The Cat That Wasn't There

by Fiona Snyckers

  “But why did they start the campaign in the first place?”

  “To blame the planned failure of the lighthouse on her. But once she had seen the sabotage schematics, she couldn’t be allowed to live.”

  “That’s evil.”

  “They would sneak into her house at night and make a sandwich in her kitchen, leaving her to think that she had walked in her sleep. They even drugged her to make her appear incoherent and off balance at a committee meeting.”

  “I was at that meeting. I thought she had the flu. I wanted her to come into the surgery to be examined but she refused.”

  “Whoever did it was very clever. Almost everyone who knew Tabitha believes that she was suffering from some form of dementia. It was a successful campaign. They just didn’t count on her mailing her diary to me. When I stopped thinking of her as a doddery old lady, I realized what a very smart and switched on person she was.”

  “But who was it?” asked David. “Who did this to her?”

  Fay hesitated. “I have an idea about that, but I can’t speculate without proof. Mr. Van Holt at the insurance company let me see the policy document for the Sinead. It was taken out by a company called Bluebell Linens & Haberdashery. Ever heard of them?”

  David and his father shook their heads.

  “If it has the name Bluebell in the title it was probably registered here on the island,” said Doc Dyer. “Company registrations are a matter of public record. You could go to the town hall and see whose name that company is registered in.”

  The next morning, Fay hurried down into the village to visit the town hall the moment she had finished serving breakfast.

  After a couple of false starts, she found her way to the hall of records. It turned out to be housed in the basement. It was staffed by a man who seemed to be more interested in the game of Candy Crush on his phone than in helping members of the public.

  “What did you say the company’s name was?” he said when he finally looked up from his game. “I paused it,” he added by way of explanation.

  Fay was confused for a second before realizing that he was talking about his game.

  “It’s called Bluebell Linens & Haberdashery.”

  He made Fay write it out for him on a piece of paper before disappearing into a back room to go and pull the file.

  The minutes ticked past. When he finally returned, his hands were empty.

  “Couldn’t find it.” He flung himself down in his chair and picked up his phone again. “Sorry.”

  “But it must be there,” said Fay. “I saw an insurance policy document with that name printed on it. It had a proprietary number next to it and everything.”

  The tinkling noises from his game stopped as he looked up with a sigh. “When was it registered?”

  “I don’t know. Two people I spoke to who have lived here their whole lives had never heard of it, so it might be quite recent.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” He turned to face his computer. “Everything that was registered this year is stored electronically. Everything from before this year is filed in the back. You really should have said something.”

  And you really should have told me this from the beginning. Fay managed to keep her frustration to herself.

  “Ah, yes. Here it is.” He swung his computer screen so that Fay could see what he was looking at. It was a company registration form dated just four months earlier. Fay looked at the name of the sole proprietor and nodded.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Maggie! Maggie, where are you?”

  Fay burst into Penrose House calling as she went.

  Morwen looked up in surprise from the reception desk. “What’s up? What do you need Maggie for?”

  “She’s not with Duncan McCloud, is she?”

  “I don’t think so. She said they saw each other last night, but she should be upstairs cleaning the rooms now. Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. I need to speak to her.”

  Fay pounded up the stairs to look for her.

  The three people in the room spoke in whispers, although there was no chance of their being overheard. It was just that the listening equipment they were working on was so sensitive it picked up every sound in the other room.

  They could hear Duncan sigh and shift in his seat. They could hear him clearing his throat. It seemed impossible that he couldn’t hear every sound they were making too.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” whispered Maggie. “I hate to do this to him. What if you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not.” Fay was very sure of herself.

  “I hope you’re right, love,” said Sergeant Jones. “I had to get a warrant from a Justice of the Peace to authorize bugging his room like this.”

  “It’ll be worth it in the end. You’ll see.”

  Sergeant Jones kept his eyes on the screen. There was a single fixed camera in the room, but Duncan was currently out of sight.

  “Listen,” said Fay. “Someone’s here.”

  There was a knock at the door of the apartment that Duncan shared with some of the other lads who worked at the docks. They had been warned to keep away that evening, so he was alone.

  Duncan moved into shot as he crossed the room to open the front door.

  “Evening, Aunt Betsy.” He held the door wider. “Thanks for coming.”

  Maggie bit down on her fist. “Oh, boy. Oh, boy. She looks so tiny. This isn’t right.”

  Sergeant Jones rolled his eyes. “It was your idea to be here, Maggie Binnie. If you can’t handle it, you should leave.”

  “I set this whole thing up. I have a right to be here.”

  Betsy McCloud handed her jacket to her nephew. “What’s this all about, Duncan? I don’t see why you couldn’t have come to my place as usual.”

  “I knew my roommates would be out this evening so we could talk here.”

  She declined his offer of tea and perched on the edge of an armchair.

  “You said you were worried about something?”

  He sat on the sofa opposite her, his body stiff and uncomfortable. “Look, Aunt Betsy, you asked me for a favor, and I did it. My mates and I went to the lighthouse and recovered the papers for you. But I don’t feel happy about it.”

  “You don’t have to feel happy about it. You owed me a favor and it was time for me to collect. I stood by you through all your troubles. You’ve got a good job now. Did I phone your employer and tell him that he was hiring an ex-convict? No, I did not. You owe me. And you will continue to owe me. This isn’t over.”

  “But I don’t understand what it was all for. Maybe if I knew what was going on, I’d have a better idea of how to help you. I learnt a lot in prison, Auntie. I made some valuable contacts.”

  There was a long silence as Betsy seemed to be taking his measure. At the other end of the apartment, Fay, Maggie, and Sergeant Jones held their breaths. Duncan was getting down to business faster than they had recommended. Was he going too fast?

  Betsy seemed to make up her mind. “Did you understand what the papers were that I asked you to remove from the lighthouse?”

  “Yes. It was a set of instructions on how to disable that old clockwork mechanism for a certain period of time. The Sinead ran aground because the light didn’t shine. I understand that part. Or at least, I do now.”

  There was another silence as Betsy absorbed her surprise at the extent of his knowledge.

  “Apparently you have more brains than I gave you credit for. Perhaps you could be useful to me, after all.”

  “I’d like to be, Aunt Betsy. I owe everything to you. With my help, you could go far.”

  “I’ll go far with or without your help when I get the insurance payout for the cargo that the Sinead was carrying. It should be processed in a matter of weeks.”

  “So, the Sinead wasn’t really carrying bed linen? I suspected as much.”

  “That shows how much you know.” She tapped her forefinger to her temple. “You’
re not quite as smart as your old auntie, Duncan. The Sinead was indeed carrying bed linen, as was verified by two separate inspections. It just wasn’t the kind of bed linen you find in fancy guesthouses. More like the kind you’d buy at a discount outlet.”

  Fay couldn’t see Duncan’s face because of the position of the camera, but it sounded as though he was smiling. “That is clever, Auntie. I can see how you would score on the insurance like that. But what about Tabitha Trott? Why did you make me break the catch on her kitchen window?”

  “I needed a way to get in and out of her house. I knew her better than anyone, see? I was her best friend – the one who always defended her. I knew exactly which buttons to push to make her think she was losing her marbles. She knew someone was planning to sabotage the lighthouse. She was going to blow the whistle on the whole scheme I needed to make her mistrust her own judgment.”

  “And to make everyone else mistrust her too.” Duncan sounded admiring. “It was a stroke of luck for you when she died. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have left it to chance.”

  Betsy’s blue-rinsed perm bobbed as she shook her head. “You surprise me, Duncan. I always thought you were a good boy at heart. I thought you preferred living life on the straight and narrow.”

  “That was before I went to prison, Auntie. Like I say, prison changed me.”

  “For the better, my lad. You don’t really think I left Tabitha’s death up to chance, do you?”

  “Aunt Betsy!” His admiration grew. “I would never have suspected. How did you manage it?”

  “It was ridiculously easy. The hard part was setting it up in advance so that everyone believed she was a slurring, stumbling senile delinquent. She liked to take the air up on the lighthouse platform at the end of her shift. I warned Gertie a few times that the railing on that platform wasn’t safe, and of course she insisted it was and refused to do anything about it. Stubborn old coot. On Tabitha’s last day. I joined her up on the platform and gave her a firm shove between the shoulder blades just as she was admiring the view. Her spectacles flew off in one direction and she fell in another. No one was as sad as I was. My best friend had met a tragic accident. And everyone was falling over themselves to tell the police how erratically she had been acting lately.”

  Sergeant Jones stood up with a scraping of the chair that was loud enough to be audible in the front room. Betsy pricked up her ears.

  “What was that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything, Auntie.”

  But Betsy got to her feet and picked up her purse. She was headed to the front door when Sergeant Jones strode into the room and told her she was under arrest.

  Epilogue

  Fay parked the Volvo at the bottom of the road that led up to the surgery. As she came to a halt, the engine cut out. She took it in her stride.

  “Saves me having to switch the car off.”

  She pulled the key out of the ignition and climbed out of the driver’s side. Then she walked around to the passenger’s seat and opened the door. A chorus of indignant mews greeted her as she picked up the cat carrier from the seat.

  “It’s okay, guys. You’re going to your new home. Just wait until you see all the cool stuff your daddy and granddaddy have bought you.”

  Tigger and Zorro mewed again, their voices anxious. Fay walked up the hill at a brisk pace, keen to get them installed as quickly as possible. Freddy and Cinnamon had been collected that afternoon. The entire Binnie family had arrived to take them home. Maggie, her parents, and both of her brothers had ceremoniously transported the kittens home. Fay had received several pictures since then of the kittens playing, eating, and finally sleeping in their new basket.

  Now it was Tigger and Zorro’s turn. Fay was about to complete her first full cycle as a foster cat mom. It was every bit as heartbreaking as she had expected, but knowing that she would see them often and that she would get regular updates on their progress helped to ease her sadness.

  Fay knocked when she got to the front door of the surgery. It was flung open so quickly that she knew they had been looking out for her.

  “I’ve been so excited I could hardly eat any dinner.” Doc Dyer rubbed his hands together, beaming from ear to ear.

  “You would swear his first grandchildren were being brought home from the hospital the way he’s been carrying on.” David tried to sound exasperated, but only succeeded in sounding excited.

  “Bring them in. Bring them in.” Doc ushered Fay in and closed the door behind her. “Let’s put them in the front parlor for now. We have everything set up for them there. Just listen to those squeaks. They’re excited too.”

  Fay put the carrier down on the rug in the parlor and unzipped the front flap.

  Predictably enough, Tigger was the first to emerge. His first step into his new home was in keeping with his personality. He emerged with a playful bound. Then he stopped dead when he realized that he was in a strange place. He put his nose down as he began to explore his new territory.

  Seconds later, Zorro’s face appeared as she ventured cautiously into the unknown.

  “Poor little girl. She’s scared.” David dropped to his knees and extended a forefinger to stroke Zorro from head to tail. She sniffed his finger and turned towards him with a tiny mew. He scooped her up and held her against his chest.

  As Fay watched the big man cradling the tiny kitten against him, something melted in her heart. She knew she was standing on the edge of a precipice. She couldn’t let herself fall in love with David Dyer. Not when he had made the decision to pull away from her. She could feel the new detachment in him.

  Tigger sniffed Doc Dyer’s shoelaces, so he bent to stroke him. Soon, the sound of his sewing-machine purr could be heard from across the room. It was lovely to watch the men getting acquainted with their babies.

  “Nice work on the Tabitha Trott case, by the way,” said David as Zorro curled up against his chest.

  “Thanks. A lot of the credit must go to Duncan McCloud. He played his role perfectly.”

  “What will happen to him now? He admitted to removing papers from the lighthouse museum, and also to breaking the catch on Tabitha’s downstairs window.”

  “Removing the papers from the museum wasn’t a crime because he was asked to do so by one of the committee members, who gave him a key. He suspected that it wasn’t all above board, but he didn’t know for sure. Breaking the catch on the window was certainly a form of vandalism, but Sergeant Jones has decided not to pursue that because of the role that Duncan played in getting his aunt to confess on tape. He’s a free man. Maggie Binnie is encouraging him to start an apprenticeship as an electrician.”

  “I hope he does well for himself,” said Doc. “He deserves a second chance in life.”

  Fay agreed. “He’s a nice boy. And now that that murderous aunt of his will be out of his life, he’ll finally have a chance to succeed.”

  “Look how well the kittens have settled in,” said David. “It’s a shame I have to go away next week. It’s only for a few days but they will probably already have grown by the time I get back.”

  “Oh, are you going away?” Fay kept her voice neutral.

  He met her eyes for a second before looking away as though her gaze had scalded him.

  “Yes. I’m going to New York. It’s time I reconnected with Laetitia.”

  The Cat’s Paw Cozy Mysteries Will Return

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  Look out for THE CAT THAT WAS BIGGER THAN YOU, Book Five of The Cat’s Paw Cozy Mystery series, releasing in April 2019 on Amazon Kindle.

  About the Author

  Fiona Snyckers is the author of the Trinity series of young adult novels, the Eulalie Park Mysteries series, as well as the suspense novel Now Following You and the high-concept thriller Spire. She has published various short stories in magazines and collections. The Cat’s Paw Cozy Mys
teries is her latest series of murder-mystery novels. Fiona has been nominated four times for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her family.

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