The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “Is that what he does? I thought it was the opposite. I thought Doc had always tried to persuade David to live his own life.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Why else would a man of David’s caliber come to a place like this? It must be his father’s influence.”

  “Perhaps he likes it here.”

  Laetitia found this amusing. “Impossible. This is a man who trained at Harvard and Oxford University. I appeal to you, Miss Penrose. You’ve lived in New York City. Don’t you agree that David is wasted here on this tiny dot in the middle of the Atlantic?”

  “I think it all depends on whether he’s happy or not and what he wants to be doing with his life.”

  Laetitia snorted. “If he imagines he is happy here, then he’s wrong. He is hiding his light under a bushel. Now, I have found an excellent post at a teaching hospital in Boston for him. The opportunities for research would be unparalleled. It is a really prestigious position that he could have at the drop of a hat. It would be his for the asking. And best of all, we’d be living in the same city again.”

  “That sounds perfect. What did he say when you told him about it?”

  “I haven’t laid it all out in detail yet. That’s why I want him to have dinner with me this evening.” Laetitia allowed herself a small smile. “He’s going to be so surprised.”

  They had reached the high street by now. Fay needed to turn right to go the florist, while the Royal Hotel lay in the opposite direction.

  “It was good to see you again, Laetitia,” said Fay. “Enjoy your dinner tonight.”

  The other woman gave a regal nod and walked on.

  Fay crossed the road to reach the florist. Just the sight of it gave her a lift. Even the name was cheerful – Bluebell Island’s Bluebells. It was especially appropriate right now because the bluebells were out in force this spring. Large parts of the rocky island were uncultivated, so bluebells grew wild in great swathes wherever there was an open patch of land.

  Laurie Tennith, the owner of the shop, went out in her pickup truck and gathered them by the bucket load. Right now, her shop was a sea of blue, with bluebells spilling out onto the sidewalk. They were interspersed with daffodils, oxeye daisies, English stonecrop, and buttercups.

  Laurie looked rather like a spring flower herself with her halo of bright red hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. She always had a smile on her face, as though working with flowers all day put her in a good mood. Fay knew her because she had an ongoing contract to supply the flowers for Penrose House. It was an arrangement that dated back to Fay’s grandmother’s time. Once a week, she would arrive in her truck to set up a large arrangement of flowers at reception, several small arrangements for the breakfast room and the residents’ lounge, and bedside posies for the guest rooms.

  The gardens of Penrose House bloomed all year round with beautiful flowers, but Fay’s grandmother had given up trying to persuade Pen to supply flowers for the house. He flatly refused. And if she went out with a pair of secateurs to cut some for herself, he acted as though it were his own fingers and toes she were cutting off. So now Bluebell Island’s bluebells supplied the flowers – an arrangement that suited everyone.

  “Morning, Fay.” Laurie was as cheerful as ever. “There wasn’t a problem with the order this week, was there?”

  “It was perfect as always, thanks Laurie. I wanted to ask you about something else.”

  The florist had plastic gloves on and was snipping away at a bunch of hothouse roses. “What’s up?”

  “Do you remember the antiques fair on Saturday?”

  “Of course.”

  “You supplied the flowers for some of the stalls, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Can you remember a woman by the name of Marigold Bessinger coming in on Friday morning to order flowers from you? She and her husband ran a stall under the RARE banner.”

  “Of course. I know exactly who you mean. I’ve done the flowers for them before. They usually ask for a medieval theme. All the flowers in the arrangements must have been mentioned in medieval texts, paintings, or tapestries – like blue iris, hunting pinks, forget-me-nots, cowslips, and wallflowers.”

  “That’s such a cute idea.”

  “It’s a lot of fun putting it all together and coming up with the genuinely medieval arrangement.”

  “Can you remember if Marigold came to see you at about ten o’clock on Friday morning?”

  “Yes, she wanted to place a…” Laurie broke off.

  “What is it?”

  “Wait a minute. You said Friday morning – not Thursday?”

  “Yes, Friday morning. That’s when she said she was here.”

  “And the fair was on Saturday morning?” Laurie thought for a moment, trying to cast her mind back. “No, that’s not right. I remember it was two days before the fair that she came to see me. I told her that I might have trouble sourcing cowslips at such late notice and we talked about how I could substitute primroses instead. It was definitely two days before the fair. If she told you she was here on Friday, she must have been mistaken.”

  “She probably got the day wrong.”

  “In fact, I did see her on Friday morning and that’s probably why she got confused. She walked straight past my shop while I was outside setting out the sidewalk arrangements. I remember recognizing her and wondering if she was going to be happy with the arrangement I was creating. She turned off very close by here, which is probably why she thought she came here on Friday.”

  “Did you see where she was going?”

  “Not exactly, but it was close by. Maybe the library? That’s just a couple of doors down from me. She was carrying a pile of books, which is what made me think of it. She crossed diagonally in front of my shop and then disappeared.”

  “That’s very helpful, Laurie, thanks.”

  “You can always ask her where she was going. I’m sure she’ll remember.”

  “I might do that, thanks.”

  Fay stepped out of the florist and turned left. It was time to see what else was on this block besides the library.

  Chapter 20

  The library was hosting its weekly story-time event.

  Fay could see Mrs. Tribble sitting in front of a semicircle of preschoolers reading aloud to them from a series of colorful picture books. Their parents stood to one side near the tea table chatting in low voices. It was clearly not a good time for Fay to barge in and start asking questions.

  She circled the library, examining it from all angles. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. It was a free-standing building surrounded by a small patch of yard that was kept weeded and neat by the Bluebell Village Council. The library was one story high, but had a basement, which was where the archives were kept and where Paul Leblanc had his work station. Fay took note of the fire exit that led down to the basement and confirmed her impression that it couldn’t be opened from the outside. The killer might have got out that way, but he or she must have come in at the front door like everyone else.

  On one side of the library was Mrs. Tribble’s house. It was a tiny, double-story cottage on a small patch of land that Mrs. Tribble had cultivated into a garden.

  On the other side of the library stood the Bluebell Pronto-Print where you would go to have documents photocopied and photographs printed. It also sold photograph albums and picture frames. It was a deeply ordinary place. If Marigold had gone in there, it must have been for innocent reasons. Anything further removed from the Middle Ages was hard to imagine. On the other side of the print shop was the florist.

  Where could Marigold have been going? Why had she been carrying a stack of books? Had she walked into the library, picked up a candlestick, and hit Desmond Pinkerton over the head? Would she have put her books down before or after?

  Fay shook her head. None of it was coming into focus. A narrow service road ran along the side of Mrs. Tribble’s house. Could Marigold have taken that route? Fay set off along it, looking fro
m left to right, trying to imagine what Marigold had been doing.

  Her foot caught on something and she stumbled.

  She stopped and looked back. The path was muddy from the recent rains, making it difficult to see what she had tripped over. She scuffed her foot against the ground, feeling for the obstruction. It had felt large and solid against her shoe.

  Suddenly she saw it – the corner of a piece of wood set into the ground. She brushed more sand aside with her foot and saw that it was much larger than she first thought. This was a sizable piece of wood, at least ten foot by five foot. The edge of it nudged onto the pathway but the rest extended into the grounds of the library. Then Fay saw the iron ring attached to the far end of the wooden rectangle and knew what she was looking at. It was a root cellar.

  Root cellars were a common sight on Bluebell Island. They were used in the old days to store root vegetables during the winter. Turnips, carrots, swedes, and parsnips were the only vegetables that would grow during the long winter months and were an important source of nutrition at a time when food was scarce, and the ground was as hard as iron.

  Two things were noteworthy about this cellar. It had been recently opened and there was a brand-new shiny padlock on the iron ring.

  Fay couldn’t imagine who would want to lock an old root cellar. Most of them were so overgrown as to be impossible to open. The ground around this one, on the other hand, had been recently disturbed. Some root cellars were still used by local farmers to store equipment or supplies. None of them were locked. This was Bluebell Island. Most people didn’t bother to lock their front doors, never mind their root cellars. Fay took a photograph of the trap-door, so she could remember where it was. Another rain would wash more mud over it, making it difficult to find.

  It might mean nothing, she told herself.

  Someone could be storing their power tools down there and have put the padlock on to keep them safe. But Fay had every intention of coming back to explore further. As she saw it, she had two options. She could alert Sergeant Jones to the existence of the cellar and let him do whatever he liked with that information, or she could come back later with a set of lock-picking tools to see what she could find. There was no doubt which was the more sensible option, but she already knew which one she was going to choose.

  If the cellar had been on private property, she wouldn’t have dreamt of picking the lock. But the cellar was on public land. As a taxpayer, she had as much right to snoop as anybody. The Bluebell Village Council might not agree with her on that but that was her story and she was sticking to it.

  Fay walked back to the high street to consider her next move. She wanted to hear more about the legend of the cat that got your tongue, but Doc Dyer would only be free again after five o’clock when he had finished consulting for the day.

  Her lock-picking activities should probably wait until after dark. She didn’t want Mrs. Tribble peering out her kitchen window and wondering what she was up to.

  She should go back for lunch now.

  The fact that her phone had been silent the whole morning meant that the police weren’t looking for her with a view to placing her under arrest. She took this as a good sign. Hopefully she was no longer their number-one suspect in the break-in. Sooner or later they would realize there was no evidence against her. She hoped it would be sooner.

  Fay sat in the playpen with kittens climbing all over her and picked at the knot of a piece of ribbon holding together a felt pouch.

  “What’s that?” asked Morwen who had come in to give the kittens their midday milk.

  “A set of lock-picks I once confiscated from a cat burglar. I was off-duty at the time and it was my apartment he was trying to break into, so I felt no guilt about not handing them over to my captain.”

  “And now… you’re going to teach the kittens to pick locks?” Morwen watched as Fay trailed one of the long flanges along the ground for Tigger to chase.

  “That’s an idea, but I think I’ll use them myself. I discovered a rather intriguing root cellar near the library.”

  “A root cellar? What’s interesting about that? Most of them are empty these days, unless badgers have got into them.”

  “This one was recently opened, and someone put a shiny new padlock on it.”

  “Okay, I’ll admit that’s unusual. Do you think it’s related to the Pinkerton case?”

  “Let’s just say I won’t be able to rest until I know what’s in there. If it’s nothing, I’ll close it up again and no one will be the wiser.”

  Morwen shook her head. “I’m just wondering if there’s enough money in the petty cash to bail you out when you get caught. If Sergeant Jones or Constable Chegwin comes along while you’re picking that lock, you’ll spend the night in a cell.”

  Fay waved this away. “It will be fine. I’ll wait until its dark. Besides, the cellar is on public land. I have as much right to go in there as anyone else.”

  The expression on Morwen’s face showed that she was not convinced of this either.

  “I’ll keep my phone next to me while I’m watching Poldark tonight, so I can rush over with the bail money when you get arrested.”

  After lunch, Fay put in a few hours in her office catching up on paperwork, paying bills, ordering supplies, and balancing the books. When she had taken over the Cat’s Paw, her biggest fear had been that she would run it into the ground through lack of financial knowledge. She had taken a correspondence course in small business administration and discovered an unexpected talent in herself for financial management.

  In its fourth month of existence, the Cat’s Paw had broken even for the first time. Now, a few months later, it was running at a modest profit. She expected this to improve as the warmer months approached.

  Fay updated her blog with a post about a dolphin pod that had been spotted returning to the coast of Bluebell Island in time for spring. The local charter boat companies would start offering dolphin watching tours soon and those were always a hit with the tourists. As the weather warmed up even more, whales would join the dolphins, especially family groups and mothers with single calves.

  “If that doesn’t net me a couple of bookings, I don’t know what will,” Fay told the cats on her desk as she pressed ‘post’. Today, her office companions were Smudge and Olive. Fay had noticed that they were starting to take an interest in the world beyond the playpen these days. As the kittens became more independent, the foster moms took short breaks from their charges.

  Fay spent time giving them each some love and attention. They had done an excellent job with the kittens. If there such a thing as foster mommy medals, they deserved them. Instead, they would get lots of strokes and love. The moment she stood up from her desk, they hopped back into the playpen and settled next to the sleeping pile of kittens.

  Fay went downstairs to help Morwen set out tea in the lounge for the residents. She spent nearly an hour chatting to the guests and making sure that were happy with the service they had received. She had found that the guests she took the time to get to know personally were more likely to recommend the Cat’s Paw to their friends and to rebook a stay for another time.

  After tea, she was free to pursue her other interests, namely finding out who had killed Desmond Pinkerton.

  It was five o’clock at last. Doc Dyer would be finishing off his consultations. She would probably catch him taking the air outside the surgery with his corncob pipe as a companion.

  Sure enough, his tall, tweed-jacketed figure was out on the sidewalk as he chatted to passers-by. He often got asked for directions at this time of day since he was so obviously a local.

  “Ah, there you are.” He waved his pipe at Fay. “I was hoping you’d come along soon. Are you ready to hear about the cat that got your tongue?”

  “Ready and eager,” said Fay.

  “Then walk with me. I like to stroll up and down the hill for exercise.”

  Fay fell into step beside him, trying to stay upwind of his pipe smoke.

&
nbsp; “You’re familiar with the saying ‘cat got your tongue’. Right?”

  “Right. People say it to someone who is being silent or unresponsive.”

  “Correct. No one knows the exact origin. Some say it refers to a Middle Eastern or ancient Egyptian custom of cutting out a traitor’s tongue and feeding it to the king’s cats. Others say it refers to the old naval punishment of being whipped with a cat-o’-nine tails. That experience was so painful as to rob the victim of the ability to speak for a while.”

  “That’s pretty gruesome.”

  “And also, probably not true. That explanation seems to have been discredited.”

  “I thought the saying was based on an old superstition.”

  Doc Dyer gave her a paternal smile. “Yes, well done. There are those who say that it referred to a medieval superstition about witches and how their cats would take away your ability to speak. And finally, there are theorists who say that it is nothing more than a children’s saying – that it is frivolous and without meaning.”

  “Is there a reference to it in one of Eleanor’s manuscripts?”

  “Not in so many words, but legend has it that one of the signs of the queen is an illustration of a cat-like creature standing on its hind legs and grasping the tongue of a man.”

  “Is the tongue still attached to the man?” Fay struggled to picture this.

  “Yes. The man is standing there with his mouth open while the cat holds his tongue. Nobody knows if it was a random medieval illustration or if it is related to the saying ‘cat got your tongue’. The cat is a mythical, unreal creature that bears little resemblance to an actual cat.”

  “A bit like the other signs of the queen,” suggested Fay. “The unicorns, gryphons, and phoenixes and so forth?”

  “Correct?”

  “Was the cat also intended to be a clue to the whereabouts of the dowry?”