The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “He’s mistaken. I’ve never been to her house.”

  “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. For a man to date an older woman should be as routine as for a woman to date an older man.”

  “I know that. But in this case, it just isn’t true. I met Mrs. Saville once and we had no contact after that.”

  The color faded from his face, leaving it blotchy.

  Fay forced herself to smile. As uncomfortable as he had made her over the last few months, she wasn’t enjoying making him feel the same way. She decided to take pity on him.

  “I guess it’s a case of mistaken identity. Mrs. Saville’s daughter probably knows the name of the man her mother was seeing. That will clear it up.”

  “I imagine she won’t be staying on the island much longer?”

  “I really couldn’t say. Her booking is open-ended. She could leave tomorrow or still be here next week. It all depends on what kind of state Mrs. Saville’s affairs were in.”

  “She struck me as a meticulous woman. I’m sure Candice will find that her finances are in good order. The lawyer will too.”

  Fay picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll bring the kittens in a few weeks then. I’ll be sad to see them go, but they deserve happy, loving homes of their own.”

  “Definitely.” He slid open the door and stood back to let Fay through.

  The waiting room was now occupied by a small boy with a budgie in a cage, a man with a corgi on a leash, and a woman with an annoyed-looking cat in a cage on her lap.

  “No charge for this consultation,” Martin told his receptionist. “Miss Penrose was just asking my advice for a future consultation. Goodbye then, Fay.”

  He was about to turn away and usher in the man with the corgi when Fay called him back.

  “Oh, Martin?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you know that Mrs. Saville’s daughter is called Candice?”

  He froze for a second but recovered quickly. “I… you must have mentioned it. Yes, I think you mentioned it when you said she was staying at the Cat’s Paw.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I did.”

  But that was the thing, Fay thought as she stepped out onto the rain-swept street. She hadn’t mentioned it at all.

  Chapter 15

  Fay arrived home to find her house in chaos.

  Someone was having an epic fight in the residents’ lounge. Fay could hear raised and angry voices. There was one woman who sounded particularly enraged.

  Guests peeked out of their rooms to locate the source of the noise and Morwen stood at reception, wringing her hands and looking helpless.

  “What’s going on?” asked Fay. “Who’s making that noise?”

  “It’s Mrs. Saville-Wareham and her lawyers. They asked if they could use the residents’ lounge for a meeting. Of course, I said yes. Tea was over, and the lounge was empty. Next thing I know, they all start yelling at each other. It’s upsetting the guests. I don’t know what to do about it. This is awful.”

  A resounding crash emanated from the residents’ lounge.

  “Now they’ve started breaking things! What are we going to do?”

  This was the part of running a B&B that Morwen didn’t enjoy. She was excellent at charming the guests and smoothing their ruffled feathers, but she found it almost impossible to get stern with them. Sometimes the guests got out of hand. Sometimes they let their kids run wild through the house or came in drunk at night and woke everyone up. These incidents were rare, but when they happened, Morwen always called on Fay to deal with it.

  It wasn’t Fay’s favorite part of the job either, but she could manage it. Once you had worked crowd control at Times Square on New Year’s Eve, you could tell a bunch of rowdy guests to calm down.

  “I’ll sort it out, don’t worry.”

  “Would you? Oh, thank you! It’s just that she lost her mother so recently - I don’t feel right about going in there and telling her to keep it down. She must be terribly upset.”

  “She didn’t look particularly upset. I know everyone processes grief differently, but she did not seem heartbroken about the departure of her mother.”

  “Good luck,” called Morwen as Fay headed to the lounge.

  The shouting got louder as Fay approached. She could make out what they were saying now.

  “…exploitation of an old woman…”

  “Your mother wasn’t old, Mrs. Saville-Wareham.” The other voice was male and sounded calmer, although he was having to shout to make himself heard.

  “Old and senile! Senile, I tell you. Unfit to run her own affairs…”

  Fay knocked once and walked into the lounge.

  Candice Saville-Wareham was on her feet, screaming at a man and a woman who were sitting on a couch. From the briefcases they had next to them and the pile of papers on the coffee table, Fay gathered that these were the lawyers.

  “What do you want?” yelled Candice, turning to Fay.

  “I want you to keep the noise level down, please. There are other guests here at the Cat’s Paw and you’re disturbing them. I realize this is an emotional time for you, but I have to think about my guests.”

  “How do you expect me to keep my voice down when this man is telling me I’ve been robbed? How am I supposed to…?”

  Fay held up a hand. “Like I said, I know this is an emotional time for you. If you can’t moderate your tone, it might be more appropriate for you to move this meeting to your lawyer’s office.”

  The woman behind the coffee table gave an eager nod. “That’s an excellent idea. Mrs. Saville-Wareham, I’m sure we could make you comfortable at our offices. We could explain the whole situation to you without disturbing this lady’s guests.”

  “Thank you for understanding,” said Fay, turning back to the door. “I’ll leave you in peace now.”

  “Wait!” Candice’s voice stopped Fay like a bullet. “I need you to hear this. I need a reasonable human being to hear this just to assure me that I’m not going crazy.”

  “It’s really none of my business.”

  “You knew my mother. She was killed right here on your property. That makes it your business.”

  Fay turned back. The truth was, she had never been very good at minding her own business anyway.

  “I’m Fay Penrose, by the way.”

  “Mia Blackburn.” The woman shook hands. “And this is my assistant, James Poe. We are solicitors. Mrs. Saville hired our firm to be her executors.”

  “Solicitors? That’s like attorneys, right?”

  “Exactly. We were just reading Mrs. Saville’s last will and testament to her daughter. We wanted to have a meeting of all interested parties, but Mrs. Saville-Wareham insisted on first meeting with us here alone.”

  “Of course, I did. I am my mother’s only living relative. Apart from my children.”

  “That’s another point we were about to raise,” said James. “Your mother has left legacies to your children too.”

  He smiled, as though this was news that was sure to please Candice.

  “What?” She shrieked so loudly that Fay winced. “What kind of woman disinherits her own daughter in favor of the grandchildren she couldn’t even be bothered to visit?”

  Neither lawyer had an answer for her.

  “How much did she leave them?” she demanded. “How much?”

  Mia consulted her notes. “Five hundred thousand pounds each.”

  “Five hundred thousand pounds? Are you telling me she left them a million pounds of my father’s money? She had no right! That money was supposed to come to me. It was my mine. It should have been mine from the beginning. My mother was supposed to hold it in trust for me. She was supposed to live off the interest and keep the capital intact to be handed down to me.”

  Mia cleared her throat. “Actually, Mrs. Saville-Wareham, there was no such condition in your father’s will. He left the money to your mother free and clear to do with as she wished. She could have spent every penny if
she so chose. Instead, she took very good care of it.”

  “I’m not talking about the legal position, but the moral one. That money was morally mine. I was his daughter. He should have given my mother just enough to live on and left the rest to me. If he had only done that, we wouldn’t be having this problem now.” She swung around to glare at Fay. “You agree with me, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I’m agreeing with. When I came in here, you were upset about something that had nothing to do with your children. You asked me to stay and listen to what that was.”

  Candice paced the room, her angry energy crackling around her.

  “That’s even more ridiculous. You won’t believe me when I tell you. You!” She waved at Mia. “Miss Blackberry, or whatever your name is. Read out that part in the will.”

  “The part about the housekeeper, or the other part?”

  “Both. They’re equally ridiculous.”

  “Paragraph 3.2.1,” read Mia. “To my housekeeper, Bertha Maidstone, I leave the sum of a hundred thousand pounds in grateful acknowledgement for the faithful service she has rendered me since I moved to Bluebell Island. I hope that this money will give her some independence and perhaps go some way towards repaying the bond on her cottage.”

  “You see?” Candice jabbed her finger at the document. “That woman influenced her. She probably kept going on and on about how she couldn’t afford to meet her bond repayments until my poor, soft-in-the-head mother left her a cool hundred thousand pounds. It’s undue influence. Isn’t that what you lawyers call it?”

  “As we were saying earlier, there is no evidence that…” James broke off when Candice hushed him with a sound like a spitting cobra.

  “Enough. You! Blackberry! Read the other part.”

  “Paragraph 3.2.2. To Martin Trenowyth, Esquire, of 32 Puddle Lane, Bluebell Island, I leave three million pounds in memory of what we shared together. I make this bequest in full possession of my faculties and of sound mind and body. It is my express wish and my final will and testament. Shall I go on?”

  Candice shrugged, so Mia continued.

  “Paragraph 3.3.3. To my daughter, Candice Elizabeth Saville-Wareham, I leave the remainder of my estate. She will be pleased to get her hands on it at last.”

  Mia looked up apologetically as a tide of scarlet fury swept across Candice’s face. With a great show of control, Candice forced her anger down. When she spoke again, her voice was icily calm.

  “And how much would that be, by your estimation? The remainder of the estate?”

  “It depends on exactly what your mother’s estate will be liquidated at, but we estimate just under a million pounds.”

  “Just under a million pounds. So, I, the daughter of a man who was worth at least five million pounds when he died, am now set to inherit less than a million pounds. Who is this Trenowyth person anyway? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Our information is that he is the local vet.”

  Candice’s laugh was bitter. “To think I was joking just the other day that I hoped my mother hadn’t left her money to the local cats’ home. Now she’s gone one better and left it to the vet. She was senile. It’s the only possible explanation.”

  “We have no explanation for why your mother might have left her money to this man,” said Mia. “But we also have no reason to believe that she was senile.”

  “I might be able to help with that,” said Fay. “There’s an unconfirmed rumor that Martin Trenowyth and Mrs. Saville were in a relationship. It seems they met a few weeks ago at the Rotary Club.”

  Candice’s eyes lit up. “He took advantage of her! We’ll be able to get the will overturned. It will be just like that actress – what was her name? – Anna Nicole Smith. Her husband left all his money to her, but the family managed to get it overturned. Or they’re still fighting about it. Who knows? The point is that there’s hope.”

  “That was a very different case, Mrs. Saville-Wareham. The gentleman was in his nineties, I believe. Your mother was fifty-seven and in good health. It would be difficult to prove that she didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “You don’t understand. I need that money. I’ve been counting on it. My business will fail without it. I told my creditors last month that there would be money coming in soon. What am I supposed to tell them now? That it’s not coming in after all? What am I going to do?”

  Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch and she began to cry.

  The lawyers led the sobbing woman out of the lounge and downstairs to their car, saying that they would discuss the matter further at their office.

  As Fay watched them crunching down the gravel driveway, she wondered how Candice Saville-Wareham could have promised inheritance money to her creditors weeks before her mother had actually died.

  Chapter 16

  Was there anything better than a slice of hot chicken pie on a cold, wet evening?

  Fragrant steam rose up as Fay cut through the feather-light pastry to the filling beneath. The chicken had been roasted by Morwen with bay leaves and fresh lemon. Then it was taken off the bone and stirred into a creamy sauce. Fay had made the pastry herself from scratch, rolling and rerolling it so that it became light and flaky in the oven.

  The wind continued to howl around the old stone house. Fay was grateful for the wood-burning oven that kept the kitchen snug in even the coldest weather. Through the window she could see Ivan stalking around the kitchen courtyard, apparently on the trail of a rat. The fact that a freezing rain was lashing down on him didn’t seem to trouble him at all.

  The other four cats were stretched out in front of the oven, belly up to absorb the warmth.

  Fay scooped a portion of peas and carrots onto her plate. She felt as though she had caught a chill from sitting in her wet clothes earlier that day, and some extra vitamins were called for.

  “Hungry this evening?” Morwen walked into the kitchen to make coffee.

  “There’s a tickle in my throat. I think I might have caught something when I got so wet today.”

  “Told you so.” Morwen nodded. Her motherly warnings had proved correct. “I’ll bring a hot toddy to your room later.”

  Fay pulled a face. “That’s whisky, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ll like it.”

  “You don’t have to like it. You just have to drink it.” Morwen was still in mom mode. “See that you have a hot bath as well and get an early night. I thought you were looking a bit miserable earlier.”

  “That was probably after my pleasant chat with Mrs. Saville’s daughter and the lawyers.”

  “Oh, dear. Was it as nasty as it sounded?”

  “It was nastier. What is it about inheritances that brings out the worst in people?”

  “Depressing, isn’t it? You didn’t even hear the yelling that happened before you arrived. It had something to do with the money that Mrs. Saville left to the Playhouse Theater. I didn’t get all the details, but Candice has a very carrying voice and I gathered that was what it was about.”

  Fay pricked up her ears.

  “Did Mrs. Saville really leave money to the theater?”

  “That’s what they were saying. Or yelling, rather.”

  “Interesting. So, the list of people who benefited financially from her death now includes Bertha, the amateur dramatic society, her daughter Candice, Martin Trenowyth, and Candice’s two children.”

  “No wonder she sounded peeved.”

  “Peeved doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m also wondering why she was apparently telling her creditors weeks ago that there would be money coming in. How could she have known that she was about to inherit money from her mother?”

  “Could she have been talking about money coming in from another source?”

  “It didn’t sound like it. It sounded as though she was talking about the inheritance.”

  Morwen’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t think she shot her own mother?”

  “I don’t know. The timing would have been very tight. She would
have had to pull the trigger and then leave the island immediately by ferry because it was hours later that the police phoned her at her home in Surrey to tell her what had happened to her mother.”

  “It’s a four-hour drive from Cornwall to Surrey.”

  “Plus, more than half an hour on the ferry, with the risk of being spotted. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

  “Unless she was wearing a disguise!”

  Fay laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said when Morwen glared at her. “I just can’t see Candice putting on a false nose and a moustache to catch the ferry back to the mainland. It’s interesting, though. I wonder how much Mrs. Saville left to the theater.”

  “I can tell you that. Candice was trumpeting it loudly enough for the whole house to hear. It was five hundred thousand pounds.”

  Fay whistled. “Half a million pounds? That would put on a lot of pantomimes and Macbeths. As the theatrical director and assistant director, Raymond Garver and Pippa Brand will get full control of that money. I wonder if they knew what Mrs. Saville had left them.”

  “It’s not unheard of. When a member of one of the wealthy families of the island dies, it’s quite common for them to leave money to local causes like the theater. The late Lord Chadwick did it, and so did your grandmother.”

  “I hear you, but still… half a million pounds. That’s a sizeable chunk of money. Not as sizeable as what she left to Martin, but still potentially life changing for the recipient.”

  Fay picked up her tray.

  “The chicken pie calls. And so do the kittens. I used to watch TV shows in the evening, but now I watch the kitten show. They are endlessly entertaining.”

  “Remember that hot bath, and I’ll be up later to bring you a toddy. My grandmother’s secret recipe. It never fails.”

  Fay went upstairs to her room in a thoughtful mood.

  Despite Morwen’s hot toddy, which was apparently made of rocket fuel and dried chilli, Fay woke up the next morning knowing for sure that she had caught a head cold.

  Instead of her usual three-mile run along the boardwalk, she managed a much shorter walk. It blew away the cobwebs and got some sea air into her lungs, but her head still felt thick and her throat sore. If she had been coughing and sneezing, she might have stayed in bed to avoid infecting Morwen, Maggie, and Pen, not to mention the Cat’s Paw guests, but she wasn’t. Instead, she washed her hands thoroughly with medicated soap and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then she put on a face mask, pulling the elastics to fit over her ears.