The Cat That Got Your Tongue

by Fiona Snyckers

  “Cecil seems to think it’s true. He told me about it at our first meeting.”

  “Interesting.”

  Fay used her phone to take photos of the mythical creatures. “Thanks for your time, Nella. It’s been a great help.”

  “It was my pleasure. Come back any time. Otherwise I’ll see you at the tombola stand at the spring fair.”

  Fay hurried back up the hill for lunch.

  As a true Englishwoman, Morwen couldn’t let a Sunday go past without producing an elaborate roast lunch with all the trimmings. Dinner tonight would be something light, like chicken salad, but Sunday lunch was always a feast.

  The delicious aromas hit Fay while she was still fifty yards from the kitchen door. She was pleased that her brisk walk up from the village seemed to have burned off her mid-morning cream tea. Besides, she had always had a healthy appetite.

  “That smells like your chargrilled beef fillet with the peppercorn crust,” she said, walking into the kitchen.

  “Spot on,” said Morwen. “Also, individual Yorkshire puddings with gravy, broccoli with cheese sauce, and glazed carrots, because they’re Pen’s favorites.”

  Morwen was the only woman Fay knew who could look cool and calm while cooking a roast lunch in a hot kitchen.

  “We’re having that apple pie you made this morning for dessert,” said Morwen. “I’ll serve it with clotted cream.”

  “Perfect. Although I might pass on the cream. I had a cream tea at the Cracked Spine this morning.

  “The best in town,” said Morwen. “Good choice.”

  “I think I overdid the cream a little. It was too delicious. Where does she get it from? She wouldn’t tell me who her supplier was.”

  “It’s top secret. All the coffeeshops in the village would like to know the answer to that question, but Nella won’t tell. It’s like she has a secret well of cream in her house.”

  “Or maybe a magical cow in her backyard.”

  “It would have to be an invisible magic cow because no one has ever seen it.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” said Fay. “One of these days, I will engage detective mode and figure it out. How long until lunch?”

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll check on the kittens in the meanwhile. It feels strange not to be bottle-feeding them every few hours.”

  “I gave them some milk substitute in bowls like you asked. They lapped it very well. Even little Zorro.”

  “Thanks, Mor. Their tummies are still too small for them to take in enough food at breakfast to last them all the way through to dinner time. They still need milk in between, just as they would be getting from their mother if she hadn’t rejected them.”

  “Oh, that reminds me. I ran into Dr. Trenowyth the other day. He told me he recently spayed the kittens’ mother. Her owner finally brought her in to be sterilized.”

  “It’s lucky she wasn’t pregnant again. People who don’t get their pets fixed make me mad.”

  “Me too. He asked after you, by the way - Dr. Trenowyth.”

  Fay pulled a face. “I’m finding him a bit creepy these days, to be honest. He’s just so relentless.”

  “I wish you’d give him a chance, Fay.”

  “He had his chance to back off gracefully when I said I wasn’t interested the first time, and he didn’t take it. He gets no more chances after that.”

  Fay walked up the stairs in a state of mild irritation. Any mention of Dr. Trenowyth had that effect on her.

  The sight of the kittens looking well fed and happy improved her mood. Tigger, Freddy, and Cinnamon were sleeping. They raised their heads and gave her a tired blink as she walked in but promptly went back to sleep again. Only Zorro was awake, playing tag with – of all things – Ivan’s tail. The Siberian had hopped into the nursery, probably to steal the dregs of their milk, and was now stretched out on his side keeping an indulgent eye on Zorro as she made clumsy attempts to pounce on his fluffy tail.

  Fay sat and watched. Their energy was so different. Ivan was large and lazy, while Zorro was tiny and full of mischief. Watching them gave Fay a chance to plan her afternoon. She usually spent Sunday afternoons kicking back with a good book. Most of the guests would be out enjoying the beach or one of the island’s other attractions. She would only be needed again at teatime when she would put in an appearance and chat to the guests.

  Today she would have to neglect Miss Marple in favor of snooping around. What she really wanted to do was take another look at the library. Unfortunately, it closed at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and only re-opened at nine on Monday morning.

  Fay didn’t feel like waiting.

  It shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade Mrs. Tribble to open the library for her. The fact that she lived in a cottage next door made it easier. She would go around after lunch and see if she was there. She gave Zorro a kiss on her head and stroked Ivan. Then she hopped out of the playpen and went downstairs for lunch.

  Because Morwen had cooked, Fay was the one to clear up afterwards. Morwen retired to her quarters to read her latest bloodthirsty thriller and to Facetime with her sons at university in Exeter.

  When the kitchen was spick and span Fay set out for the village. Tomorrow, she decided, she would take the ferry to the mainland. She wanted to see Desmond Pinkerton’s shop in Truro. In the meanwhile, she would do what she had always found helpful in her days as a homicide detective – she would walk the scene of the crime.

  Fay found Mrs. Tribble sitting on the verandah next to her front door. She was crocheting a blanket and watching the world go by.

  “Good afternoon, Fay love. Are you having a good Sunday?”

  That was the beauty of Bluebell Island. You never had to make an excuse to speak to someone. As long as they regarded you as part of the community, they would speak to you first.

  “Very pleasant, thanks, Mrs. Tribble. And you?”

  “I’m well enough, dear. I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at the seminar last night. I wanted to ask how you were coping after finding poor Mr. Pinkerton dead like that. It must have been a dreadful shock. I still haven’t quite recovered.”

  Fay was about to say she was fine when she realized that this was an opportunity.

  “It’s terribly upsetting for me too,” said the former homicide detective. “I don’t know if my nerves will ever recover. I think that’s why I attended the seminar. I needed to process what had happened.”

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Tribble’s crochet hook stilled. “It’s been preying on my mind - the thought that it might have been one of us if we had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to the library. It feels like an evil place now.”

  Mrs. Tribble looked distressed. “But you love the library, dear. You and Morwen are two of my top borrowers. Think how much you’ll miss your murder mysteries.”

  “I hate feeling this way,” said Fay. “If only I could go into the library when it was quiet, with no one else around. Perhaps I could get used to it again.”

  Mrs. Tribble stood up. “I’m going to get the key. There’s never a quieter time than on a Sunday afternoon. I’ll let you in myself and we’ll conquer this phobia together. You can take as long as you like.”

  When she came back she was holding her keys in one hand and her cat in the other.

  “Is Mr. Macavity coming too?” asked Fay.

  “Of course! He would be hurt if I left him behind.”

  Chapter 15

  They stood at the door to the library. Mrs. Tribble fiddled with her key, trying to get it open.

  “I need both hands to turn the key,” she said. “Here - hold this furry lump.” She handed the cat to Fay.

  Fay found her arms full of purring grey fluff. “Oh, he’s lovely. Look how friendly he is.”

  Mrs. Tribble gave him a fond stroke. “Yes, he is. That’s why he makes such a good library cat. He’s very affectionate and not at all shy of people.
He just doesn’t like anyone to sit on his chair. Ah, there we go.” She managed to get the iron key to turn in the lock. “Now, it might seem a little spooky at first, but I’ll put the lights on and everything will look more cheerful.”

  Fay could only agree that spooky was the word. The library smelled musty and closed up. The leaded windowpanes let in ghostly fingers of light that crept across the carpet in jagged lines. The stacks seemed to loom out of the darkness as though they had been waiting for humans to arrive. If Fay really had been nervous about returning to the library, this would not have helped at all.

  Then Mrs. Tribble switched on the lights and the fluorescent tubes flickered into life. It was just an ordinary village library again. The ghostly fingers disappeared, and the hulking stacks turned into friendly, book-lined shelves.

  Fay put Mr. Macavity on his chair.

  “I’ll let you have a wander around, dear,” said Mrs. Tribble. “You’ll soon see that everything is just as you remember it.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Tribble.”

  Fay walked around the perimeter of the library looking for entrances or exits. On this level there was only one and that was the main door they had used to come in. She went down the stairs to check out the basement again, switching on lights as she went. The only exit on that level was the fire door she had noticed previously. Paul Leblanc’s work station was tucked into a corner. It seemed unlikely that someone could have walked right past him unnoticed, especially carrying a bloody candlestick. But still - it was a possibility that couldn’t be ignored. If he had been engrossed in his work, he might not have registered someone walking past.

  Fay sat at his desk and looked down as though preoccupied with work. Yes, it was possible that someone had sneaked past.

  As an experiment, she set the stopwatch on her phone.

  “And, go!”

  She stood up and walked quickly across the floor to the steps. At a quiet jog she went up the steps and into the main library. Mrs. Tribble was at her work station just as she would have been on Friday morning. Keeping out of her line of sight, Fay circled around to the medieval section where Desmond Pinkerton had apparently been browsing. It was a good spot for a murder.

  Some of the library shelves were below head height but the stacks in the medieval section were high. Even the tallest man would not be able to see over them. Anything that happened here would have been out of sight for everyone.

  Fay tried to imagine Desmond Pinkerton standing here with his back to his assailant. Did he have his head bent over a book? It seemed likely. The angle at which the candlestick had hit him suggested that his head had been bowed at the time. There had also been books all over the floor.

  Where had the attacker got the candlestick from? Had he brought it in with him? Had it been in the library all along? Or had it belonged to Pinkerton?

  Either way, the attacker had raised it up high and brought it down hard on Pinkerton’s head, swinging from right to left as a right-hander would be inclined to do.

  Desmond Pinkerton had dropped like a stone. A tall man, he had fallen forward and struck his forehead on the sharp edge of the lowest bookshelf. This had caused his head to snap back hard. The impact had fractured his neck and he had fallen to the floor quite dead.

  Had the attacker been horrified at the consequences of his or her action? Had they merely intended to stun him, or had murder been the goal all along?

  Once Fay had mimed the action of the murder, she turned and walked back to the basement steps, still taking care to avoid being spotted by Mrs. Tribble. She trotted down the stairs and went to sit at Leblanc’s workstation, shoving an imaginary candlestick under the desk.

  She stopped the timer on her phone. Three-and-a-half minutes. It was more than possible for Paul Leblanc to have committed the murder and got himself back to his desk with no one the wiser. Unfortunately, a number of other scenarios were equally possible.

  Fay walked to the stairs and glanced back at the desk. She imagined Leblanc sitting there with his head bent over his work. Walking quietly, she crossed the sound-proof carpeting to the fire door. It took her exactly six seconds to get from the stairs to the exit. Then the murderer would have been out on the high street with the candlestick possibly tucked into an overcoat. Friday morning had been chilly. Everyone would have been wearing coats.

  From there, it was a short walk to the side road where the dumpster was conveniently located. One heave of the candlestick over the side of the dumpster and the murderer was free to go on his way. Or her way.

  A short to medium-sized woman was unlikely to have been the attacker. Even with her hands raised over her head, it would have been difficult to achieve the angle of the blow that had felled Desmond Pinkerton. But a tall woman or a medium-sized man could have accomplished it easily. Marigold Bessinger was a tall, strong woman - five foot eight at least. So was Mrs. Tribble. Whether she would have had the strength to wield the candlestick was another matter, but Fay wasn’t ruling her out as a suspect just yet.

  She went back to the main library and stood in the mystery and suspense section where she had been browsing when the murder took place.

  Yes, she’d had a direct line of sight to Mrs. Tribble’s workstation and had been vaguely aware of her working there the whole time. But she hadn’t been paying attention to anything except her favorite writers. If Paul Leblanc could have accomplished the murder and been back at his desk in three and a half minutes, could Mrs. Tribble have left her workstation, committed the murder, and been back at her counter before Fay noticed she was gone? Yes, it was possible. Another reason not to rule Mrs. Tribble out.

  Fay’s gut didn’t like Mrs. Tribble as a suspect, but she had learned not to put too much faith in her gut. You trusted the evidence first and listened to what your gut was telling you last. The evidence told her it was possible that Mrs. Tribble was the murderer. Her gut told her it was unlikely.

  She walked back to the medieval section while Mrs. Tribble caught up on paperwork. She seemed happy to let Fay spend as long as she liked in the library. Fay could see the exact spot where Desmond Pinkerton had fallen. There was still a mark on the bookshelf to indicate where he had hit his head. Mrs. Tribble might want to clean that off. It didn’t add anything to the ambience of the room.

  What had Pinkerton been reading at the moment he was struck? Did it have anything to do with why he was killed? And what was he doing in the medieval section of this tiny village library anyway? It seemed unlikely that there were any rare discoveries to be made here.

  Cecil Travis said that his boss had lately made a habit of visiting the local library of every small town they visited. It had to have something to do with his research. If he had been looking for a paperback to read, she would have expected to find him in the mystery and suspense section with her – not in medieval history. It all boiled down to Eleanor’s dowry. Fay was convinced of it. Pinkerton was a member of RARE, and that was their obsession. They lived and breathed the legend of the dowry.

  “Mrs. Tribble?”

  The librarian looked up. “Yes, love?”

  “Do you know what books Desmond Pinkerton was looking at when he died? I remember that there were books lying on the floor, but I don’t remember which ones they were.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I have no idea.”

  “Did you re-shelve them?”

  “No, Paul would have done that. He does all the re-shelving. You can ask him tomorrow, but I’ll be surprised if he remembers. It was a few day ago, after all.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. T.” Fay turned away disappointed. Then she slapped a hand to her forehead. “Of course! I took photos of the crime scene. They are right here on my phone. I just hope the titles of the books are visible.”

  Mrs. Tribble gave her a strange look. “Whatever helps you get over your trauma, dear.”

  Fay flicked through her photos. Yes, there they were. Making her own record of a crime scene came as naturally to her as eating and breathing. It was a good thin
g too because there were three books visible and she could read all their titles just by zooming in.

  One was called Notes on Marginalia: Playfulness and Subversion in Medieval Manuscripts. The other was, A Medieval Bestiary. And the third was Inscriptions, Epigraphs and Epitaphs: a guide to hidden messages in late Medieval culture.

  A flutter of excitement tickled Fay’s spine. Pinkerton had been researching Eleanor’s dowry at the moment he was killed. Her suspicions were correct.

  “Are any of these books in, Mrs. Tribble?”

  The librarian went to her computer. “Let me check the catalogue.”

  Fay held her breath as she searched for the books.

  “The Notes on Marginalia and the Medieval Bestiary are here if you’d like to borrow them, but the one about hidden messages is listed as missing and possibly mis-shelved.”

  “It was here on Friday. You can see it right there in the photo. What could have happened to it?”

  “Perhaps Paul put it in the wrong place.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Not at all. He is a meticulous shelver. The only time we get mis-shelved items is when customers try to put the books back themselves.”

  “Could Sergeant Jones have taken it with him as evidence?”

  “If he did, he didn’t tell me about it. He and Constable Chegwin made a list of the items they were taking and got me to sign it. There were no books among them.”

  Fay swiped through her photos until she found the pictures of the candlestick that the Dyers had sent her. She chose one that was taken at an angle where the blood wasn’t visible.

  “What about this, Mrs. Tribble? Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “But of course! That’s one of the pair that stands at the entrance. Didn’t you notice them when we came in? I suppose it was rather dark. They’re just over here.”

  She led Fay to the front door. There were side tables on either side of the double doors. One had a pair of carved seahorses on it and the other held two candlesticks. One was a perfect twin of the murder weapon, and the other was of a similar size and shape but otherwise completely different.