The Cat and Capricorn by Dolores Hitchens

Author:Dolores Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Jennifer surveyed the interior of the cabin with a bitter eye, then gave a snort. “When I think of your lovely room at home—”

“The thing that makes most old people so stuffy is their damned eternal disapproving,” Miss Rachel interrupted. The swear word had the effect of snapping Jennifer up short. “I’ll be switched if I’ll do it.”

Jennifer put her small suitcase on the bed, opened it, and pretended to rummage—just a cover to get her wind back. Miss Rachel realized pityingly that Jennifer had thought of herself as middle-aged for some twenty years now. She was fighting for an illusion.

The cat was on the bed, welcoming Jennifer with purring questions. She looked plump. Perhaps Mrs. McGuffin’s way with a cat’s saucer was not the same as her way with a dining table. The sun was bright against the flimsy curtains at the window. It was nearly noon. Miss Rachel went to the window and pulled the netting aside to look out. McGuffin was on the kitchen step, his eyes fixed on something in this direction—something at one of the other cabins.

She recalled the look he had given Chico on their return to the car at the wash. It had been flint-hard and searching—and Chico had quailed.

That’s how he looked now, she thought. As though he were sizing up an enemy. With a swift turn he opened the door and went inside, and a moment later Miss Toffet came tripping out into the garden. He had been watching her. Miss Rachel wondered if Miss Toffet were aware of it.

Sometime during the morning Beckett had come in. A car she had not seen before, sitting in the shelter, must be his. It was a late model, but streaked with dust and marred with scratches.

Miss Toffet skipped about over the garden, picking a handful of geraniums. When she had plucked about a dozen of the sickly blooms she stood twiddling them this way and that inside her fist. Miss Rachel went out to meet her.

“Good morning.”

Miss Toffet glanced her way and gave the whinnying laugh. “Hello.”

“The geraniums out here aren’t what they are in town.”

“It’s too cold at night,” Miss Toffet explained. “Withers them. Didn’t I see someone go with you into your cabin?”

She had eyes for everyone. Miss Rachel said, “My sister, just checking up on me. She thought I may have been eaten by a centipede.”

The weathered mummy’s face broke into a grin. “Oh, I know you’re teasing, but I thought right away she might be a relative. There’s a resemblance. She doesn’t use any powder or anything, of course, and her hair’s done plain. No curls around her face.”

“Jennifer has always confused ugliness with virtue—she’s never forgotten that in our youth only very naughty ladies did any fixing up. Rouge to her is the badge of the bordello.”

The grin went away, as though Miss Rachel had said something quite shocking. Miss Toffet remembered the flowers then, and did some more picking and arranging. While she was bent over, her face almost concealed, she spoke.

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