The Primrose Pursuit by Suzette A. Hill

was to make a point perhaps.’
    ‘Do you mean a sort of example, a warning?’
    He nodded. ‘A kind of memento mori to deter others from intended transgression.’
    ‘Intended transgression? Gosh, you sound just like Francis after he had had one too many. Must have been that seminary you were both at: clearly the idiom gets into the bones. Anyway, what have you in mind – some Vatican revenge on one of its stool pigeons?’ I laughed loudly – not because I was in jocular mood but rather to deflect my mind from what Ingaza had said about the danger of my own situation. It was too bad: I had been seeking reassurance!How naïve; one should have known better. Ingaza has the talent to perturb honed to a fine art.
    It is an art that Maurice shares; for when I returned home it was to find the cat curled up in the open hat-box left on my bed. The hat had been delivered from Swan & Edgar only that afternoon and I hadn’t even had time to try it on. And now it was crushed and covered in cat hairs with Maurice snoring gently on top. Had Ingaza been a cat, it was exactly the sort of cavalier indifference he too would have shown.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    The Cat’s View
    ‘You know,’ Bouncer said, ‘I’m not too sure about that Duster fellow, a bit cranky if you ask me.’ He gave a shove to his grub bowl, a gesture invariably indicative of smug assurance. It’s the clatter: I think he feels it clinches the point.
    ‘Actually,’ I replied, ‘I was not intending to ask; but since you raise the subject I should say he is pleasantly quiet and—’
    ‘That’s just it,’ the dog bellowed, ‘too blooming quiet! And he’s got this funny face, it always looks the same.’
    ‘If you mean he is restrained and not given to making gross and vulgar grimaces, then I would agree. He strikes me as being couth, Bouncer, couth .’
    He looked puzzled. ‘What’s couth?’
    ‘It is what you are not; and the opposite of your erstwhile accomplice O’Shaughnessy.’ The Irish setter had been Bouncer’s bosom pal in Molehill; a creature of intemperate habits whose main aims in life had been to rev up ‘the craic’ and irritate me .
    A wistful look entered the dog’s eyes and for a moment I regretted my words. Not for long, of course. It doesn’t do to be overly indulgent.
    ‘Well,’ I said briskly, ‘I am sure when you get to know each other a little better you will find Duster a most congenial playfellow. There’s probably more to him than meets the eye.’
    ‘Hmm,’ he grunted sceptically, ‘let’s hope so.’
    ‘Come now,’ I said, ‘it’s not like you to be so negative. Why this sudden wariness of the cairn?’
    ‘I met him the other day on his lead with the tall man. I was on my lead too with the Prim, and they hung about jabbering for ages. So while they were doing that I took a good look at the cairn. And do you know, he just stood there staring into space – well, into the hedge as a matter of fact. Personally, I don’t think it’s a very interesting hedge, not as hedges go that is. I mean there are some hedges which are just the job but—’
    ‘Job for what?’ I enquired with interest.
    ‘Most things,’ he replied vaguely.
    ‘And this one wasn’t?’
    He shook his head. ‘Not that I could see but the cairn seemed to think so.’
    I cleared my throat. ‘Uhm, you don’t think by any chance that he was trying to avoid your eye, and hence the fixation with the hedge?’
    ‘Avoid my eye, my arse!’ the dog barked. ‘Why should he want to do that? There’s nothing wrong with Bouncer’s eye!’
    ‘Nothing at all,’ I agreed hastily. ‘It’s a very fine eye, as is the other one.’ I was about to add when it can be seen through that mountainous fringe – but thought better of it.‘But bear in mind that Duster being a cairn is quite small; and you as a woolly mongrel are quite large. You may have intimidated him.’
    ‘Done what?’ he said.
    ‘Perhaps you put the frighteners on him. He is