The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  It had been a popular location for luxury houses in the nineteen-sixties because it commanded the best views on the island. Then there had been several incidents of cracks and slippages on the crescent, and an engineer’s report had declared most of the houses to be unsafe. At least three stood empty and abandoned now, waiting for new owners with sufficiently deep pockets to restore them to their former glory.

  As she reached Ridge Crescent, Fay looked up at the crumbling old houses that gravity was doing its best to pull into the sea below. Was that a glow of light she saw on the top floor of the middle house? It could have been nothing more than a reflection of moonlight.

  Earlier that evening, Fay had phoned Bella Reade, the woman who ran an accommodation agency in the village. She confirmed that no one had approached her in the last four days to supply accommodation for two men. Fay asked where they would be likely to go if they wanted to stay hidden, but also had a car with them.

  That was when Bella had told her about reports of activity up on Ridge Crescent in one of the old condemned houses. No one had thought much of it because local teenagers were known to sneak in there occasionally to get up to mischief. Or at least they had been until one of them had suffered a broken ankle falling down an unstable staircase.

  Bella told Fay she had reported the activity to the police, but nothing had been done about it.

  That was all Fay needed to know.

  After dinner, she had given the kittens their eight o’clock feed and another one at ten-thirty. She saw that Morwen’s light was still on, so she had knocked quietly and handed her innkeeper the box of kittens, with Smudge and Olive hot on her heels. Then she had gone back to her room to change into dark clothing and to puzzle over whether to take her weapon with her or not.

  It was a Smith & Wesson 5906, the same model she had carried during her years with the NYPD. Getting a license to carry it on Bluebell Island had been a bureaucratic nightmare. Now that she had the license, it was valid for five years, and she didn’t want to do anything to endanger that.

  She decided to take it anyway. The license allowed her to use the gun for personal protection and this was a situation in which she would need all the personal protection she could get.

  Fay slung her hip holster over her clothes. Her license didn’t allow her to carry the gun concealed.

  As she looked up at the house on Ridge Crescent and wondered if the gleam of light she had seen was a reflection or not, Fay was pleased to have the reassuring weight of her gun against her hip. Without it, this would have been a reconnaissance mission only. With it, she could make a citizen’s arrest and have the two men in custody at the police station before dawn.

  The only thing that could affect her chance of making a successful arrest would be if the men were armed themselves, or if there were more than two of them. Nothing in her investigation had led her to suspect the presence of a third person, but she would stay alert to the possibility.

  A shadow passed across the window Fay had been watching. This time it was unmistakable. She was at the right place.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. The fact that these people were up and moving around meant that something was afoot. Fay crept closer to the entrance.

  The front door crashed open, startling her severely.

  She barely had time to flatten herself against the hedge when two men burst out of the house talking loudly. They were speaking a language she didn’t understand. If it had been French, German, or Spanish she might have been able to catch the odd word, but this was totally foreign to her ear. As they stood in the wash of light coming from the front door, she recognized them as the men who had accompanied Mr. Olesk from Tallinn.

  One of them strode to the corner of the house and gestured to the car that was parked there. The other man shook his head and spoke vehemently. There was an angry exchange of words. They seemed to be debating whether to take the car or not.

  Then they headed down Ridge Crescent on foot.

  Fay waited until they were at least a hundred feet ahead of her before slipping out of her hiding place to follow them. She could only be grateful that they had decided not to drive because then she would have had no chance of pursuing them.

  Down Ridge Road they went and into the high street. They weren’t exactly tiptoeing, but they were talking in whispers and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

  The only other sounds were the sighing and rumbling of the sea and the occasional hoot of an owl that made all three of them jump.

  As the men turned up Portwen Road where the doctors’ surgery was located, a suspicion began to form in Fay’s mind. This grew stronger as the road took them out of the village and up towards Penrose House.

  It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep her presence a secret. The twists and turns of the snowy road kept her concealed, but when it straightened out there was nowhere to hide. If one of them decided to turn around, he would see her.

  Fay’s suspicions were confirmed as the men turned up the driveway of Penrose House. She was convinced they were there to look for whatever it was that Martin Caldwell had taken on the shipwreck hike. But why had they waited four days before coming in search of the missing item?

  Perhaps this wasn’t their first attempt. Fay remembered that she had been awake and feeding the kittens a couple of nights earlier when she had heard a stealthy creak on the stairs. That was the problem with running a guesthouse. There were always people wandering around at night.

  The confidence with which the men skirted the main entrance to the house and approached the side door told her that they had been here before. The shorter of the two rummaged in his pocket for a key. He fitted it into the lock and opened the door.

  For six months, Fay had been handing over sets of house keys to her guests. These opened the side door to Penrose House, as well as the guest’s individual suite. They were supposed to give them back at the end of their stay, and so far had always done so. But it would be child’s play for one of these men to have made copies while a guest was distracted.

  She could arrest them now, she realized. They had broken into her house and she had every right to apprehend them. But the house was full of guests, including several children. The thought of a possible shoot-out starting up indoors made her heart sink. She would keep an eye on them and wait until they came out again. Then she would arrest them when they were safely out of doors.

  She still couldn’t be sure whether they were armed or not, but she suspected that the taller man might be carrying. There was a bulge in his right coat pocket that looked too heavy to be a wallet. Fay crept along the snowy path to the side door to see what they were doing.

  Walking quietly, the men made their way behind the reception desk to the room where luggage was stored. Fay heard them rummaging around. She couldn’t risk getting close enough to see what they were doing so she stayed outside.

  Minutes later, they emerged from the room carrying the briefcase and the wheeled cabin bag that had belonged to Martin Caldwell. Fay pressed herself against the wall, worried that she had been spotted. She heard the men conferring in low voices, still in that incomprehensible language. Their footsteps approached the side door and Fay squeezed herself into an alcove next to a plant pot.

  The shorter man stepped outside with the briefcase in his hand. Fay shrank deeper into the alcove. Where was his companion? Was he still in the house?

  “Don’t move.”

  Fay’s hands rose automatically. Turning, she saw the taller man holding a gun on her. Everything about his stance and grip convinced her that he was experienced with firearms. She realized what must have happened. The clouds had parted while they were in the luggage room, and they had spotted her shadow lying across the doorway when they came out of it. The taller one had gone out by the front door and circled around the house to surprise her.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” said Fay. “This is my house.”

  The man’s footsteps had been muffled on t
he snowy pathway, but now he surged forward, keeping the gun trained on her.

  “Oh, you don’t want any trouble, little girl? Then what are you doing with that gun at your side? What do you think…?”

  His foot caught on something in the snow and he fell heavily forward. As he put out his hands to break his fall, his gun went flying.

  Ivan the Siberian raised his shaggy head from the snow and blinked sleepily. He seemed to be asking why people were always tripping over him.

  Moving fast, Fay drew her weapon and kicked the man’s gun neatly out of reach. She stepped around the tall man so that she could cover him and his companion at the same time.

  “I’m a former police officer and a crack shot,” she said. “If you move, I will put a bullet through you. Consider yourselves under arrest.”

  Epilogue

  Dr. Dyer rolled up the unused bandage and secured it with a metal clip. He packed it back into his medical bag along with a tube of disinfectant and a spare sling.

  “How did that man break his wrist?” he asked.

  “He tripped over Ivan and put out a hand to catch himself on the stones.”

  “Who is Ivan? Your dog?”

  “Ivan is my cat. He likes to sleep outside in the snow. Then he gets covered in snow and becomes invisible. I’m always tripping over him myself.”

  At that moment Ivan walked into the lobby. He lifted his head and mewed. It was as though he were asking what all the fuss was about.

  “Is he a Norwegian Forest Cat?”

  “No, he’s a Siberian. That’s an even tougher breed, if you can believe it.”

  Fay held out her hand to Ivan, but he walked straight past her and went to rub his head against David’s leg instead. David zipped up his medical bag and sat down. He looked at Ivan and tapped his fingers against his knee.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Fay. “He’s not really a lap cat. He will only sit on my lap.”

  As though to prove her wrong, Ivan jumped onto David’s lap and settled on his knee, purring loudly.

  “Will you look at that. Cats seem to like you, at any rate.”

  There was a ghost of a smile on Dr. Dyer’s face. “You mean as opposed to humans?”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “You didn’t have to. And for your information, Miss Penrose, the humans of Bluebell Island like me too. They think I look like a young George Clooney. It’s only you who finds me abrasive and overbearing.”

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  Dr. Dyer sipped the mug of coffee she had made him. His face turned serious.

  “What happened here tonight?”

  “Those men broke in here after midnight. They had a key to the side door – the one that the guests use. It was obviously not the first time they had been here in the middle of the night. They had probably already searched Martin Caldwell’s old room. I’ve been keeping it vacant since the murder. This time, they went straight to the luggage room to fetch his briefcase and cabin bag.”

  “You think they were looking for whatever it was that Caldwell took?”

  “That’s my guess. They won’t find it in his luggage. The police have already searched it and so have Morwen and I.”

  “Where were you while all this was happening? It sounds almost as though you were watching them.”

  Fay had hoped to skim over this part of her involvement, but she was a truthful person.

  “I found out where they were staying and went to check it out.” David opened his mouth to protest, so she went on quickly. “It wasn’t reckless because I have a lot of experience and I was armed. They were staying in one of those abandoned houses on Ridge Crescent. No sooner had I got there than they came out and walked all the way here. Unfortunately, they spotted my shadow when they came out of the luggage room and managed to get the drop on me. It would have been a sticky situation if not for my knight in shining fur over here.”

  David stroked Ivan’s head.

  Before he could speak, Sergeant Jones came into the lobby.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Doctor. We have the suspects handcuffed in the police van. We’ll take them to the police station to spend the night. Fay love, do you mind coming to the station tomorrow to fill in some forms? We have your basic statement, but we need more detailed information.”

  “No problem. I’ll be there at ten when the breakfast rush has subsided.”

  “Perfect. I’ll tell my mum to expect you. Goodnight all.” He saluted and turned on his heel to leave.

  “They won’t misplace the suspects, will they?” asked Fay as they heard the police van start its engine.

  “Let’s hope not. They usually manage to hang on to criminals once they have taken them into custody. It’s catching them in the first place that seems to be the problem.”

  Fay’s mind hopped from one worry to the next.

  “What do you think is going to happen to Lady Chadwick?”

  “I’ve actually been asked by the local magistrate to assess her. He wants my professional opinion on how much responsibility she had for what happened.”

  Fay glanced at David. His expression was as forbidding as ever. He looked like a man who would have no mercy - no tolerance for weakness. But something seemed to tell her that she didn’t have to worry too much about how he would treat Lady Chadwick.

  “Have you decided what your report will say?”

  “Well, she’s certainly not senile, as some people seem to think. She’s just very eccentric and finds the modern world confusing. She has an unfortunate tendency to believe everything she reads on the internet, but there are plenty of people like that. We need to confiscate all the concoctions she has been using to dose other people’s food and convince her to stop doing that. But she was just an unwitting pawn in all this. That’s what I believe and that’s what I’ll tell the magistrate.”

  He smothered a yawn. It was nearly three in the morning.

  “I’ve kept you talking too long,” said Fay. “We both have a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “Weekends are fairly quiet for me, but not for you. I just wish I knew what it was that Martin Caldwell took. It’s frustrating not to know.”

  “Actually, I have a theory about that,” said Fay. “Would you like to come on a treasure hunt with me, Dr. Dyer?”

  He stood up at once, depositing Ivan gently onto the floor. “Lead the way, Miss Penrose.”

  They went downstairs to the kitchen. It was still cozy from the residual warmth from the oven.

  “Martin Caldwell wouldn’t have come down here, would he?” asked David.

  “No, he wouldn’t, which is why his killers wouldn’t have thought to look in here.”

  Fay opened an airing closet that was usually used to dry tea towels and wash cloths. One of the hinges of the door was faulty so it stood permanently ajar. This meant that a determined cat could open it quite easily.

  “I have a magpie for a cat,” she explained. “He’s black and white so he even looks like a magpie. He can’t resist anything shiny. I don’t understand how he can even tell that an object is shiny, but somehow he can. Aren’t cats supposed to see in black and white?”

  “It’s not as simple as that. They don’t see color like we do but they don’t see in black and white either.”

  “Well, Whisky is all about the bling. He likes to sneak into guests’ rooms and steal shiny toys and trinkets. He has hiding places all over the house, but this is one of his favorites.”

  David just shook his head. This all sounded very unlikely to him.

  Fay knelt on the floor and stuck her arm into the bottom of the closet. She brought out some pieces of tinfoil and a pair of silver nail scissors. Then her hand closed over something circular and she brought out a gold bangle.

  “Hey, that’s mine,” she said. “I wondered where it had got to.”

  Without much hope, she reached into the closet again.

  This time her hand closed over a smooth, round object. Her heart began to beat
a little faster. She sat up with the object resting in the palm of her hand. It was about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. It was very green and glowed with an inner luminescence. Just looking at it took your breath away.

  David’s eyes widened. “Is that… an emerald?”

  “I think it is.”

  “It must be worth a king’s ransom.”

  The emerald winked and shone under the electric lamps, glowing with a sub-aqueous light, as though it were lit from within by the depths of the seabed where it had lain undisturbed for three hundred years.

  THE CAT THAT GOT YOUR TONGUE

  A note on the history

  Eleanor of Castile is a real historical figure. She was the Queen Consort of Edward the First of England. Everything about her in this novel is true, except for her secret dowry. Edward and Eleanor fell in love at first sight and were married for thirty-six years. After her death, the king mourned her until the end of his days and ordered the twelve Eleanor Crosses to be constructed in her memory.

  Eleanor was highly educated and a great patron of the arts. She supported the art of tapestry-making and created her famed Scriptorum, where scribes sat for years and transcribed stories in order to make them more accessible to the public.

  Chapter 1

  “Aha!”

  Fay Penrose clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized she had said this far too loudly for her surroundings. This was a library, after all.

  She took the book she had spotted off the shelf and turned it over to admire the cover. The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie. She had first read it as a child and had been looking for a chance to revisit it ever since. Reading the blurb on the back cover, she found that she still remembered who the murderer was, but not why they had done it. But that wasn’t the point. The point was watching Miss Marple piecing together the clues and coming to the right conclusion.

  Fay looked around for somewhere to sit. She had a little time before she was due back at the Cat’s Paw - the bed and breakfast she had recently inherited from her grandmother. The village library was small but well supplied with squashy, inviting-looking armchairs. She noticed a blue wingback chair facing the window and decided that it would do nicely. It was a dull and rainy Friday. What could be cozier than curling up in an armchair with a good book while the sea heaved outside, and the rain hurled itself against the window?