Murder on Show (11 page)

And that was where I found Rose Chesne-Malvern. As white-faced and vindictive as the indignant owner who had just set upon me, she was berating poor Penny. Pandora lurked in her cage, watching with hooded, brooding eyes.

‘...
dare
you?
My
prize exhibit! Who
are
you, anyway? What are you doing here?'

‘Good evening, Mrs Chesne-Malvern.' For once, I was the one coming up from behind. ‘I see you've met my secretary.'

‘Your secretary?' She was somewhat mollified. ‘Is
that
who she is? But what is she doing with
my
–?' Pandora heard my voice. That deadly accurate little paw flicked out and disposed of the latch in a flash. Another flash of fur and she was crouched on my shoulder, nagging like the rest of them. Somehow, though, it was the best nagging I'd heard all day. Perhaps because most of the sting was taken out of it by the way she was rubbing her chin against my ear.

Rose Chesne-Malvern froze. ‘What are you doing to my cat?'

I shrugged. She ought to have been able to see that I wasn't doing anything to her cat. On the other hand, her cat was nuzzling a wet nose behind my ear.

‘Come here, Pandora,' Rose Chesne-Malvern ordered crisply.

Pandora continued complaining softly to me. I reached up and patted her reassuringly. I sympathized with her, but there was little I could do. She
was
Rose Chesne-Malvern's property.

The gesture seemed to infuriate Rose Chesne-Malvern. ‘Pandora, come down here instantly!' She was a great one for pulling rank, but Pandora continued insubordinate. She had turned to face Rose now, and I could feel one ear flicking restlessly against my cheek, as she continued her jeremiad.

Among the things she was complaining about, I wouldn't be surprised to learn, was that Rose Chesne-Malvern's sharp voice hurt her ears.

‘I said,
Come Here!
' Rose reached up, but Pandora retreated. Rose caught her by one of her hind legs and pulled sharply. ‘Come
down!
'

The next few seconds are pretty much of a blur. Pandora hooked her claws into everything hookable and dug in. Rose Chesne-Malvern continued to pull. I heard a nasty tearing sound and hoped it was only my suit.

I tried to be philosophical and reflected that, if my film client ever raised the backing for his projected Pirate picture, I was a cinch for a bit part, wearing a gold earring. One of my ears had just been thoroughly pierced.

Finally, I disentangled myself from them. Rose and Pandora, both breathing heavily and eyeing each other with mutual loathing, had retreated to a corner.

‘Come over here, Douglas.' Marcus Opal took my elbow and steered me solicitously into his stall. ‘Let me see those scratches ... I have a little First Aid kit here ...' He had, too. But I wouldn't have called it a little one. It was the biggest, most comprehensive one I had ever seen. Of course, considering the disposition of his cat, it ought to have been.

He dabbed at my wounds expertly, with various preparations. He seemed particularly concerned with my ear, then gave his diagnosis. ‘You're very lucky. That
just
barely escapes the necessity for stitches.'

Precious was crouched with his nose against the mesh of his pen, regarding me speculatively. When he saw me looking at him, he growled something softly, interrogatively. That damned cat was still trying to communicate with me – and I still didn't know what he was on about. I decided to take it as an expression of sympathy.

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘Actually, it only hurts when I laugh,'

‘You
have
won him over,' Marcus Opal said. ‘I wonder –' he hesitated – ‘if you'd like to give him his supper. He still won't take anything from me.'

I accepted the tin of cat food and decanted it into a bowl. Marcus Opal drew back and I pushed the bowl into the pen. Precious sniffed at it and began eating slowly, some deep rumblings still coming from his throat to tell me that he wanted more than this.

‘And
furthermore,
' Rose Chesne-Malvern flung across the barrier at me, ‘
I'm
staying at the Exhibition tonight.'

I wondered who had told her that I had been sleeping in her room, and then I saw Hugo Verrier's face behind her, grinning maliciously. Gerry was right, there
was
bad blood in that family.

That's quite all right, madam,' I said. ‘I prefer the couch in the Press Gallery.' I waited for a guilty start from one or both of them. At least it should have wiped that smirk off Hugo Verrier's face, but it didn't.

‘Rose,' Hugo said, ‘come and have a drink. I want to talk to you.' She didn't seem too pleased.

‘And
I
want to talk to
you,
' she said.
That
wiped the smirk off his face.

Before they left, she put some milk into Pandora's pen. Pandora twitched with irritation. I watched, fascinated. I had never seen anything like it before. Her shoulders moved, as though in a shrug, at the same time, her loose skin seemed to ripple upwards and collect in wrinkles just below her neck. It stayed there for a second, then shuddered back into place.

She flicked her ears, then turned her back on the milk, hunching down at the back of her pen, face to the wall, tail tucked tightly along the length of her body. She was a cat who had renounced the world, and milk had no further interest for her.

Rose Chesne-Malvern hesitated a moment, perhaps wondering if Pandora might be starting a hunger strike, under the influence of Precious's example. I was a bit worried about that, myself.

‘I'll be back,' she warned me, ‘to use
my
room. And I'll thank you not to go near
my
cat, in my absence.'

I bowed slightly, consoling myself with one thought. The Committee had hired me, so Rose Chesne-Malvern could not withhold payment in a fit of pique, as she seemed quite capable of doing at this moment.

At least I had the sympathy of the Committee. ‘That woman should be shot!' Helena Keswick said bitterly. ‘She hasn't an ounce of genuine feeling in her whole body. She can't love anything – she just wants trophies.'

I nodded, unsure of whether she were condemning Rose Chesne-Malvern on my behalf, or on Pandora's.

‘Disgraceful!' Marcus Opal said. ‘There should be laws preventing people from owning animals unless they really care for them.' He glanced at Precious. ‘Care deeply.'

Again I nodded. Betty Lington strolled across the aisle, carrying Silver Fir. ‘Would you like to hold her?' she asked, thrusting the animal at me, as though conferring a consolation prize. I had to take it.

Silver Fir lay flaccid in my arms. One pair of arms was as good as another to her. She lifted her head to a better angle and her empty little eyes scanned the area, as though wondering where the cameras were. I stroked her absently, and a few shimmering white hairs detached themselves and floated languidly on to my dark suit. Unfortunately, one cat wasn't as good as another.

Kellington Dasczo had a more practical solution. Firmly penning Pearlie King, he crossed the aisle too. ‘Come and have a drink,' he said. ‘It's the only remedy. Drown your sorrows.'

I was in no mood to argue. Handing an indifferent Silver Fir back to her mistress, I went across the road to the pub with Kellington.

When we returned, after ‘Time' had been called, Pandora was still turned to the wall.

Kellington patted my arm. ‘Try to get some sleep, old man,' he said, rather as one speaking to the recently bereaved. ‘It will look better in the morning.'

Morning meant the day of the Exhibition. And then – I'd had enough to be feeling maudlin – I'd never see Pandora again.

In a vicious mood, I charged up the spiral stairs and flung the door open, flooding the Press Gallery with light, hoping to catch them. The room was empty.

From the Gallery, I looked down on the Special Exhibits Aisle. Most stalls were dark now. Only Kellington Dasczo still had a night light going. As I watched, he turned it out and headed for the bedroom corridor. Now the only light was coming from behind the plate-glass window of the Press Gallery. It cast a glare nearly the length of the aisle, probably disturbing the cats trying to sleep.

I had no quarrel with them. I turned the light out and fumbled my way to the couch in darkness.

I slept fitfully, but I slept. I had no idea of the time when the door of the Press Gallery opened. ‘Who's there?'

No reply, but I could see the lighter shade of grey where the door stood open against the blackness. There was no darker shadow in the doorway, though.

I lay back, thinking I had not closed the door firmly enough. Beneath me, I could hear faint snarls from Pyramus and Thisbe, belligerent even in slumber. I had nearly drifted back to sleep again, when it leaped on me.

‘Aaraarah.' I recognized Pandora's little wail. Frantically, she burrowed towards my chin.

‘What the hell –?' She was trembling violently, little mewling cries of distress coming from deep in her throat.

‘Easy, easy.' I stroked her, trying to calm her down. ‘You shouldn't be here, you know.' I considered taking her downstairs and trying to sneak her back into her cage. Perhaps she caught the thought. Her shivering increased.

‘Oh, all right,' I capitulated. ‘Stay here – but you'll get me killed.'

However, when the screams woke me in the morning, I found it was Rose Chesne-Malvern who had been killed.

‘Appalling! Appalling!' Marcus Opal paced the length of the aisle and back constantly, wringing his hands. ‘Appalling! Can't someone
do
something?'

‘Not until Carlotta comes.' Kellington Dasczo was a pale green around the gills, he tried to keep his back turned to the Big Cage. ‘They've called her, she should be here any minute.'

‘It's too late, anyway,' Betty Lington said, slightly hoarse from her screaming. ‘You can tell that just by looking at her.'

I had been trying to avoid it. Pandora was crouched on my shoulder, still giving an occasional shudder and mewling something from time to time, in the tone of a querulous invalid. I'd tried putting her in her pen when I first came downstairs, but she'd battered herself against the mesh, screaming hysterically, and I'd replaced her on my shoulder. She was there to stay, obviously. I wouldn't have the heart to try putting her in that pen again. And there was no one to object any more.

Rose Chesne-Malvern lay inside the tigers' cage. They had dragged her into a corner of the cage – mercifully, a shadowed corner. We could see that she had been badly mauled, but we couldn't discern the worst details.

One thing was certain, she hadn't crawled into that cage of her own accord. I hoped she had not been conscious at all – or even alive. But it would take an autopsy to determine that now. And the pathologist had better be good at jigsaw puzzles.

‘Can't we get her out of that cage?' Marcus Opal asked. ‘We can't just leave her there. It – it isn't human.'

The tigers were paying no attention to the body. In any case, they had been well fed earlier. Just the same, I wasn't ready to try to take her away from them. No one else volunteered, either.

‘What are we going to do about the Exhibition?' Betty Lington asked. ‘We can't cancel it without warning – can we? Can we?' she repeated.

I had been afraid she was looking at me. I checked my watch. It was only seven – the Exhibition opened at ten and would stay open until six. Some of the farthest-flung Exhibitors had come in last night. Others would be well on their way by now, and we had no means of reaching them. We couldn't turn them away at the door, could we? And what about the ones already here? Whatever I said, it was going to be a long day.

‘Unless the police decide otherwise,' I said slowly, ‘we might as well let the Show go on.'

They nodded agreement. The vote was unanimous. It was what they had wanted to do anyway, they had just been waiting for someone else to voice the suggestion.

‘How could this have happened?' Kellington Dasczo moaned. ‘We were all here all night.' He looked around. ‘Surely, we couldn't
all
have slept through it?'

And that was a thought no one wanted to face. Someone in the bedroom corridor had
not
been sleeping last night.

Someone had slid back the feeding trapdoor of the Big Cage and pushed Rose Chesne-Malvern – dead or unconscious – into the cage. And then? Could anyone have gone back to bed and gone to sleep, knowing what was happening in the Big Cage?

I looked around at them, but they all looked equally dishevelled, sleepless and distraught. I must have looked the same. I caught a few sideways glances and realized that, to this circle, jealousy over a cat represented a perfectly reasonable motive for murder. After the way Rose had pulled Pandora about yesterday, a couple of them might even call it justifiable homicide.

‘Can't we at least put a blanket over her?' Marcus Opal was still trying to preserve the decencies in a situation that had left them behind long ago.

‘How?' Kellington silenced him.

‘Actually, I believe the police never want anything touched at the scene of a crime,' I said. And where were the police, anyway? ‘You
have
called the police?'

‘I called the RSPCA,' Marcus said.

That was a big help. ‘Did you ... er ... explain the problem to them?'

‘Well, no,' he said regretfully. ‘There was no answer. I'd overlooked the hour. It seems incredible that it's still so early.'

I took his meaning. I, too, felt as though I'd lived through a good three weeks since the screams woke me this morning. A
bad
three weeks, rather. And the day hadn't even started yet.