The Cat Who Turned on and Off (5 page)

The cats knew something was afoot. When Qwilleran returned to Medford Manor, both were huddled in wary anticipation.

“Come on, you guys. We’re moving out of Medicare Manor,” Qwilleran said.

From the closet he brought the soup carton with airholes punched in the side. Koko had been through this routine twice before, and he consented to hop in, but Yum Yum was having none of it.

“Come on, sweetheart.”

Yum Yum responded by turning into a lump of lead, her underside fused to the carpet and anchored
by twenty efficient little hooks. Only when Qwilleran produced a can opener and a small can with a blue label did she loosen her grip. With a sensuous gurgle in her throat, she leaped onto the dresser.

“All right, sister,” the man said as he grabbed her. “It was a dirty trick, but I had to do it. We’ll open the chicken when we get to Junktown.”

When Qwilleran and his two suitcases, four cartons of books, and one carton of cats arrived at the Cobb mansion, he hardly recognized his apartment. The dentist’s chair and parlor organ were gone, and the pot-bellied stove from the auction was standing in one corner. Two lamps had been added: a reading lamp sprouting out of a small brass cash register, and a floor lamp that had once been a musket. The elderly battle-ax over the fireplace still glowered at him, and the depressing rug was still grieving on the floor, but there were certain improvements: a roll-top desk, a large open cupboard for books, and an old-fashioned Morris chair—a big, square contraption with reclining back, soft black leather cushions, and ottoman to match.

As soon as Qwilleran opened the soup carton, Yum Yum leaped out, dashed insanely in several directions, and ended on top of the tall cupboard. Koko emerged slowly, with circumspection. He explored the apartment systematically and thoroughly, approved the red-cushioned seats of the two gilt chairs, circled the pot-bellied stove three times and discovered no earthly use for it, leaped to the mantel
and sniffed the primitive portrait, afterwards rubbing his jaw on the corner of the frame and tilting the picture askew. Then he arranged himself attractively between two brass candlesticks on the mantelshelf.

“Oh, isn’t he lovely!” exclaimed Mrs. Cobb, appearing with a stack of clean towels and a cake of soap. “Is that Koko? Hello, Koko. Do you like it here, Koko?” She looked at him in a near-sighted way, waggling a finger at his nose and speaking in the falsetto voice with which cats are often addressed—an approach that always offended Koko. He sneezed in her face, enveloping her in a gossamer mist.

“The cats will like it here,” she said, straightening the picture that Koko had nudged. “They can watch the pigeons in the backyard.”

She bustled into the bathroom with the towels, and as soon as she turned her back, Koko scraped his jaw with vengeance on the corner of the picture frame, pitching it into a forty-five-degree list.

Qwilleran cleared his throat. “I see you’ve made a few changes, Mrs. Cobb.”

“Right after you left, a customer wanted that dentist’s chair, so we sold it. Hope you don’t mind. I’ve given you the pot-bellied stove to fill up the empty corner. How do you like your roll-top desk?”

“My grandfather—”

“The tavern table will be nice for your typewriter. And what do you usually do about your personal
laundry? I’ll be glad to put it through the automatic washer for you.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Cobb! That’s too much trouble.”

“Not at all. And please call me Iris.” She drew the draperies across the windows—velvet draperies in streaked and faded gold. “I made these out of an old stage curtain. C.C. got it from a theatre that’s being torn down.”

“Did you do the wall behind the bed?”

“No. That was Andy’s idea.” The wall was papered with the yellowed pages of old books, set in quaint typefaces. “Andy was quite a bookworm.”

“As soon as I unpack and feed the cats,” Qwilleran said, “I’d like to talk to you about Andy.”

“Why don’t you come across the hall when you’re settled? I’ll be doing my ironing.” And then she added, “C.C. has gone to look at a Jacobean dining room set that someone wants to sell.”

Qwilleran emptied his suitcases, lined up his books in the open cupboard, put the cats’ blue cushion on top of the refrigerator—their favorite perch—and drew their attention to the new location of the unabridged dictionary which served as their new scratching pad. Then he walked across the hall to the Cobbs’ apartment. The first thing he noticed was Mrs. Cobb ironing in the big kitchen, and she invited him to sit on a rush-seated chair (A-522-001) at a battered pine table (D-573-091).

“Do you sell out of your apartment?” he asked.

“Constantly! Last Tuesday we had breakfast at a
round oak table, lunch at a cherry dropleaf, and dinner at that pine trestle table.”

“Must be hard work, moving the stuff around, up and down stairs.”

“You get used to it. Right now I’m not supposed to lift anything. I wrenched my back a couple of months ago.”

“How did you get my apartment rearranged so fast?”

“C.C. got Mike to help him. He’s the grocer’s son. A nice boy, but he thinks antique dealers are batty. We are, of course,” she added with a sly glance at her guest.

“Mrs. Cobb—”

“Please call me Iris. Mind if I call you Jim?”

“People call me Qwill.”

“Oh, that’s nice. I like that.” She smiled at the pajamas she was pressing.

“Iris, I wish you’d tell me more about Andy. It might help me write my story about the auction.”

She set the electric iron on its heel and gazed into space. “He was a fine young man! Nice personality, honest, intelligent. He was a writer—like you. I admire writers. You’d never guess it, but I was an English major myself.”

“What did Andy write?”

“Mostly articles for antique magazines, but he liked to play around with fiction. Some day I should write a book myself! The people you meet in this business!”

“How much do you know about the accident? When did it happen?”

“One evening in October.” Iris coughed. “He’d been having dinner with the Dragon at her apartment—”

“You mean Miss Duckworth?”

“We call her the Dragon. She frightens people with that hoity-toity manner, you know. Well, anyway, Andy had dinner with her and then went to his shop for something, and when he didn’t return, she went looking for him. She found him in a pool of
blood!
”

“Did she call the police?”

“No. She came flying over here in hysterics, and C.C. called the police. They decided Andy had fallen off the stepladder while getting a chandelier down from the ceiling. They found the light fixture on the floor smashed. It was all crystal. Five long curving crystal arms and a lot of crystal prisms.”

“Is it true that he fell on that sharp finial?”

She nodded. “That’s one thing that doesn’t make sense. Andy was always so careful! In fact, he was a fussbudget. I don’t think he would leave that finial standing around where it would be a hazard. Antique dealers are always spraining their backs or rupturing something, but nothing ever happened to Andy. He was very cautious.”

“Maybe he had a couple of drinks with Miss Duckworth and got reckless.”

“He didn’t drink. She probably had a drink or two, but Andy didn’t have any bad habits. He was
kind of straitlaced. I always thought he’d make a good minister of the gospel if he hadn’t gone into the junk business. He was really dedicated. It’s a calling, you know. It gets to be your whole life.”

“Could it have been suicide?”

“Oh, no! Andy wasn’t the type.”

“You never know what goes on in people’s heads—or what kind of trouble—”

“I couldn’t believe it. Not about Andy.”

Qwilleran drew his pipe and tobacco pouch from the pocket of his tweed sports coat. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Go right ahead. Would you like a can of C.C.’s beer?”

“No, thanks. I’m on the wagon.”

With fascination Iris watched the sucking in of cheeks and soft oompah-oompah of pipe lighting. “I wish C.C. smoked a pipe. It smells so good!”

The newsman said, “Do you suppose Andy might have been killed by a prowler?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you think of a motive for murder?”

Iris pressed down on the iron while she thought about it. “I don’t know . . . but I’ll tell you something if you’ll promise not to tell C.C. He would kid me about it . . . . It was Andy’s horoscope. I just happened to read it in the paper. The
Daily Fluxion
has the best horoscopes, but we get the
Morning Rampage
because it has more pages, and we need lots of paper for wrapping china and glass.”

“And what did the
Morning Rampage
have to say about Andy?”

“His sign was Aquarius. It said he should beware of trickery.” She gave Qwilleran a questioning glance. “I didn’t read it till the day after he was killed.”

The newsman puffed on his pipe with sober mien. “Not what you would call substantial evidence . . . . Was Andy engaged to the Duckworth girl?”

“Not officially, but there was a lot of running back and forth,” Iris said with raised eyebrows.

“She’s very attractive,” Qwilleran remarked, thinking about the Dragon’s eyes. “How did she react after Andy was killed?”

“She was all broken up. My, she was broken up! And that surprised me, because she had always been such a cool cucumber. C.C. said Andy probably got her in a family way before he died, but I don’t believe it. Andy was too honorable.”

“Maybe Andy was more human than you think.”

“Well, he died before Halloween, and this is almost Christmas, and the Dragon’s still as skinny as a rake handle . . . . But she’s changed. She’s very moody and withdrawn.”

“What will happen to Andy’s estate?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Maus is handling it. Andy’s parents live upstate somewhere.”

“How did the other dealers feel about Andy? Was he well liked?

Iris reflected before she answered. “Everyone
re
-
spected
Andy—for his ability—but some people thought he was too much of a goody.”

“What do you mean?”

“How shall I explain? . . . In this business you have to grab every advantage you can. You work hard without letup and don’t make any money. Some months we can hardly make the payments on this house, because C.C. has tied up his cash in something crazy—like the pot-bellied stove—that we won’t be able to sell.” She wiped her damp forehead on her sleeve. “So if you see a chance to make a good profit, you grab it . . . . But Andy was always leaning over backwards to be
ethical,
and he condemned people who were trying to make an extra dollar or two. I don’t say he was wrong, but he carried it too far. That’s the only thing I had against him . . . . Don’t say that in the paper. On the whole he was a wonderful person. So considerate in unexpected ways!”

“In what ways?”

“Well, for one thing, he was always so nice to Papa Popopopoulos, the fruit man. The rest of us just ignore the lonely old fellow . . . . And then there was Ann Peabody. When the antique dealers had a neighborhood meeting, Andy always made sure that Ann attended, even if he had to carry her. She’s ninety years old and still runs a shop, although she hasn’t sold so much as a salt dip in four years.” The iron was making light passes over a red and grey striped sport shirt. “One good thing about being in this business—you don’t have to iron white shirts.”

“Was Andy successful—financially?”

“He made a go of it, I guess. He also sold articles to magazines and taught an evening class in antiques at the Y.W.C.A. In this business everybody has to have some kind of job on the side—or else a rich uncle. C.C. is a professional picket. He was on the picket line this morning in that bitter cold.”

“What was he picketing?”

“I don’t know. He goes wherever the agency sends him. He likes the work, and it pays time and a half in bad weather.”

“Does Miss Duckworth have a sideline?”

“I doubt whether she needs one. I think she has money. She sells very fine things—to a select clientele. She has a Sheraton card table over there that I’d commit murder to own! It’s priced way out of my class.”

“I was surprised to find such an expensive shop in Junktown.”

“I suppose she wanted to be near her boy friend. In this business, location is unimportant; customers will go anywhere to find what they’re looking for.”

“But isn’t there some risk in having valuable things in a neighborhood like this?” Qwilleran asked.

Iris frowned at him. “You’re just like everyone else! You think an old neighborhood that’s run down is a hotbed of crime. It’s not true! We don’t have any trouble.” She fell silent as she concentrated on the collar of a blouse.

The newsman stood up. “Well, I’d better get back
to work—try out the new typewriter—and see if I can write something about the auction.”

“By the way,” said Iris, “there’s a box of old keys on that Empire chest. See if one of them fits your lock.”

He glanced in the box and saw nothing but old-fashioned keys, four inches long. “I don’t need to lock my door,” he said.

Returning to his apartment, Qwilleran opened the door and reached in for the wall switch that activated three sources of light: the reading light near the Morris chair, the floor lamp standing at the desk, and the hand-painted relic on the tilted table. Then he looked for the cats, as he always did upon coming home.