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“Yes, Julia?”
“You remember, Ragwort, how I said things were vanishing from my desk…”
“I believe you did say something along those lines. Given the normal state of disorder in which you pursue your business, I was inclined to feel that…”
“Oh really, Ragwort! I am quite sure now that the missing files—and a rather sweet glass paperweight given to me by my juniors at school, and a Sellotape dispenser lent to me by Mr. Richardson next door with strict instructions not to lose it, and a Chelsea bun that I had been quite looking forward to, among other things—are not in any of my desk drawers after all, or down a crack at the side of the desk, or in my handbag, or in my briefcase, or on my bureau at home, or anywhere else you and Cantrip told me to look.”
“Are you, Julia? How is it that you can be quite sure?”
“Because,” said Julia with triumph which she appeared immediately to regret, “Selena has gone missing too, and she most certainly would not fit in any of those places.” She reconsidered. “She might be able to sit on top of my bureau at home, but she should first have to remove everything from the top of it, and I would never find any of my kirby-grips again if they were moved from their accustomed places.”
“I say, Larwood! That’s what the chaps at the Daily Scuttle call burying the lede. Selena can’t have gone missing, can she? I expect she’s just popped out to, er…”
“Buy you another Chelsea bun,” said Ragwort very dryly. “When was the last time you saw Selena, Julia? The last time she appeared here, in her own office, she did indeed say she was dropping by yours to confirm the particulars of the Leafield case. That would have been just after tea. As it is now just after seven, I don’t know that ‘gone missing’ would be recognized by the authorities.”
“Julia,” I asked, “under what exact circumstances did you cease to see Selena?”
“She vanished before my eyes, in fact. Since you ask.”
“I simply don’t believe that,” said Cantrip. “You must have glanced aside for a minute—or an hour. You know you’re awfully distractible, Larwood.”
“I am very rarely distracted from Selena,” said Julia primly. “I will acknowledge that I may have looked away from her for a moment, perhaps to consider how best to address myself to the Chelsea bun without applying icing to the papers on my desk or the front of my blouse. Then it occurred to me that it would be thoughtful to divide the bun with Selena—”
“—greater love hath no woman—” Ragwort murmured.
“—rather than munching away at it in front of her, which some might construe as insensitive.”
“Look here, Larwood, just because I hadn’t quite finished my elevenses the last time you—”
“—and when I looked up again, Selena was gone,” Julia concluded. “As was the Chelsea bun, leaving me doubly bereft.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting your knickers in a twist about, then. It’s obvious that Selena snatched the bun and scarpered."
"Really, Michael, don’t be ridiculous.” Ragwort’s sigh was put-upon. “Selena is a mature adult—perhaps the only one in these Chambers entitled to such an appellation—”
“—saving yourself, Ragwort,” I added.
“Thank you, Hilary, I felt it would be in poor taste to stipulate myself—in any case, Selena is hardly likely to engage in such puerile behavior, unlike some of us.” Ragwort rose to his feet. “You will pardon me, I hope, while I see if Laurie is back yet. I should like to find out whether Selena has any court appearances scheduled for tomorrow.”
“You think she’ll show up in court no matter where she’s gone skedoodling off to?”
“Your English, Cantrip,” Ragwort said primly. “In fact I wish to be sure that no harm will be done if she does not appear in court as scheduled.”
“Very thoughtful of you to be concerned with Selena’s professional reputation, Ragwort.”
“What? Ah…of course. Well, certainly, but I am primarily intent on making sure that my schedule is not unduly disrupted, in the event that someone must take her place.”
“Gosh,” said Cantrip, leaping to his feet with great athleticism if little of Ragwort’s grace, “that’s a point. Let’s go buttonhole Laurie and make her see sense pronto.”
Laurie was the current temporary typist, notable for her unmemorable features and ravishing golden-brown hair, usually worn in a braid which Cantrip had had to be dissuaded forcibly from pulling at every opportunity, as well as for her efficiency, by grace of which the residents of 62 New Square had reduced their contact with Henry the clerk to a degree which gave them all great satisfaction.
“I suppose I’d better get back,” Julia said disconsolately. “I hardly like to be in my office. I can’t help feeling that the presence of Selena is everywhere, silently reprimanding me.”
“Surely you could be excused for leaving at this time of day?”
“No, Hilary, I must work. The deadline for Mrs. Leroy’s filing…” Julia trailed the end of her sentence and a long, elegant silk scarf likewise out the door.
My opinion of Selena Jardine’s competence is, needless to say, a high one, and I did not allow this odd occurrence to disturb my reflections on the important scholarly work at which I had spent my day toiling. However, I did bring to mind a particular classical referent which had come to light earlier that day and might, depending on its original context, have been read more than one way, thus affecting in turn the context of the document I wished to cite. It was therefore natural for me to contact my young colleague Sebastian Verity and ask, in passing once the important matter had been confirmed, if he had spoken with Selena over the last few days.
“No, no I haven’t. Er—you may not be aware, Hilary, that Selena and I are no longer on the particular terms we have been in the past—”
I apologized for raising what must have been a painful subject.
“Oh no, not to worry. It was very amicable all around, we simply…but why did you ask? Surely you could find Selena in her Chambers?”
I explained the situation in question.
“Oh,” said Sebastian, sounding rather daunted. “Well, if Julia says so, I expect there’s something in it.”
“Are you sure you have not misplaced a negative at some point? Perhaps an alpha privative?” Much as we all love and admire Julia, absolute trust in her words is not usually a characteristic of those who know her, less still among us the scrupulous academic fraternity.
“Not when it comes to Selena,” said Sebastian. “If anyone knows what’s up with her, Julia does.”
Having rung off and finding myself afflicted by the honest thirst of the laborer, I went in search of my young friends for companionship and perhaps news of Selena’s reappearance; Laurie the temporary typist, disentangling her braid from her cardigan as she prepared to leave the office, told me that Ragwort and Cantrip had gone to Miss Larwood’s office and that no, Miss Jardine had not reappeared.
Julia’s office is quite small in comparison to the large room shared by Ragwort and Cantrip, or indeed even to Timothy’s comfortable quarters, and as it belongs to Julia, nearly every square inch is occupied by tax manuals, half-empty jars of facial powder, handkerchiefs of every sort from lace heirlooms to former knickers, novels of the stripe from which Julia and Cantrip’s magnum opus derives its inspiration as well as (widely scattered) a complete set of Trollope, dried orange peels, woolen scarves, unraveling at the ends, suited to the dead of winter (I may add that this was October), brochures from tourist attractions visited some years in the past, souvenirs ditto, legal notepads in every state of usage (one would like to think that none of them contain client-proprietary information, but given the nature of Julia’s handwriting, perhaps confidentiality may be preserved without further measures taken), miraculously unbroken glass and porcelain figurines, and cups now permanently stained with tea.
Julia was sitting at her desk in this her native habitat, writing furiously on her current notepad and at the same time arguing with Cantrip, who had taken possession of the visitor’s chair, which was astonishingly unencumbered with anything but his appealing figure. Ragwort was standing behind his shoulder and looking despairingly about the room, pausing to extract a pocket square of his own (pristine, almost certainly free of lace of any kind, although I suspected it of bearing a discreetly embroidered DR in one corner) and give vent to a series of sneezes.
“Still no Selena,” he said, sniffing delicately as only Ragwort can. “Cantrip and I will find ourselves much put upon if this situation is not promptly relieved.”
“It’s beastly,” Cantrip opined gloomily. Julia’s office is provided with one tiny window which looks out on New Square, although it has been found to be painted shut, and its encrusting dust, as Julia likes to say, preserves her privacy from any crows or other third-story invaders. A shaft of early moonlight was falling through the window just now to rest on Cantrip’s features, enhancing the illusory sense of fragility and Romanticism which persists until he opens his mouth.
Ragwort sneezed once again.
“I say, Larwood, it’s about time you took a duster to this place. Ragwort never sneezes in our office.”
“I should say,” said Ragwort rather thickly from behind his handkerchief, “that Julia has been associating with someone’s cat. I am not given to reacting adversely to dust, even in these Julia-esque quantities.”
“Really, Ragwort. Cats are not commonly found in tax barristers’ offices—oh!” Julia disappeared momentarily from view and emerged, with her hair trailing over one shoulder and bearing decorative clots of dust, holding a cat in her arms.
It was a very elegant cat, white with gray points (miraculously spared adherence of the dust currently adorning Julia), with the small mouth and rounded ears characteristic, I am given to understand, of the Traditional Persian, and acidulous green eyes which considered each of us in turn and then turned to fix unswervingly on Julia, or rather on Julia’s bosom, which was after all in its line of sight. Or rather, I should say, hers.
“Julia,” Ragwort protested, “you might have some consideration—”
“I say, it’s not fair! Henry would never let us keep a cat in our Chambers—”
“This cat,” I pointed out, “may be the exception. Or rather, may have all along been the exception.”
The cat purred. Julia purred back. Ragwort sneezed. Cantrip frowned.
“Do talk sense, Hilary. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Don’t be silly, Cantrip,” said Julia into the cat’s fur. “Can’t you recognize Selena when you see her?”
Cantrip’s mouth fell open, which may be a Cambridge solecism, as I have never seen it occur at Oxford. Ragwort concealed his entire face behind his handkerchief.
“Having thus solved the question of Selena’s disappearance—” I began.
“You have a curious idea of the meaning of the word ‘solved,’ Hilary,” said Ragwort, remaining invisible. “Can you venture to explain how Selena finds herself in this…configuration?”
“No,” I admitted—a true academic need never hesitate to admit honest ignorance—“and I don’t propose to. Surely Selena herself knows that. I believe the how is less important in this case than the why.”
Cantrip, who had finally managed to close his mouth, opened it again to burst out “I think it’s jolly selfish of Selena not to have let the rest of us in on it! Just think how useful it would be, scooting over as a cat to find out what opposing counsel is actually going to say—”
“Reprehensible,” said Ragwort austerely, eyeing Cantrip censoriously over his handkerchief. “Also, Cantrip, may I point out to you a few of the potential disadvantages of felinity?”
Cantrip, who was watching Selena’s liquid distribution of self over Julia’s salient points, said rather distractedly “Eh? Disadvantages?”
“For instance,” Ragwort pursued, “we are all regrettably familiar with your fondness for ‘birds,’ but would you really care for the effort of hunting them down on the wing, not to mention consuming them raw, bones and all?”
“Ragwort,” Julia murmured, “there is really no need to be quite so graphic.”
“My apologies. I might add, Cantrip, that all respectable indoor male cats, such as enjoy the privileges of cream and smoked salmon, have undergone a certain procedure…”
Cantrip blanched and adjusted his posture protectively. “Honestly! Putting a chap off altogether. And now you mention it, what’s Selena going to do if she’s got herself in the club by way of the local pub tomcat? Who’s going to take responsibility?”
“I would, of course,” said Julia, “but don’t be so absurd, Selena would never allow such a thing to happen. What was it you were saying, Hilary?”
“That we must find out why Selena has…” I began, interrupted by Selena herself, who leapt suddenly from Julia’s arms into the tiny amount of clear space on the desk, barely large enough indeed for a cat to balance. One forepaw indicated the notepad on which Julia had been writing, while she emitted a series of impatient meows.
“I am quite sure Mrs. Leroy’s case has nothing whatsoever to do with cats,” Julia protested.
“Have you any materials on the case which are not handwritten, Julia?” I asked. It is the task of the scholar of history to extract meaning from the most obscure palimpsests, but this was not a situation permitting quiet hours in a library analyzing each impenetrable loop and swirl of Julia’s pen.
Julia pouted at me, but proffered a bound stack of typed (or perhaps word-processed) documents. I extracted Cantrip from the visitor’s chair by dint of surprising him with a sharp tap on the shoulder from behind, took possession, and began to approach the problem in earnest.
Displaced, Cantrip prowled the office and peered over Julia’s shoulder at Selena, apparently drawing the line at picking her up as Julia had done. “I’ve had a thunk,” he announced, apparently finding this an unusual enough experience to be reported. “What about that bird with the frog?”
“If you are referring to past events on the Continent—” Ragwort began testily, stifling another sneeze.
“Not a Frog, a frog! She ended up having to snog him, didn’t she? Turn him back into a prince or whatever he was. Have you tried that, Larwood?”
Julia raised her eyebrows, bent slightly, and kissed the Persian cat on the nose without further ado. Nothing happened, except that the tip of the cat’s tail twitched.
“So much for fairy tales,” Ragwort murmured.
It was at this point that I arrived at the text in the bound documents which clarified the matter. “Julia!”
“Yes, Hilary?”
“Were you aware—” Knowing Julia, it was entirely possible that she had overlooked the matter, although to do her justice her approach to her work is rather less scattershot than to everything else in her life (as otherwise she would have long found herself decorating the local Jobcentre). “Were you aware that your practice has a bearing on the Department of Infernal Revenue as well as its Inland counterpart?”
“I have never,” Julia sniffed, “been able to recognize the slightest difference, other than the method by which one submits the paperwork.”
Selena flourished her tail triumphantly in my direction, but thankfully forbore to leap from the desk into my lap. Ragwort emerged entirely from his handkerchief, rather red about the nose, to stare speechlessly, a state of being in which Cantrip joined him.
Julia looked at both of them in surprise. “Surely your branch has its equivalent apparatus? After all, Cantrip, when we selected the name of Mr. Justice Heltapay—”
“—I don’t believe you sometimes, Larwood!” Cantrip spluttered. “A chap can’t be expected to understand how your mind works!”
“Julia,” said Ragwort, at his most, as Selena might have put it if currently in possession of human speech, priggish, “have you considered the unethical nature of such an occupation?”
“Ragwort,” said Julia with perfect serenity, “any tax barrister possessed of a determination to avoid unethicality will shortly be seeking a change of profession,” to which Ragwort had no retort.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “the fact remains that your client, Julia, is called on to pay a septennial tax of the Infernal sort and, one may surmise due to the nature of the matter, has selected Selena as the means of payment.”
Cantrip boggled at me. “Selena as the wonga?”
“You mean,” said Ragwort, who does not share Cantrip’s educational disadvantages, “that the, er, Infernal authorities require payment in the form of a soul, and Selena’s was selected. Why Selena in particular? Why, in fact, not Julia, who must have seemed a much more accessible and obvious alternative? It is, after all, her client.”
“And what has all this got to do with Selena’s current status?” Julia put in. “Does one turn into a cat if deprived of a soul?”
Selena hissed disapprovingly.
“I should jolly well hope not,” said Cantrip uneasily. “Think of all those nice moggies one’s given a scratch between the ears over time. What if they were all…”
“I repeat,” said Ragwort patiently, “why Selena in particular? How, in fact, is Julia’s client acquainted with Selena at all? I have no recollection of a personage by any such name visiting our Chambers. We have, to my knowledge, never entertained Royalty of any variety whatsoever.”
“Royalty?” Cantrip blinked at him. “I thought the Queen hadn’t got to pay taxes unless she feels like it. Or has she got a secret fiddle going with the devil and that’s what you and Hilary are going on about?”
“Not that Queen,” I corrected patiently. “Julia’s client—Mrs. Leroy, that is—appears to hold dominion over a rather less temporal sphere.”
“You do talk a lot of rot, Hilary,” said Cantrip unfairly. Ragwort hissed a word or two in his ear. “Oh. Well, if you meant Fairyland, why didn’t you just say so? How are we supposed to get hold of her if that’s where she hangs out, then? I don’t suppose they’ve got a telex machine.”
Selena leapt tidily off the desk and trotted out of Julia’s office toward the entryway, with a most feline and yet most Selena-like gait. Following her, we observed her take up a position on the desk belonging to the secretary (Julia’s Chambers do not stoop to temporary typists; they are provided with a pleasant, competent, well-upholstered lady known, I believe, as Mrs. Fanning, whose tenure there considerably predates Julia’s), and reach out a paw to the typewriter, patting imperiously at its cover until Cantrip hoicked it off for her. Then she tapped sharply at the L key.
“I say!” Cantrip announced, delighted. “It’s like one of those Ouida boards.” (“What next, Marie Corelli?” Ragwort murmured.) “She’s going to spell out the answers for us.”
But Selena made no further attempt to type, instead adopting an Egyptian pose and waiting, tail tip twitching, for us to penetrate her riddle.
“We already know the client’s name is Mrs. Leroy,” Julia sighed, reaching out as if irresistibly to caress the underside of the cat’s chin.
“Yes, but why the typewriter? There must be lots of L’s Selena could point to in all that handwritten mess of yours on your desk, Larwood, and unlike the rest of us she can read your fist. Who do we know that’s got to do with typewriting?”
“And begins with an L,” I added.
“…Laurie,” said Ragwort and Cantrip together.
“What is Laurie’s full name?” I asked, and got twin blank looks. “I only ask because, according to Julia’s documentation, her client is legally known by the name of Eudora Mabel Lorelei Perry Leroy.”
“One can certainly imagine,” Julia sighed, “that an attractive young woman afflicted with the name of Eudora Mabel Lorelei in this day and age might choose to call herself Laurie.”
“It would not be the first time,” said Ragwort meaningfully, “that a temporary typist has turned out to be possessed of unexpected riches.”
Cantrip glared at him. “I hope that’s not you casting nasturtiums at old Lilian—”
“Perish the thought.”
“Allow me to reassert the position,” I said. “We surmise that Laurie the temporary typist is also Mrs. Eudora Mabel Lorelei Perry Leroy, Julia’s client in these mortal realms, who is compelled to pay a septennial tax to the Infernal Revenue in the form of a human soul, and who has selected Selena’s as her payment. Selena, however, could not currently be described precisely as human, which suggests that her soul is likewise—”
“—off the table,” Cantrip filled in.
“Unlike her paws,” said Ragwort primly. “I hope Mrs. Fanning chooses to eat her lunch elsewhere.” Selena hissed at him.
“Really, Ragwort. She is very clean!”
“Therefore,” I pressed onward, “the task before us is clearly for Julia to perform her duties as she normally does, viz to produce a lawful manner in which Mrs. Leroy—or Laurie if you will—will find herself no longer compelled to make her tax payment.”
“Or at least not in full,” Julia said rather anxiously. “Do you think sixty-five percent of a soul is enough?”
“Thankfully,” said Ragwort, “none of us are of the cloth, and we may debate these matters later. Well, Julia, kindly put your brain to work.”
“Couldn’t we just have her chuck them somebody else’s soul instead?” Cantrip suggested boldly.
“Why, Cantrip, I wouldn’t have thought you were appropriately equipped to volunteer.”
“That’s a jolly low blow. I’ve got just as good a soul as the next chap.” Cantrip pouted. Ragwort patted his shoulder absently, and sneezed again.
“Mr. Justice Welladay—” Julia began.
“Certainly not.”
“Henry?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ragwort, over a meow from Selena, “what on earth possesses you to imagine that Henry has a soul to begin with?”
“Fair enough,” Julia sighed.
“Julia,” I said, “how would you establish that Mrs. Leroy is not after all compelled to make her tax payment to the infernal realms?”
“Presumably,” said Julia after a moment’s thought, “by convincing the court that she is no longer a resident there. The statutory residence test, you know.”
“How long has Laurie been working at the Chambers?” I asked.
Ragwort and Cantrip looked at each other. “Quite a while now?” Ragwort said uncertainly.
“She was there in August,” Cantrip said firmly, “because I was going to ask her to a Bank Holiday do, only I never got around to it—”
“—which may have been a piece of great good fortune on your part. Before August? In March or February, for instance?”
They thought. Cantrip snapped his fingers, a vulgar Cantabrigian habit. “February! Remember the Blackstaff Trust trial? The one where Selena got Mrs. Justice Fear-me-son to see sense for once?”
“Mrs. Justice Ferguson was perfectly reasonable,” Ragwort corrected, “but she did call on Selena to provide a great number of documents on very short notice.”
“And Selena threw a wobbly because they’d all got to get typed, and given what Elaine was like—that was the temporary typist before Laurie, she was a bit daffy, Timothy called her the temporary un-typist—it would’ve been Christmas before they were ready. Laurie just took one look at them and said ‘Yes, Miss Jardine, by tomorrow morning? That’s no problem,’ and it wasn’t.”
“Excellent! So Laurie has been in full-time employment at your Chambers for at least seven months and counting, given that today is—of course—the last day of October.”
“That would in fact qualify her for split-year treatment,” Julia agreed. “If one argues that a soul is by definition non-splittable, and that the bulk of her past year has been spent outside the scope of Infernal Revenue…” She scooped Selena casually up in one arm and made for her desk, where Selena draped herself elegantly about Julia’s shoulders while Julia began to write frantically on a fresh sheet of paper. Since Mrs. Fanning was not in residence, it was to be hoped that the forces of infernality would be able to read Julia’s writing (or perhaps Mrs. Leroy would act as her own temporary typist).
Amid Ragwort’s occasional sneezes and Cantrip’s increasingly forceful mutters about supper, we waited for Julia’s petition to be complete. She eventually turned her head slightly, brushing her lips by chance along the edge of Selena’s ear, and inquired of the cat “Have I missed out anything?”
Selena flowed down onto the desk and dabbed lightly at the line Julia had just finished with a front paw.
“Oh! Of course! I can’t think how I…” Julia scribbled furiously, inserting a profligate number of carats, and tilted her head inquiringly. Selena purred.
“Well!” said Julia, tore the top sheet off her pad, and folded it into a paper airplane. She extracted a matchbox from her jacket pocket, tossed the paper airplane into the air, and lit a match.
The slightest knowledge of Julia should make it unnecessary to go into details of what happened next. Cantrip dived for the remaining paperwork on Julia’s desk and saved it from immolation by means of sprawling to the floor with it and knocking everything else from the desk’s surface across the room likewise; Selena’s whiskers frizzled into curls; Julia wailed and scooped her up in time to avoid a worse fate; and the paper airplane, as intended, spiralled through flame into ash and reached its intended destination.
Ragwort stooped thoughtfully to help Cantrip to his feet and clear a path through drifts of documentation, souvenir paperweights, somehow unbroken tea mugs, three Sellotape dispensers, hairpins, and a stray Chelsea bun toward the door. I paused to consider Julia and Selena, embracing with abandon in a cloud of Julia’s hair (Selena retained bandbox perfection in human form as she had in felinity, except for her slightly curled eyelashes), and thought it fitting to close the door behind the three of us and allow them some privacy.
We met some three days later (having all had pressing business in the interim) at the Corkscrew, to discuss the matter.
“Of course she wanted Julia’s soul to begin with,” said Selena, “I can’t imagine how you could have thought otherwise. I simply happened to be there at the time.”
“I do think it’s rotten of you not to have told us you’d got a trick like that. If you can just slip into a bit of fur any time you feel like it—”
“Oh, but I can’t. It was very fortunate that Laurie happened to appear in the early evening, and that Julia hadn’t drawn her curtains—indeed, that Julia has forgotten that her office possesses such things.” Selena’s melting look in Julia’s direction abjured any possible (or actual) insult. “I need the moonlight, you see.”
I repressed the urge to smite my forehead, having missed this point until now. “I don’t believe any of us have ever inquired so far about your parents’ motivations in your christening.”
“I’m sure they will become clear,” said Selena, “when I mention that my mother’s name is Cynthia and my grandmother’s Diana.”
“And are they both capable of transforming themselves into cats?”
“Of course not,” said Selena, and before I could so much as nod sagely, went on “My mother, in the presence of moonlight, becomes—if she so chooses—an Angora rabbit, and my grandmother—well, let us leave something to the imagination. I am the first cat in the family for several generations, apparently.”
“And you never told us!” said Julia indignantly.
“The occasion never arose,” Selena said simply, with such complacency that it was difficult not to see the features of the Persian cat in her own. “That is, until I realized that Laurie—or should we be calling her Mrs. Leroy, for consistency?”
“Since her real name is likely to be neither,” I said, “either will do.”
“That Laurie was about to avail herself of Julia’s soul.”
“I never noticed,” said Julia pathetically.
“The list of things Julia fails to notice on a regular basis,” Ragwort remarked, “would take even the most accomplished temporary typist several hours of overtime.”
“Indeed,” said Selena meaningfully, and then smiled to herself, as one upon whose thigh a hand has been placed under the table. “And so,” she resumed after a liquid pause, “I volunteered myself instead, and before the removal could be effected, made use of the moonlight to be sure that I was temporarily beyond reach.”
“Not that we all don’t adore Larwood and all,” said Cantrip, “but it’s a mystery to me, why all these good-looking girls, up to and including you, Selena—and you’re quite brainy as birds in our profession go—are so willing to throw over the world for her.”
Selena, whose hands were now similarly invisible under the table, gave her Persian-cat smile. Julia, beside her, resembled—to quote her past self—an ice cream over which hot chocolate sauce had just been drizzled, most delectably.