Scratch the Surface

has worms,” Mr. Trotsky said. “Diseases. Did it scratch you?”
    “No. He’s very friendly. And sweet. Besides, he took to me right away.”
    “They always know who hates them,” Brooke said. “Cats do. They have a sixth sense about it.”
    “I don’t hate him,” Felicity said. “On the contrary, I’m crazy about him, and I love cats. I write about—”
    “Cats. Of course. Well, I hope it all turns out for the best,” Brooke said, “but I’ve got to get some dinner and get to bed.” With that, she drove off, leaving Felicity to wonder how a murder could possibly turn out for the best or even for the half decent. Brooke was probably too exhausted to know what she was saying. She and her husband, whom Felicity had never met, seemed to work eighteen-hour days and, understandably, to spend their weekends sleeping. Indeed, many residents of Newton Park left for work early in the morning and returned home late in the evening. Felicity assumed that they were slaving to pay their mortgages. Whatever the reason, the result was what often struck Felicity as an unpopulated or perhaps underpopulated neighborhood. If the murderer had driven up in an eighteen-wheeler and deposited scores of dead men and live cats on her front lawn, the chances were excellent that there would have been no one around to notice. With only a slight feeling of guilt, Felicity realized that in one respect, the murder actually was turning out for the best: For once, the neighborhood was filled with people.
     

 
    Sprawled on her back on the unmade bed,’ Brigitte exposes her pale blue-gray belly to the musty air, which seems to her neither stale nor fresh but so familiar that it is taken for granted. She is named after Bardot but is no sex kitten. For one thing, even for a cat, she is flat chested. Also, she was spayed at an early age, and thus feels nothing for males and cannot attract them. Even so, her name, Brigitte, is pronounced in the French manner or in as close to the French manner as Bostonians can manage. Furthermore, at the age of two years, she is not a kitten except to the extent that her diminutive size and long, fluffy coat doom her to be eternally, if nauseatingly, known as Baby Brigitte. At seven pounds, she is only a little more than half as big as her absent companion, Edith.
    Brigitte cannot be said to miss Edith but does find it dull without her, principally because provoking Edith is Brigitte’s favorite means to banish boredom. In every tiff between the two, Brigitte is the instigator and the loser. To those who don’t know Brigitte, it might seem stupid of her to tackle so hefty an adversary. Brigitte, however, understands Edith’s gentle, pacific nature. Provoked beyond endurance, Edith strikes back, but she can be relied on to yank out great quantities of Brigitte’s long, soft hair without inflicting flesh wounds. What’s more, Edith never holds a grudge.
    So, lolling on the sheets, Brigitte doesn’t actually long for Edith’s presence but suffers from the tedium that Edith’s presence would relieve. Rousing herself, she leaps off the bed, flies to the kitchen, and attacks the dry cat food in the bowl that she and Edith amicably share. When she finishes, the bowl is almost empty. Brigitte is unconcerned. She has never experienced hunger.
     

 
    Irked at the unliterary—and infuriatingly un-British—behavior of the police and her neighbors, Felicity longed to retreat to her kitchen to await the inevitable arrival of an important detective of some sort, preferably a chief superintendent, if the rank existed in the United States, as she suspected it did not. To fortify herself against shock, a condition commonly observed at crime scenes in British mysteries, she intended to pour herself a second shot of Laphroaig and broil a fillet of farm-raised Scottish salmon. Accustomed! as she was to controlling the behavior of law enforcement! personnel, she was chagrined to have the lowly policeman] forbid her to enter her house.
    “It’s a crime scene,” he explained.
    “The vestibule is a crime scene, and I have no desire to go there. Ever again! I have already been in my kitchen, and I just want to go back.”
    “We’ll need to check for signs of forced entry. Were your doors locked?”
    “Of course. The doors to the house were locked. The outer door to the vestibule wasn’t. And I have already been in the house! If the murderer were lurking there waiting to kill me, I’d be dead