"I suppose you know," he said, attacking the subject with less delicacy, "that we've lost one of our dinner companions. Mrs. Graham has left her husband — rather suddenly and mysteriously."
Miss Roop raised her chin primly. "I never listen to I gossip, Mr. Qwilleran."
"I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to her," he persisted. "I heard a scream the night she disappeared, and it worries me."
"Mrs. Graham is perfectly all right, I'm sure," said I Miss Roop. "We must always maintain an optimistic I attitude and think constructive thoughts."
"Do you know her well?"
"We've had many friendly conversations, and she has taught me a great deal about her art. I admire her tremendously. A clever woman! And her husband is such a sweet man. They're a lovely couple."
A peculiar noise came from Koko, who had jumped from the table and was looking for an empty shoe. Qwilleran scooped him up and rushed him into the bathroom.
"Excuse me," he said to his guest when the crisis was past. "Koko just chucked his breakfast. He must have a hair ball."
Miss Roop gave Koko a look of faint distaste.
"I wonder what happened to Mrs. Graham's cat," Qwilleran remarked. "She was all broken up about losing him."
"She will rise above it. She is a sensible woman, with remarkably strong character."
"Is that so? I've been told that she is capricious and a little scatterbrained."
"I beg to differ! I have seen her at work. She knows what she wants, and she takes endless pains to achieve it. One day she was sitting at the wheel, spinning a pot, as they say — or should I say casting a pot?"
"Throwing a pot," Qwilleran corrected her.
"Yes, she was throwing a pot on the wheel, pumping the machine with her dainty little foot, and I asked her why she did not use the electric wheel. It would be so much easier and more efficient. She said, 'I'd rather work harder and produce an object that has my own personality in the clay.' That was a beautiful thought. She is a real artist." Miss Roop rose to leave. "I have stayed too long. I'm keeping you from your work." And when Qwilleran remonstrated, she added, "No, I must go downstairs and get a bite to eat."
When Charlotte Roop was gone, Qwilleran said to Koko, "Did you hear what she said about the wheel?"
"Yowl" said Koko, who was back on the table, washing himself in the sunlight.
"Dan said he saved Joy from a serious injury by throwing the switch. A slight discrepancy, don't you think?"
Koko nodded in agreement, it seemed, or was he merely licking the pale patch of fur on his breast?
"I'd like to figure out a way to sneak you into that pottery," Qwilleran said. "I'll bet you could sniff out some clues."
More than once in the past Koko had led the way I into a highly revealing situation, but if the cat had a sixth sense about suspicious behavior, Qwilleran's sensitive mustache had an equal awareness. Many a time it had alerted him to bad news, hidden danger, and even unsuspected crime.
Now he was experiencing the same disturbing quiver on his upper lip. It was telling him that something dire had happened to Joy. It was telling him that Joy was not alive. He didn't want to believe his hunch. He refused to believe his hunch.
8
For Qwilleran the day seemed interminable. He skipped lunch. At noon Rosemary stopped at his door with a ball of yarn; she had been tidying her knitting basket and thought the cats would enjoy some exercise with a ball of yarn. Qwilleran invited her to come in, but she was on her way to work. In the afternoon the sun disappeared behind a bank of gray clouds, and the cold light flooding through the huge studio window drenched the apartment in gloom. The cats felt the chill. Ignoring the yam, they crept behind the books in the bookcase and found a cozier place for their afternoon nap.
Qwilleran was thankful when the time came to leave for the Stilton Hotel. He needed a change of scene and a change of thought, and he was glad, somewhat, that he had invited the babbling Hixie Rice. On the way to the hotel he stopped at the office to open his mail, and a fleeting impulse sent him to the Fluxion library to pick up an old clip file on the River Road pottery. . . the Penniman Pottery, as it was originally known.
He met Hixie in the hotel lobby. It seemed to the newsman that she was exhibiting desperate gaiety with her cherry red suit and shrimp pink hat laden with straw carrots, turnips, and radishes.
"That's a tasty chapeau," Qwilleran remarked.
"Merci, monsieur." She fluttered her double set of I eyelashes. "I'm glad you like it."
"I didn't say that."
"Oh, you're a kidder!" Hixie gave him a playful shove. "I couldn't resist the straw legumes. You know me! . . . Do you speak French?"
"Only enough to keep out of trouble in Paris."
"I'm taking a Berlitz course. Say something in French."
"Camembert, Roquefort, Brie," said Qwilleran.
The annual Choose Cheese celebration was being hosted by the cheese industry in the hotel ballroom. The hundred or more guests, however, were patronizing the free bar and ignoring the long table of assorted cheeses.
"This is a typical press party," Qwilleran explained. "About six of the guests are members of the working press, and nobody knows who the others are or why they were invited."
He smoked his pipe and sampled a Danish cheese made with skim milk. Hixie sipped a Manhattan and sampled the Brie, Camembert, Cheshire, Edam, Gorgonzola, Gouda, Gruyere, Herkimer, Liederkranz, Mozzarella, Muenster, Parmesan, Port du Salut, and Roquefort.
"Is that all you're going to eat, for gosh sake?" she asked.
"I might take a little Roquefort home to Koko," Qwilleran said arid then added, "We had an unexpected visitor today — Miss Roop. I sense that she disapproves of cats. Koko didn't approve of her, either."
"Charlotte disapproves of everything," said Hixie. "Smoking, drinking, gambling, divorce, short skirts, shaggy dog stories, foreigners, motorcycles, movies with unhappy endings, politicians, gum-chewing, novels written after 1910, overtipping of waiters, and sex."
That kind always had a skeleton in the closet, Qwilleran thought. "Has there ever been any romance in her life?" he asked his well-informed companion.
"Who knows? I suspect she was secretly in love with Hash House Hashman. He's been dead for fifteen years, but she still talks about him all the time."
Qwilleran chewed his pipe stem thoughtfully. "Did you ever wonder what happened to Joy Graham's cat?"
Hixie shrugged. "Ran away, I suppose. Got picked up. Got run over by a bus. Fell in the river. Choose one of the above."
"Do you like pets?"
"If they don't cause trouble or tie you down too much. I bought myself a canary, but he seems to be a deaf-mute. That's just my luck. I'm a born loser."
Qwilleran sliced a wedge of Norwegian Gjetost and presented it to her on a cracker. "I suppose you know that Joy has disappeared."
"Yes, I heard she left him." For a moment Hixie's jovial expression changed to one Qwilleran could not identify, but her face quickly brightened again. "Try this Westphalian Sauermilch, mon ami. C'est formidable!"
Qwilleran obliged and remarked that it was a little immature. It had not quite achieved total putrefaction. He was determined, however, not to let her change the subject. "Did you ever see Joy throw a pot on the wheel?" he asked.
"No, but she almost threw a pot at my head once. I accidentally broke a dumb-looking pitcher she'd made, and after that I wasn't exactly welcome in the pottery."
"We've got a colorful tribe at Maus Haus. What kind of guy is Max Sorrel?"