Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

Studio in North Kennebeck

Time: The next morning

Introducing: MRS. TODDWHISTLE

IN MAKING HIS APPOINTMENT with Wally

Toddwhistle, Qwilleran asked for directions to the studio.

"You know how to get to North Kennebeck?" Wally asked. "Well, we're east of Main Street... I mean west. You know Tipsy's restaurant? You go past that till you get to Tupper Road. I think there's a street sign, but I'm not sure. If you get to the school, you've gone too far, and you'll have to turn around and come back and turn right on Tupper - or left if you're coming from Pickax. You go quite a ways down Tupper. There's a shortcut, if you don't mind a dirt road - not the first dirt road; that one dead - ends somewhere. There's another dirt road..."

A woman's voice interrupted - a throaty voice with a great deal of energy behind it. "I'm Wally's mother. If Wally stuffed owls the way he gives directions, he'd have the feathers on the inside. Got a pencil? Write this down: Two blocks past Tipsy's you turn left at the motel and go nine-tenths of a mile. Then left again at the Gun Club and we're the third farmhouse on the right - with a sign out in front. Pull in the side drive. The studio's out back."

On the way to North Kennebeck Qwilleran visualized Mrs. Toddwhistle as a large woman with football shoulders, wearing army boots. Wally himself always looked hollow-eyed and undernourished, but he was a nice kid - and talented.

He allowed an hour for lunch at Tipsy's and even had time to stop at the Gun Club. The pro shop, open to the public, was stocked with rifles, shotguns, handguns, shells, scopes and camouflage clothes. Here and there were mounted pheasants, ducks, and other game birds.

"Help you, sir?" asked the brisk man in charge.

"Just passing by and stopped for a look," Qwilleran said. "Are the birds Wally Toddwhistle's work?"

"Yes, sir! Certainly are!"

"The sign in the window says you teach the use of firearms."

"Certainly do! We don't sell anything to anybody unless they know how to use it. We have classes for children and adults, ladies included. Safety is what we stress, and care of the firearm."

"Do you sell many handguns?"

"Yes, sir! A lot of hunters are using handguns."

"Do you find people buying them for personal protection?"

"Our customers are sportsmen, sir!"

Qwilleran priced the handguns and then went on his way to the taxidermy studio. There was a neat, white farmhouse with lace curtains in the windows and the usual lilac bush by the door and a modem pole barn in the rear. That was the studio.

He was greeted by Mrs. Toddwhistle, with Wally two steps behind her. She was not what he expected, being short and chunky and aggressively pleasant. "Have any trouble finding us, honey?" she asked. "How about a cup of coffee?"

"Later, thanks," he said. "First I'd like to talk to Wally about his work. I saw the stuffed bear at the Hotel Booze last night."

"Mounted bear, honey," the woman corrected him in a kindly way. "We don't stuff animals any more, except birds and small mammals. Wally buys or builds a lightweight form and pulls the skin over it like a coat. It's more accurate and not so goshdarned heavy... is it, Wally? When they used to stuff animals with excelsior, mice got into them and built nests. My husband was a taxidermist."

"I stand corrected," Qwilleran said. "Be that as it may, the bear looks great! They've got it spotlighted."

"Very bad to have a mounted animal under a spotlight or near heat," she said. "Dries it out... doesn't it, Wally? And all the smoking in Gary's bar is going to ruin the pelt. It's beautiful work. A shame to spoil it! Wally didn't charge half enough for that job."

They were in an anteroom with several specimens on display: a bobcat climbing a dead tree, a pheasant in flight, a coyote raising its head to howl. Qwilleran directed a question to the silent taxidermist. "How long have you been doing this work?"

His mother was relentless. "He probably doesn't even remember... do you, Wally? He was only a few years old when he started helping his daddy scrape skins. Wally always loved animals - didn't want to hunt them - only preserve them and make them look real. I help him with scraping the meat off the hides, getting the burrs and straw out of the pelts - things like that."

"May I ask you a favor, Mrs. Toddwhistle," Qwilleran began amiably but firmly. "I have a problem. I've never been able to interview two persons at the same time, even though I've been a reporter for twenty-five years. I have an unfortunate block. Would you mind if I interviewed your son first? After that I'd like to sit down with you and get your story - and have that cup of coffee."

"Sure, honey, I understand. I'll go back to the house. "Just give me a buzz on the buzzer when you're done." She bustled from the studio.

When his mother had gone, Wally said, "I haven't heard from Fran. What's the club going to do about a summer show?"

"No summer show, but they plan to do a serious play in September, with rehearsals beginning in August. No doubt you'll be called upon to build the sets, although I don't know who'll design them. Jill is taking David to South America for a few weeks. He's having difficulty adjusting, and she wants to get him away for a while."

"I'm having a hard time accepting it, too," said Wally. "After I heard about the murder, I couldn't work for days; I was so nervous. I'm glad it's all over."

"I'm not convinced of that. New evidence may come to light."

"That's what my mother says. She used to work for the family when Mr. and Mrs. Fitch lived in Grandpa Fitch's house."

"She did?" Qwilleran patted his bristling moustache.

"She cooked for them after my dad died. That's why the murder hit me so hard, and then Mrs. Fitch's stroke and Mr. Fitch's suicide! It was terrible!"

Following this revelation. Qwilleran had to struggle to keep his mind on the interview. Wally conducted him into a barnlike area that was a bewildering combination of zoo, furrier's workroom, animal hospital, butcher shop, catacomb, and theater backstage. There were freezers, oil drums, a sewing machine, a wall of bleached animal skulls, a skeletonic, long-legged bird. A shaggy, white wolf, not yet fitted with eyes and nose, lay stiffly on its side, its forelegs wrapped in bandages. A brown bear hide was being stretched on a board to make a rug. Fox, skunk, owl, and peacock, were in various stages of dress and undress.

Some of the animals were alive: dogs with wagging tails, a cage of small fluttering birds, a menacing macaw chained to a perch. An orange cat was curled up on a cushion, asleep.

Wally was eager to show and tell: A box of glass eyes included eleven kinds for owls and twenty-three for ducks. "We have to be authentic," he said... Plastic teeth, tongues, and palates were for animals being mounted with open mouths. Real teeth, Wally explained, would crack and chip... There were ear-liners for deer. He showed how he turned the ears inside out and glued the liners in to stiffen them... Also in evidence were animal forms in yellow plastic foam. "They're manikins." Wally said. "They're good because I can sculpture the foam to fit the skin, then coat the manikin with skin paste, pull the skin over it, fit it and adjust it."

Qwilleran said, "You seem to do a lot with adhesives."

"Yes, it takes all kinds- glue, skin paste, and epoxy for things like putting rods in leg bones. I repaired a damaged eyelid by gluing on a piece of string and painting it. You could never tell anything was wrong."

The young man was an artist at reconstructing animals, making them lifelike, bringing out their natural beauty, but Qwilleran was impatient to see his mother again. The buzzer brought her running from the house with coffee and freshly made doughnuts. He edged into the subject of the Fitch family diplomatically.