Murder on Show (13 page)

It wasn't until the taxi pulled up in front of the Exhibition Hall that she realized where she was. She gave me a long, betrayed look and scrambled up to my shoulder, whimpering softly.

‘Easy, doll, easy.' I tried to pat her, but her fur flinched away from my hand, although she remained on my shoulder. It was going to take me a long while to make friends with her again, I knew. Even though she still clung to me, as to a refuge. Still trying to pat her, I climbed out of the taxi, leaving the bill to Gerry. It would all go on the same Expense Account – always provided there was someone to authorize it now.

‘He's got a cat!' The cry went up and the kids surged around me, looking up at my shoulder. I thought that they looked vaguely disappointed, but had too many troubles of my own to worry about theirs.

I was not to be spared, however. ‘Please, mister –' they clustered tightly around me again – ‘please, mister, we've got the money now, but they won't let us in. They said kids have got to be accompanied by an adult. Please, mister, will you be our adult?'

I looked at their grubby, hopeful faces, and I thought of the police interrogation I was going to have to face inside. Especially after disappearing for so long. My spirit quailed. It was willing – but it quailed.

‘Not right now, kids,' I said. And couldn't stand the look on their faces.

‘Look, I promise you,' I said, ‘I'll get you in later.
And
you won't have to use any of your own money. Spend it on lunch.' I winked at the little girl. ‘I'll take you in with me – free – after lunch.'

I dodged away from their effusive thanks then, and found Penny and Gerry waiting for me at the Entrance. Pandora wailed softly, just once, as we re-entered the Exhibition.

The last few stragglers among the Exhibitors were roaming around, carrying their mesh-ended cages, greeting each other and looking for the pens assigned to them.

Penny and Gerry walked ahead. They knew the way, the old familiar routine was waiting for them. Greet the Press, be helpful and tactful, steer them in the right direction, and try to play down the sensational elements. (Just try to!) The flashing lights of exploding flashbulbs lit the horizon like the Aurora Borealis as we bore down on the Special Exhibits Aisle. The photographers were shooting the Big Cage from every possible angle.

All the activity was doing nothing towards calming Pyramus and Thisbe. At least the body was gone now. Mounds of as-yet-undisturbed sawdust covered the spot where it had lain.

Carlotta stood in front of the cage, trying to soothe the animals and respond to the Press at the same time. It was obvious that she wished they would go away and stop disturbing the animals. It was equally obvious that she dared not say so, she was trying to project an image of them as practically household pets.

‘See – hush, Thisbe – they are tame, quite safe. Please – remain beyond the barrier. They are upset, nervous but perfectly tame. It is wicked to say – as I have heard people say – that they should be put down because of what has happened. They are not to blame. The one who pushed Mrs Chesne-Malvern into their cage is the one to blame.'

‘Are you accusing someone of murder, Señora Montera?' an enterprising reporter called out.

Carlotta hesitated, calculating the alternatives, then straightened defiantly and declaimed. ‘It is so! Someone has used my cats as an instrument of death – and I will find out who.'

‘Just turn this way, Señora Montera, please,' a photographer shouted. The flashbulbs popped as she turned slowly. I knew him and his rag, and shuddered as I visualized the sort of headline the next edition would carry. ‘Tigers, Mistress and Murder' would inevitably loom large in it.

‘I will find out,' Carlotta repeated. ‘And I will have vengeance!' She had found a Cause as worthy as any Revolution – she was now committed entirely to her cats.

Her attitude made me profoundly uneasy. I wished she would stop threatening the unknown murderer. If she didn't, it was quite possible that she could wind up a victim herself. But I could see that the new revolutionary fervour inflaming her had swept her beyond any such practical considerations. She had a new Cause: her cats to the barricades – to death – in their defence!

She might even kill the murderer first – and that wasn't a comforting thought, either.

Pandora growled softly as I winkled my way through the crowd. Several of the newsmen raised a hand in greeting, but the copy was too good where they were. I knew I'd see them later, after the first excitement had died down and the preliminary stories had been phoned in.

Penny and Gerry had settled in at the Chesne-Malvern stall. The next-door stall appeared to have been surrendered to the police. Blue-coated figures came and went behind the glass of the Press Gallery. I gathered they had commandeered it for this investigation.

Hugo Verrier appeared to have won his point. The deep purple draperies had been replaced by ones of black velvet and one of Gerry's photos of the Whittington Cat (I wondered, in passing, if we could flog some of those photos to the Perfection Hosiery people – they hadn't got any of their own) had been placed atop the sculptor's stand, I thought it a bit odd; but, then, I thought Hugo a bit odd, too. And I hadn't time to worry about it.

Pandora sank her claws into my collar and moaned when I tried to dislodge her, so I left her on my shoulder for a while longer. Penny offered her another shrimp, but that didn't move her either.

I saw burning yellow eyes staring hotly at the tin of shrimps from the cage in the other stall. I relieved Penny of the tin (I didn't want to be responsible for the girl getting maimed) and went over to Precious.

‘Care for a bit of branch, old boy?' He responded so favourably that it seemed safe to unlatch the door of his cage and let him out to eat in comfort. Ignoring the shrimps momentarily, he sniffed my sleeve and rubbed his head against it. Then he stepped back, looked up at me, and began that awful interrogating yowl again.

‘I'm sorry.' I felt helpless, stupid, useless. ‘I don't know. I just don't know what you're trying to tell me. Look.' I tipped the tin out on to the table, shrimps rolled enticingly into a heap in front of him. ‘Why don't you just eat instead?'

With a subvocal rumbling that wasn't quite a growl, nor yet a purr, he launched himself into the shrimps. I glanced at Pandora to see how she was taking it, but she was indifferent. She had closed her eyes and withdrawn from it all.

‘Oh, Douglas, that
is
good of you.' Marcus Opal had come back. ‘Precious will be
quite
all right, once I get him home again, but I am glad he's eating. Er –' he hesitated delicately – ‘you
do
think the police will allow us to return home tonight?'

He would come up with a cheerful idea like that.

‘I'm sure they will,' I said, a bit too heartily, avoiding Gerry's eyes. ‘After all, the Show is over tonight.'

It might even be the truth. Perhaps the police preferred to keep murder suspects under fairly close surveillance, but I couldn't imagine that they'd want to retain a hall full of cats in such an enclosed area for very long. ‘I expect they'll just take all the names and addresses and ask everyone not to leave the country, or something like that.'

‘Yes.' Marcus Opal relaxed. ‘Yes, I daresay that would be the most sensible course for them to follow.' He beamed and grew confidential as Precious worked his way through the shrimps.

‘You know, there's a dear little Manx tabby for sale over there.' He gestured to the Exhibitor's Pens behind us. ‘She's
so
sweet, and I'm sure she'd breed true I just feel it. Of course, it will depend on what Precious thinks of her. I'll bring her over and introduce them later – when things have quietened down. See how he takes to her.'

I nodded noncommittally. Marcus Opal was living in a fool's paradise if he thought anything was going to quieten down this afternoon. With less than eight hours before the Exhibitors scattered to their respective homes, I couldn't see the police easing the pressure any. Or the journalists.

‘Fine,' I said. ‘Sounds very promising. Excuse me, I think I ought to –'

‘Oh, Douglas, please!' He caught my arm as I turned away. Before you go –' he gestured towards the Thermos flask and bowl – ‘a little milk for Precious – those shrimps will make him thirsty, and he won't take it for me. Would you –?'

‘Sorry. Of course.' I poured some milk for Precious, who seemed more trouble to Marcus Opal than he was worth. But perhaps Marcus was the best judge of that. After all, I knew nothing about the finer points of cat-flesh – I just knew what I liked.

Pandora was still disinclined to get down. Since she felt that way, I decided she might as well come on my rounds with me. It was against the strictest rules, but in these circumstances, I felt that the rules had gone by the board long ago. She wasn't going to bother anyone like this.

She inched a bit closer around my neck as I moved out into the Exhibition again. I felt guilty for having brought her back here. Then reminded myself that there was nothing else I could have done. She wasn't mine, after all. She had to be returned to her owner. Who, with Rose Chesne-Malvern presumably lying in some morgue, must now be Roger Chesne-Malvern. Who seemed a nice enough fellow (always provided
he
hadn't murdered his wife), albeit unfortunately allergic to cats.

Our first stop was at Dave Prendergast's stand. He was hunched in his chair, staring with glassy-eyed fascination at the commotion around the Big Cage. He looked as though he hadn't taken his eyes off it since I'd last seen him. He seemed like the right one to ask the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.

‘How did they get her out of there?'

‘God!' He closed his eyes, and shuddered.

I sat down on the edge of the stand while he recovered, idly running my fingers through a handful of the product, until I remembered what it was. Glancing to make sure his eyes were still closed (admen can get pretty sensitive about these things), I scrubbed my fingers quickly on my handkerchief.

When I looked up, Hugo Verrier was standing over me, glowering at me. ‘That's Rose's cat,' he accused.

So long as it wasn't his, I didn't see why he had any cause to act so aggrieved. I said as much, and he paled with fury.

‘Just the sort of thing one might expect someone like
you
to say,' he snarled. ‘You –'

‘God, it was awful!' Dave opened his eyes, seemingly unaware that he was averting a nasty scene. ‘Awful! They earn their money. I'll never listen again when anyone complains all they ever do is give breathalyser tests. God – our police
are
wonderful.' He cocked his head on one side.

‘Carlotta wasn't bad, either, come to think of it. She helped. They got poles and they got an iron gate. They pushed the tigers back into one section of the cage – away from the body – then they slid the gate across, making a divided cage. Then, half a dozen on each side, they held that gate in place.

‘Carlotta went into the cage with the police and stood beside the gate, talking to the cats, trying to keep them quiet, while they scraped the body on to a stretcher.

‘She was the last to leave the cage. As soon as the door shut behind her, they let the gate slide back and those beasts leaped across the cage. They hit the farther side and it moved –
moved,
I tell you ! God –' he wiped his forehead – ‘it was no sight fit to be seen by
anyone
– let alone a poor sod with the mother and father of all hangovers!'

Even Hugo seemed impressed. He sank down on the ledge opposite me, enmity forgotten. ‘God!' he echoed.

Pandora moaned in sympathy and tried to crawl inside my collar. I dissuaded her gently, remembering that, somewhere along the line,
she'd
seen something even more unfit to be viewed. That must have been when she came streaking up the spiral iron staircase to me.

‘She
must
have been dead.' As though catching my thought, Hugo had gone pale green around the gills. ‘No one could have done such a thing if she were still alive.' He avoided looking at the cage. It was easy for him – he had his back to it.

I had too good a view of the Big Cage. A couple of very official-looking gentlemen had joined Carlotta and she was in a smouldering rage.

‘They are not dangerous! This atrocity is not theirs. The woman's blood is on the hands of her murderer.'

One of the monsters had come over and was rubbing his head against the bars, for all the world like his miniature domestic brethren in the Exhibition Pens, inviting affection.

‘You see?' Carlotta reached up and scratched behind the ear so trustingly presented. A loud throbbing sound could be heard from where we sat.

‘You see? Thisbe purrs! What can she understand of human malice? My cats were brutally made an instrument of death. And soon I shall find out who has done this!'

The officials were looking unconvinced, but not so hostile as they had been.

‘That woman is a maniac!' Hugo Verrier said. ‘She should be locked up for her own good.'

‘She's crazy like a fox,' Dave said. ‘There's a true-life film in the offing. If the little darlings can play themselves, there'll be another fortune in it for her. Plus the extra she'll pick up acting as Trainer, Technical Adviser, and all that.'

So I'd heard. ‘And all this publicity won't harm her at all.' I couldn't help looking at it from a professional angle.

‘Practically double her price, I should think,' Dave agreed. ‘Who else would want to work with them after this?

‘Not only that,' Dave continued, ‘but there's been some talk about an appointment to the World Wild Life Commission for her. If she can exonerate those cats – after all this – it should just about clinch that deal.'