Free The Black Cat by Martha Grimes Page B

Dora.
    Go on.
    Well, I’m wandering about outside looking for field mice, and I come across a person lying on the patio where the tables are.
    Mungo sat straight up, big-eyed.
    It didn’t move, this person. I sniffed all around and smelled something like blood, I think.
    Blood! Mungo could feel the small stiff hairs rise along his spine. He would like to be a bloodhound.
    It must’ve been a dead body.
    I expect so. Then I saw an old woman coming along with a fat dog and ran back inside the pub. Do you have anything to eat? I’m really hungry. A nice piece of fish would go down a treat. Of course, I’d take anything.
    Mungo was thinking furiously. I’m going in for a bit.
    Back to the house? Will you come back?
    Yes. I’ll bring some food. You stay here. I won’t be long.
    The rear door was open, as it often was off the latch in good weather. Mungo hated the dog door because he was afraid of getting stuck in it. All he needed to do here was get a paw in between door and doorjamb and pull.
    Mrs. Tobias was busy arranging thin cucumber slices on a cold salmon. “Mungo! Where have you been?”
    Mrs. Tobias always sounded surprised to see Mungo was still living here. “This is for your master’s dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?”
    My what? Was she kidding?
    “He does like his bit of salmon.”
    I’d like my bit, too.
    Mrs. Tobias went twittering on about cooking this and that and sounded settled in forever with the cucumber decoration. She was opening ajar of pimiento when the telephone rang from somewhere deep in the house.
    The blessed telephone! That should keep her busy, she was such a talker.
    He raced out to the dining room, knowing exactly where that Corgi car had fallen when Mrs. Tobias had flung it. He picked it up in his teeth and made his way back to the kitchen. From the hallway came the sound of Mrs. Tobias on the phone: talk, talk, talk, talk.
    Back to the kitchen he went. He was up to the chair, then to the stool, and then to the kitchen counter. Mrs. Tobias’s cold salmon lay on a long china plate on the counter. Its eye was a circle of black olive; its scales, the overlapped cucumber slices.
    He deposited the little silver car with its nose to the pepper grinder, then knocked over the grinder for good measure. Delicately, he put his teeth around the lower part of the salmon with its cucumber garnish. Carefully, he slid down to the floor and carefully held his head high so as to keep the salmon intact. Then, just as carefully, he was out the back door.
    He dropped the salmon and a cucumber slice in front of Morris. They were in a little clearing within the bushes defined by a box hedge. Morris had been eyeing two wrens having a clamorous talk. When Morris saw the fish, she nearly fell on it, eating as if she were inhaling it. Including the cucumber.
    Mrs. Tobias had, of course, returned to the kitchen and half a salmon and was yelling for Jasper, calling out, “This is it, my lad! You go in the morning!”
    Who’s Jasper? asked Morris between bites.
    A thing of the past, answered Mungo. He was mightily pleased. Hello, Morris. Good-bye, Jasper.
    When she’d finished the salmon, Morris thanked Mungo with great enthusiasm and began washing her face. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, which was the best he’d heard since Harry tried to convince the Spotter-Oh, but that was for another time.
    Now, tell me the rest. You stopped when this old woman came along. Mungo settled in to listen. He tried to fold his paws into his chest and couldn’t. So he just stretched his legs out.
    Morris lay down, easily curving her paws. Well, she didn’t scream, exactly, but she made some kind of noise. Her dog was yapping; it was enough to wake the dead. Then she put a leaf against her ear and-
    A leaf? What do you mean?
    Everybody has them. You’ve seen people with leaves; they’re always talking to them. People just can’t let leaves alone. Sometimes I’d be on my window seat, napping, when customers would