Touch Not The Cat Read Free Page B

examined the scene of the accident, confirmed the doctor's guess at what must have happened. But four hours' start is four hours' start, and the guilty driver had not been traced.
    Herr Gothard told me about it, sitting in his big consulting room with the picture window framing the prospect of rolling pastures, smooth as brushed velvet, and looking as if they had been shaved out of the thick forests that hung like thatch eaves above them. A bowl of blue hyacinths on the desk filled the room with scent. Beside it lay the small pile of objects which had come from Daddy's pockets: keys, a notecase I had given him with the initials J . A. stamped in gilt; a silver ballpoint pen with the same initials; a penknife, nail clippers, a handkerchief newly laundered and folded; the letter I had written to him a week ago. I looked away from this at Herr Gothard, who sat quietly, watching me, the gold-rimmed bifocals winking on his broad pale face. No longer Daddy's friend, with a shoulder I could cry on if I needed it; now he was just a doctor, who had heard and seen it all before, and the room itself had held so much of pain and emotion and courage that it was coloured by none of them. I sat calmly, while he told me what had happened.
    "He came round towards morning and talked a little, a very little. Not about the accident, though; we questioned him as much as we dared, but he seemed to have forgotten about it. He had other things on his mind."
    "Yes?"

    "You, mainly. I couldn't get it clear, I'm afraid. He said, 'Bryony, tell Bryony,' once or twice, then seemed not to be able to put it into words, whatever it was. I thought at first he was anxious in case you had not been told about the accident, so I reassured him, and said I had talked to you on the telephone, and that you were on your way. But he still worried at it. We got a few snatches, no more, none of which made much sense, then in the end he got something more out. It was
    'Bryony—my little Bryony—in danger.' I asked what danger, and he could not answer me. He died at about ten o'clock."
    I nodded. Between Funchal and Madrid; I knew the exact moment. Walther talked on, professionally smooth and calm; I think he was telling me about Daddy's stay in Wackersberg, and what they had done and talked of together. I have no recollection of anything he said, but to this day I can remember every petal on the blue hyacinths in the bowl on the desk between us.
    "And that was all?"
    "All?" Herr Gothard, interrupted in midsentence, changed direction without a tremor.
    "All that Jon said, you
    "Yes. I'm sorry. I wasn't really taking in—"
    "Please." He showed a hand, pale and smooth with scrubbing. "I did not imagine you were. You ask me what else Jon said at the end. I have it here."
    He slid the hand into a drawer of the desk, and brought out a paper.
    I don't know why I was so surprised. I just stared, without moving to take the paper. "You wrote it down?"
    "The police left a man to sit by his bed," explained Walther gently, "in case he managed to say anything about the accident which might help them to trace the culprit. It always happens, you know."
    "Yes, of course. I knew that. One never quite thinks of oneself in those contexts, I suppose."
    "The officer spoke very good English, and he took down everything Jon said, whether it seemed to him to make sense or not. Do you read shorthand?"
    "Yes."
    "It's all here, every word that was intelligible. I was with Jon myself most of the time. There was another emergency that morning, so I had to leave him for a while, but as soon as he showed signs of coming round they sent for me, and I stayed with him after that until he died. This is all that he said. I am sorry it does not make more sense, but perhaps it does, for you."
    He handed me the paper. The pothooks straggled a little wildly across the page, as if written too hurriedly, on a pad balanced on someone's knee. Walther slid another sheet of paper across the desk towards me. "I made