This suggestion he found perfectly hateful but he threw out as airily as he could: ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’ll do something about it myself in the morning. Ring up the RSPCA.’
‘I dare say if you was to put it out, sir, it’d wander off where it come from.’
‘Or,’ suggested Chubb. ‘I could put it in the garden at the back, sir. For the night, like.’
‘Yes,’ Mr Whipplestone gabbled, ‘thank you. Never mind. I’ll think of something. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ they said, meaninglessly.
Because they didn’t immediately make a move and because he was in a tizzy, Mr Whipplestone, to his own surprise said, ‘Pleasant evening?’
They didn’t answer. He glanced up and found they stared at him.
‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ they said.
‘Good!’ he cried with a phoney heartiness that horrified him. ‘Good! Good night, Chubb. Good night, Mrs Chubb.’
When they had gone into the kitchen, he felt sure they opened the refrigerator and he distinctly heard them turn on a tap. Washing the saucer, he thought guiltily.
He waited until they had retired upstairs and then himself sneaked into the kitchen with the cat. He had remembered that he had not eaten all the poached scallop Mrs Chubb gave him for dinner.
The cat woke up and ate quite a lot of scallop.
Entry into his back garden was effected by a door at the end of the passage and down a precipitous flight of steps. It was difficult, holding the cat, and he made rather a noisy descent but was aided by a glow of light from behind the blinds that masked Mr Sheridan’s basement windows. This enabled him to find a patch of unplanted earth against the brick wall at the rear of the garden. He placed the cat upon it.
He had thought she might bolt into the shadows and somehow escape, but no: after a considerable wait she became industrious. Mr Whipplestone tactfully turned his back.
He was being watched from the basement through an opening between the blind and the window frame.
The shadowy form was almost certainly that of Mr Sheridan and almost certainly he had hooked himself a peephole and had released it as Mr Whipplestone turned. The shadowy form retreated.
At the same time a slight noise above his head caused Mr Whipplestone to look up to the top storey of his house. He was just in time to see the Chubbs’ bedroom window being closed.
There was, of course, no reason to suppose they, also, had been watching him.
‘I must be getting fanciful,’ he thought.
A faint rhythmic scuffling redirected his attention to the cat. With her ears laid back and with a zealous concentration that spoke volumes for her recuperative powers, she was tidying up. This exercise was followed by a scrupulous personal toilette, which done, she blinked at Mr Whipplestone and pushed her nut-like head against his ankle.
He picked her up and returned indoors.
II
The fashionable and grossly expensive pet-shop round the corner in Baronsgate had a consulting-room, visited on Wednesday mornings by a veterinary surgeon. Mr Whipplestone had observed their notice to this effect and the next morning, being a Wednesday, he took the cat to be vetted. His manner of conveying his intention to the Chubbs was as guarded and non-committal as forty years’ experience in diplomacy could make it. Indeed, in a less rarefied atmosphere it might almost have been described as furtive.
He gave it out that he was ‘taking that animal to be attended to’. When the Chubbs jumped to the conclusion that this was a euphemism for ‘put down’ he did not correct them. Nor did he think it necessary to mention that the animal had spent the night on his bed. She had roused him at daybreak by touching his face with her paw. When he opened his eyes she had flirted with him, rolling on her side and looking at him from under her arm. And when Chubb came in with his early morning tray, Mr Whipplestone had contrived to throw his eiderdown over her and later on had treated her to a saucer of milk. He came downstairs with her under The Times, chose his moment to let her out by the back door into the garden, and presently called Mrs Chubb’s attention to her. She was demanding vigorously to be let in.
So now he sat on a padded bench in a minute waiting-room, cheek by jowl with several Baronsgate ladies, each of whom had a dog in tow. One of them, the one next to Mr Whipplestone, was the lady who trod on his foot in the Napoli, Mrs Montfort as he subsequently discovered, the Colonel’s lady. They said good morning to each other when they encountered, and did so now. By and large Mr Whipplestone thought her pretty awful, though not as awful as the pig-pottery lady of last night. Mrs Montfort carried on her overdressed lap a Pekinese, which, after a single contemptuous look, turned its back on Mr Whipplestone’s cat who stared through it.
He was acutely conscious that he presented a farcical appearance. The only container that could be found by the Chubbs was a disused birdcage, the home of their parrot, lately deceased. The little cat looked outraged sitting in it, and Mr Whipplestone looked silly nursing it and wearing his eye-glass. Several of the ladies exchanged amused glances.
‘What,’ asked the ultra-smart surgery attendant, notebook in hand, ‘is pussy’s name?’
He felt that if he said ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘It hasn’t got one,’ he would put himself at a disadvantage with these women. ‘Lucy,’ he said loudly and added as an afterthought: ‘Lockett.’
‘I see!’ she said brightly and noted it down. ‘You haven’t an appointment, have you?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Lucy won’t have long to wait,’ she smiled, and passed on.
A woman with a huge, angry, short-haired tabby in her arms came through from the surgery.
The newly-named Lucy’s fur rose. She made a noise that suggested she had come to the boil. The tabby suddenly let out a yell. Dogs made ambiguous comments in their throats.
‘Oh lor!’ said the newcomer. She grinned at Mr Whipplestone. ‘Better make ourselves scarce,’ she said, and to her indignant cat: ‘Shut up, Bardolph, don’t be an ass.’
When they had gone Lucy went to sleep and Mrs Montfort said: ‘Is your cat very ill?’
‘No!’ Mr Whipplestone quite shouted and then explained that Lucy was a stray starveling.
‘Sweet of you,’ she said, ‘to care. People are so awful about animals. It makes me quite ill. I’m like that.’ She turned her gaze upon him. ‘Kitty Montfort. My husband’s the warrior with the purple face. He’s called Colonel Montfort.’
Cornered, Mr Whipplestone murmured his own name.
Mrs Montfort smelt of very heavy scent and gin.
‘I know,’ she said archly, ‘you’re our new boy, aren’t you? At No. 1, The Walk? We have a piece of your Chubb on Fridays.’
Mr Whipplestone, whose manners were impeccable, bowed as far as the birdcage would permit.
Mrs Montfort was smiling into his face. She had laid her gloved hand on the cage. The door behind him had opened. Her smile became fixed as if pinned up at the corners. She withdrew her hand, and looked straight in front of her.
From the street there had entered a totally black man in livery with a white Afghan hound on a scarlet leash. The man paused and glanced round. There was an empty place on the other side of Mrs Montfort. Still looking straight in front of her, she moved far enough along the seat to leave insufficient room on either side of her. Mr Whipplestone instantly widened the distance between them and with a gesture, invited the man to sit down. The man said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and remained where he was, not looking at Mrs Montfort. The hound advanced his nose towards the cage. Lucy did not wake.
‘I wouldn’t come too