" ... when it hit a bad bump like the old plank bridge?"

She nodded.

"Is that how he bought the farmhouse cheaply?"

She gulped and nodded again.

"And torching the Picayune building was part of the deal ?"

"Oh, Mr. Q! It was terrible! I told him he was a murderer, and he told me I was a murderer's wife and I'd better keep my mouth shut if I knew what was good for me. He looked terrible! He was going to hit me! I ran in the bathroom and locked the door and got sick. Then he went to sleep and snored all night. I wanted to run away! I got dressed and sat up until morning. When he started to wake up, I ran out of the room — left my wedding suit, purse, everything."

"Then that's how he got the key to the museum."

She groaned, and her face-usually so cheerful-looked drawn and miserable.

When Qwilleran returned to his apartment he opened a can of tuna fish, flaked it, and arranged the morsels on a plain white china plate. "No more home-cooked food," he told the Siamese. "No more gourmet meals. No more antique porcelain dishes."

They gobbled the tuna with heads down and tails up, like ordinary cats. Yet Koko's behavior had been extraordinary. Two hours before the museum fire he had wanted to get out of the building; he knew what was coming. What else did he know?

Did he sense that Mrs. Cobb's marriage would end in disaster? How else could one explain his bizarre performance on the pink roses of the rug? And when he uprooted the herb garden, did he perceive some semantic connection with Herb Hackpole? No, that explanation was too absurd even for Qwilleran's vivid imagination. More likely, Koko was simply chewing the leaves as cats like to do, and he got a little high on an herb related to catnip. Yet, they were questions that would never be answered.

Even more perplexing was Koko's attraction to Shakespeare. Could he smell the pigskin covers, or the neat's-foot oil used to preserve the leather, or some rare nineteenth-century glue used in the bindings? If so, why did he concentrate on Hamlet?

Koko lifted his head from the plate of tuna and gave Qwilleran a meaningful stare that made his moustache quiver. What was the plot of the play? Hamlet's father had died suddenly; his mother remarried too soon; the father's ghost revealed that he had been murdered; the mother's name was Gertrude.

A shiver ran down Qwilleran's spine. NO! he told himself. The similarity to the Goodwinter tragedy was too fantastic; one could go mad pondering such a possibility. Koko's predilection for Hamlet was strictly a coincidence. That, at least, was what he told himself.

The Siamese had finished their dinner and were washing up. The room now smelled of fish as well as acrid smoke. Opening the window a few inches for ventilation, Qwilleran was wounded by the tragic scene outdoors, the ghost of a noble building. Koko had been trying to communicate, and if he had read the cat's meaning, this senseless destruction could have been averted.

What happens next? he asked himself. We can't leave the building in ruins; do we tear it down? The gutted shell was three stories high, solid fieldstone, two feet thick at the base. It occupied a prominent location on Main Street, sharing the Park Circle with the courthouse, public library, and two churches.

Koko jumped to the windowsill, saying "ik ik ik" and wearing a bright-eyed expression of anticipation.

"I'm sorry we haven't had much conversation lately," Qwilleran apologized. "Too many distractions. You probably don't understand the fire and all its ramifications. Will you miss your Shakespeare game? Thirty-seven priceless little books went up in flame. And what shall we do with the remains of the museum?"

As he spoke, it began to snow softly and silently, whitening the frozen ruts and soot -encrusted ice, drawing a merciful white curtain across the ugly scene of devastation.

At the same time Qwilleran slapped his forehead in sudden realization. "I've got it! A theater!" he exclaimed.

"YOW!" said Koko.

"Pickax needs a theater. 'The play's the thing,' as Hamlet I said. We'll have a playhouse, Koko, and you can play Richard the Third... Where are you?"

The cat had vanished.

"Where the devil did that cat go?" Qwilleran thundered with a frown.

Koko had returned to his feeding place and was trying to lick the ceramic glaze from the china plate.