No Cooperation from the Cat (26 page)

“We’ll want more spices this time, old boy.” The presence of food all around him concentrated Banquo on the subject closer to his heart. “Lots more. We didn’t have nearly enough for the little boys’ stew this time.”

“Little boys’ stew?” Martha frowned at Jocasta, who frowned back, shaking her head. “I’ve never heard of that one. It must be something new—?”

“Oldest in the world,” Mick corrected, sneering. “You know:
What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails
—”

“Mick!” Tom tried to call him to order, but Mick was enjoying this, he wasn’t to be stopped.

“We weren’t sure what snips were, and we couldn’t count on finding snails where we were. But we had plenty of—”

“Puppy dogs’ tails…” Jocasta finished faintly, staring down in horror at the photos in her hand.

Nigel urged her gently into a chair and stood behind her, patting her shoulder.

“Of course, many people dock a dog’s tail—” Edytha said dreamily. “And things mustn’t go to waste in the…” She faltered to a stop under our accusing eyes.

“Good try,” Evangeline said briskly, “but not good enough to save this situation.”

“What’s the matter?” Banquo couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

“Of all those photos we sorted through, choosing the illustrations—” Jocasta’s voice was still faint, but gaining strength. “I didn’t see any of the adult dogs without tails. “Unless”—she looked hopefully to Tom—“you still have some I haven’t seen?”

“Anything you haven’t seen,” he said grimly, “you wouldn’t want to see.”

“We should have had lots more dried onion flakes.” Banquo was lost in thoughtful reminiscence. “And perhaps some oregano, or do I mean sage?” He sighed deeply. “Melisande would have known.”

“Melisande wouldn’t have told you, even if she did know,” Mick reminded him brutally. “She didn’t want you out on the ice. She wanted you by her side every minute. She didn’t understand a free spirit. She didn’t care that you’d be bored, stagnating … nothing mattered to her except keeping you tied to her apron strings.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Banquo said. “You don’t understand—”

“Don’t I?” Mick’s face was ugly. “I know she was planning to pull the plug on your funding to keep you in line.”

“Just what
did
happen to those puppies?” Jocasta interrupted in a chill remote voice. “Apart from their tails, that is.”

“Roasted, grilled, fried.” Mick’s unpleasant grin was the sort that invited you to take what he said as a joke. Except that it wasn’t. “Boiled in a bag.”

Someone retched audibly. I thought it was Nigel, then realised it was Tom. I remembered his hatred of boiled-in-the-bag meals. He had good reason.

“That’s disgusting!” Martha was looking rather queasy herself.

“You don’t want the recipes?” Mick jeered. “They’d spice up your dull old cookbook no end.”

“What’s the matter?” Banquo was still baffled. He looked from Jocasta’s ashen face to Isolde’s warning frown.

“Not now, dear,” Edytha said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“But—”

“Forget it,” Mick advised. “We’ve got more important things to think about.”

“What happened to the mother dog?” I wanted to know. I had the nasty feeling that I hadn’t seen her in any of the other pictures.

No one spoke for a moment. That said more than anything.

“She … took exception to … to what was happening to her puppies.” Tom’s voice was tight, as though he were fighting nausea. “They— She—”

“We had to take care of her.” Mick grimaced. “Her meat was as tough as she was.”

But not as tough as he was. Tough, callous, icily calculating—and single-minded. What had he said? Something about nothing counts except Banquo. The meal ticket, while he was the hanger-on. We’d seen a lot of them in show biz: the yes-men, the enablers, the entourage.

Tom made an indistinct noise in his throat, clutching his camera as though it were a life-support system. Perhaps, for him, it was. I felt a renewed sympathy for him. There he’d been, the lone adult, out on the ice with the boys’ adventure team acting out their male fantasies, growing wilder and more extravagant with every sortie. No wonder he was getting out.

“How could you?” Jocasta choked. “How could you?”

Nigel bent to put his arm around her shoulders, while he backed her sentiments with a censorious head shaking.

“What’s the matter with everybody?” Aggrieved, Banquo appealed to his cousins. “All I did was follow in the tradition of the great explorers—the great survivors. They did it and they were heroes. I do it and you all treat me like some kind of … of criminal.”

“Try monster,” Evangeline suggested helpfully.

“Ignore them,” Mick said. “Who cares what they think?”

“We foretell public opinion on this,” Evangeline pointed out, mildly for her. “If this gets out.”

A shadow crossed Edytha’s face.

“That’s all very well”—Isolde was ready to dismiss the subject—“but all that’s for the next book. This little … episode … was only a trial run for the real thing.”

They were all monsters! Inhuman! That “little episode” was the destruction of beautiful innocent creatures who had been coldly included in the expedition for that express purpose. And they were planning to do it again. Just to satisfy the grotesque fantasies of a mad ego.

“Next time,” Isolde encouraged, “you’ll be able to get public sympathy on your side by describing the desperation, the peril, that forced you to such desperate measures—”

“With tears in his eyes, no doubt,” Evangeline prodded.

“As a matter of fact, yes!” Isolde snapped.

“What else?” The mockery was from Mick. Tom’s teeth were clenched. Even though he was soon to be free of them all, he was pale with the memory of the senseless slaughter.

“It will be most touching,” Valeria trumpeted. “In the next book. Melisande’s death was quite enough tragedy for one expedition.”

“Dearest Melisande,” Banquo brooded. “There’ll never be anyone else for me.”

Jocasta heard this impassively, I was pleased to note.

“Now that’s settled,” Isolde said briskly. “Let’s get back to work. Come along, Jocasta, there’s a difficult chapter to untangle. Poor Banquo’s fingers were nearly frozen writing it and the handwriting shows it. Perhaps we could include a photo of the original pages among the illustrations—”

“I’m not coming.” Jocasta stood and faced them, squaring her shoulders. “I resign.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

I had all I could do not to cheer.

“My cookbook—” Martha protested.

“Oh, I’ll work with
you,
” Jocasta assured her. “But not with them! Never again!”

“How dare you!” Isolde snarled. “I am not without influence. You’ll come with us right now and see this book through to its conclusion or I’ll make it my personal business to see that you never get a job again!”

“You’ll have your work cut out for you, then,” Evangeline said. “It’s a big world with lots of jobs in it. And influence can only reach so far—even for a goddess.”

“Ah. Very true,” Nigel said. “In fact, we’re going to need a good assistant at the Jewel Box—and Bertie likes you already.”

“Now, now,” Edytha cooed, fluttering her draperies like an anxious dove ruffling its feathers. “Let’s not be hasty. We’re all a bit tense right now. We must take deep breaths and calm ourselves. Surely we can come to some agreement with so much at stake.”

“Don’t worry,” Jocasta said coldly. “I’ll see that you get a replacement for me right away. She’ll be here in the morning.”

“That’s not good enough!” Isolde was not to be placated.

“No, no,” Edytha cried. “That’s not the right attitude. Everything has been going so well. We must sleep on it and I’m sure we’ll be able to reach a compromise in the morning.”

“You may be right.” Obviously against her better judgement, Valeria decided they had better retreat for the moment. “Poor Jocasta is just overtired. Perhaps a day or two of rest will help her reconsider…”

They were going to try sweetness and light as a tactic. It was a gruesome sight.

“She’s been doing so well,” Edytha said, giving Isolde the sort of look that meant it was her turn to say something nice.

“Yes … brilliantly … really impressive.” Isolde joined the toadying. She did it rather well, for her; you could barely hear her teeth grinding. “It would be a shame to abandon it all now, when we’re so near the end.”

“Quite so.” Valeria bared her teeth, unfortunately projecting something more like
the better to eat you with
than sympathetic understanding. “And I’m sure we might even manage—”

“You can manage without me.” Jocasta turned away. “Where shall I tell the editorial department to send my replacement?”

“Why, here, of course.” Edytha seemed surprised at the question.

“No!” Evangeline set her straight. “Not here. You’re leaving here now. All of you. If Jocasta isn’t working with you, there’s no reason for you to be here in the morning. You can start clearing your things out now.” She hunched forward, thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, and glowered at them, managing to look incredibly menacing.

“But we can’t!” Edytha was aghast. “We’re at the most delicate stage of Banquo’s story. He can’t have all that disruption. We can’t do without Jocasta. We can’t—”

“Try,” Evangeline advised. “You’d be surprised at what you can do, if you try.”

“But we have no transport—” Edytha was going down fighting. “We’d need a van. These things take time to arrange.”

“I’ll order a van for you.” Evangeline began to remove one hand from her pocket, then seemed to think better of it. Perhaps she realised she might throttle one of them if her hands were free.

“But it’s going to rain—” Edytha gestured to the window as though she were playing a trump card. “There’s going to be another dreadful storm. You can’t send us out into that.”

“Face it, ladies.” Mick was openly gloating over their consternation. “The welcome mat is being pulled out from under you.”

“What welcome mat?” Martha snapped. “There never was one. They … they foisted themselves on us. And why you ever allowed it, Mother—”

“Now that’s too much!” I protested. “It wasn’t my doing—”

“It’s
my
fault,” Jocasta admitted. “If my cooker hadn’t broken down, if there hadn’t been all that trouble with the gas supply just when we needed to start testing the recipes—”

And if she hadn’t been on the run from these harpies to begin with—but she seemed to have forgotten that. I wasn’t going to remind her, she was guilt-stricken enough.

“The point is—” Isolde wrested us back to reality. “Time is running out.”

“That’s another thing.” Martha looked at me uneasily. “Ours is running out even faster. Mother, I meant to tell you—”

“Don’t all rush to take the blame, girls—” Mick called out. “There’s enough to go around.”

“We have a crisis pending at the childrens’ school,” Martha said. “The board of governors are having a meeting about it today, but everyone is pretty certain what the result will be.”

“We have to get this to the printer immediately,” Isolde interrupted. “The book must be out in time for the tour in the autumn.”

“What tour?” Mick abruptly stopped enjoying himself. He looked at them suspiciously. “We’re on our way back to the ice in the autumn.”

“Yes, yes—” Valeria brushed him aside. “But next year—not this year. This year Banquo is touring America with this marvellous lecture bureau we’ve signed up with. He’ll be in the Midwest all winter and the East Coast in the spring talking about his expeditions. The bureau believes he’ll pull in the crowd with his talk:
So You Think This Is Cold?
Or possibly
You Call This Cold?
We haven’t decided on the title yet, but we must have books available to sell at the close of each lecture. They should sell like hotcakes.”

“But-but,” Mick stuttered. “But he doesn’t need the money. He’s got bags of it from Melisande’s estate.”

“It’s not all that much.” Isolde pursed her lips; nothing would ever be enough for her. “And it will take time to come through probate. Then there are the lawyers’ fees and costs. And there’s some stupid sort of ancient entailment, so that the lands involved have to go to a male blood relation. If Melisande had had a son, there’d be no problem. As it is, there’s a search on for some distant male relative supposed to be living in the Antipodes, or perhaps the South Seas. We’ll fight it, of course, but—” She shrugged.

“A son,” Banquo mourned. “We hadn’t time enough. There was the expedition to mount and … and…”

“There, there, dear.” Edytha patted his shoulder. “Be brave. We must look to the future. This lecture tour will be a fresh start … away from memories … away from empty ice fields where you have too much time to think … to brood…”

“Wait a minute—” Mick was growing increasingly restive. “What about our plans? We were due to leave in the autumn—”

“Yes, yes, but we told you, not this autumn.” Valeria was dismissive. “Next year, perhaps. Banquo needs a complete change of scene to recover himself. Lots of people around to distract him. Fine restaurants … exciting shopping … lovely luxury hotels…” She was practically drooling. “Oh, we’ll have a marvellous time.”

So they were planning to accompany him. How could I have doubted it? They were going to have themselves a marvellous time all right. For poor Mick, it would be hell on earth. Unless …

“I feel—” Edytha looked raptly into the distance. “I feel that Melisande would have truly wanted you to do this, dear. She always thought you should have another string to your bow—that was why she was so keen to have you do more cooking with her. I can feel her smiling down on us … What a tragedy that she can’t be here to come with us…” There was genuine regret in her voice. “You would have made such an inspiring couple. And, with us to guide you both—”

I felt my preconvictions shifting. There was even a trace of anger as Edytha’s far-off gaze turned accusatory. “If only she hadn’t had that fatal weakness. We could have built a wonderful…” She trailed off, perhaps undecided as to whether to say “business” or “empire.”

Perhaps they hadn’t wanted Melisande dead, after all. She’d have been more use to them alive, her fortune readily accessible, her culinary career on the rise. And, in the suggestible states, she’d have drawn prospective goddess fodder into their net as they assisted her—and advertised themselves.