No Cooperation from the Cat (11 page)

Evangeline was leaning forward in her seat, oblivious to everything but what was happening on the other side of the footlights.

Jem didn’t speak to her, but nodded to himself again.

The cast took six curtain calls, perhaps two more than they really deserved, but the audience had enjoyed the performance, so why not?

“Thank you, Jem,” Evangeline said as we emerged from the theatre. “I really needed that. I didn’t know how much.”

“Me, too,” I said. This was our world—and we had been away from it too long.

“Over here.” Jem steered us to the kerb where Eddie and his taxi waited, rebuffing the hopefuls trying to hire him.

The rain was more of a drizzle now, but I saw the street dotted with puddles and knew that there must have been another downpour while we were inside.

“Cecile can’t join us for dinner.” Jem nodded to Eddie and we slid out into the stream of traffic. “Her show is previewing this week and next and she had a working matinee today. She’s invited us for drinks in her dressing room before she rests for the evening performance.”

The champagne was chilled and the welcome was warm. What more could one ask? Dame Cecile and Matilda looked tired but happy. A successful matinee accomplished, a successful evening performance to come, they glowed with the growing realisation that they were starring in what was going to be one of the hits of the season.

In fact, the smell of success was in the air the instant we stepped through the stage door. A heady mixture of fresh flowers, expensive perfume, the sound of relaxed triumphant laughter, and the buzz of excitement, it was all there.

For a moment, I felt a pang of sympathy for poor Teddy, cut off from all this because of being replaced in the tryout stage. Then I remembered that Teddy had been dire in the role and that, if he had been allowed to continue in it, the show would have lost all chance of being a hit.

I gave a faint sigh for the unfairness of life in general and the theatre in particular.

Then a flute of champagne was pressed into my hand and I was waved towards a side table set out with a small bowl of caviar surrounded by the trimmings, a larger bowl of quails’ eggs with celery salt, and dishes containing mixed olives and feta cheese, smoked salmon, pâte, a selection of toast triangles, buttered brown bread, and crackers.

“Good, solid … a bit old fashioned, though.” Jem gave it a mock review while selecting a quail egg. “No Chinese rolls, no onion bhajis, no sushi—”

“Nothing that might put any strain on the digestion,” Dame Cecile said firmly. “Tried and true—and safe. This is our usual matinee day meal between performances. We have to be careful. It looks as though we may be in for a long run. We have to pace ourselves.”

“And we”—Evangeline took a couple of olives—“are going on to dinner at the Harpo. We mustn’t spoil our appetites.”

It was a good try, but paled in comparison to the prospect of a long run in a hit, and the hollow note in Evangeline’s voice betrayed that she knew it.

“You and Trixie will be next,” Jem said reassuringly. “You’ll pull out the whole we-don’t-applaud, we-just-rattle-our-jewellery brigade for your opening. How
is
the prospective vehicle coming along, by the way?”

There was an uneasy silence in the dressing room. Everyone except Jem knew that this was a sensitive subject. Evangeline and I met each other’s eyes.

“Not too well, I’m afraid—” I began.

“A disaster!” Evangeline threw restraint aside. “That bastard playwright has decamped with our advance and his girlfriend and gone off to see the world. For inspiration, he said! We haven’t heard a word from him since. Not one page of script— He hasn’t even written a postcard—” She broke off and finished her champagne in a single gulp.

“Oh, my poor dears, how unfortunate,” Jem said unconvincingly, hurrying to refill her glass. “How very awkward for you.”

“Yes.” I had the curious feeling that he was not displeased to learn this. That was the theatre for you—schadenfreude all the way, even with the best of them.

Chapter Eleven

“Oh, there she is!” Jocasta cried in a tone of unmistakable relief as I entered the kitchen next morning with Cho-Cho in my arms.

“What?” I also caught the edge of receding panic in her voice. “What’s the matter? Where else should she be?”

“Nothing … nowhere … that is—” Jocasta broke off in confusion—or perhaps guilt—for a moment before continuing. “I … I thought … I was afraid … we might have lost her. She … she disappeared yesterday. I couldn’t find her anywhere.”

“Lost?” My arms tightened and Cho-Cho mewled a small protest. “Yesterday?” True, Cho-Cho hadn’t come to greet us, as usual, when we returned last night, but I’d assumed she was asleep. Soon after I had settled in bed and turned off the light, there had been that familiar bounce of the mattress as Cho-Cho had leapt up on it and curled up in the crook of my arm. I’d no idea at all that everything hadn’t been normal and serene. “How could she have been lost?”

“I was afraid she ran out when the door was open. I couldn’t find her anywhere after they left.”

“They?”

“Oh, not Nigel. He’s always very careful to make sure she’s out of the way before he opens the door, but that Teddy—”

“Teddy?” a voice behind me thundered. “Has he been here again?”

“He came yesterday afternoon…” Jocasta quivered and shrank back. “After you’d left.”

“And you let him in!” It was an accusation and a condemnation.

“Well, you always do. No one told me not to.”

“
I
do nothing of the sort! This is your fault—” Evangeline rounded on me. “I know you told him he could have visiting privileges—but I don’t recall your inviting him to move in!”

“But he didn’t let her out, after all,” Jocasta defended. “Here she is. He may have upset her a bit, but there’s no real harm done.”

“That’s beside the point,” Evangeline said, at the same moment I said:

“What do you mean he upset her?”

“And
what
”—Evangeline pushed past me and swooped on a sinister tangle of narrow turquoise leather straps I hadn’t noticed lying on a chair—“is
this
?” She held it aloft, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Cho-Cho stirred in my arms and twisted to face me, uttering soft plaintive noises of distress.

“Oh, that’s what he brought for Cho-Cho this time. It’s a harness and leash, so that he can take her out for walks when he visits.”

“The man’s a fool!” Evangeline snapped.

No one was going to argue with that.

“That’s what upset her so much.” Jocasta turned to me. “He tried to, well, stuff her into it. And … and he
is
rather clumsy, you know. He … couldn’t get her legs through the right openings—and she was fighting him. I was afraid he was going to break some bones—I don’t think he realises quite how fragile her little bones are.”

“That’s it!” Evangeline pitched the harness into a corner. I felt Cho-Cho’s tensed muscles relax. “The welcome mat is rolled up. The candy store is closed. That man is persona non grata around here from now on! If you don’t tell him, I will!”

Sooner her than me, but—

“He didn’t actually take her outside?” I asked anxiously. If he did, he’d obviously brought her back. This time. But … next time?

“He couldn’t get her into the harness, she was fighting too hard. He kept pleading with her to cooperate, but she wouldn’t. He got rougher and she got more frightened. I didn’t know what to do.

“Then there was a great clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning that seemed almost overhead and the heavens opened again. He was so startled, he dropped everything and Cho-Cho took off. I hadn’t seen her since. Not until you appeared with her just now. I was afraid she’d got out somehow—and was still running. She was
very
upset.”

Evangeline was right. Something had to be done about Teddy. Short of murder, I couldn’t think what.

*   *   *

The rest of the day was so quiet it began to make me nervous.

Even Martha, intent on testing a couple of promising recipes she’d found in an old cookbook was in a not-so-bad mood when she appeared. Teddy didn’t show up at all.

The calm before the storm
was the uneasy thought that kept running through my mind.

By nightfall, I was close to a panic attack and decided to make an early night of it.

Next morning the situation remained the same. I knew it had to be too peaceful to be true. The alternative possibility was that some mysterious plague had swept through the world and we, up here in our penthouse, quiet and unsuspecting, were the only survivors.

“It’s too quiet.” Evangeline felt it, too. “It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I nodded agreement, conscious that we had both involuntarily glanced upwards, although there was nothing overhead but the roof. Then I looked around our space-age state-of-the-art kitchen, noticing that it seemed a little less daunting these days. Perhaps that was because of all the cooking clutter on the table and work surfaces, or Jocasta’s homely little retro radio perched on a shelf, providing musical wallpaper while they worked. Or perhaps I was just getting more accustomed to it. Mind you, there were still several strange dials and switches I wouldn’t like to fool around with.

“Prr-yah?”
Queried a little voice, reminding me that there was nothing like a cat for the real domestic touch.

“Prr-yah?”
Cho-Cho questioned again, twisting her head anxiously towards the windows. I saw that it was growing darker outside.

“Just a bit more rain on the way,” I told her soothingly, thinking that rain wasn’t such a bad thing. It might discourage Teddy from another of his interminable visits.

“Oh, bother!” Martha’s reasonable mood of yesterday hadn’t lasted very long. There was a metallic clatter as she slammed the lid down next to the canister. “You should have refilled this as soon as the flour started getting low, Jocasta!”

“Sorry.” Jocasta bent her head and continued beating something in a bowl vigorously, making it clear that she wasn’t going to stop what she was doing and refill the canister now.

“I should think so!” Martha hesitated for a moment before getting the message and going over to the walk-in supply cupboard to do it herself.

Jocasta gave her a swift look and seemed to shrink. She added something to her bowl and became more engrossed than ever in beating it wildly.

“Jocasta?” Martha emerged from the cupboard, looking both annoyed and puzzled. “There was a large bag of flour in here last week. Where—?”

“It’s gone,” Jocasta said. “We’ve used it all.”

“All? But—”

“You may not have been here all the time—” Jocasta was veering close to insubordination. “But I have. And I’ve been working!”

That was true. She’d hardly stopped. And she hadn’t been outside the place in days. I’d decided it was her way of dealing with the cabin fever which would have set in if I’d been forced to spend so much time in the same place. She was virtually under house arrest—even if it was her own choice.

“We need a lot of other things, too.” Jocasta was mutinous.

“Someone ought to take a trip to the supermarket and do some shopping,” Martha said. It was clear that someone wasn’t going to be her.

“That’s not a bad idea.” Evangeline jumped at the chance for action. She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and pushed the speed dial. “I’ll call Eddie.”

“I’ll come, too.” She wasn’t going to leave me behind. “Just make a list of what you want us to get, darling, and—”

“Oh, no!” Evangeline was speaking into the phone. “No. I’m so sorry to hear it. Is there anything—? Oh, well, perhaps he could give us the number of one of his cabbie friends to— Hello? Hello?” She lowered the phone and looked at me incredulously. “Would you believe it? That wife of his hung up on me!”

I’d believe it, but that was beside the point. “What’s the matter with Eddie?” I asked.

“He’s in bed with the flu, probably for the rest of the week. And she isn’t going to disturb him. For anything.”

“Poor Eddie.” If he were that ill, no wonder his wife wouldn’t let Evangeline talk to him. He was very loyal to us—and besides, he hated to think he might be missing out on anything. She undoubtedly feared that he would try to get out of his sickbed and ride to our rescue.

“Mmm…” Evangeline tapped her front teeth with a fingernail for a moment before asking: “Do you suppose Hugh would loan us—?”

“Hugh is using the car himself today.” She had spoken to me, but it was Martha who answered crisply. “Benson is driving him up to Peterborough to check out a new fringe production he’s had good reports about.”

“Mmm, then perhaps—”

The room suddenly flared with a white brilliance brighter than daylight. Almost immediately, there was a violent crash of thunder directly overhead. Instinctively, we all ducked.

“The Met Office has just issued a Severe Weather Warning—”

Into the startled silence, the voice of the announcer on Jocasta’s transistor spoke firmly. “For London and the southeast.”

Another blaze of brilliance nearly blinded us, while the resultant crash of thunder blotted out the radio report.

“On second thought,” Evangeline said into another silence, “perhaps not.”

“Definitely not!” I said.

Overhead the first heavy drops hit the roof like an ominous drumbeat.

“… torrential rain.” The radio cut back in. “There will be flooding in low-lying areas. The public is advised against travelling unless absolutely necessary. High winds will add to the danger of falling trees, billboards, and overhead lines. The emergency services are on full alert—”

“Hugh!” Martha cried distractedly. “He’s out in this storm! He could be killed!”

“Benson is a very good driver.” I tried to soothe her. “He wouldn’t let anything—”

“They’re heading north,” Jocasta said, more practically. “The storm may not reach them for hours yet.”

The rain was hammering on the roof now and running down the windowpanes like liquid curtains.

“Hugh is perfectly capable of assessing the situation and making arrangements for himself and Benson to put up for the night somewhere. And”—Evangeline added reluctantly—“it looks as though you’d better plan on staying here tonight.”