Canapés for the Kitties (3 page)

It was a beautiful building and had been transformed into a dream block of flats. Too bad about the people in it.

“The neighbourhood is really going down,” Macho said. “I hadn't thought it could sink any lower after Gemma Duquette moved in – but now this!”

“Plantagenet Sutton,” Lorinda mourned. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Ground-floor left-hand flat.” Macho was certain of his facts. “I saw the furniture being moved in this morning. No one could mistake that wing chair and lamp table. No one in the business, that is. It's practically his logo.”

“That's pretty conclusive.” She hadn't really doubted him; Macho was an expert gossip. Probably they all were. Keeping tabs on friends and neighbours could be looked on as an extension of their work. What was a book, after all, but the retailing of the alarms, excursions and minutiae of everyday life until it reached a conclusion tidier than any life usually provided? Did they become writers because they were so very interested in gossip? Or did being writers make them preternaturally interested in gossip?

Had-I and But-Known sauntered in and leaped up to sprawl out, one on each arm of Lorinda's chair. She stroked them absently. Roscoe followed and leaped up on Macho's lap. A faint concerted purr began to thrum as background music to their conversation. Outside, dusk began to settle over the village. It was all so comfortable and companionable ... but for how much longer?

Plantagenet Sutton had come to live in their midst. Life could never be the same again.

“Perhaps he'll hate it here and won't stay long,” she said hopefully.

“We can do our best,” Macho said, “but the monster has the hide of a rhinoceros. Otherwise, he could never have survived this long.”

“I suppose we'll have to be civil to him,” Lorinda said. “After all, he hasn't retired yet, has he? Not like Gemma Duquette.”

“No, her fangs have been drawn, but his are still in place and ever ready to go for the jugular.” Macho's eyes narrowed. “I suspect we have her to thank for his being here. She must have told him about our burgeoning colony. After all, Brimful Coffers is not the first place that would spring to the mind of someone wishing to move to the country.”

“How very true.” Lorinda was beginning to wish she'd never heard of the place herself. The more colleagues and cohorts moved into the village, the less des. the res. seemed.

“If she did it,” Macho brooded, “that's one more thing we have against her.”

Lorinda nodded, although the main thing Macho had against Gemma Duquette was that she had, not surprisingly, never bought one of his books to serialize in her magazine,
Woman's Place.
Those who had been serialized carried far deeper grudges. Only an author who had seen her work butchered to fit into four to six weekly instalments could really comprehend the depths of hatred Gemma had inspired, especially as the pages sacrificed to expediency had inevitably contained the most inspired passages, the best writing and the most vital plot points – thus making hash of the solution to the mystery.

On the other hand, every suggestion of witless romance, or feeble intimation of sexual attraction and banal dialogue had been retained. Paragraphs disappeared between sentences, consecutive pages went missing between paragraphs – and the screams of anguished authors could be heard in the land. However, despite bitter vows of revenge and dire threats never to allow
Woman's Place
to desecrate another manuscript, those who could continued to sell it first serial rights. Money talked – take it and run and lick your wounds in privacy or in the company of other wounded victims.

And Gemma Duquette was responsible for it all.
Other
magazines were able to publish more sensitive serializations, managing to retain most of the major characters, plot lines and all the other features that were the first things Gemma's deadly hatchet automatically attacked.

“We were so relieved when she retired,” Lorinda remembered. “We thought we'd never have to deal with her again. And now she's moved into our midst.”

“And brought Plantagenet Sutton along with her,” Macho snarled.

Roscoe stirred restively in his lap and looked up at his master in concern; he was not accustomed to hearing that snarl when Macho was away from his machine and no longer acting out his stories as he wrote them.

“Well, sometimes he gives a good review,” Lorinda said delicately. It was common knowledge that Macho had never received a good – or even a passable – review from Plantagenet Sutton. Quite the contrary, Sutton seemed to reserve his wittiest barbs and most poisonous venom for Macho Magee's books. Macho had good reason for bitterness.

“Sutton the sod!” Macho crossed and recrossed his legs violently. Roscoe bounced to the floor and stalked off to the kitchen, stiff-legged and affronted. Macho didn't notice, too absorbed in his own furious thoughts.

“Sutton the sot!” he hissed.

Lorinda nodded. She wasn't sure about the first accusation, but there was a certain amount of justice in the second. In fact, that might be the root cause of the problem. Plantagenet Sutton had always been a tough critic, but he had not turned into a hanging judge until he conceived the idea of combining book reviews with a wine column and moving to the Lifestyle pages of his Sunday newspaper.

His “Through a Glass, Darkly” pages had been a great success – with the public. The large photograph of Sutton relaxing in his wing chair, with the lamp table beside him, the lamp casting a benevolent glow over his features and the wide circular table holding a small stack of books, a decanter and half-filled glass, obviously touched a chord deep in the public heart – this was what they thought the Literary Life was like. The wine shippers had had no complaints (except for the occasional suggestion that a bottle might be used instead of a decanter), but the change had been greatly to the detriment of the mystery-writing community.

“Isn't it just our luck?” Fredericka Carlson had lamented.

“Why couldn't the bastard have turned out to be a jovial drunk instead of a nasty one?”

Others voiced the opinion – off the record, of course – that the steaming rancour had set in when Plantagenet Sutton realized that a good review of a wine was likely to bring him a case of the favoured beverage, while a good review for a book brought him no return at all. His opinion of every book had grown more and more venomous, every witticism at the author's expense, every verdict thumbs-down.

“I suppose there's no hope of
him
retiring?” Lorinda was momentarily wistful.

“Not while he can still lift a glass to his lips,” Macho sneered.

“Anyway,” Lorinda tried to look on the bright side, “in Coffers Court, they're only renting; they haven't bought the leaseholds yet. Maybe they won't stay.”

“We can but do our best to ensure that.” Macho's lips twisted unpleasantly.

“We couldn't do that ...” Lorinda said uncertainly.

“Maybe
you
couldn't.” She hadn't thought it possible, but Macho's smile became even more unpleasant. “But would you like to bet how forbearing Rhylla Montague is going to be? She took to her bed for three days after she saw what Gemma had done to her last opus. Then Sutton, in his infinite laziness, reviewed the book from the potted version in the magazine – and slaughtered it.
And
they're all under the same roof now.”

The urgent summons of the telephone saved Lorinda from having to reply. With relief, she rose and crossed to answer it, narrowly avoiding tripping over Roscoe, who had wandered back into the room to make sure he wasn't missing anything.

“Lorinda, have you heard?” Fredericka Carlson's voice was unnaturally shrill. “I can't believe it! What have we done to deserve this?”

“Steady, Freddie,” Lorinda said. “Macho is here now. He's just told me. Come over and join us for drinks.”

“We'll need them! Horrors to the right of me, horrors to the left of me – I don't know why 1 came to this place! I'll be right over!” Freddie slammed down the phone and it seemed only seconds before she was at the door.

“They're going to kill each other, you know,” she announced. “It's only a question of time – and I'd rather not be around here when they do it.”

“You're just trying to cheer us up,” Macho said. “They're thick as thieves. Lorinda and I were just saying that it must have been Gemma who told that – that
churl
– that there was a flat going spare at Coffers Court.”

“Not
them!”
Freddie threw Macho a withering look as she hurled herself into Lorinda's vacated chair and automatically began stroking the cats stretched along its arms. “That would be too much to hope for! I mean, my lot – the next-door neighbours, the other half of the house. I never should have let Dorian talk me into that semi-detached. ‘They're Americans, so they'll only be here three or four months of the year, six at most,' he said. ‘It will be like having a house all to yourself, except that it will be cheaper than a detached,' he said. Hah! Bloody hah!”

Had-I and But-Known turned to her with comforting purrs. Roscoe came over to rub against her ankles. As a stray human, owned by no proprietary feline, but always ready to welcome a visiting cat with warmth, snacks and cuddles, she was extremely popular with them.

“Aaah ... thanks.” She accepted the glass of deep amber liquid and slipped off her shoes, absently scratching Roscoe's neck with a stockinged toe. Relaxation was setting in.

“Are the neighbours being difficult again?” Lorinda looked at Freddie with some concern. Freddie's hairdo was in a disintegrating preshampoo condition, not helped by the way she was running her hands through it, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“All night,” Freddie sighed. “Shouting, screaming and throwing things. I didn't get a wink of sleep. Every time it got quiet and I started to doze, they began again.”

“Poor Freddie,” Macho sympathized. “You should have banged on the wall.”

“I couldn't!” Freddie said. “They'd die if they thought I could hear them so clearly. Especially with some of the home truths they were hurling at each other. We'd never be able to look each other in the face again.”

“You're going to have to do something,” Lorinda said. “You can't go on like this. Especially if it's true that they're going to stay here year around this year.”

“Oh, it's true, all right.” Freddie shuddered. “They're collaborating on a nonfiction book. One of those
A Year In
... with lots of photographs. Guess who's going to do all the work while
he
swans around pointing his camera at everything so that he'll get his name on the title page as co-author. The last shot to save an ailing marriage. How many times have we seen it?” She shuddered again.

“I'm thinking of moving my bedroom,” she went on. “If I clear the box-room and move the bed in there, leaving the bedroom as a dressing room ...”

“You can't squeeze yourself into the box-room!” Lorinda was horrified. “There's no window – you'll have no air.”

“Especially if I keep the door closed, which I shall have to do to keep it soundproof,” Freddie nodded gloomily. “Damn Dorian and all his machinations!”

“Dorian can't be blamed if the Jackley marriage is breaking up.” Lorinda was assailed by sudden doubt. “Can he?”

“I wouldn't like to swear to anything.” Freddie was suddenly very interested in her drink. “It's possible that they've just discovered they can't stand each other.”

“And who can blame them?” Macho murmured. Diplomatic relations had been strained ever since Jack Jackley had pointed out the antiquity of much of his hard-boiled American slang. He had been particularly annoyed to be told that “roscoe” was even worse than “gat” for a gun. Nor was Jackley's humour appreciated when he suggested alternative names for Roscoe. Nothing on earth could induce Macho to change Roscoe's name to Capone.

“I was so exhausted by the time they decided to call it a night,” Freddie went on, “that I overslept disgracefully this morning. I didn't wake up until Karla threw the toaster at the wall.”

“How do you know it was the toaster?” Macho always liked to get these little points clear.

“I heard Jack shout, ‘You'll electrocute yourself!' and then, ‘Those were the last two slices of bread.' It wasn't hard to deduce – that
is
our business, you know.”

“True.” Lorinda and Macho nodded.

“Then there was a long silence. I hoped one of them was strangling the other with the electric cord, but no such luck. I looked out of the window a while later and saw them setting off for the shops. They had their shopping basket with them –” She forestalled Macho's next question.

“Anyway, I took advantage of the quiet to get some work done. When I heard doors slamming over there again, I decided to get out and do some shopping myself. I had nearly finished and was walking down the High Street when I saw that – that
toad!
” She spat the word out and the cats turned their heads to look at her with a wary interest bordering on alarm. They were not accustomed to that tone of voice from her.

“He was hopping out of the wine merchant's – wouldn't you know it? – and looking too pleased with himself to be true. I'd hoped I was hallucinating, but he spoke to me and said he'd just moved in to Coffers Court and was looking forward to living here amongst all his old friends and colleagues.”

“You should have spat in his face!” Macho was overidentifying with his character again, although the fictional Macho wouldn't have stopped at mere spittle, a few broken teeth were more his style.

“I have a book coming out next month,” Freddie apologized.