The Diamond Cat Read online

  And may you never find out. “Sorry, Mother,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m half asleep. The weather must be making me drowsy.”

  “You and the cats!” Mrs. Bilby swept a scornful glance over the sleeping felines. “Sometimes you’re just alike.”

  “The cats have got the right idea in this weather.” A hopeful thought occurred to her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go upstairs and take a little nap yourself?”

  “Certainly not!” Mrs. Bilby laughed shrilly and scornfully. Adolf twitched his ears and swore softly. Enza, startled awake, shook her head groggily and leaped to the floor, moving to the far side of the room.

  It had been too much to hope for, of course. Mrs. Bilby only retired to her room when she felt like it.

  Enza inspected her food dish, but nothing interesting had been added to it since last she looked. She muttered her opinion of this lack of hospitality and went over to nudge herself into the cosy huddle of Bluebell and Pasha. They grumbled, but shifted lazily to make room for her.

  Adolf sat up abruptly, as though sensing he might be missing something. He looked around, raised his head to sniff the delicious aroma of roasting chicken coming from the oven and turned to Bettina expectantly.

  “Not yet,” she told him. “It isn’t cooked.”

  “Talking to a cat like that!” her mother scoffed.

  “As though it could understand what you’re saying. You’re a fool, Bettina. There’s a lot of your father in you.”

  Bettina stood up abruptly, sending Adolf leaping to the floor. Suddenly the kitchen was too claustrophobic, too small to hold all the personalities in it.

  “I’d better go and empty those buckets.” She kept her voice even. “Before they get too full to manage.”

  “Now you’re being sensible,” her mother approved. “Pay some attention to the things that really matter. I always say—”

  Bettina closed the door quietly behind her, discovering that her teeth were clenched so tightly her jaw was beginning to ache. She had known it was going to be a long weekend; she had not realized quite how long it was going to be. She had not made allowances for the storm. No one had. She had never envisioned being trapped inside the house all day, every day, unable to get out as far as the end of the garden.

  What would life be like if Jelwyn Accessories closed down? If she were condemned to spend all her time in this cramped little house … with her mother? Even if she were able to invent enough errands to keep her outside for most of the day, they would still be spending far too much time together.

  Only the cats were going to keep her sane this weekend. What would she do without them?

  The buckets were nearly full, she emptied them and replaced them, then did the same with the bowls under the lesser drips. It didn’t take long. Rather than return to the kitchen immediately, she went to her room and stood at the window watching the world drowning outside.

  The presence of the feathered corpse on the windowsill was curiously disturbing. Unpleasant. She certainly did not want to spend the night with it in her room. Nor did she care for the idea of leaving it propped on the ledge outside the window, even supposing the driving wind and rain wouldn’t knock it to the ground and blow it away.

  In which case, there would be no evidence that the pigeon had ever reached this house, nothing to connect it with the pocketful of diamonds …

  She tried to pull her thoughts away from the temptation. How much would the diamonds be worth? And how would one go about selling them? Surely any dealer would want an explanation as to how she came to be in possession of such jewels. Of course, it might be easier to sell them one at a time. But to whom? And how good a price would she get? She was no good at bargaining, she knew, and she vaguely recalled having read that jewel thieves only got a fraction of the true value of the jewels—

  She was not a thief! Not even the “stealing by finding” kind, which this would amount to—if she kept the gems. But what else was she to do with them? What possible chance was there of finding the true owner—and how? Should she advertise in the newspapers? That would surely bring a horde of false claimants.

  And who was the true owner? What sort of bird lover would stuff the priceless gems into a carrier pigeon’s message cylinder? There had to be a strong suspicion that the gems were criminally acquired and headed for an illegal destination. Perhaps they were the results of a jewel robbery, prised from their settings and en route to someone who would mount them in new settings so that they could be sold as new and innocent pieces.

  A fresh burst of rain mixed with hail struck viciously against the window. She looked out at the storm, almost with gratitude. It meant that she literally could do nothing right now. And the Bank Holiday meant that there was no use in trying to reach anyone by telephone, all offices and businesses would be closed. She had time to think and try to decide what to do.

  Meanwhile, there was still the pigeon. She found several plastic shopping bags in her closet and wrapped the bird thoroughly before putting it into a shoe box. So far, so good, but she still didn’t want it in her room. She had the uneasy feeling that decomposition would still be going on, no matter how well she wrapped it up.

  There was nothing for it but the freezer—if she could manage to smuggle the pigeon into it when her mother wasn’t looking. Mrs. Bilby rarely checked the contents of the freezer, preferring to leave that to Bettina, who could be depended upon to buy anything that was needed to keep it well stocked.

  Yes, the freezer should be a safe place to stash the bird until she could decide what to do about everything.

  Chapter 4

  It was a nasty shock to walk into the kitchen and find her mother bending over the open freezer chest.

  “I thought I’d better check it.” Mrs. Bilby sounded curiously on the defensive; perhaps something in her daughter’s attitude told her she was overstepping some invisible line. “In case the power goes again. They say you’re supposed to have it fully packed and, if not, to fill up the space with a blanket or newspapers, so that it will hold the cold better until the power is restored.” There was a pile of newspapers at her feet.

  Bluebell was also there. She knew what the freezer was—a fine source of food. Not so good as the fridge—you had to wait for it to be thawed and cooked—but one that gave promise of future delights. She reared up on her hind legs, front paws resting on the edge and arched her neck, straining to look inside.

  “Oh, take her away, Bettina.” Mrs. Bilby pushed at Bluebell. “If that lid should fall, she’ll lose her paws.”

  If the lid fell, it would brain her mother first. The thought brought a faint guilty smile to her face. Quickly, Bettina gathered up Bluebell, who had just given her a better idea of what to do with the pigeon.

  “I think I ought to check Zoe’s freezer,” she said. “Just in case. It would be terrible if they came home and found everything ruined.”

  “Can’t do any harm,” her mother agreed, “as it’s just next door. I hope you’re not planning to go chasing all over the neighbourhood to the others though. You’ll get soaked and catch your death of cold.”

  “Mrs. Cassidy and Mr. Rawson just have freezer compartments in their fridges,” Bettina said. “Small ones. They don’t hold enough to make much difference if they thaw out. Sylvia …” She hesitated.

  “Sylvia! You don’t need to worry about that one! She has more money than she knows what to do with. You can tell that by the way she throws it away on nonsense.” Mrs. Bilby sent poor Pasha a malevolent glance. She had never got over learning how much he had cost. And then Zoe had had to go and buy the outrageously expensive Bluebell, lovely though she was, to try to keep up with the Joneses. It was the terror of her life that Bettina also might succumb to the general madness and catch the delusion that she could make money by breeding pedigree cats.

  (“He’s worth his weight in diamonds!” Sylvia had burbled persuasively last year, cuddling the year-old Pasha she had just acquired. “He’s a champion already, top
prizes in every show he’s been in. People will be queuing up for his services, there’ll be lots of stud fees. And later, we can buy him his own little queen or two and breed our own kittens. Do you know kittens can sell for as much as five hundred pounds, and up to seven hundred and fifty pounds?”

  (“If he’s so valuable,” Mrs. Bilby had questioned suspiciously, “why were his owners willing to sell him?”

  (“Oh, business,” Sylvia had said vaguely. “They’re in business. They can’t keep every cat. They have plenty of others. But this one is mine now, aren’t you, darling?” She had hugged Pasha. “My own little gold mine, my worth-his-weight-in-diamonds cat.”)

  “I won’t be long,” Bettina said. “I’ll just get my raincape.” She could have smuggled out a dozen boxes of defunct pigeons under its voluminous folds.

  Her mother was unsuspicious as Bettina crossed through the kitchen again, wearing the cape. She neatly blocked Adolf’s rush for the opening door with one foot and slipped through.

  The rain seemed to be lighter, although still relentless. The ground was mere tufts of grass drooping above a sea of mud and puddles. What daylight there had been was rapidly disappearing, making the world gloomier than ever.

  She turned sideways to slip through the barely discernible gap in the hedge between the two houses, feeling the waterlogged branches drag against her, tipping torrents of water down her raincape, her legs and into her shoes.

  She used a few words that would have shocked her mother and shook herself thoroughly as she gained the shelter of Zoe’s little back porch with its overhanging roof.

  The lock fought the key—she had mentioned this to Zoe before—then capitulated so abruptly that she was afraid the key had snapped. She turned the knob and the door swung open with a loud creaking protest suggesting that it was in terminal agony and this was its last cry before expiring.

  The house seemed warm in those first few moments of shelter from the storm, then the chill began to make itself felt. Zoe and her mother had obviously turned off the central heating before they left. She removed her raincape and hung it on the hook by the door.

  Her footsteps echoed on the linoleum as she crossed the kitchen to the larder. The freezer clicked on with a raucous whine as she lifted the lid, startling her. Her nerves weren’t what they used to be, no doubt about that. And an illicit horde of diamonds wasn’t going to help.

  Three pairs of tights lay on top of one of the stacks of ready-prepared meals. She must remember to ask Zoe if freezing really did lengthen the life of tights. Perhaps a shoe box wouldn’t look so out of place to anyone investigating the freezer who saw the tights first. Nevertheless, she burrowed down into the chest, ramming the shoe box into the centre of the stacks and rearranging the food packages so that they hid the box.

  She must warn Zoe that the box had been added to the contents of her freezer; it would be most upsetting if Zoe came across it unexpectedly and opened it, thinking it was some new meal her mother had cooked and frozen. And Mrs. Rome might have a heart attack if she were to discover such an abomination while innocently browsing through the freezer for something to tempt her appetite.

  Unlike her own, Zoe’s freezer was full enough not to warrant any additional packing in the way of towels or newspapers, so she closed the lid and went back into the kitchen. Everything was just the way it should be. She decided on a quick tour of the house, just to make sure the storm hadn’t found any chinks in the armour. It shouldn’t have. Zoe and Mrs. Rome, she recollected wistfully, had managed to replace their roof last year. It would still be strong and watertight.

  Feeling guilty, she took her time strolling through the house and even gave way to the temptation to slump into Zoe’s rocking chair in the living room and just sit quietly for a few minutes. She relished the peace and quiet so much she seriously considered inventing some slight problem over here which would need to be watched, so that she could slip over occasionally and get a bit of peace.

  In fact, Zoe had suggested this just before she left: “Tell her we’re having trouble with the boiler and you have to keep popping over to make sure it isn’t going to explode.”

  “Oh, no, I can’t say that. She’d never stop worrying about it. There’d be no peace at all.”

  “Well, then, say Bluebell gets homesick and you have to bring her over for a couple of hours every night. You’ll be all right in the daytime, you can stay out in the garden. It’s those long nights cooped up alone with Old Worryguts you’ve got to watch. You’re still too young to be driven mad.”

  “Madness might be a relief.” She had only been half joking. “I wouldn’t notice so much then. I’d be in my own little world.”

  “It might be worse.” Zoe frowned at her uneasily. “You might slip away into her little world and you’d both be mad together.”

  “She’s not really mad,” Bettina had protested. “No madder than your mother.”

  “You think that’s a recommendation?” They had both dissolved into helpless giggles.

  They could say these things to each other as to no one else. Each was the sister the other had never known—and without the sibling rivalry shared parents engender.

  Mrs. Bilby and Mrs. Rome had moved into their adjoining houses as brides and formed a firm friendship, strengthened when they both gave birth to daughters within days of each other. They had named the girls after top models rather than after film stars as was the fashion then. Later, they frequently pointed out to their growing daughters that models married into the aristocracy more often than film stars did.

  Alas for fond mothers’ dreams. Neither girl had shown the slightest inclination towards the catwalk—or the aristocracy. Nor had there been any more children; both mothers seemed to feel that they had done their duty by providing a playmate and companion for each other’s child. The girls were in and out of each other’s houses so often that in moments of exasperation each mother was wont to exclaim that she had two daughters, after all.

  Perhaps it had been an ideal way to grow up, but one pays for everything eventually. The bill arrived suddenly in their late twenties when Mr. Bilby and Mr. Rome went off on a fishing trip—or possibly poaching salmon, given Mr. Rome’s predilections—and were both drowned. Bettina and Zoe suddenly found themselves the breadwinners and noticed that all pressure to marry into the aristocracy—or to marry at all—suddenly disappeared. Any suitors who appeared in the following years had been frightened away by one mother or the other. No young man with any sense wanted to be saddled with the Mother-in-law from Hell.

  It was another bond they shared—one they could have done without.

  Bettina sighed and rose to her feet. She could not prolong the pleasant interval any longer but, yes, Zoe had been right. She must invent some excuse—

  A loud hammering on the common wall and her mother’s voice was shouting anxiously. She couldn’t distinguish the words, but their purport was clear enough: she had overstayed her time and her mother was worrying.

  “All right, I’m coming,” Bettina shouted back and gave the wall a thump for good measure.

  She sighed again deeply as she swirled the raincape around her and stepped out into the dwindling storm.

  It was going to be a long weekend.

  The night, too, was longer than she had expected.

  Mrs. Bilby had decided to go to bed early and insisted that her daughter should do the same.

  “And don’t bring any of those cats upstairs with you,” she grumbled. “They’re a nuisance as they are. I won’t have them running all over the house.”

  The cats all turned to glare at her, narrowed eyes and lashing tails making their feelings clear. All were accustomed to spending the night on a soft bed next to a warm human and they had been hoping that last night had been a mere aberration.

  “I’ll see to it.” Bettina deftly captured the cats and inserted them into their respective cases.

  The hysterical curses of the affronted cats followed them all the way up the stairs a
nd could be heard in the bedrooms above.

  “Pay no attention,” Mrs. Bilby said. “They’ll settle down when they see that their behaviour isn’t getting them anywhere. And this is the last time you pull a trick like this, young lady. I’ll never know what possessed you to take on so many cats!”

  Bettina gave a sigh for the thought that no one except her mother had called her young lady for a long time now. Probably Mrs. Bilby still thought of herself as middle-aged, not noticing that her daughter had now attained that status herself.

  “Good night, Mother.” Bettina went into her room and closed the door, resisting any temptation to defend herself. She certainly could not have explained the circumstances to her mother—Mrs. Bilby would have enjoyed them too much.

  It was quite unfair to blame Bettina for all the cats. Pasha had been an unintended last-minute addition to the crew.

  A distraught Sylvia had waylaid her on her way home from work Thursday night, a Sylvia trembling and on the verge of tears.

  “Oh, please help,” Sylvia had pleaded. “I have to go to Edinburgh for the weekend with Graeme. If you could only take care of Pasha for me—he won’t be any trouble.”

  “I don’t know …” Bettina had hesitated, thinking of the three cats she had already agreed to care for.

  “I—I’ll tell you the truth,” Sylvia had suddenly blurted out, pushing a shaking hand through her already dishevelled hair. “Oh, God! It’s so awful! I can’t bear it. I don’t know what to do. Yes, I do. I’ll, go up to Edinburgh and confront them!”

  “Them?” Bettina was faintly horrified at the implication of that. Sylvia and Graeme, although they had only lived in the neighbourhood for a relatively short time, about two years, had always seemed an ideal couple and very happy together.

  “He’s got a woman up there! He doesn’t think I know it. He goes up there all the time. Business trips, he says.” She gave a short ugly laugh. “I know what kind of business now!”

  “I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do …” With a sinking heart, Bettina realized she had just fallen into the trap.