Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [53]
Well, why not? I had nothing better to do at the moment.
A short time later the place was – not spotless, I’ll never be a good Swedish housewife. But it was clean. The dishes were washed and stacked, the floor swept, and attractive smells were seeping out of the saucepans that bubbled on the stove. The pike was in one of the ovens, sans its head. Mrs Andersson and Granny wouldn’t have approved of decapitation, but I can’t stand those boiled white eyes looking up at me from a plate. When I opened the other oven, a heavenly odour almost cancelled out the stench of fish. The feeezer had contained stacks of pies, tarts, and pastries. All had been neatly labelled, but since my Swedish is minimal, the labels were of no use to me. This pie looked, and smelled, like red raspberry.
The first to respond to the smell of cooking was the cat. I had been wondering where it was; that cosy little sitting area absolutely demanded a fat, purring cat. it came in through the window, startling me so that I dropped the spoon I held – a big, fluffy tabby, its forehead marked with the customary black M, its jowls outlined in white. Tail elevated and bristling, it studied me warily for a moment, and I stared back, mesmerized by its glowing green eyes. Then it opened its mouth and emitted a ladylike, dainty little mew.
While the cat wove in and out around my feet, purring hoarsely, I found its bowl in a cupboard, and a can of cat food, identifiable by the picture on the label, in the pantry. He (his sex was obvious, as soon as he turned his back) tucked into the food with that accusing air of imminent starvation typical of cats. I wasn’t too worried about him. The island probably abounded in small rodents, and he had already demonstrated a commendable caution in approaching strangers. His chances of survival were probably better than mine.
When the kitchen door opened, he scuttled for cover under the table. He didn’t move fast enough.
‘What a touching tableau,’ John exclaimed. ‘The cook and her cat. Hello, cat.’ He squatted. After a moment a suspicious whiskered face appeared. The two of them contemplated one another in solemn silence for a time. Then, with a kind of feline shrug, the cat gave John an unmistakable cold shoulder and returned to its dinner.
‘Crushed again,’ said John. Rising, he sniffed appreciatively. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘Your dinner? I haven’t the faintest idea.’
John raised one eyebrow – a trick of his I particularly abhor – and wandered into the pantry I lifted the lid of a skillet. Whole onions, cooked in butter and brown sugar, simmered in half a cup of beef stock. John came back empty-handed but unperturbed. Whistling, he opened the refrigerator door and draped himself over it, staring into the fridge in that maddening way men and children have, as if they expected a seven-course meal to materialize on a shelf. I almost snapped, ‘Close that door.’ I must have heard Mother say it a thousand times.
To my chagrin John found the food I had pushed to the back of the shelves. I suppose Mrs Andersson had taken it out of the freezer the night before. Murmuring affectionately, he removed a bowl of kidneys, a box of mushrooms, and the butter.
‘Lend me the knife,’ he said abstractedly.
I borrowed it back a little later to slice cabbage. John stirred things into his sautéed kidneys and mushrooms and fed scraps to the cat. It had transferred its fickle affections to John, and ignored me completely. obviously it preferred kidney to canned food.
It went out the window in a long, flowing leap when the others started to file in. They stood around watching and sniffing hopefully. I drained my potatoes and put them through the ricer, added butter and a generous amount of hot milk. John tossed linguine into a big pot of boiling water. Everybody else drooled.
Leif was the last to appear. He had showered and changed, and he looked like the kind of man a wife hopes will come home for dinner. I gave him a melting smile and waved my spoon toward the rocking chairs.