Free The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare by Lilian Jackson Braun

there, the whole building was in flames… Is this hurting you?”
    “Arrh arrh.”
    She sighed. “So I guess Juney will take a job at the Fluxion, and his mother will sell everything.” She whipped off the bib. “There you go! Have you been flossing after every meal like Dr. Zoller told you?”
    “Inform Dr. Zoller,” Qwilleran said, “that not only do I floss after meals but I floss between the courses. In restaurants I’m known as the Mad Flosser.”
    From the dental clinic he went to Scottie’s Men’s Shop. Qwilleran, whose mother had been a Mackintosh, was partial to Scots, and the storekeeper had a brogue that he turned on for good customers.
    Throughout his career Qwilleran had never cared much about clothes, being satisfied with a drab uniform of coat, pants, shirt, and tie. There was something about the north-country lifestyle, however, that sparked his interest in tartan shirts, Icelandic sweaters, shearling parkas, trooper hats, bulky boots, and buckskin choppers. And the more Scottie burred his r’s, the more Qwilleran bought.
    Entering the store, Qwilleran said, “What happened to the four inches of snow we were supposed to get today?”
    “All bosh,” said Scottie, shaking his shaggy head of gray hair. “Canna believe a worrrd of what they say on radio. A body can get better information from the wooly caterpillars.”
    “You look as if you lost some sleep last night.”
    “Aye, it were a bad one, verra bad,” said the volunteer fire chief. “Didna get home till six this mornin’. Chipmunk and Kennebeck sent crews to help. Couldna do it without ‘em – or without our women, God bless ‘em. Kept the coffee and sandwiches comin’ all night.”
    “How did Junior take it?”
    “It were hard on the lad. Many a time I been in the newspaper office to pass the time o’ day with his old man. A fire trap, it was! Tons of paper! And them old wood partitions – dry as tinder – and the old wood floor!” Scottie shook his head again.
    “Any idea how it started?”
    “Couldna say. They’d been takin’ pictures, and it could be a careless cigarette smolderin’. There’s a flammable solvent they always used for cleanin’ the old presses, and when it hit, it raced like wildfire.”
    “Any suspicion of arson?”
    “No evidence of monkey business. No reason to bring the marshal up here to my way o’ thinkin’.”
    “But you saved the lodge hall and post office, Scottie.”
    “Aye, we did indeed, but it were touch an’ go.”
    On the way home Qwilleran stopped at the public library to check the reading room. The man who claimed to be a historian was not there, and the clerks had not seen him since Tuesday morning. Polly Duncan was not there either, and the clerks said she had left for the day.
    For dinner that night Mrs. Cobb served beef Stroganoff and poppy-seed noodles, and after second helpings and a wedge of pumpkin pie, Qwilleran took some out-of-town newspapers and two new magazines into the library. He drew the draperies and touched a match to Mr. O’Dell’s expert arrangement of split logs, kindling, and paper twists. Then he sprawled in his favorite lounge chair and propped his feet on the ottoman.
    The Siamese immediately presented themselves. They knew a fire was being lighted before the woody aroma circulated, before the crackle of the kindling, even before the match was struck. After washing up in the light of the blaze, Koko started nosing books and Yum Yum jumped on Qwilleran’s lap, turning around three times before settling down.
    The female was developing an inordinate affection for the man. She was brazenly possessive of his lap. She gazed at him with adoring eyes, purred when he looked her way, and liked nothing better than to reach up and touch his moustache with a velvet paw. True, he called her his little sweetheart, but her obsessive desire for propinquity was disturbing. He had mentioned it to Lori Bamba, the young woman who knew all about cats.
    “They go for the