The Victim in Victoria Station (17 page)

Time passed. We searched, growing more and more discouraged. At last I tottered to my feet with loud groans. “Nothing. How about you?”

“No laptop computer, at least. Most of the papers I've seen are forms of one sort or another, and dull as ditchwater.”

We looked at each other despairingly in the dim light. “Nigel, this is infuriating! I'm really very suspicious of Mr. Fortier, but this place is such a rat's nest, anything could be hidden here, and we'd never find it!”

Nigel nodded soberly. “I'm not sure there's a point to looking further.”

“There's still Mr. Spragge's office.” I sighed as I said it. I was very tired and getting very discouraged.

“But it's locked.”

“Yes, well, I thought you might—”

“Pick a lock? Not a chance! Do you know, for such a respectable, honest-looking lady you are a menace to society!”

“And you are—Nigel, what's that over there? Let me have the light for a second.”

I shone it against the wall, and there, sure enough, in the modern partition dividing this office from Mr. Spragge's, a door had been cut, plain, inconspicuous, flush with the wall. “Aha! So the boss can confer with his second in command. If the second were ever here, anyway. And I'll bet …”

The door wasn't even made to lock. So much for security. We carefully put everything back the way we had found it and entered Mr. Spragge's office.

Seen by daylight, I knew, it was a beautiful room. The proportions had been spoiled when it was cut up, of course, but the walnut paneling still glowed softly with the patina that only proper care can maintain. The large, impressive desk was of the right period and also beautifully cared for. The boss, furthermore, had treated himself not only to a rich Persian carpet but to fine, dusty blue velvet draperies. I moved to the window and pulled them carefully shut.

“Now. Let there be light.”

The rest of the office complex suffered the glare of recessed fluorescent fixtures. Here a fine brass chandelier provided softer, more gracious light. It was sufficient, however.

We found the computer almost at once, turned on its side and pushed in among the books in one of the arched, built-in bookcases.

“Eureka!” said Nigel.

“You're very classical tonight, Nigel. Is it really, though?”

“It's certainly a laptop, and it was certainly tucked away, if not exactly hidden. As to whether it's what we want …”

He had turned it on as he spoke and, once the screen responded, began to peck eagerly at the keyboard like a robin digging for worms. I leaned avidly over his shoulder.

“Wow.” He said it very softly, almost with awe.

“What? I can't see, the screen is all purple.”

He tilted it for me, the contrast seemed to adjust itself, and I saw.

It read like a roster of the United Nations. Every poverty-stricken nation I'd ever heard of, and quite a few I hadn't, was among the addresses scrolling up the screen. Sales dates, figures, contact names, were all there. The figures were totaled now and then to sums I found staggering.

“Mr. Spragge,” I said numbly. “But why? He must earn a fortune at this job. Well, we know he does. We've seen his salary.”

“Greed—” began Nigel.

“I don't believe it. He's just not that kind of man. He's a man of principle, a churchwarden.”

“And how long did you say you'd been employed here?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “You seem to know him awfully well for such short acquaintance.”

“Okay, okay, but he really is! I don't say he's an angel, but you only have to take one look at him—
what was that?
”

The last words came out in a panicky squeak. We'd both heard the noise from the adjacent office.

Nigel moved to the light switch, turned it off as silently as he could, and then very slowly eased open the connecting door.

Something rubbed against my ankles and uttered a plaintive mew.

Nigel made a disgusted noise and pointed the flashlight in the direction of the mew. “Is that all? Only the office—”

“Nigel, hush! No, don't turn the lights back on!” My voice was a whisper that didn't seem to have enough breath behind it. “The office doesn't have a cat, and I shut this one out hours ago. Nigel—
how did it get in here?
”

I
t took Nigel two seconds to absorb that. Then he made for the door. “We have to get out of here!”

“Yes, but where's the computer? We've got to put it back!”

We found it easily. It was still turned on, its screen glowing eerily in the darkened room. Nigel took more time than I liked to turn it off.

“Hurry!” I urged.

“I have to do this properly,” he muttered. “If I just shut it down without saving the files, I could destroy the data, and they'd know someone had been at it.” He finished, finally, and jammed the computer back into the bookshelf. We took a last panicky look around the room to see if it looked more or less normal and tried again to leave. The problem was the cat. Perfectly content in a dry place, on a warm, soft rug, it had begun to wash itself and purr loudly.

“Here, puss,” said Nigel very quietly. “Nice puss!”

The cat, centered in the flashlight beam, dealt with a troublesome spot on its right shoulder blade.

“Stupid animal,” Nigel muttered, and made a grab for it. A paw flashed out; Nigel swore and sucked his hand. The cat went on purring.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” I pleaded. I could have sworn the beast rolled its eyes in disgust.

“Damn! We can't leave it here to give the game away, but if someone is still in the building, or hanging about—”

“I know. Listen, Nigel, did you say you had another sandwich?”

He rummaged in his backpack, produced the sandwich, and extracted a bit of beef. Without a glance at the cat, he put it on the floor and moved back toward the door.

The beef was gone in an instant. Nigel put down a little more, retreated a little farther… .

I followed to shut the door on the cat once it was out of Mr. Spragge's office, but we still had several rooms to go before we reached the outside door. Progress was excruciatingly slow, and I began to fear that the food would run out before our feline tormentor was safely on the front step.

“This is the last of it,” Nigel said when we had gotten as far as my vestibule. He put his pack on the floor, opened it, and laid the small piece of beef in the far corner.

I didn't think it would work. The cat was a wary, wily stray. It was, however, also very hungry, and the beef was obviously the best thing that had come its way for days.

Neither of us breathed. The cat, slinking low on its belly, crawled to the pack, sniffed the human smell, hesitated, and then dove to the back.

Nigel clapped the top half down, picked up the pack, and managed, with the assistance of me and gravity, to get the zipper done up.

Unearthly yowls proceeded from inside, along with writhings and ominous scraping noises as sharp claws tried to open an escape path.

“Extra-heavy-duty nylon, I hope?”

“Industrial strength,” said Nigel. “And nearly new, so the little bugger had best not shred it if he knows what's good for him. Now what?”

“Now we fade away as quietly as possible. I do wish that beast would
hush!
”

But it didn't hush until we got outside and down the steps. It was still drizzling. I put up my umbrella. “You can let it go now, Nigel,” I reminded him.

Nigel put the pack down and unzipped it. The cat poked its head out, sniffed the rain, and looked at us.

Then it uttered a brief comment and curled back up in the pack.

I suppose it was reaction. Nigel and I looked at each other and began to shake with laughter. We laughed so hard, we almost fell over. “I don't suppose,” I said weakly when I couldn't laugh anymore, “that there'd be a pub open anywhere. I could use a drink after that.”

“I've those bottles of Bass,” said Nigel, wiping his eyes.

“No, thank you. A lady doesn't drink on a park bench in the rain. Besides, we've got to move on. I don't know what we're thinking of. If anyone's still around …”

Again I didn't finished the thought, but it sobered both of us in a hurry. Nigel shouldered the pack again, zipping it enough so that the cat would stay dry and still be able to breathe, and we headed for Russell Square, the nearest place to find a cab at that hour of the night. I refused to deal with the Underground just then.

We snared a cab right out from under the doorman at the Russell Hotel and climbed in. “Yes, sir?” said the cabbie.

He looked at Nigel, and Nigel looked at me. I shrugged. “We might as well go back to the Andersons'. They'll want to know all about it, and Lynn said they'd be up till midnight.” I gave the cabbie the address, and we sat back in silence, each absorbed in our own thoughts. The silence didn't last long. The cat soon made it earsplittingly clear that it did not care for auto-mobile travel. The cabbie turned around at the first yowl, shook his head, and firmly shut the connecting window.

The cat was still yowling at the top of its considerable lungs when we got to the house in Belgravia. I reached for the bell, but Lynn opened the door before my finger hit the button.

“I suppose you heard the cat,” I said weakly.

“I imagine the
Queen
heard the cat. Buck House is only a half mile away, after all, and this is a quiet neighborhood. Ordinarily. For heaven's sake get the creature inside before my neighbors get up a petition!”

Seen against the backdrop of Lynn's exquisite period furniture, the cat looked more disreputable than ever. Once Nigel opened the backpack, it sat perfectly still for a few minutes, only its nose and ears twitching. Then, stepping delicately, it began to wander around the room, belly low to the ground and tail tucked under, exploring the new territory with every sense alert.

“All right, where did you pick up this one? And if you don't mind my saying so, why?” Tom's voice was critical, and I can't say I blamed him.

“I had nothing to do with it. Cats choose their people, you know that. I wouldn't have chosen this one, but it decided it wanted to come home with us.”

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Lynn. “Emmy and Sam wouldn't like it a bit, would they?”

“Probably not. Actually I expect I'll take it back where it came from, but meanwhile you don't have any food it could eat, do you? The poor thing's half starved, even after demolishing an entire sandwich. Look at its ribs.”

Tom groaned. “Feed a stray cat, and it's yours for life, you know, D.”

Lynn said nothing, but slipped out to the kitchen and came back with a large saucerful of minced chicken. She also brought a plate of sandwiches for the humans, and some beer at the proper temperatures for both English and American tastes. We enjoyed our treat, but not with quite the enthusiasm of the cat, who devoured the chicken in a few bites.

“It'll soon fatten up if it goes on eating that way,” said Nigel with a grin. “Or he will. I'll lay odds he's a tom, and a fighter, too. We'll have to turn him loose, I suppose. He's no pet.”

“No.” I surveyed the cat, now licking a paw industriously. “It seems a pity, though. The poor thing could use a little love.” I yawned widely. “And besides that, he's a clue, in a way.” I explained quickly, for Tom and Lynn's benefit. “What I want to know is how he got into the building,” I concluded.

“Back door?” asked Tom.

“It's kept locked. It's just beyond my desk in the hall. Evelyn explained it's a fire exit and has to be kept clear, but it's never used, and certainly never left open.”

“Are there fire stairs outside?”

“I haven't noticed, but I suppose there are. And yes, it's just conceivable that Sneaky Pete there—”

“Sneaky Pete?” That was Nigel.

“It's another name for moonshine whiskey. Seems appropriate for a white cat that sneaks around. Anyway, he might have climbed up the outside stairs, if there are any, and gotten in through an upstairs window, though it seems most unlikely that any would have been left open in empty offices. But he didn't, I'll swear, open that door from the hall by himself. Somebody let him in, Nigel. Probably without knowing it; opened the door, and the cat slipped in. They do that.”

“When?”

“It could have been almost any time after I fell asleep. I slept for over an hour, and then you came along, and we started exploring. Would we have heard anyone?”

Nigel, dropping to a seat on the floor and nursing his beer, thought about that for a moment. “I don't know. I think so. We weren't making a row.”

“But we were concentrating on what we were doing, and that's a solid old house. I can't be sure. But the more I think about the whole incident, the less I understand it.” I punched the pillows on the couch into a more comfortable configuration and leaned back against them.

“Someone came into that building, either before you arrived or after. If it was before, I don't understand what he—she—they did. Where they went. They didn't come into the main office, because that's where I was asleep, and I would have known. I wasn't all that dead to the world.”

“No?” asked Nigel, one eyebrow quirked.

“Well—all right, it took me a while to hear the doorbell. But it doesn't really sound very loud inside. And I
know
I'd have walked if someone had turned on a light, or shone a flashlight around. Light has always wakened me.”

“Mmm.” Nigel didn't sound convinced, but I went on anyway.

“Okay, so if they came while I was asleep they either went upstairs—but why?—or just hung around. And again, why? But if they came
after
you were there—well, then, what did they do? The same thing. Nothing. I don't understand.”