THE GLASS CAGE

The cat died at half-past four on a Tuesday afternoon, and I was the only one in the house who knew why.

I watched the little creature, Mephisto, a black tom with one ear perpetually cocked as though listening for some private joke, lap at the rim of the porcelain cup I had set on the side table. Arthur had brought me the milk myself, as he did every evening since Michaelmas. He stood in the doorway of my sitting room, framed in the fading Yorkshire light, his spectacles catching the last amber of day.

Drink it while it's warm, Ellie, he said, that voice of his, the one that could soothe a horse or a hysteric. You've been so tired lately.

I had smiled at him. I had always smiled at him. But this time something in my chest had tightened into a knot I could not untie. When he left, I set the cup down and told Mephisto I did not feel well.

He is still dead. The little body cold against my knees. The milk on the rug the color of tarnished silver.

Arthur did not come back into the room. I heard him in the study, the low murmur of his voice on the telephone. He was speaking to someone about a lady in Wiltshire, he said. A delicate constitution. Nervous exhaustion, apparently. The kind of thing his new tonics could remedy beautifully.

I picked up Mephisto and carried him to the window, the one that looked out over the ravaged Yorkshire moors. Outside, the fog was rolling in, thick as wool. Inside, the house was the size of a cathedral, all cold stone corridors and rooms that echoed with footsteps I could not afford to take.

It took me three days to figure out what was in the milk.

The answer was simpler than I expected. Arthur kept his supplies in a locked cabinet in the study. I waited until he was at his practice in town, went in through the back door, and took my time. The cabinet was not locked well, Arthur was a brilliant man but not a cautious one. He believed that intelligence rendered security unnecessary.

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