CHAPTER Five

We had a short wait on the platform at Whitham Junction. Then the local for Pattaskinnick came chugging into the station, and when it chugged out again we were on it. The little train’s course ran north and east, and with each turn of its wheels the terrain grew more rugged and remote and the snowfall intensified.

By the time we got to Pattaskinnick it was dark out and the snow was several inches deep. Carolyn scooped up a handful and made a snowball, then looked around for something to throw it at. The only car in sight was a Jeep Cherokee with Buck’s Taxi Service inexpertly lettered on its side. You couldn’t peg a snowball at a cab and then expect the driver to make you welcome, so she shrugged and tossed the snowball over her shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Bern. I didn’t know you were there.”

“Well, I’ve never been here before. Welcome to Pattaskinnick.”

“It’s like a village in the Cotswolds, isn’t it? Chipping Camden or one of those.”

“Sodding Boardham,” I suggested.

“Miss Jane Marple could be living in one of those cozy little cottages, Bernie. Knitting things and poking around in the garden and solving murders left and right.”

“Cottages? I don’t see any cottages.”

“Not with all this snow. But I’m sure they’re there. So’s our cab. Wouldn’t you think he’d hop out and help us with our bags?”

He did, finally, after we’d walked over and tapped on his windshield. I told him our destination and he clambered out from behind the wheel, a squat, broad-shouldered fellow with less than the traditional amount of space between his eyes. He wore one of those weird hunting jackets in orange camouflage, which makes it hard for deer to see you and hard for human beings to look at you, and he lifted our suitcases effortlessly into the Cherokee’s luggage compartment, then looked warily down at Raffles’s cat carrier.

“You got an animal in there,” he said.

“It’s a cat,” I agreed.

“I don’t pick up no animals.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s not going to damage your car.”

“Ain’t a car. ’T’sa Jeep.”

“Even if it’s a brand-new John Deere tractor,” I said, “there’s no way on earth he’s going to hurt it. He’s locked up in there, he can’t get out, he couldn’t even fit a paw through the wire mesh, so-”

“I got nothing against transporting ’em,” he said. “Where I draw the line is picking ’em up.”

“Picking them up?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Carolyn said. She lifted the cat carrier and placed it on the floor of the Jeep, between the two suitcases. The driver closed the rear door, then went up front and got behind the wheel. Carolyn and I got into the passenger compartment.

“Could be it strikes you as peculiar,” he said, “but a man has to draw the line. People want you to haul all manner of livestock. If it’s a cat today it’ll be a horse tomorrow.”

I snuck a peek at Raffles. He was a cat today, and somehow I couldn’t make myself believe he’d be a horse tomorrow.

“Snowing to beat the band,” our driver said, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb. “Good thing for you you’re in a four-wheeled vehicle.”

“As opposed to a bicycle?”

Carolyn treated me to an elbow. “Four-wheel drive,” she said, and leaned forward. “You think we’re in for a lot of snow?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, and she’s coming down right heavy. I’ll get you to Cuttleford, though. This here’ll get through most anything. Can’t take you over the bridge, though.”

“The bridge?”

“There’s a parking lot,” I explained, “where you have to leave your car, and then you walk across a bridge, and then it’s a few steps to the house itself.”

“Quarter mile,” the driver said. “Be a wagon there for your bags. I suppose you could put your animal into it.”

“We’ll manage,” Carolyn told him.

The roads to Cuttleford were something out of a Judy Garland song. They kept getting rougher, and lonelier and tougher. The snow fell steadily, and the Jeep proved equal to the challenge, going where no vehicle had gone before. I wouldn’t have dreamed of calling it a car.

“ Cuttleford Road,” the driver announced, braking and turning to the left, where a one-lane road made its way through thick woods. “Been plowed within the hour. The young ’un’s doing.”

“The young ’un?”

“Orris,” he said. “Works for them, don’t he?” He tapped his head significantly with his forefinger. “The least bit slow, Orris. Does his work, though. Have to give him that. I never credited those stories, anyway.”

“Stories?”

“You can’t believe half of what you hear,” he said. “Better to have the boy plowing driveways than locked away for his whole life.”

“Why would they lock him up?” Carolyn wanted to know. “What did he do, anyway?”

“Not my place to say. Never been a believer in carrying tales.”

Carolyn started to press the issue, then broke off when we braked to a stop alongside a clearing where eight or ten cars were parked, as well as a half-ton panel truck and a Jeep with a snowplow attached to its front.

“If you brought your own car,” he said, “that’s where you’d have to leave it. Except you’d likely be stuck somewhere, ’less you had four wheels.”

I’d been planning on suggesting that quaintness could yield to expediency for once, and that he drive us across the bridge and drop us at the door. One look at the bridge made it clear that was out of the question. It was narrower than the Jeep, narrower indeed than any four-wheeled vehicle larger than a shopping cart, and it was suspended by rope cables across a deep gorge.

The driver cut the Jeep’s engine, and I got out and walked to the edge, or as close as I cared to get to it. I couldn’t see anything below, and I couldn’t hear anything, either.

“Quiet,” I said.

“Cuttlebone Creek. She’s iced over. Be frozen clear to the bottom by daybreak, if she’s not already.”

“Is the bridge safe?” Carolyn wanted to know.

“What a question,” I said. “Of course it’s safe.”

“’S good strong rope,” he said.

“Good strong rope,” I echoed.

“Thing about rope,” he said, “is it rains, don’t it? And the damp soaks into it, and then it turns cold and freezes. And then it’s brittle, innit?”

“It is?”

“Snap like a twig,” he said.

“Er.”

“But it ain’t yet,” he said with satisfaction. “Best cross before it does. See the wagons? Put your luggage in ’em. And your animal.”

“Look,” Carolyn said. “This is a Jeep, right? Not a car but a Jeep.”

He looked at her.

“Well, he’s a cat,” she said. “Not an animal. So don’t call him an animal. Show a little respect.”

He didn’t call him an animal again, but neither did he call him anything else, or say another word. I think Carolyn left him dumbstruck, and I only wish she’d spoken up earlier. He opened the back of the Jeep, lifted out our suitcases, and stepped back in silence. Cat, animal, or four-wheeled mammal, the rules weren’t about to change. Whatever he was, we had to tote him ourselves.

We picked out a pair of little red wagons, loaded Raffles and the luggage, and made our way across the bridge and along a winding path to Cuttleford House. Crossing the bridge was actually a lot less perilous than some of the things I’ve been called upon to do in my career as a burglar, but there’s something about walking upon a surface that moves beneath your feet that can put one, well, off-stride.

Carolyn wanted to know how deep the gorge was. I asked her what difference it made. “Either way,” I said, “it’s the same rickety bridge. Either way we have to cross it.”

“I guess I just want to know how far we’re gonna fall, Bern.”

“We’re not going to fall.”

“I know,” she said. “But if we do, are we looking at bruises or broken bones or a grease spot? When you can’t see, you wind up picturing a bottomless abyss, but maybe it’s more like five or six feet.”