhome built of ornate limestone. While the structure impressed me, the landscaping did not—leggy bushes grew this way and that like uncombed hair. I flattened myself in the uncut grass. Eddie's Detective Dupin from The Murders in the Rue Morgue was no match for me. I'd heard enough about the gentleman's exploits to form this educated if somewhat biased, opinion.

Josef climbed the steps to the porch and rang the bell box. Almost immediately, the door opened, revealing another familiar face from Shakey House Tavern: Mr. Uppity, the man who'd purchased Eddie's newspaper. Josef faltered, his eyebrows lifted in surprise, then handed him Caroline's note.

I hadn't bothered with Mr. Uppity's details before other than to note his shoes and his weight, but his features intrigued me: white side-whiskers, long, hooked nose, and a fetching pair of sky-blue eyes. I wiped my face with my paw and looked again. Yes, they were the exact same color as the eyeball I'd found in the bar. There are no coincidences, only cats with impeccable timing. This physical evidence convinced me more than Josef's or Mr. Abbott's loose association.

My teeth chattered, longing to bite Mr. Uppity, the real Thief of Rittenhouse. I had found my murdering eyeball stealer at last.

Garden of the Dead

Teatime had almost ended when I arrived at the green-shuttered home on Coates. I tried to rush home to warn Eddie about Mr. Uppity, truly I did. But after the day I'd had, running turned to skittering, skittering turned to loping, and loping, well, let us say that my tender paws surrendered before my spirit. To make matters worse, I found no cheese or crackers waiting for me. I wandered through the unusually quiet first floor until I came across Muddy in the front room. She sat alone by the fireplace with a cup in her hands, sipping and rocking and gazing into the embers. I longed to ask her Eddie's whereabouts, but she and I didn't share the required empathy. A search of the second and third floors bore nothing, so I returned to the yard and climbed an ancient hemlock for a kite's-eye view of Fairmount.

Between the needled boughs, I could see the Water Works, the elbow bend of the Schuylkill, and further south, boat masts poking above the docks. Dash it all. Too many humans populated these areas for my aerial search to be of use, though it did turn up a wake of buzzards circling in the distance. I looked north to the near-deserted landscape above the Water Works and, to my surprise, discovered Eddie and Sissy frolicking in a graveyard. Many old, forgotten burial grounds lay along the riverbank. I knew because I'd explored them in my kittenhood, finding solitude among the tilting tombstones. But why, for kitty's sake, were my companions visiting one now?

After a short walk—anything was short compared to my trek from Rittenhouse—I squeezed through the wrought iron fence surrounding the cemetery. Trees obscured the river, but the rush of water and honk of geese served as a reminder. On my quietest paws, I snuck up to Eddie and Sissy and hid behind a statue of a winged lady. With expressions ranging from doleful to dreadful, these monuments were frightfully common in graveyards. But if they marked the burial place of flying humans, why hadn't I seen them fluttering about the streets of Philadelphia? I switched my tail. Cattarina, have you seen your companion today? Why yes, he's flapped to the market for a bag of seed. Squawk! Flying humans—what vulgar creatures.