The Cat That Was Bigger Than You

by Fiona Snyckers

  “So, what will your next move be?”

  “I need to look more deeply into the backgrounds of my suspects. People become killers for a reason, and that reason usually lies in their past. Somewhere there is a red flag waiting to be found. It’s my job to find it.”

  “Do you have an idea of who it is?”

  Fay tickled Whisky under his chin. “I do, actually. But I’m not confident enough to share it yet. If I’m wrong, it’s a terrible accusation to make against someone. I’ll keep my speculations to myself until I’m sure. All I know is that one of the people I questioned gave me a strange answer to something I asked. It might mean nothing, or it might mean everything. I need evidence to back up my theory. And I need to be careful not to get tunnel vision in case I’m wrong. I’ll check the backgrounds of all the suspects.”

  The next morning, Fay was back in the kitchen after breakfast baking chocolate brownies for tea, while also trying to find out as much as she could about the patient who had brought a malpractice suit against Dr. Farlow all those years ago in Canada.

  The brownies were among the most popular of her baked goods. The recipe had been gifted to her by a family from South Carolina who had loved their stay at the Cat’s Paw and wanted to repay her. From that moment on, every recipe Fay had ever tried for chocolate brownies went out the window and this became the only version she relied on.

  The secret ingredient was chocolate – an insane amount of bitter and sweet chocolate melted together with real farm butter over a bain-marie and mixed with sugar, flour, and an equally insane number of eggs. Fay knew the recipe off by heart. Her hands measured and mixed on auto pilot while the software on her iPad tracked the identity of the client who had accused Dr. Farlow of malpractice.

  Her name was Sheila Macfarlane and it turned out that she too had made a fresh start in the United Kingdom. Instead of settling in England like Dr. Farlow, Sheila had followed her ancestral roots to Glasgow in Scotland.

  As the first batch of brownies went in the oven, Fay tracked her down via social media and sent her a Skype request, with a brief note attached explaining that she wanted to speak to her about Dr. Benjamin Farlow. Fifteen minutes later, the incoming Skype call chime began to sound on Fay’s iPad and a woman’s face appeared on the screen. She looked to be about sixty years old – very much a contemporary of Dr. Farlow himself.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Macfarlane,” said Fay. “Thank you for getting back to me. My name is Fay Penrose and I’m calling you from Bluebell Island off the coast of Cornwall. Dr. Ben Farlow is working here now as a locum and I wanted to speak to you about the lawsuit you brought against him years ago.”

  The reception was fuzzy, but Sheila Macfarlane’s voice came through loud and clear, even as the image of her face flickered and pixelated.

  “I knew it! I knew someone would contact me one day to ask about that dreadful man.”

  Fay picked up the iPad and carried it with her, angling it so that Sheila could only see her face and not the fact that she was baking multiple trays of brownies.

  “I’d love to hear more about it,” she said. “That is, if you’re comfortable telling me about what he did.”

  “Comfortable?” Sheila almost shrieked. “Comfortable? I’ve been waiting years for this. Back when I was younger - in my forties, I mean - my health wasn’t as good as it is now. I had backache and stomach pain and a skin condition, and all my hair was falling out.”

  “That sounds awful. Were you very stressed?”

  Sheila’s eyes hardened. “That’s exactly what he said. He kept asking if I was anxious or depressed. Like I was some kind of crazy person. I knew it wasn’t that. It was something real. There was something properly wrong with me.”

  Fay wanted to tell her that anxiety and depression were real and that there was nothing about a physical illness that made it more real than a psychological one. But none of that would help her get closer to the truth about Dr. Farlow.

  “Are you saying that he didn’t take you seriously?”

  “He took the psychological thing seriously but wouldn’t treat me for my physical symptoms. I wanted him to put me on strong painkillers for my stomachache, but he wanted to treat me for anxiety instead. He said that once the anxiety was under control the stomach pain would fade away by itself. Utter nonsense, of course.”

  “Did he not even do any tests on you to see if your pain had a physical origin?”

  “Actually, he did. He sent me for hundreds of tests. Blood tests, scopes, x-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, even a barium meal. Nothing came up positive. Or so he said.”

  “You think he was lying?”

  “Well, he must have been, mustn’t he? My symptoms carried on and on.”

  “You were probably tempted to start treating yourself. I know I would have been.”

  “Of course. I was taking anti-inflammatories because they were the only thing that helped with my headaches. He told me to stop taking them. He said they were causing my stomach pain. As if I would listen to that incompetent quack. Then I got a bleed in my stomach lining and ended up in hospital, which just proved what I had known all along – that there was something seriously wrong with me.”

  “What did the other doctors at the hospital say?”

  Sheila’s laugh was bitter. “They said my bleed had been caused by taking too many anti-inflammatories. They all took his side, of course. They closed ranks against me. What else would you expect?”

  Chapter 23

  As the brownies cooled, Fay dusted confectioner’s sugar over them to keep them dry.

  She looked at the face on the screen. Sheila Macfarlane was clearly upset as she talked about the events of twenty years ago, but apart from that she showed none of the signs of someone who had been living with chronic pain. She looked good for her sixty years. Her eyes were clear, and she appeared well rested. There was a good color in her face. She looked like someone who took care of herself.

  “So, when the other doctors took Ben Farlow’s side, was that when you decided to sue him?”

  “Yes, exactly. I could see I was going to get nowhere by going through the usual channels. The other doctors said that I had caused my own stomach problems by overdosing on over-the-counter medication, and that my back and joint pain were caused by drinking too much red wine and working out with heavy weights at home. I went through a number of lawyers before I found one who was willing to take my case.”

  “Whose idea was it to go to the media?”

  “That was my lawyer. He said that public perception was very important in cases like this. The courts would only take me seriously if there was a public outcry about my case. I went to the newspapers. I went on radio. I went on the local TV news. The best part was when other patients of Dr. Farlow called in and said that they had felt overlooked by him. One lady said he tried to refer her to a psychologist, as though she were crazy.”

  “It was an effective campaign,” said Fay. “It did a lot of damage to Dr. Farlow and his practice.”

  “It was nothing compared to the harm he had done to me. I was the one who was lying in hospital bleeding internally from my stomach lining.”

  “That must have been an awful time in your life. Do you mind if I ask how your health is these days? It’s just that you look extremely well, and younger than your years.”

  Sheila smiled for the first time in their conversation. “Thank you. It’s kind of you to say so. I’ve been living in Britain so long I’ve almost forgotten what a compliment sounds like. You’re American, aren’t you?”

  “Born and bred. I’ve lived here for less than a year. The islanders are lovely, though. Or at least they are when they accept you as one of their own. Compliments are not a rarity around here.”

  Sheila sighed. “It seems I’ll always be an outsider then. But you asked me about my health. It’s much better these days, thank you. When we decided to drop the lawsuit, I left Canada and came here for a fresh start. Ever since then, I’ve been much better. No proble
ms at all, really.”

  “And why did you decide to drop the malpractice suit?”

  “My lawyer said we couldn’t win. He explained that the courts would always be on the side of the doctors so that it was virtually impossible to get a favorable verdict.”

  “What would you say to someone who was thinking of going to Dr. Farlow for treatment today?”

  “I’d say they should find another doctor. I don’t know if you’ve met him, but he’s really odd, with all those tics and twitches of his. All that coughing and throat clearing and those strange noises he makes. That put me off from the beginning. Who was he to be telling me that I needed to see a therapist? He was the one who clearly needed therapy. It’s not normal to be the way he is.”

  “He has Tourette’s syndrome.”

  “Exactly. He’s sick. Who wants a sick doctor to be treating them? I would definitely say to someone that they should find another doctor. One who would give them medicine when they ask for it and admit them to hospital when they clearly need it.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” said Fay. “Well, thanks for your time, Mrs. Macfarlane. Your input has been very helpful.”

  When she had finished her baking for the day, Fay set off on foot for Sunset Acres.

  She hadn’t scratched Dr. Farlow off her list of suspects, but she was less inclined to think that his long-ago malpractice suit was an indication that he would one day turn murderous. Her talk with Sheila had convinced her that David was right. It had been nothing but a nuisance suit.

  Some patients reacted badly to being told that their problems were of psychological origin rather than physical. They took offense and believed that the doctor was calling them crazy. In their minds, only physical ailments were real. Psychological ailments were something shameful that needed to be hidden away. It was sad to see how much stigma still clung to mental illness.

  As hard as she had tried, Fay hadn’t been able to discover any inappropriate behavior on Dr. Farlow’s part in his treatment of Sheila. She had been prejudiced against him from the start for his Tourette’s syndrome and had refused to believe that a course of psychological treatment was the best answer to her problems. The fact that her physical symptoms had disappeared when she had left behind a life that was obviously making her unhappy didn’t seem to have occurred to her.

  The only question now was whether the experience of being wrongly accused of malpractice all those years ago had made Dr. Farlow so bitter as to turn him into a murderer. Fay wasn’t prepared to overlook that possibility.

  The road bent sharply to the left. There was a gap in the hedgerows here that made this one of Fay’s favorite views of the island. She normally paused here to take in the sweep of the coastline with its snug little harbor where fishing boats came and went in all weathers. There was also the small strip of sandy beach that attracted tourists like bees to honey. She loved the wildness of the Atlantic Ocean and the rugged patterns it carved into the cliffs wherever it touched.

  Today Fay was blind to the view. All she could see was another trail of overturned garbage where there had been none the day before.

  She couldn’t even get mad at Sergeant Jones for ignoring her message, because he hadn’t. He had left her a voice-note telling her that he and Constable Chegwin would be on garbage patrol all day. Any vandals caught overturning garbage cans would be dealt with swiftly.

  Somehow, they must have missed this stretch of road.

  Fay looked more closely at the garbage that lined the road.

  It wasn’t just a matter of overturning the cans. Every bag had been ripped open and gone through. Fay peered at the garbage bags and the way they had been torn apart, seemingly by a giant shredder.

  An unpleasant thought stirred in the back of her mind.

  Either someone had attacked these garbage bags with a knife, or they had been torn apart by large and powerful claws. The last time Fay had seen garbage bags that looked like this she had been hiking part of the Appalachian Trail with her parents as a teenager. They had spent the night in the small town of Monson in Maine. A black bear came into town overnight and tore into some garbage that a careless tourist had left on the street overnight. That bag had been shredded in the same way as this one.

  Bluebell Island was not bear country. However, it had until recently been lion country. Fay remembered that she had been meaning to phone Noah’s Ark Sanctuary in Norfolk to ask how Leo was settling into his new habitat. She hadn’t done so yet. The Sunset Acres murder investigation had been too absorbing.

  She also remembered Lady Chadwick’s reluctance when she had insisted that Leo must be surrendered to an appropriate sanctuary rather than kept on the island. But surely even Lady Chadwick could not be so reckless as to endanger other people’s lives by continuing to hold onto Leo after she had shown herself to be a highly incompetent lion keeper?

  Fay shook her head. It was impossible. Leo was safe and sound at Noah’s Ark. He had to be. This vandalism of the garbage cans was the work of teenagers. Sergeant Jones and Constable Chegwin would just have to be more vigilant. It was as simple as that.

  To be safe, Fay would phone Noah’s Ark the moment she got back to Penrose House. But in the meantime, she had an urgent appointment with Matron Sale.

  The matron was clearly expecting her. The receptionist ushered Fay into her office where a tea tray for two was waiting on her desk.

  “Welcome, Miss Penrose. I know you’re American, but I believe you have got into our habit of drinking tea at this time of the day.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Fay accepted a cup with a little milk. She had a feeling that this would turn out to be the high point of cordiality between them. She was about to start asking some awkward questions.

  “How is your investigation going, Miss Penrose? Are you any closer to finding answers for the Binnie family?”

  There was a laugh in her voice as she said it. It was as though she were indulging a child’s curiosity about adult matters. It wasn’t the first time Fay had noticed something patronizing in the Matron’s manner.

  “I don’t have answers for them yet, but I’m getting closer all the time. One thing that came up when I spoke to Argyle Holdings was that there has been money disappearing from this frail-care center and that they suspect you of being behind it.”

  Matron flinched as though Fay had struck her. This was followed by a long pause. Whatever she had been expecting Fay to say, this clearly wasn’t it.

  “Matron?”

  “They shouldn’t have told you that. They have no proof. Just because I’m the most senior staff member in this unit doesn’t mean I’m the one who was siphoning off the money. The same goes for the fact that I enjoy playing the bingo machines from time to time. But apparently, they don’t need proof. They just made up their minds without it.”

  “Do you feel as though they stopped trusting you?”

  “Yes, I do. They refused to approve more funding for the unit, even when we desperately needed it. They cut my duty nurses down from three to two. And now they wonder why patients have been dying.”

  “I heard they have now authorized a funding increase?” said Fay.

  Matron snorted. “Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.”

  “Why did you claim to have gone home on the night that Iona Busby died when I have a witness who heard you still in the unit after hours?”

  There was that flinch again.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Like I said, someone told me. You were overheard. What were you doing there?”

  Matron sighed. “I was trying to catch the person who has been embezzling money from us, okay? I knew I was under suspicion and the only way to clear my name was to catch the real thief. I suspected that it was happening at night. Someone was fiddling with our ledger books and computer records. So, I pretended to leave at five o’clock as usual, but doubled back a couple of hours later to watch who went in and out of my office. I don’t know who heard me. On
e of the nurses, perhaps?”

  Fay didn’t enlighten her. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “No. Nobody came in here for hours. After a while, I gave up and went home. I was long gone by the time Mrs. Busby died. Meredith Disick will tell you that she called me at home, and I answered immediately. I was shocked to hear that she had died. It was so unexpected. But I decided that it would only complicate matters if I admitted to having been here after hours.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “So, I kept quiet about it. I hoped no one had noticed me. And that’s all there was to it. I wish I had picked any other night to try snooping around but I didn’t.”

  Chapter 24

  Fay emerged from Sunset Acres to find that the garbage had been cleared away, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

  The scenic Cliff Road basked in the mild English sunshine. The hedgerows were full of autumn flowers. It was almost impossible to imagine a male African lion stalking this benign scene. It seemed like the stuff of fantasy.

  But Fay remembered the way the garbage bags had been ripped apart and decided to go straight home to call Noah’s Ark.

  The answering machine was on at the Norfolk sanctuary, so she left a message. She considered phoning Lady Chadwick directly, but knew that her chances of getting an honest answer about the fate of the lion were not good. She decided to use the time she had left before lunch to pursue her deep background search on her suspects.

  First up was Rowan Court. The incident with his mother had taken place two years previously in Liverpool. It had either not attracted much attention in the media, or it had been actively hushed up because she could find no mainstream reports about it. The only reference she could find was in a blog that appeared on a website campaigning for the rights of terminally ill people to choose assisted dying.