No Cat Is An Island: A Cozy Cat and Witch Mystery (Cozy Conundrums Book 2)

by T. H. Hunter

  “Will you close that confounded window?” he said. “Do you want me to get pneumonia?”

  “There was a light,” I said. “In the lighthouse.”

  “That’s what lighthouses are for,” Barry said snidely. “The name is a hint.”

  “No, I mean, in the basement,” I said. “It sort of… pulsated a couple of times, but now it’s gone.”

  “Who cares? It’s probably just…”

  “Shhh,” I said. “I think I can see someone.”

  A low figure seemed to be gliding along the path from the lighthouse towards the hotel. It took a minute for my eyes to register who it was.

  “It’s Mr. Brown,” I exclaimed. “Coming from the lighthouse.”

  Once more, I was surprised at how easily Mr. Brown was able to propel himself forward with his old yet powerful arms. The damp and slippery earth beneath must have made it even more difficult for him, and yet he reached the entrance to the hotel with impressive speed and agility.

  After he had vanished, I finally closed the window, much to Barry’s relief. I wondered what Mr. Brown had been up to in the lighthouse. Surely, if he had been tinkering with some device or machine, the workshop would have been the better option. It was both closer to the hotel and presumably also had the necessary tools.

  No, there had to be another reason for Mr. Brown’s nocturnal activities, I thought as I went back to my bedroom and slipped into the still warm bedsheets. Though I had no indication that his peculiar behaviour was in any way nefarious, a small voice at the back of my mind insisted that something wasn’t quite right. And I was determined to get to the bottom of it eventually – meetings or no meetings.

  ***

  A few hours later, I sat groggily at the breakfast table in the dining room, drinking my first coffee of the day. The room looked very different with sunshine permeating its space than the evening before, though I wasn’t really in a mood to appreciate it much. Anita Brown had set up a buffet for us, with what looked like home-made buns, jam, and an entire arsenal of cereals.

  “Oh, hello,” said Anita Brown as she bustled in from the kitchen. “Didn’t expect anyone to be up so early. Had a bad night?”

  “You could say that,” I said, rubbing my temple. “I helped myself to some coffee, I hope that’s alright?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “Beautiful at this time in the morning, isn’t it? Dan – that is Williams, I mean, hasn’t missed a sunrise in years. So he tells me, at least. But I like to sleep in during the winter time. Getting up in the dark can be a little depressing, can’t it? It’s a good thing that the days are getting longer again. Anyway, would you like some cooked breakfast? We have some wonderful local meat. Came in fresh yesterday by boat.”

  “No, thanks, not yet at least,” I said.

  “That’s alright,” she said kindly. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Last… last night,” I began slowly, “I couldn’t help notice a light – in the lighthouse…”

  “Oh, yes, it’s fully automated,” she said quickly. “Thank the Heavens we don’t have to worry about that, too. I have my hands full as it is.”

  “No, I mean in the basement,” I said.

  She looked unnerved.

  “Really?” she said, though she didn’t look surprised at all to me. “How strange.”

  “Yes,” I said, pressing the point. “It must have been around 2 am, I think.”

  “Oh, someone must have left the light on, then,” she said.

  “The weird thing was,” I continued, knowing full well I was pushing it by now, “that it went on and off rhythmically, like a pulse.”

  “The bulbs must be ancient in there,” she said, clearly uncomfortable now. “I’ll… I’ll ask Williams to check. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Miss Sheridan.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  ***

  When Val and Barry came downstairs, I quickly filled them in on how Anita Brown had reacted. We had chosen a breakfast table right in the corner and had put Barry’s bowl close to the radiator behind us, so that he wouldn’t be seen. He dared only utter a word or two at a time, though he was able to give us an occasional nod of the head in order to communicate as well. Luckily, the noise from the other tables and the clunking of cutlery was sufficient to mask most of our conversation.

  “She pretended not to know?” whispered Val, pouring herself some more coffee.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Something’s going on in there, and I want to find out what it is. The only thing is, I can’t go myself because Mrs. Highgarden is starting the meetings right after breakfast. And by the looks of it, they’re going to last until well after dark.”

  “Sounds more like a hearing,” said Val, grinning. “But sure, Amy, we’ll find out what we can.”

  “Best if you went together. And let Barry suss things out first. Nobody’s going to suspect a cat of prying. Well, not in the way we’re doing it, anyway.”

  Barry looked at me.

  “This was meant to be a holiday,” he hissed from beneath the table, unable to contain himself any further.

  “Sorry, Barry, but no cat is an island,” I said. “Not even you, though you do your best. We need you in this. Wagner will have to wait a bit.”

  Barry scowled over his bowl of cooked tuna, muttering darkly under his feline breath.

  “Anymore coffee, dears?” Mrs Haughton asked kindly, bustling over from the kitchen.

  She was helping Anita Brown with keeping everyone happy at the breakfast tables.

  “Yes, please,” I said, staring into my third empty cup of the day. “Something tells me I’ll be needing a lot more today.”

  “Would your cat want any more food?” she asked, looking at Barry with a curious gaze.

  Barry looked at me. He didn’t move an inch, though his stare unmistakably told me that, if he were to go investigating the lighthouse, he wasn’t going to do so without a full stomach.

  “I think so,” I said, laughing. “Something tells me he’s going to need some extra energy today.”

  “The climate, you see,” Val added.

  “Alright,” said Mrs. Haughton, nodding her head.

  She bustled back toward the kitchen, humming tunelessly as she did so. When the door had closed behind her, Val leant over to me.

  “She’s suspicious, you know.”

  “Of what?” I asked, bewildered.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Of Barry, I think.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I said teasingly.

  “No, I’m serious, Amy,” Val said.

  “But… surely she doesn’t suspect him of being… you know, a warlock,” I said, lowering my voice to a bare whisper.

  “I don’t know,” said Val, stroking her forehead. “Sorry, it’s all so muddled. I just get glimpses. Bit too crowded in here.”

  “OK,” I said. “We’ll watch our step around her, from now on.”

  Then, Mrs Highgarden, who had long since finished her own breakfast, coughed loudly from the table adjacent to ours. She was rapping her fingers impatiently on the table, eyeing everyone in the room like a hawk, as if she were trying to make them eat faster through pure willpower.

  Sitting opposite her, Dr. Linton was slowly nibbling away tentatively at his first bun of the day while listening to a story Randolph Bolton, the businessman, was telling him. Invariably, it involved the sealing of a particularly formidable deal for his firm that only he had been able to close. Vanessa McQuinn symbolically plugged in her earphones, and for once, I – and by the looks of it pretty much everybody present – sympathised with her. Except for Jane, perhaps, who was still politely nodding and smiling at the appropriate moments in Mr. Bolton’s story.

  I was sure that Dr. Linton was taking so long in part to annoy Mrs. Highgarden, who had spent the last few minutes puffing air out of her nostrils at regular intervals in an ostentatious display of disapproval. More and more, she resembled a dragon gearing up for action. All
that was missing was fiery sparks incinerating Dr. Linton.

  After he had held his last buttered piece of bread in his hand for a while, lifting it up to his mouth but lowering it again after a particularly poignant point in Mr. Bolton’s story, he finally placed it into his mouth.

  Immediately, Mrs. Highgarden jumped up to address us before anyone dared to go and help himself to the buffet again. At last, she was able to set the gears in motion for the first meeting. There was nothing akin to a conference room at the Seaview Hotel, so the dining room we were already in would have to do. We rearranged the tables and chairs so that we all sat at one long table in the middle of the room. At the head, with her back to the kitchen, sat Mrs. Highgarden, armed with an assortment of pencils and notepads. It seemed that nobody wanted to sit right opposite her on the far end, as we had seated ourselves on the sides, so that it was the only spot left for the elusive Mr. Urquhart, who still hadn’t arrived.

  “Really,” Mrs. Highgarden kept muttering. “That man is the limit. Well, we’ll just have to start without him. Not that he made any significant contributions last year, of course. But there we are.”

  She cleared her throat self-importantly and stood up again, spreading her fingers on the table below her in a territorial gesture.

  “Welcome all,” she began, “to our 42nd annual meeting of the Royal Committee for the Preservation and Restoration of Lighthouses. I have had the great pleasure of having attended all but a single one of those meetings – and that was only due to the early birth of my nephew. It from a very early age onwards that I fell in love with lighthouses, you know, so that…”

  My worst fears were realised when Mrs. Highgarden spent a full thirty minutes elaborating on her past love affair with lighthouses (as well as hinting at some with their keepers). Apparently, she had retired early from her teaching career in order to spend more time on the committee’s affairs, which included fundraising for the most part. And that had been how she had got to know Mr. Bolton in London.

  Vanessa McQuinn yawned ostentatiously next to me, while Dr. Linton held up his hand in a schoolboy’s manner that made him look forty years younger.

  “Yes, Dr. Linton, what is it?” asked Mrs. Highgarden with a trace of impatience.

  “May I step outside for a moment?” he asked.

  She sighed.

  “Very well, if you must. So, where was I? Oh yes, the committee’s financial crisis of 1999. Yes, quite a shock to all of us, you have to understand. If it hadn’t been for your late great-aunt, Miss Sheridan, the show wouldn’t have gone on, as it were.”

  There was a pause as she looked expectantly at me. Suddenly, I knew how Dr. Linton must have felt a few minutes earlier. Mrs. Highgarden’s air of the eternal schoolmistress catapulted one back in time.

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” I said, smiling.

  It felt rather half-hearted, though my answer seemed to satisfy Mrs. Highgarden and the rest of the committee for the time being.

  “Hear, hear,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway.

  We all spun around to see who it was. A man in his early thirties was casually leaning against the doorframe. He was exceptionally good-looking, with dark, wavy hair and a mischievous grin on his youthful face. He was wearing a smart, tailor-made suit. To top it off, he was holding a pipe, which he held to his mouth every other moment, although from what I could tell it hadn’t been lit at all.

  “Mr. Urquhart,” Mrs. Highgarden said through clenched teeth. “So nice of you to finally bother to turn up.”

  “Yes, sorry about that,” he said, casually walking over to the table. “Spot of bother on the mainland.”

  “For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting our latecomer yet, this is Mr. Patrick Urquhart,” said Mrs. Highgarden.

  “Please,” he said. “Patrick is what everybody calls me. No need to be so formal. And who are you?”

  He stretched out his hand towards me, taking me by surprise.

  “Oh, I’m Amanda Sheridan,” I said. “I’m filling in for my late great-aunt.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, smiling at me apologetically. “Hope you’re not bored already.”

  “Mr. Urquhart!” Mrs. Highgarden said, her voice becoming shrill. “Please. I would eventually like to move on to our agenda for this week.”

  Patrick held up his hands.

  “Far be it from me to stop you, Mrs. Highgarden,” he said with a roguish smile on his face.

  He had taken the only remaining seat, prominently placed opposite to Mrs. Highgarden’s, and the fact seemed to unnerve her somewhat. On the flip side, I thought privately, such an arrangement had the benefit of speeding up the proceedings, at least the biographical part, for Mr. Urquhart’s appearance had made Mrs. Highgarden forget all about her handling of the committee’s financial crisis of 1999.

  The agenda itself was quite another matter, of course. Dr. Linton had returned from his smoke and had apparently made his mind up to criticise every single point on the list. When I had to think that I would have to endure another week of this, I felt quite queasy inside. Whatever had possessed me to think that this might have been fun, I will never know, though a certain amount of guilt for the unexpected inheritance last year and the wish to repay my great-aunt in some way must have played a role.

  I only hoped that Val and Barry had been more successful. As I sat there, listening to yet another point of order from Dr. Linton, I wondered whether we had all been overreacting somewhat. Even if Barry was right and Mrs. Haughton was a natural clairvoyant, it still didn’t mean that anything would happen. Indeed, we had clearly heard for ourselves that Williams wanted the old man dead. Though whether he was willing to act on it was another matter. How often had such words of anger been uttered in the heat of the moment? Surely, be it consciously or not, Mrs. Haughton had picked up on those vibes and uttered them in her own dramatic manner. It didn’t necessarily follow that it would come to pass, especially when Anita Brown was involved. Would Mr. Brown’s opposition to her involvement with Williams lead her to be in favour of killing her own father? Everything, it seemed, hinged on that question. And from what I could tell, Anita Brown was not the murderous type.

  “Miss Sheridan?” Mrs. Highgarden addressed me out of nowhere.

  “Sorry,” I said, making me feel like a scolded pupil.

  “Would you pass along the annual report, please?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” I said, quickly grabbing the stack that Vanessa had pushed over to my side of the table and handing it over to Patrick to my left.

  “Now, if Dr. Linton has no more objections…” Mrs. Highgarden said, lifting her eyebrows at him.

  “Well,” he said hesitantly. “There might be one or two…”

  But he quickly faltered when he saw the dangerous gleam in Mrs. Highgarden’s eye.

  “… I suppose it’s sufficient,” he ended weakly.

  “I’m glad that’s settled, then,” said Mrs. Highgarden loudly. “Next on today’s agenda is the annual report. Each of you should now have a copy in front of you. If you’d please turn to page four, there is an overview of our funds for the past year.”

  There was the general rustling of paper.

  “As you can see,” she said, with an appreciative nod in Randolph Bolton’s direction, “Mr. Bolton’s firm is by far our most important backer. Coming up in second position is her Majesty’s government.”

  I ran my finger further down the list of investors. To my astonishment, one of the major long-term contributors was one Mr. Gregory Brown, owner of the Seaview Hotel.

  “Despite that, however, I am very sorry to say,” said Mrs. Highgarden, pressing her pointy glasses further up her nose, “that, at the current rate of decline in funds, we will have to cease running normal operations within the next six months.”

  “Our commitments are simply too extensive,” said Dr. Linton thoughtfully, holding the report in a slightly shaky hand.

  “Couldn’t we cut back on them?” I
asked. “The commitments, I mean. Focus on fewer lighthouses to repair and maintain.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Mrs. Highgarden’s direction.

  “Cut…?” she said. “My dear Miss Sheridan, we have not dared to use that word in twenty years.”

  “She’s right, you know, Olivia,” said Patrick Urquhart next to me. “The numbers just don’t add up. Even I can see that.”

  “We will simply have to get more contributions,” Mrs. Highgarden said, her temper rising quickly. “More funds. That is what it comes down to.”

  She pointedly looked in Randolph Bolton’s direction, who hadn’t been paying any attention. Instead, he had been preoccupied with gathering the biscuits from various bowls on the table and eating them as surreptitiously as possible.

  “Funds?” he asked. “Sorry, the firm won’t cough up any more I’m afraid.”

  “What about the government?” I asked.

  Dr. Linton shook his head sadly.

  “Austerity measures imposed by the government have made it impossible. We are lucky to get as much as we do from them.”

  “Then we need new investors,” said Mrs. Highgarden fanatically. “Other firms. Businessmen and governments from overseas.”

  “But we can’t even keep our old ones,” said Dr. Linton, his voice becoming shriller and thinner now.

  I must have looked slightly taken aback, for Patrick Urquhart leaned towards me.

  “Don’t mind them,” he said softly, so that nobody else could hear. “They’re always at each other’s throats. Been that way since I joined.”

  “Why is that?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

  “Linton used to be president himself. He made the Committee, you might say, until he had a nervous breakdown. Couldn’t handle the pressure, I think. A lot of responsibility to deal with. He’s never been the same since. Highly-strung, you might say.”

  Mrs. Highgarden, her old instincts from many years as a teacher no doubt kicking in, craned her neck to see who was causing the distraction at the other end of the table.