Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

"When David and Jill were married, their wedding cost a fortune."

"Harley's wife never came to the Theatre Club, yet the newspaper said both couples were going to the rehearsal and both couples were wearing rehearsal clothes."

Polly raised her eyebrows. "Did you ever read a news story that was completely accurate?"

They consulted the menu. It was no-frills cuisine at Tipsy's, but the cooks knew what they were doing. Polly was happy that her pickerel tasted like fish and not like seasoned bread crumbs. Qwilleran was happy that his steak required chewing. "I always suspect beef that melts in my mouth," he said.

The conversation never strayed far from the Fitch case. Polly worried about Harley's mother, who was a trustee on the library board. "Margaret has very high blood pressure. I'm afraid to think how she may react to the shock. She's such a wonderful person-so generous with her time, always willing to chair a committee or captain a fundraising event - not just for the library, but for the hospital and school. Nigel is the same way. They're beautiful people!"

"Hmmm," Qwilleran mused, unsure how to react to this outpouring of sentiment - so unusual for Polly. "It will be rough on David," he ventured to say. "He and his brother were so close."

"Yes, and David was the more sensitive of the two, but Jill will give him the support he needs. She has a firm grip on her emotions. Did you notice that it was Jill who was quoted in the newspaper? When she and David were married, everyone in the wedding party was nervous except the bride."

"Didn't it surprise you to learn that we've had an armed robbery in Moose County?" he asked.

"It was bound to happen. Firearms are plentiful up here. So many hunters, you know, with rifles, shotguns, handguns. The majority are responsible, law-abiding sportsmen, but... these days anything can happen." She shot him a quick, inquiring glance. "I don't hunt, but I do have a handgun."

Qwilleran's moustache bristled. Her reserved personality, her gentle manner, her quiet voice, her matronly figure, her conservative dress - nothing suggested that she might have a lethal weapon in her possession.

"Living alone on a country road, I feel it's only prudent," she explained. "What's happening Down Below is beginning to happen here. I've seen it coming. I don't like it."

"Why don't you move into town?" he suggested.

"I've lived in that little house ever since Bob died. I adore my little garden. I like the wide-open spaces. I enjoy living on a dirt road and seeing cows in a pasture when I drive to work."

"Sometimes one has to compromise, Polly."

"Compromise doesn't come easily to me."

"I've noticed that," Qwilleran said. Polly declined dessert, but he was unable to resist the lemon-meringue pie.

"Have you ever seen the Fitch estate?" he asked.

"Several times. When Margaret and Nigel lived in the big house, she gave a tea for the library board every Christmas. They have hundreds of acres-beautiful rolling country with woods and meadows and streams and a view of the big lake from the highest hill. The mansion that Cyrus Fitch built in the 1920s is a large rambling place. They say he designed it himself. He was a militant individualist! An avid collector, too. Harley and David grew up there - among big-game trophies, rare books, Chinese-temple sculpture, medieval armor, and all the exotic things that people collected in the twenties if they had money. When David married Jill, his parents built them a modem house on the property. When Harley married, he and his bride moved into the mansion and his parents took a condominium."

"Can one drive into the property?"

"It's a private road, but there's nothing to stop anyone from entering."

"What is there to attract burglars? I can't imagine that the thieves were interested in rare books or mounted rhinoceros heads."

"There was jewelry handed down in the family. I imagine Harley's wife received some of it after they were married."

Qwilleran stroked his moustache thoughtfully. "I have a feeling the killer or killers had been there before."

When they left Tipsy's and started the drive back to Pickax in the first pink of the sunset, he asked, "How do you like the Moose County Something?"

"I rejoice that we have a newspaper once more, but the name is appalling."

"It's only temporary until the readers cast their ballots."

"I was surprised at the size of it."

"It will settle down to twenty-four pages as time goes on. They plan to publish Wednesdays and weekends until the new plant is finished, then go to five days a week. I'm going to write a feature column."

.'What about your novel?" Polly asked sharply.

"Well, Polly, I've reached the painful decision that I'm not geared for producing fiction. For twenty-five years my career was based on ferreting out facts, verifying facts, organizing facts and reporting them accurately. It seems to have stultified my imagination."

"But you've been working on your novel for two years!"

"I've been talking about it for two years," he corrected her. "I'm getting nowhere. Maybe I'm just lazy."

"You disappoint me, Qwill."

"You overestimate me. You were expecting me to be a north-woods Faulkner or a dry-land Melville."

"I was expecting you to write something of lasting value. Now you will simply produce more disposable newspaper prose. Your columns in the Daily Fluxion were always well-written and informative and entertaining, but are you living up to your potential?"

"I know my limitations, Polly. You're setting a goal for me that's unrealistic." He was becoming annoyed.

"It was your idea to write a novel."

"It's every writer's idea to write a novel sooner or later, but not all of us have the aptitude. On my desk I have a bushel of notes and a fistful of half-written pages." Unfortunately his voice was rising. "I need the discipline of a newspaper job! That's why I'm writing a column for the Moose County Something." His tone had a finality that implied: Like it or not!

Polly looked at her watch. They were nearing the center of Pickax. "I enjoyed having dinner with you."

"Won't you come up to the apartment for a nightcap?"

"Not tonight, thanks. I have things to do." Her voice was curt.

The last few blocks were driven in silence. With a brief good-night she transferred to her own car in the library parking lot - the cranberry-red two-door he had given her for Christmas during a surge of holiday spirit, grateful sentiment, and emotional delirium. When she drove away, the blue silk scarf in the gift-wrapped box was still on the back seat of his car, quite forgotten.

It was too good to last, he thought, as he drove around the Park Circle to his carriage house. His relationship with Polly was inevitably coming to an end. Once loving and agreeable, she had become critical. She thought their intimacy gave her license to direct his life, but he was his own man. That was why his marriage had failed a dozen years before.

As he unlocked the door of the carriage house, he heard the telephone ringing, and he ran up the stairs, hoping... hoping that Polly had changed her mind... hoping she had driven a few blocks and had stopped at a phone booth...

The voice he heard, however, was that of Mr. O'Dell, the white-haired houseman who had been school janitor for forty years and now conducted his own one-man janitorial service.

"Sure, an' it's sad news tonight," said Mr. O'Dell. "Young Harley was a good lad, but he married the wrong colleen, I'm thinkin'. Will yourself be needin' me tomorrow, now? It's a new grandson I have in Kennebeck, and the urge is upon me to lay eyes on the mite of a boy."

"By all means take the day off, Mr. O'Dell," said Qwilleran. "Was everything all right when you were here?"

"All but the little one. Herself did her dirty outside the sandbox again. It's bothered about somethin', she is."