"The Cat Who Turned On and Off" - читать интересную книгу автора (Braun Lilian Jackson)

13

After Qwilleran had brought Iris Cobb home from Police Headquarters and had called Mary Duckworth to come and stand by, he went to the office. With a bleak expression on his face, accentuated by the downcurve of his moustache, he threw ten pages of triple-spaced copy on Arch Riker's desk.

"What's the matter?" Arch said.

"Rough morning! I've been up since five," Qwilleran told him. "My landlord was killed. Fell down a flight of stairs." "You mean Cobb?" "He was stripping one of the condemned houses, and when he didn't come home, I went out with Mrs. Cobb to look for him. We found him dead at the foot of the stairs. Then the police took us in for questioning. Mrs. Cobb is a wreck." "Too bad. Sorry to hear that." "It was the Ellsworth house on Fifteenth Street." "I know the place," Riker said. "A big stone mausoleum. Hector Ellsworth was mayor of this town forty years ago." "He was?" Qwilleran laughed without mirth. "Then Cobb lost his last battle with City Hall. They finally got him! I'm beginning to believe in the spirit world." "How are you going to write this up?" "It's a trifle awkward. Cobb was trespassing." "Scrounging? All the junkers do that. Even Rosie! She never goes out without a crowbar in the car." "Tell your wife she's guilty of looting city property. Cobb was caught once. They arrested him and gave him a heavy fine-and a warning, which he disregarded." "Doesn't sound like the kind of jolly Christmas story the boss wants." "There's one thing we could do," said Qwilleran. "Cobb was organizing a Christmas celebration for Junktown — a Block Party — and the city was giving him a hard time. Wouldn't let him decorate the street, play Christmas music, or serve refreshments. All kinds of red tape. Why don't we talk to City Hall and railroad this thing through for Wednesday afternoon? It's the least we can do. It's not much, but it might make the widow feel a little better." "I'll ask the boss to get the mayor on the phone." "The way I see it, there are five city bureaus giving Junktown the run-around. If they could just get someone from the mayor's office to cut through the whole mess…" "All right. And why don't you write a plug for the Block Party? We'll run it in tomorrow's paper. We'll get every junker in town to turn out. And write something about Cobb — something with heart." Qwilleran nodded. The phrases were already forming in his mind. He'd write about the man who tried to make people hate him, but in the topsy-turvy world of the junker, everyone loved his perversity.

Qwilleran stopped in the Fluxion library to look up the clips on Hector Ellsworth and at the payroll cage to pick up his check, and then he returned to Junktown.

Mary Duckworth, handsomely trousered, met him at the door of the Cobb apartment. He was aware of a subtle elation in her manner.

"How's Iris?" he asked.

"I gave her a sedative, and she's sleeping. The funeral will be in Cleveland, and I've made a plane reservation for her." "Anything I can do? Perhaps I should pick up the station wagon. It's still behind the Ellsworth house. Then I can drive her to the airport." "Would you? I'm packing a bag for her." "When she wakes," Qwilleran said, "tell her that Junktown is going to have everything C.C. wanted for the Christmas party." "I know," said Mary. "The mayor's office has already called. His representative is coming here to speak to the dealers this afternoon, and then we'll have a meeting upstairs tonight." "In Hernia Heaven? I'd like to attend." "The dealers would be delighted to have you." "Come across the hall," Qwilleran said. "I have something to report." As he unlocked the door of his apartment, the cats — who had been curled together in a sleeping pillow of fur in the Morris chair — immediately raised their heads. Yum Yum scampered from the room, but Koko stood his ground, arching his back and bushing his tail as he glared at the stranger. His reaction was not hostile — only unflattering.

"Do I look like an ogre?" Mary wanted to know.

"Koko can sense Hepplewhite," Qwilleran said. "He knows you've got a big dog. Cats are psychic." He threw his overcoat on the daybed and placed his hat on the desk, and when he did so, he saw a small dark object lying near his typewriter. He approached it gingerly. It looked like the decomposed remains of a small bird.

"What's this?" he said. "What the devil is this?" Mary examined the small brown fragment. "Why, it's a piece of hair jewelry! A brooch!" He combed his moustache with his fingertips. "Some uncanny things have been happening on these premises.

Yesterday some benevolent spirit left me a dollar bill!" He examined the birdlike form woven of twisted brown strands.

"You mean this is real hair?" "Human hair. It's memorial jewelry. They used to make necklaces, bracelets, all sorts of things from the hair of someone who had died." "Who would want to keep such stuff?" "Iris has an extensive collection. She even wears it occasionally." Qwilleran dropped the brooch with distaste. "Sit down," he said, "and let me tell you what I discovered about the Ellsworth house in the Fluxion clip file." He offered her a gilded chair, flipping the red cushion to the side that was not furred with cat hair. "Did you know that Ellsworth was a former mayor?" "Yes, I've heard about him." "He died at the age of ninety-two, having achieved a reputation for eccentricity. He was a compulsive collector — never threw anything away. He had a twenty-year accumulation of old newspapers, string, and vinegar bottles. And he was supposed to be worth quite a sum of money, but a large chunk of his holdings was never found…. Does that suggest anything to you?" Mary shook her head.

"Suppose someone was looking for buried treasure in the old house last night… and suppose C.C. arrived with his crowbar, looking for black walnut paneling… and suppose they thought he was after the strongbox?" "Don't you think that's rather far-fetched?" "Maybe he accidentally found the loot when he ripped open the paneling… and maybe another scrounger came along and pushed him downstairs. I admit it's far-fetched, but it's a possibility." The girl looked at Qwilleran with sudden curiosity. "Is it true what my father says about you? That you've solved two murder cases since joining the Fluxion?" "Well, I was instrumental — that is, I didn't do it alone. I had help." He touched his moustache tentatively and threw a glance in Koko's direction. Koko was watching, and he was all ears.

"Do you really think that Cobb might have been murdered?" "Murder shouldn't be ruled out too quickly — although the police accepted it as an accident. A man with Cobb's personality must have had enemies." "His churlishness was a pose — for business reasons. Everyone knew that. Many junkers think prices go up if a dealer is friendly, and if his shop is clean." "Whether it was an act or not, I don't suppose anyone hated him enough to kill him. Competition for the Ellsworth treasure would make a better motive." Mary stood up and looked out the back window for a while. "I don't know whether this will have any bearing on the case," she said finally, "but… when C.C. went scrounging late at night, he didn't always go to a condemned building." "You think he was playing around?" "I know he was." "Anybody we know?" Mary hesitated and then said, "One of The Three Weird Sisters." Qwilleran gave a dry chuckle. "I can guess which one." "She's a nymphomaniac," said Mary with her cool porcelain look.

"Did Iris suspect?" "I don't think so. She's near-sighted in more ways than one." "How did you know this was going on?" "Mrs. Katzenhide lives in the same apartment building. Several times she saw Cobb paying late evening calls, and you know very well he was not there to discuss the hallmarks on English silver." Qwilleran studied Mary's face. Her eyes were sparkling, and her personality had a new buoyancy.

"What's happened to you, Mary?" he asked. "You've changed." She smiled joyously. "I feel as if I've been living under a cloud, and the sun has just broken through!" "Can you tell me about it?" 'Not now. Later. I'd better go back to Iris. She'll wake and think she's deserted." After she had left, QwiIleran took another look at the hair brooch — and a good hard look at the cats. The male was graciously allowing the female to wash his ears.

"Okay, Koko, the game's up," he said. "Where are you getting this loot?" Koko sat very tall and squeezed his eyes innocently.

"You feline Fagin! I'll bet you find the stuff, and you make Yum Yum steal it. Where's your secret cache?" Koko unfolded his rear half and with dignity walked from the room. QwiIleran followed him — into the bathroom.

"You're finding them under the tub?" "Yow," said Koko with a noncommittal inflection.

QwiIleran started to go down on all fours, but a twinge in his bad knee discouraged the effort. "I'll bet no one's cleaned under that monster for fifty years," he told the cat, who was now sitting in his sandbox with a soulful look in his eyes and paying no attention to anyone.

Shortly after, when QwiIleran returned to the Ellsworth house to pick up the Cobb car, he did some treasure hunting of his own. He looked for footprints and tire tracks in the snow and telltale marks in the dust of the stripped rooms.

White plaster dust had settled everywhere. Large objects had been dragged through it, leaving dark trails, and footprints had piled on footprints, but here and there a mark could be distinguished. Qwilleran noticed the patterned treads of boots, the imprint of a claw hammer, some regularly spaced dots (made by crutches?), and even the pawprints of a large animal, and a series of feathery arabesques in the dust, perhaps caused by the switching of a tail. Evidently every dealer in Junktown had been through the Ellsworth house at one time or another; recent prints were lightly filmed over and the older ones were almost covered.

Qwilleran dug Cobb's flashlight out of a pile of rubble and retrieved his crowbar. Then he went upstairs.

Everything on the stair treads had been obliterated, but on the landing there was evidence of three kinds of footwear, and although it was impossible to guess whether all three had been there at the same time, they were sharp enough to be recent. The newsman copied the tread marks on the folded sheet of newsprint that was always in his pocket. One print was a network of diamond shapes, another was a series of closely spaced dots, and the third was crossbarred. His own galoshes left a pattern of small circles.

The tire tracks in the yard contributed nothing to Qwilleran's investigation. There was no telling how many junkers had been in and out of the driveway. Tire tracks had crisscrossed and frozen and melted and frozen again, and snow had frosted the unreadable hieroglyphics.

Qwilleran backed the tan station wagon out of its hiding place in the backyard, and as he pulled away, he noticed that the vehicle left a rectangle of gray in the field of white snow. He also noticed another such rectangle nearby. Two cars had parked there on the dirty ice Sunday night, after which a light snow had fallen. Qwilleran jumped out of the wagon, thanked fate and Mary Duckworth for the tape line in his pocket, and measured the length and breadth of the second rectangle. It was shorter than the imprint left by the Cobb wagon, and it was not quite square at one corner, the snow having drifted in from the northwest.

Qwilleran's findings did not amount to much, he had to admit. Even if the owner of the second car were known, there was no proof that he had engineered Cobb's fatal fall. Nevertheless, the mere routine of investigation was exhilarating to Qwilleran, and he drove from the scene with a feeling of accomplishment. On second impulse he drove back into the Ellsworth yard, entered the house, and salvaged two items for the Cobb Junkery: a marble mantel and a chandelier of blackened brass.

Later he drove Mrs. Cobb to the airport.

"I don't have anything black to wear," she said wearily. "C. C. always liked me to wear bright colors. Pink especially." She huddled on the car seat in her cheap coat with imitation fur lining, her pink crocheted church-going hat, and her two pairs of glasses hanging from ribbons." "You can't pick up something in Cleveland," Qwilleran Isaid, "if you think it's necessary. Who's going to meet you there?" "My brother-in-law-and Dennis, if he gets in from St, Louis." "Is that your son?" "Yes." "What's he doing in St. Louis?" "He finished school last June and just started his first job." "Does he like antiques?" "Oh, dear, no! He's an architect!" Keep her talking, Qwilleran thought. "How old is he?" "Twenty-two." "Single?" "Engaged. She's a nice girl. I wanted to give them some antique silver for Christmas, but Dennis doesn't approve of anything old…. Oh, dear! I forgot the presents for the mailman and the milkman. There are two envelopes behind the clock in the kitchen — with a card and a little money in them. Will you see that they get them — in case I don't come home right away? I wrapped up a little Christmas treat for" Koko and Yum Yum, too. It's in the top drawer of the Empire chest. And tell Ben that I'll make his bourbon cake when I get back from the — from Cleveland." "How do you make bourbon cake?" Keep her talking.

"With eggs and flour and walnuts and raisins and a cup of bourbon." "Nothing could beat that coconut cake you made yesterday." "Coconut was C. C.'s favorite," she said, and then she, fell silent, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing beyond the windshield.