Black As He’s Painted. Ngaio Marsh

he decided in a fluster. ‘It would only see me.’

      ‘Damnation!’ he cried three minutes later. ‘How dare people lock out their cats! I’ll complain to someone.’

      Another three minutes and he did, against every fibre of disinclination in his body, look out of the window. He saw nothing. The feline lamentations were close enough to drive him dotty. On the steps: that’s where they were. On the flight of steps leading up to his front door. ‘No!’ he thought. ‘No, really this is not good enough. This must be stopped. Before we know where we are –’

      Before he knew where he was, he was in his little hall and manipulating his double lock. The chain was disconnected on account of the Chubbs but he opened the door a mere crack and no sooner had he done so than something – a shadow, a meagre atomy – darted across his instep.

      Mr Whipplestone became dramatic. He slammed his door to, leant against it and faced his intruder.

      He had known it all along. History, if you could call an incident of not much more than a month ago history, was repeating itself. In the wretched shape of a small black cat: the same cat but now quite dreadfully emaciated, its eyes clouded, its fur staring. It sat before him and again opened its pink mouth in now soundless mews. Mr Whipplestone could only gaze at it in horror. Its haunches quivered and, as it had done when they last met, it leapt up to his chest.

      As his hand closed round it he wondered that it had had the strength to jump. It purred and its heart knocked at his fingers.

      ‘This is too much,’ he repeated and carried it into his drawing-room. ‘It will die, I dare say,’ he said, ‘and how perfectly beastly that will be.’

      After some agitated thought he carried it into the kitchen and, still holding it, took milk from the refrigerator, poured some into a saucer, added hot water from the tap and set it on the floor and the little cat sat beside it. At first he thought she would pay no attention – he was persuaded the creature was a female – her eyes being half-closed and her chin on the floor. He edged the saucer nearer. Her whiskers trembled. So suddenly that he quite jumped, she was lapping, avidly, frantically as if driven by some desperate little engine. Once she looked up at him.

      Twice he replenished the saucer. The second time she did not finish the offering. She raised her milky chin, stared at him, made one or two shaky attempts to wash her face and suddenly collapsed on his foot and went to sleep.

      Some time later there were sounds of departure from the basement flat. Soon after this, the Chubbs affected their usual discreet entry. Mr Whipplestone heard them put up the chain on the front door. The notion came to him that perhaps they had been ‘doing for’ Mr Sheridan at his party.

      ‘Er – is that you, Chubb?’ he called out.

      Chubb opened the door and presented himself, apple-cheeked, on the threshold with his wife behind him. It struck Mr Whipplestone that they seemed uncomfortable.

      ‘Look,’ he invited, ‘at this.’

      Chubb had done so, already. The cat lay like a shadow across Mr Whipplestone’s knees.

      ‘A cat, sir,’ said Chubb tentatively.

      ‘A stray. I’ve seen it before.’

      From behind her husband, Mrs Chubb said: ‘Nothing of it, sir, is there? It don’t look healthy, do it?’

      ‘It was starving.’

      Mrs Chubb clicked her tongue.

      Chubb said: ‘Very quiet, sir, isn’t it? It hasn’t passed away, has it?’

      ‘It’s asleep. It’s had half a bottle of milk.’

      ‘Well, excuse me, sir,’ Mrs Chubb said, ‘but I don’t think you ought to handle it. You don’t know where it’s been, do you, sir?’

      ‘No,’ said Mr Whipplestone, and added with a curious inflection in his voice. ‘I only know where it is.’

      ‘Would you like Chubb to dispose of it, sir?’

      This suggestion he found perfectly hateful but he threw out as airily as he could: ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’ll do something about it myself in the morning. Ring up the RSPCA.’

      ‘I dare say if you was to put it out, sir, it’d wander off where it come from.’

      ‘Or,’ suggested Chubb. ‘I could put it in the garden at the back, sir. For the night, like.’

      ‘Yes,’ Mr Whipplestone gabbled, ‘thank you. Never mind. I’ll think of something. Thank you.’

      ‘Thank you, sir,’ they said, meaninglessly.

      Because they didn’t immediately make a move and because he was in a tizzy, Mr Whipplestone, to his own surprise said, ‘Pleasant evening?’

      They didn’t answer. He glanced up and found they stared at him.

      ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ they said.

      ‘Good!’ he cried with a phoney heartiness that horrified him. ‘Good! Good night, Chubb. Good night, Mrs Chubb.’

      When they had gone into the kitchen, he felt sure they opened the refrigerator and he distinctly heard them turn on a tap. Washing the saucer, he thought guiltily.

      He waited until they had retired upstairs and then himself sneaked into the kitchen with the cat. He had remembered that he had not eaten all the poached scallop Mrs Chubb gave him for dinner.

      The cat woke up and ate quite a lot of scallop.

      Entry into his back garden was effected by a door at the end of the passage and down a precipitous flight of steps. It was difficult, holding the cat, and he made rather a noisy descent but was aided by a glow of light from behind the blinds that masked Mr Sheridan’s basement windows. This enabled him to find a patch of unplanted earth against the brick wall at the rear of the garden. He placed the cat upon it.

      He had thought she might bolt into the shadows and somehow escape, but no: after a considerable wait she became industrious. Mr Whipplestone tactfully turned his back.

      He was being watched from the basement through an opening between the blind and the window frame.

      The shadowy form was almost certainly that of Mr Sheridan and almost certainly he had hooked himself a peephole and had released it as Mr Whipplestone turned. The shadowy form retreated.

      At the same time a slight noise above his head caused Mr Whipplestone to look up to the top storey of his house. He was just in time to see the Chubbs’ bedroom window being closed.

      There was, of course, no reason to suppose they, also, had been watching him.

      ‘I must be getting fanciful,’ he thought.

      A faint rhythmic scuffling redirected his attention to the cat. With her ears laid back and with a zealous concentration that spoke volumes for her recuperative powers, she was tidying up. This exercise was followed by a scrupulous personal toilette, which done, she blinked at Mr Whipplestone and pushed her nut-like head against his ankle.

      He picked her up and returned indoors.

      II

      The fashionable and grossly expensive pet-shop round the corner in Baronsgate had a consulting-room, visited on Wednesday mornings by a veterinary surgeon. Mr Whipplestone had observed their notice to this effect and the next morning, being a Wednesday, he took the cat to be vetted. His manner of conveying his intention to the Chubbs was as guarded and non-committal as forty years’ experience in diplomacy could make it. Indeed, in a less rarefied atmosphere it might almost have been described as furtive.

      He gave it out that he was ‘taking that animal to be attended to’. When the Chubbs jumped to the conclusion that this was a euphemism for ‘put down’ he did not correct them. Nor did he think it necessary to mention that the animal had spent the night on his bed. She had roused him at daybreak by touching his face with her paw. When he opened his