A Bedlam of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

was in a right old bate this evening! Muttering and spluttering and yanking my lead as if he was dragging rocks out of a well. I can tell you, I wasn’t having it. No thank you! And to quote the cat, I made my position clear – i.e. crouched on the pavement outside the organist’s gate and did the business. Tapsell saw from his window and came hurtling out cursing the vicar up and down dale. There was an awful row and F.O. looked a bit sheepish. Generally he gets the better of Tapsell but this time he was short of ammunition. Serves him right – a dog like me deserves a bit more POLLY TESS, as Pierre the Ponce says.
    Still, mustn’t grumble. He’s all right generally – pretty kind, really – but just now and again he gets ratty. I suppose it’s being a murderer that does it. Gets on his fins I daresay … Mind you, I don’t think that was the cause this evening. It was something to do with the Brighton Type and the bishop person. The vicar was on the blower, and after he put the thing down I heard him say, ‘That’s all I need – bloody Nicholas and bloody Horace!’ So for some reason they are at him – and we get the flak.
    I told all this to Maurice, but he didn’t say much. Just gave one of those God-awful miaows and then went silent and sort of huffy. Hasn’t spoken since. I’m not complaining, mind. Sometimes it’s quite nice not to have the cat’s pennyworth shoved under my nose all the time. Still, it won’t last. He’ll soon find his tongue again and start telling me what’s what. But in the MEANTIME I’m off to the graveyard for a bit of peeing practice. O’Shaughnessy has bet me his new ham bone that I can’t outdo him. We’ll see about that!
     
    So, I’ve had a nice little caper, emptied the old bladder at a rate of knots and discovered a shortcut through the big tombs by the side gate. O’Shaughnessy doesn’t know about that – or if he does, the rotter’s never mentioned it to me. So if everything goes to plan and I can keep up my pace and my peeing, that ham bone should be in the bag – or, better still, in BOUNCER’S BASKET!
    As guessed, Maurice has now crawled out of his huff and started to talk again. But before he got too carried away by the sound of his own voice I thought I’d give him a blow-by-blow account of my fun in the cemetery. And I had got halfway through this when he suddenly said, ‘Yes, yes, Bouncer, all very fragrant I’m sure, but there are issues of greater moment than bones and urine, and we need to discuss them.’
    Well, I didn’t know what he meant by moment and urine, but I understood the word bones all right, so I told him coldly that as far as I was concerned bones were JOLLY IMPORTANT and that I didn’t think many things mattered more.
    ‘Haddock and murder,’ he said.
    ‘Stuff the haddock,’ I said, ‘but what about the murder?’
    He looked sniffy, and then said in his best cat voice, ‘It has come to my notice that our master is more than worried about the Turnip villain, he—’
    ‘Well, yes of course,’ I said, ‘we guessed that when he rushed up to London with the Prim to meet him at that special place you were on about. So what’s new?’
    ‘What is new, Bouncer, is that one’s suspicions are now fully confirmed: he is indeed destined to see more of that dangerous ruffian.’
    ‘How do you know?’ I asked.
    ‘I’ve heard him talking.’
    ‘Who to?’
    ‘To himself, in his sleep.’
    ‘Huh!’
    ‘I can assure you it was very revealing. If you recall, when he returned from that London hotel he put on his slippers and collapsed into the armchair, and despite the racket coming from the wireless went straight off to sleep. You retired to your basket in the kitchen while I stayed on the hearthrug. From there I could hear exactly what he was muttering.’ The cat stopped here and asked if I was listening. Well of course I was listening – no chance not to when he’s giving tongue! Just because I was having a bit of a