Catspaw for Murder by Dolores Hitchens

Author:Dolores Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“And the phrase, Tell them about the noise, means nothing to you?”

Prudence hesitated. Bruce Casling took his hand off the knob and turned his head slightly, as though the better to listen. Samantha, on the bottom step, began to purr loudly in the quiet.

“I—I don’t believe that it does,” Prudence said finally. “There was a moment there—something I half recalled.”

Mayhew waited; Miss Rachel pictured his immense patience.

“No,” Prudence decided. “It isn’t anything I could put my finger on.”

“Very well.” Mayhew’s notebook closed with a little slap of its pages. “Just keep it in mind. Things pop up again, sometimes, when we least expect them to.”

Bruce drew away and walked quickly out of sight. Something in Mayhew’s tone expressed finish, finality. He would be in the hall in a moment, and the girls would be going to bed. Miss Rachel, caught off guard by the suddenness of the end of the interview, tripped over herself getting down the steps. Samantha looked up, rose. Miss Rachel, catching the banister, managed to reach the lower floor without falling.

She went quickly and silently through the dark dining room and the kitchen and waited at the glass panel, watching Bruce’s dim figure vanish into the cloudy night. There was no way of telling whether or not he had gone home; no light came on in the lower story of the house at the top of the hill. The dark received him, and he was gone.

She was without a wrap, and there was now no time to go back for one. Samantha rubbed her ankles and mewed softly, inspired by the odors of the kitchen. Miss Rachel, thinking to leave the cat busy with a bit of food, found the remains of a salmon patty which Nona had prepared on the sink and put it on the floor. But once outside the cat was with her, having bolted the fish as she saw the door open.

It might prove awkward, having the cat tag her, but a light had gone on in the dining room behind her, and there was Mayhew shedding his coat, a speculative eye on the cot Prudence had set up for him. She couldn’t risk opening the kitchen door to put Samantha inside. The wind filled her taffeta skirt like a sail as she drew away. She shivered, then began to run lightly through the dark.

The Schuyler house appeared suddenly, its upper floors dim against the clouds, the porch a cavern of darkness. She felt her way down the wall to the rear, to the door of Bruce’s laboratory which she had put off the latch earlier in the evening. There was no sound, no trace of light inside the place. She turned the knob and went in, and the cat’s warm fur pressed her ankle as Samantha squeezed in too.

Dimly she saw Bruce’s mineral specimens on their shelves. A few crystals reflected what light there was as she passed through. In the kitchen Samantha remembered and cried for more fish, and Miss Rachel picked up the cat and carried her into the hall.

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