Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

On the other hand, her presence here, if discovered, could have led to a search party.

I sniff the closet perimeter, detecting again the odd, musky, decidedly alien feline odor I sensed elsewhere in the house.

Just what does Miss Hyacinth use for henchmen these days?

The thought gives me another chill.

There is a lot about this place that gives me serial chills.

Then again, it could be the air conditioning.

Well, there is nothing like brisk activity to get the blood moving.

I try the door.

It is now locked, of course.

They are beginning to get me mad.

I sniff the perimeter again, hoping this joint is old enough to have an established mouse and rat population. Great chewers, they are.

However, I turn out to be depressingly alone in my incarceration. And I do so like it when the rodent population has done the preliminary excavating for a job.

I do discover, behind some musty satin and velvet capes, a heating register.

This is as good as a twenty-four-karat golden gate.

In no time flat, I have managed to dislodge two loose screws and have the grate askew in its frame. One last loose screw and it is hanging by one corner.

I gyrate through and find myself once again in the upper hallway, deserted by all except the ghosts from Omen movies.

This time I do not waste any (time, that is) exploring the ambiance.

I move, fleet and sure, through the cavernous rooms, past the guardian suits of armor, unabashedly sniffing like the lowest dog.

This time I do not turn and head toward the upper regions when I reach the crossroads to the kitchen but continue on the trail of roast beef, the occasional enterprising rodent, the strange feline scents, and a vague whiff of canna lily that can only betoken my darling…cohort.

As I suspected before, the kitchen is a large, old-fashioned affair with a door leading to a…butler’s pantry. And a door leading to…the outside garden. And a door leading to…a dining room the size and solemnity of a private medieval chapel. And a door leading to the…cellar.

Oh, joy.

Last time I went up and found magicians, Big Cats, and Hyacinth.

I will now descend and hopefully find…Midnight Louise.

Of course I must first open the door.

Breaking into a mansion has its drawbacks. Give me a one-room apartment any day.

There is a mitt-wide space under the door.

I stick my mitt into the dark.

When it is not cut off, I use it to nudge and wiggle the door. Sometimes these old doors are as loose as change.

In a couple minutes I hear a welcome click. A loose metal tongue has just given up the ghost.

Or, in this place, a ghost may have just given me entry.

You never know.

I edge through, pull the door shut behind me, thrilled to hear no click of true closure, and descend a flight of stone stairs in the pitch dark.

I am not sure why dark is considered pitch. It does not sing. It does not normally tilt, like stair risers. Anyway, pitch dark is considered blacker than my best formal coat, and so this pathway is.

I move down for so long that I feel the cool dank air rising to meet me.

So does the scent of the alien weasels I scented in the closet, and the faintest sniff of calla lily.

I recall that the lily is the chosen human symbol of death.

Poor Louise. Snatched in her prime, preprime, really, and interred here in this forgotten cellar, with only weasels for pall-bearers. If they bothered to bury her.

I am smitten by remorse. Or is that smited? Smoted?

Anyway, I realize with a pang that had I not been distracted by human concerns and my Miss Temple’s safety, I would have been here sooner and perhaps could have prevented this tragedy.

While the feral folk wait without, I tunnel deeper within, afraid that our quest will have only one certain and sad ending. Ma Barker will not meet her only maybe grandkit. I will be partnerless again. Hmmm. The Crystal Phoenix will once again need a new house detective. Chef Song will lose a toadie!

I am nearly choking with loss (and dust) when I touch the cold stone of bottom.

I tiptoe around the rough-hewn stones. The scents have boiled down into an unappetizing stew.

Death leers from unseen corners.

I stumble over a sudden depression in the floor, wrestle with a metal tray until it is dislodged, fall a rib-bruising distance, and find the stingers of a dozen scorpions puncturing my poor hide.

I am done for! Dropped like Indiana Jones into a pit of vipers and vermin, with no way out.

“Get off me, you big oxymoron!”

Only one person — pardon me, individual — would berate me so subtly.

“Louise! You are alive!”

“Not by much, after you landed on me. How did you manage to remove the grating?”

“What grating?”

“As I thought. Dumb luck. Quick, I can climb to the top on you and then…well, I do not know if I can pull you out, so I will go to deal with the muscle upstairs and come back for you later.”

“Wait a minute. I can climb out on you, and then pull you out.”

“You would crush me, Popsicle. It is better I crush you.”

“Maybe we can both make it out,” I suggest, hurling upward until my front shivs catch on a stone rim.

Oooh! That stings.

So do Midnight Louise’s shivs as she ratchets up my spine to the cellar floor in a twinkle, just like old St. Nick up the chimney. Nick is right! Ow.

“You are not going to leave your old man just hanging here by his nails?”

Something comes hurtling down.

“There is a board. I will scout the stair to make sure your lumbering down here did not awaken all the dogs of war in the house.”

Dogs? I thought they were outside.

I manage to scramble up the board, failing to avoid every rusty nail in the dark. If I do not die of tetanus it will be a miracle.

I run and limp my way back up the stairs, running into a furry wall at the top.

“You were a prisoner?” I whisper.

“It suited me to let them think so.”

Un-huh. Likely story. “Who are ‘they’?”

“Your lady friend Hyacinth and her cronies.”

“She is not…a lady. Or a friend. Besides, our main goal is to leave here safely.”

“My main goal is to eat Siamese tonight.”

“Louise, there is more going on than your petty attempts at revenge. I have a whole cat colony waiting outside to back us up, not to mention the Big Cats.”

Louise is unmoved. I can feel that by the punishing twitch of her unconvinced tail.

“And your grandmother is waiting to meet you.”

“My granddam?”

The family tree will get them every time.

“That is right. I, uh, ran across her again tonight during my investigation.”

“You mean you ran and she found you. So where did you dig up the ferals?”

“Your grandmama is their head honcho.”

“No kitting!”

“I swear.”

“Well, I guess I could wait to make mincemeat of Hyacinth until another day. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and there is nothing colder than dead.”

“I will hear about your adventures later. Meanwhile, I have restored our old route into the place, which someone had carefully closed.”

“Then let us blow this Bastille.”

Bastille? For a moment I think Midnight Louise is referring to the dread Bastet, but the moment passes. One does not wish to invoke Bastet, even inadvertently, unless one wishes to deal with the goddess of cats since the days of ancient Egypt. My tip is: one does not want to deal with Bastet. Ever.

Once I have convinced Midnight Louise that family ties are more important than suicide missions, we rocket up the stairs.

As we pass through the broken-into door, though, my super-sleuth senses go into red-alert. I crush my curled shivs into Louise’s shoulder.