Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 14 Who Wasn't There

Lilian Jackson Braun - The Cat Who Wasn't There

One

In late August, sixteen residents of Moose County, a remote part of the United States 400 miles north of everywhere, traveled to Scotland for a tour of the Western Isles and Highlands, lochs and moors, castles and crofts, firths and straths, burns and braes, fens and bens and glens.

Only fifteen of them returned alive, and the survivors straggled home in various states of shock or confusion.

Among the travelers who signed up for the Bonnie Scots Tour were several prominent persons in Pickax City, the county seat. They included the owner of the department store, the superintendent of schools, a young doctor from a distinguished family, the publisher of the local newspaper, the administrator of the public library, and a good-looking, well-built, middle-aged man with a luxuriant pepper and-salt moustache and drooping eyelids, who happened to be the richest bachelor in Moose County--or in fact the entire northeast central United States. Jim Qwilleran's wealth was not the result of his own effort but a fluke inheritance. As a journalist, he had been content to pound a beat, churn out copy, and race deadlines for large metropolitan dailies Down Below. (so Pickax folk called the urban areas to the south.) Then fate brought him to Pickax City (population 3,000) and made him heir to the Klingenschoen estate. It was more money than he really wanted. The uncounted millions hung over his head like a dark cloud until he established the Klingenschoen Foundation to dispose of the fortune philanthropic ally leaving him free to live in a barn, write a column for the Moose County Something, feed and brush his two Siamese cats, and spend pleasant weekends with Polly Duncan, head of the Pickax Public Library. When the tour to Scotland was proposed, Qwilleran and his feline companions had just returned from a brief sojourn in some distant mountains, a vacation cut short by disturbing news from Pickax. Polly Duncan, while driving home after dark, had been followed by a man in a car without lights, narrowly escaping his clutches. When Qwilleran heard the news, he had a sickening vision of attempted kidnapping; his relationship with Polly was well known in the county, and his millions made him an easy mark for a ransom demand.

Immediately he phoned the Pickax police chief to request protection for Polly. Then, canceling his vacation arrangements, he made the long drive back to Moose County at a speed that discommoded the two yowling passengers in the backseat and alerted the highway patrols of four states. He arrived home Monday noon and dropped off the Siamese and their water dish before hurrying to the Pickax Public Library. He went on foot, cutting through the woods and approaching the library from the rear. In the parking lot behind the building he recognized Polly's small gray two-door and an elderly friend's ancient navy blue four-door. There was also a maroon car with a Massachusetts license plate that gave him momentary qualms; he had no wish to encounter Dr. Melinda Goodwinter, who had come from Boston for her father's funeral. He mounted the steps of the stately library in un stately leaps and found the main room aflutter with small children. There was no evidence of Melinda Goodwinter.

The youngsters were squealing and chattering and lugging picture books to the check-out desk, on which sat a rotund object about three feet high, like an egg with a cracked shell. The six-foot-two man pushed through the horde of knee-high tots, went up the stairs to the mezzanine three at a time, and barged through the reading room to the glass-enclosed office of the head librarian. None of the persons at the reading tables, he noted with relief, was the young doctor from Boston. Sooner or later he would have to face her, and he was unsure how to handle their reunion: with cool politesse? with lukewarm pleasure? with jocular nonchalance? The librarian was a dignified and pleasant-faced woman of his own age, and she was eating lunch at her desk, the aroma of tuna fish adding an earthy touch to the high-minded bookish ness of the office. Silently she reached out a hand across the desk and managed to smile her delight and surprise while chewing a carrot stick. A fervent and lingering handclasp was as amorous a greeting as they dared, since the office had the privacy of a fishbowl and Pickax had a penchant for gossip.

Their eye contact said it all.

"You're home!" she murmured in her gentle voice after swallowing.

"Yes, I made it!" It was a dialogue unworthy of Polly's intelligence and Qwilleran's wit, but under the circumstances they could be excused.

He dropped into a varnished oak chair, the keys in his back pocket clanking on the hard seat.

"Is everything all right?" he asked anxiously.

"Any more scares?" "Not a thing," she said calmly.